| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
The Myth of ‘The Good Wars’
21st Century Wire says…
Glorious battles, and valiant victories. But what do we really know? Time and history sometimes places an incredible buffer between reality and folklore , even fact and fiction.
It’s not unusual even today to hear politicians and TV pundits refer to certain wars as being ‘the good war’, or ‘the last justifiable war’, or ‘the only righteous war’. Specifically, World War II is the one war which is constantly waxed as being “the last good war, fought by the greatest generation”. Before WWII, western society was told that WWI was ‘The Great War’ and ‘the war to end all wars’, and so on.
Beyond these throw-away lines, though, do we really know enough to make such sweeping statements – about a conflict in which enemies were financing each other, and where the spoils were divided up in such a way that it guaranteed more perpetual conflict and militarization for the next 100 years? WWII was supposedly all in the name of fighting fascism, yet it ushered in a global corporate fascism which makes that era seem pale in comparison.
The truth is we don’t know enough, and by falling prey to government public relations spin, and parroting romantic generalizations about some of the most epic slaughters in human history, we merely fall into the same trap as our ancestors – stuck in a perpetual cycle of glorifying the bankers’ wars.
Historian Howard Zinn asks: ‘Can we find another way?’
During World War II, Howard Zinn was a bombardier in the 490th Bombardment Group.
His targets included Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as well as Royan, a seaside resort in southwestern France which on which he dropped napalm. He documented the last bombing in his book, “The Politics of History”, the research included him discovering that 1.000 civilians were killed in that raid and the raid itself, ordered in the last three weeks of the war, was primarily a career-building exercise for the officers involved.
Many Vets share Zinn’s feeling about their war experiences. Very, very few ever find a supportive platform to talk about their experiences and outlooks…
READ MORE WWII NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire WWII Files
-
Source: http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/02/02/the-myth-of-the-good-wars/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-myth-of-the-good-wars
