I want to talk to you about The Good War, 1941-1945.
When most people use that phrase, I think what they have in their subconscious minds is an image of skeletal prisoners being liberated from German camps. The emotional response evoked by that imagery cuts right to the heart of what it means to be human, and it justifies in the popular mind (and often even in my own, honestly) a belief that the war was fundamentally Good.
Nevertheless, as rational beings we are compelled to look deeper and think hard about what lies beyond that emotional response. So … a few facts.
In late-1930s America there was no understanding at all of what was going on inside Germany, or the camps. There was also no appetite for yet another war of any kind. The vast majority of Americans wanted no part of it, and in fact it was very common for public figures like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh to be radically pro-German, and even pro-fascist.
President Franklin Roosevelt was inclined to intervene against Germany. But he had no good rationale for asking Congress to declare war (as was still the practice, in those crude simple times), especially in light of the view of the People that too much young American blood had been shed in the name of European squabbles a generation earlier–and fuck Europe, if they had learned nothing from it. So the US stayed out, and they were right to stay out, by any reasonable metric of right and wrong.
Meanwhile, half a world away, Japan was furiously struggling to build an Empire of their own. The Japanese weren’t fascists in any meaningful sense. Just imperialists who wanted China to be theirs, for a start. Roosevelt pursued a policy of ruthlessly strangling their ambitions with economic warfare–maybe “sanctions” is the right word. Japan had no oil of their own, and without finding a source of it, they were doomed to being a runty little island nation and never fulfilling any of their expansionist dreams.
Desperately starving for oil, Japan in late 1941 launched a coordinated series of attacks on places that had it.
There was still no justifiable reason for the US to go to war–with anyone.
But … since America was the only place in the world that might effectively object to their conquests, Japan made the fateful decision to also destroy their ability to effectively object, and bombed the American fleet anchored at their colonial holdings at Hawaii. (Which the US had invaded and stolen from a lawful Queen about 50 years prior.)
At the moment the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the cold war against Japan got hot, and could suddenly be termed Good, for one reason and one reason alone.
It was purely an act of self-defense.
Did this give Roosevelt the additional right to declare war on Japan’s half-ass ally Germany?
It did not.
But he didn’t need to, because in the stupidest strategic move of his whole life, Hitler saved him the trouble and actually declared war on the US himself. In the amusing words of one historian, the Fuhrer’s decision was “puzzling”–a majestic understatement.
So World War Two in every phase can now be legitimately termed a Good War, for the sole and simple reason that it was, for the first time in America’s history since revolutionary times, a really and truly defensive war.
***
America is said to have defeated Germany in Europe, and there is no doubt that Normandy was a turning point. I’ll hold off for now on debating whether the Russians were a more decisive factor, but there’s a compelling case to be made.
In the Pacific, the nobility of the American victory was badly stained, when the new president Truman committed a pair of horrific war crimes against the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Again, there’s debate available on the morality of it–personally I favor the argument that Truman did it because if he didn’t, the damn Russians would have beat him to Tokyo as well as Berlin .. but again, that’s a tangent.
In any case, stained by whatever, it was by lesser or greater margins a “good” war, on the grounds of self-defense alone.
Sadly, it was the Last Good War. In the almost eighty years since, the baby Empire has waged dozens, or hundreds depending on how you count, of wars that were and are in no way good. Bad wars, proxy wars, covert wars, political assassinations, regime change operations, ‘police actions’–and not one of them Declared constitutionally by the congressional representatives of the people.
My point is this.
You may not have been old enough to have strong feelings about Korea, or Vietnam, or any of the marquee Bad Wars of the thirty-year period after the Big Good One. To the extent you have feelings now, they’re probably based on either the Rambo movies, or Apocalypse Now.
But to the extent that you …
–were moved to tears by the false propaganda about Kuwaiti babies smashed in their incubators and screamed for Bush the Elder to wreak vengeance for you, or
–cheered our brave troops as they marched on Baghdad based on the idiocy of the Bush II lies about phantom WMDs and some bullshit connection to Al Queda and 9-11, or
–were disappointed in Biden for abandoning those poor women of Afghanistan to the Taliban, after 20 years and trillions of dollars spent in a country the US never had any business in in the first place, or
–fly your little Ukrainian flag to this day on your lawn or next to your twitter-handle; because freedom, because democracy, because liberty for our fellow non-Asiatic pale kin, while saying nothing ever about Yemen or Syria or Somalia or Libya or any of the horrors perpetrated daily by your government that far exceed anything Bad Vlad the Putin ever did in his life ..
I would just ask you to stop. Think. Do some minimum amount of research, before you jump on board with the next war and the next war and the next Endless. Fucking. War.
Is the proxy war in Ukraine a “good” war? No. It’s not defensive.
If you want to try to make the case that ‘we’ have some obligation to defend the Zelenskys, or the much more sympathetic Afghan women, or literally anyone anywhere in the world at any time, I will just say …
The burden of proof for that is on you. I’ve told you what I think, and exactly why.
Where do you draw the line between compassion and becoming the Police of the Planet, and how CAN you draw it logically when your rationales have been spoon-fed to you by the lying Machine itself, and over and over again by cynical appeals to the emotional reflexes of your lizard brain?
How many times have you sat in front of the TV and been beaten over the heart with images of western Ukrainian mamas and babushkas outside their gutted apartments. “Lots”.
How many times have you been similarly gutted by images of children whose limbs were taken off by Ukrainian rocket fire, or colorful petal mines designed to look like toys, in the Donetsk of eastern Ukraine?
Is it two times? Is it zero?
What is that mismatch doing to your cognitive processing; to your opinions and the very way you see the world?
Why is it that you clap and cheer every time another ten, or twenty BILLION dollars gets shipped to Raytheon and Halliburton via the money-laundering operation in the deeply corrupt, nazi-tainted puppet state in Kyiv?
Why REALLY do you think you have the right to wish Putin dead and expect your government to grant your wish, no matter the expense of it in blood (not your blood) and treasure (yes, our treasure) and no matter that as you crow back lustily at the NPR announcer-drone, you’re driving by an armless veteran with a tin can from the last Bad War … or just an economic casualty of capitalism who might just be your brother’s brother?
Now do that same equation over again. Take Israel and Palestine, and come back here and tell me all about how “wull the Israelis have a right to defend themselves, don’t they?”
Oh yeah, you really got me that time. Hoisted by my own self-defense petard, that time.
Good Lord in heaven and Jesus wept, people. (Don’t forget to take a breath, Alex.)
When South Africa jailed Nelson Mandela, was that a good and justifiable act of self-defense?
When the settlements in Gaza are burned and bulldozed, is that Good? Or is it genocidal apartheid?
Is it the victims of eighty years ago … running the open-air death camps of 2023 …
Is it the nice man who became the first black president, building the slave cages for Mexican kids, so that Trump could fill them up, and doddering old Joe can make sure they stay filled to this day …
Yeah. It is … a lot of that. Bad War, and a lot of Bad Civil War, beneath the radar.
Sometimes I despair of ever even making a single dent in one brick-brain of that impenetrable fucking Wall of Lies.
***
Turn your face toward heaven, into the first dawn after the Solstice. I bring the Good news.
The Good news is that bringing down the Wall is not exactly my job. Nor even denting it. Not only is no one paying me to do it, but I am not obligated morally to do it either.
I get wound up and pissed off at density and willful blindness and self-serving brainwashed political opinions … mainly for the fun of it, I think.
So using a word like Despair in that context is ultimately not much more than self-indulgence on my part.
I am not a prophet. I am not a Holy Brick Denter blessed of God or anyone.
I’m a simple and objectively humble belletrist. From the French, belles lettres, beautiful letters.
But what is Beauty … ?
Oh, no you don’t. There’s been more than enough philosophizing for one god damned day. This is the Good news part
and anyway, THIS is beauty.
I’m in the grocery store and I need eggs. “Need”. So I look at the top two shelves where they keep the good shit and I see that the cheapest certified Organic ones are $7.99.
The cheapest good stuff is these. Not organic. Free range though at least. Sooo pretty, upon opening the carton. Brown eggs of all shades, and the others, it’s hard to see, but pale blues.
And two dollars less.
I make a quick command decision.
In the pan the yolks are a stunning orange. In the homemade breakfast burrito: divine.
Six bucks is still absurd and unreal for a dozen eggs.
But I made the right choice this time, and I am working, in my broken foolish way, to learn to do that with a little more consistency.
I wish you heartfelt good luck as you pursue that same agenda for yourself, in the supermarket, at the ballot box, in every fleeting moment of your one true miracle of life.