[Rhodes22-list] Omaha Beach - History and politics (anyone know what day it is?)

[Bill Effros]

Brad,

I assume you know David Gelernter's other claim to fame?

Bill

brad haslett wrote:
> This is a good day to call my dad.  BTW, thank you
> Stan.  Brad
>
> ----------------
>
> Too Much, Too Late
> Baby boomers heap insincere praise on the "greatest
> generation."
>
> BY DAVID GELERNTER
> Friday, June 4, 2004 12:01 a.m.
>
> My political credo is simple and many people share it:
> I am against phonies. A cultural establishment that
> (on the whole) doesn't give a damn about World War II
> or its veterans thinks it can undo a half-century of
> indifference verging on contempt by repeating a silly
> phrase ("the greatest generation") like a magic spell
> while deploying fulsome praise like carpet bombing.
> The campaign is especially intense among members of
> the 1960s generation who once chose to treat all
> present and former soldiers like dirt and are willing
> at long last to risk some friendly words about World
> War II veterans, now that most are safely underground
> and guaranteed not to talk back, enjoy their celebrity
> or start acting like they own the joint. A quick
> glance at the famous Hemingway B.S. detector shows the
> needle pegged at Maximum, where it's been all week,
> from Memorial Day through the D-Day anniversary
> run-up.
>
>
>
>
>
> When I was in junior high school long ago, a touring
> arts program visited schools in New York state. One
> performance consisted of a celebrated actress reciting
> Emily Dickinson's poetry onstage for 90 minutes or so.
> I defy any audience to listen attentively to 90
> minutes of Dickinson without showing the strain, and
> my school definitely wasn't having any.
> A few minutes into the show, the auditorium was alive
> with student chatter, so loud a buzz you could barely
> hear the performance. Being a poetry-lover, I devoted
> myself to setting an example of rapt attention for,
> maybe, five minutes, at which point I threw in the
> towel and joined the mass murmur.
>
> The actress manfully completed her performance. When
> it was over we gave her a stupendous ovation. We were
> glad it was finished and (more important) knew
> perfectly well that we had behaved like pigs and
> intended to make up for it by clapping and roaring and
> shouting. But the performer wasn't having any. She
> gave us a cold curtsy and left the stage and would not
> return for a second bow.
>
> I have always admired her for that: a more memorable
> declaration than anything Dickinson ever wrote. And
> today's endless ovation for World War II vets doesn't
> change the fact that this nation has behaved
> boorishly, with colossal disrespect. If we cared about
> that war, the men who won it and the ideas it
> suggests, we would teach our children (at least) four
> topics:
>
> • The major battles of the war. When I was a child in
> the 1960s, names like Corregidor and Iwo Jima were
> still sacred, and pronounced everywhere with respect.
> Writing in the 1960s about the battle of Midway,
> Samuel Eliot Morison stepped out of character to plead
> with his readers: "Threescore young aviators . . . met
> flaming death that day in reversing the verdict of
> battle. Think of them, reader, every Fourth of June.
> They and their comrades who survived changed the whole
> course of the Pacific War." Today the Battle of Midway
> has become niche-market nostalgia material, and most
> children (and many adults) have never heard of it.
> Thus we honor "the greatest generation." (And if I
> hear that phrase one more time I will surely puke.)
>
> • The bestiality of the Japanese. The Japanese army
> saw captive soldiers as cowards, lower than lice. If
> we forget this we dishonor the thousands who were
> tortured and murdered, and put ourselves in danger of
> believing the soul-corroding lie that all cultures are
> equally bad or good. Some Americans nowadays seem to
> think America's behavior during the war was worse than
> Japan's--we did intern many loyal Americans of
> Japanese descent. That was unforgivable--and
> unspeakably trivial compared to Japan's unique
> achievement, mass murder one atrocity at a time.
>
> In "The Other Nuremberg," Arnold Brackman cites (for
> instance) "the case of Lucas Doctolero, crucified,
> nails driven through hands, feet and skull"; "the case
> of a blind woman who was dragged from her home
> November 17, 1943, stripped naked, and hanged"; "five
> Filipinos thrown into a latrine and buried alive." In
> the Japanese-occupied Philippines alone, at least
> 131,028 civilians and Allied prisoners of war were
> murdered. The Japanese committed crimes against Allied
> POWs and Asians that would be hard still, today, for a
> respectable newspaper even to describe. Mr. Brackman's
> 1987 book must be read by everyone who cares about
> World War II and its veterans, or the human race.
>
> • The attitude of American intellectuals. Before Pearl
> Harbor but long after the character of Hitlerism was
> clear--after the Nuremberg laws, the Kristallnacht
> pogrom, the establishment of Dachau and the
> Gestapo--American intellectuals tended to be dead
> against the U.S. joining Britain's war on Hitler.
>
> Today's students learn (sometimes) about right-wing
> isolationists like Charles Lindbergh and the America
> Firsters. They are less likely to read documents like
> this, which appeared in Partisan Review (the U.S.
> intelligentsia's No. 1 favorite mag) in fall 1939,
> signed by John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer
> Schapiro and many more of the era's leading lights.
> "The last war showed only too clearly that we can have
> no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to
> any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan
> of 'Stop Hitler!' would actually result in the
> immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here. .
> . . The American masses can best help [the German
> people] by fighting at home to keep their own
> liberties." The intelligentsia acted on its
> convictions. "By one means or another," Diana Trilling
> later wrote of this period, "most of the intellectuals
> of our acquaintance evaded the draft."
>
> Why rake up these Profiles in Disgrace? Because in the
> Iraq War era they have a painfully familiar ring.
>
> • The veterans' neglected voice. World War II produced
> an extraordinary literature of first-person soldier
> narratives--most of them out of print or unknown.
> Books like George MacDonald Fraser's "Quartered Safe
> Out Here," Philip Ardery's "Bomber Pilot," James
> Fahey's "Pacific War Diary." If we were serious about
> commemorating the war, we would do something serious.
> The Library of America includes two volumes on
> "Reporting World War II," but where are the soldiers'
> memoirs versus the reporters'? If we were serious, we
> would have every grade school in the nation introduce
> itself to local veterans and invite them over. We'd
> use software to record these informal talks and weave
> them into a National Second World War Narrative in
> cyberspace. That would be a monument worth having.
>
>
>
>
>
> Speaking of which: I am privileged to know a gentleman
> who enlisted in the Army as an aviation cadet in 1942,
> served in combat as a navigator in a B-24, was shot
> down and interned in Switzerland, escaped, and flew in
> the air transport command for the rest of the war. He
> became a scientist and had a long, distinguished
> career. Among his friends he is a celebrated
> raconteur, and his prose is strong and charming. He
> wrote up his World War II experiences, and no one--no
> magazine, no book publisher--will take them on. My
> suggestions have all bombed out.
> If you're interested, give me a call. But I'm not
> holding my breath. The country is too busy toasting
> the "greatest generation" to pay attention to its
> actual members.
>
> Mr. Gelernter is a contributing editor of The Weekly
> Standard and professor of computer science at Yale.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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