A Tale of Two Wars & Two Presidents
And so on the second day of the seventh month of the fifth year of the war in Iraq, the final episode of Ken Burns’ The War ran on PBS. This vivid mosaic of World War II at home and abroad was a big hit by public broadcasting standards, drawing the most viewers since an episode of Antiques Roadshow in 2000, although falling far short of prime-time heavy hitters like CSI and Desperate Housewives.
We probably have to take Burns at his word that The War was not intended as a counterpoint to the Iraq war, and indeed pre-production of the documentary did get underway well before the drive on Baghdad.
But in an era when the images and sounds that come through our ever larger TVs have an outsized ability to grab and hold our attention, The War is a powerful if apparently unintentional indictment of today’s war, and most notably the arrogance and folly of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the other members of the Neocon Poets Society.
Whether the men and women who fought and sacrificed in World War II were nobler than the men and women who fight and sacrifice today is not an issue, but the powerful message of “A World Without War,” the ironically titled final episode of Burns’ seven-part, 14½-hour documentary is unequivocal:
The GIs who landed on Omaha Beach in the D-Day invasion, who liberated Hitler’s death camps in Austria and Germany, who fought to victory on Okinawa as their foxholes filled with the guts of thousands of killed and suicided Japanese, knew exactly what their war was about.
They were constantly reminded of what their war was about by President Roosevelt, a great man whose great ego was matched by an ability to inspire Americans to make the enormous sacrifices necessary to defeat a fascist demon that threatened to devour the planet and destroy our most precious freedoms.
The GIs who are fighting in the streets of Baghdad and the desert wastes of Anbar have only the vaguest idea of what their war is about.
They are constantly if unintentionally reminded of the core disingenuousity of their war by President Bush, a small man who also has a great ego but cannot camouflage his failures of leadership behind flag waving and false analogies to FDR’s war as he prattles on about the demon of the hour – first Saddam Hussein, then the insurgency, then Al Qaeda and now Iran – and whose war threatens to devour the Middle East and policies at home undermine those precious freedoms.
15 Responses to “A Tale of Two Wars & Two Presidents”
You make a good comparison between Bush and Roosevelt. Bush seems to need a great enemy to make himself appear as a resolute warrior against “evil”. As such, his foreign policy choices to use preemptive force over diplomacy, should surprise no one.
Strip away his identity as an anti-terror “warrior” and you have a partisan pol, who has rewarded party loyalty and big campaign contributions up the wazoo, while jettisoning the conservatives’ principles of fiscal restraint and smaller government, whenever it suited him. He has delegated to underlings and then never held them accountable when things went wrong, and never seemed to have much of a grasp for the details of the power he delegated away.
Even with polio and wheelchair-bound, FDR looms like a giant above him.
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And except for the gratuitously hyperbolic rhetoric, I agree with you, krit. The key factor, in my view, for a wartime CiC, is the ability to communicate/inspire/lead. Only Kennedy and Reagan have since had the ability to communicate like FDR. Of all Bush’s shortcomings, piss-poor communication skills have led the pack. Not that it would be really necessary for him to communicate with you or SM, but when he can’t even communicate with his own constituency, you wonder what Barbara was thinking when she let this one get into politics.
As to the PBS series, what struck me was that it is now politically acceptable to badmouth WW2 leadership. I grew up literally surrounded by WW2 vets…….and nary one negative thing uttered for 5 decades. Now, an Iraq-era piece is produced and lo and behold, those field generals of WW2 are now declared incompetents.
The series itself was a disappointment. Better than the dull Baseball and somnolent Jazz, but nowhere near The Civil War.
The musical score- esp. the Norah Jones song, was atrocious.
The World At War is still the best doc on WW2.
The series is wonderful.
I didn’t think it was an indictment of anyone except war itself. There are stacks of ‘war is hell’ movies and books based on practically every war noted in history, and they all end with the resollve to avoid war – until the next war comes along.
The poignant theme throughout is the unity between the battlefront and the home front. It’s got to be remembered, though, that there were no newsclips whatched while eating dinner. It’ s a different experience to read text in newspapers or listen to the radio than to watch the devastation in
a ‘you are there’ visual format.
How national unity breeds national resolve, though, is made abundantly clear. The cheerfulness in accepting rationing and devoting serious time to writing letters to those on the front is awe inspiring.
That does indict our society in the present. Our partcipation in the war is largely devoted to fighting word battles on blog sites. The contrast is striking, heartbreaking and ominous.
I was glad to note that the documentary didn’t stoop to presenting WWII Ameticns like Hollywood heroes, flawless and pure. Racism is shown in all its ugliness and pervasiveness. Anti-semitism wasn’t confined to Hitler’s Nazi devotees. Rosie the Riveter was quite capable of being disturbed by Jewish co-workers.
The series is great, not only because it brings out the major themes, but because it touches on so many sub-texts.
There’s a lot of food for thought there.
I don’t know if we’re capable of clearning from it.
Many in the military did not fully comprehend the reason why they were fighting until Hitler’s death camps were liberated or until they met the fanatical Japanese fighters in battle. Even FDR’s powers of communication needed help to make the message clear in some ways.
The GIs who are fighting in the streets of Baghdad and the desert wastes of Anbar have only the vaguest idea of what their war is about.
You know this how, Shaun?
You make a good comparison between Bush and Roosevelt.
You should read what people had to say about FDR at the time. It was often just as bad as what is said about Bush now. Indeed, much of it sounds awfully familiar.
Cosmo and Domajot:
I agree that World at War remains the pre-eminent documentary about WW2, but after watching all seven installments of The War I have softened the already modest criticisms in my initial review.
Yes, I could have done without Norah Jones, but on balance the series accomplishes its goal, which to quote Phillip Caputo, is to examine “the things men do in war, and the things war does to them.â€
It’s best aspect was the Personal, for FDR, Churchill, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, have been examined to death, but the music was very inapt.
Perhaps the only effective use of music was the single key piano piece which was dirge-like.
Also, the reading of letters, followed by the person quoting themselves, is stale. Burns tends to impose his format on anything he covers, rather than letting content dictate form.
Plus, what the folk wrote or revealed in interviews, was not nearly as compelling as their Civil war counterparts.
Also, the three episodes with the tag-ons that Burns bowed to, under pressure, were embarrassingly bad. Esp. the one of the Am Indian who became a chief. Ugh! It was an example of liberal racism at its worst- yes, let’s feed the stereotype of the Am Indian as a buffoon who becomes a medicine man. chief, etc.
Inouye, Sascha Weinzheimer and the internees, and the MN flyer were prob the best interviewees, with the most to tell, although the Aanenson guy ended the series w what was obvious, he simply had not the power to contextualize his experience.
Not that expert talking heads wd have helped, but at least an attempt to grow out of the Burnsian cliches wd have helped.
Overall, a 70 out of 100.
Cosmo-
You have your musical and artistic preferences, and that’s just fine.
I don’t subscribe to them.
It’s lucky then that the documentary wasn’t made by a committee representing the ‘public’.
Doma:
In fact, one of the above crits was because Burns actually did bow to the public- with the unnecessary and PC tag-ons.
The rest of the flaws stem from a lack of growth artistically, and that’s not the public’s fault.
Actually, comments about W would be a lot worse than FDR’s, if there wasn’t a con screaming “TRAITOR!” every time somebody said mildly uncomplimentary about Our Leader.
Other than that, W and FDR are exactly the same. Except FDR won four landslides, not in a couple of squeakers engineered by his Daddy’s friends and (perhaps) voting machines. And FDR called for shared sacrifice on everybody, not just the Reserves. And FDR called for higher taxes to help pay for the war, instead of just letting the national debt accumulate for future generations to pay. And FDR’s kids signed up for the draft, fought, and contributed to the war effort, instead of staying home to party. And FDR refused to use the war as a club to demonize his opposing party. And FDR put national unity over short term political gain (the GOP made big Congressional gains in 1942) And FDR won his war in five years, instead of letting it drag out longer and longer and longer….
Nice BDS’ing, Jean. Pretty irrelevant and much of it materially false, but nice. For example, the Dems called everyone who questioned Roosevelt’s leadership a traitor with some regularity, including those who protested the Japanese-American internments. FDR raised taxes long before the war–indeed, the 1936 Tax Act did more to continue the Depression than any other single factor. Roosevelt’s daughter never joined the service. FDR spent months promising MacArthur relief forces in the Phillipines, knowing they would never arrive. The national debt reached its highest levels EVER under FDR, rising to record levels during the Depression and then tripling that during the war before peaking at over 120% of GDP, a level untouched since. And so on.
Go read the minutes of the 1944 GOP convention. As I said, you’ll find it sounding awfully familiar.
And I left out his defiance of and threatening of the Supreme Court, and a whole bunch of other little goodies. FDR is viewed as great now, but at the time he was just as beset as any other modern president during wartime. He did have the good fortune to die in office, which always boosts history’s verdict quite a bit.
Tully-
Your overall argument would have read better, if you, yourself, hadn’t mixed in a lot interpretive BS with the very accurate points you make.
It’s a mistake, your mistake, to characterize an era by its undertones rather than its generalites.
There were important exceptions to the rule, but in general, what the public felt or said about the internnent of the Japanese-Americans was not a partisan thing. Just like racial prejudice wasn’t, and neither was anti-semitism or the general suspicion of those of German and Italian descent or other ethnic groups.
In general, the man in the street was inspired by FDR and trusted him to lead the nation through the crisis. Levels of criticism rose and fell with defeats and victories on the battlefront, but on the whole, the public was in an us-against-the enemy frame of mind once involvement in the war was a fait accompli. FDR was the uncontested leader for the effprt.
Your comments about the effect of FDR’s taxes involves a lot of hindsight and taking some interpretive liberties with the analysis, as well.
The truth is that not even economists understand
economics fully. and the errors in today’s economic gospel become apparent tomorrow. That’s why it’s called economic THEORY. A lot has been learned about the mechanics of economics since FDR’s time,
but it would be a gross misrepresentation of those lessons to sum it up with a simple ‘taxes are bad.’. That kind of slant reflects the oversimplification and politcalization of economics, which are corrosive on their own. IIt will not be helpful if tomorrow’s analysts disect today’s economics (the Bush era) in the same political and simplistic way.
As to the ‘FDR did it too’ arguments, I’m just grateful that Clinton isn’t being blamed yet .
There are so many differences between WWII and the war in Iraq, that it would take a book to hash them all out. They can both be characterized by being unprepared at the outset of war, though, That the lesson in that regard from the earlier war was not correctly applied to the latter war should be noted, however.
One important difference between WWII and the current situation should not be ovrlooked, however, It was always assumed that WWII would end. The ‘war on terror’ (distinct from the war in Iraq) has no ending in the forseeable future.
Whatever the ‘FDR did it too” steps being taken now are, have a connotation of permanence,
That brings consideration of the issues up to a whole new level, and past analogies no longer apply.
Thanks for saying I sling BS nicely, but as your comment says, I have much to learn from the master.
(Yes, I know that can be taken two ways, but rest assured, I only meant it one way.)
Where to begin? Let’s start with the “traitor” label. You don’t provide any links or any info, but let’s see a link where the 40′s congressional Democrats condemned a right wing organization for (admittedly juvenile, but still free speech) name calling one of FDR’s generals, and FDR joined in the pile on. If you can find one, I’ll applaud you.
Yes, FDR raised taxes, and introduced the Income Tax. (when he signed it, he said “This one’s for Hearst!”) However, unless you want to drag out the discredited laffer curve, there is no indication that it “made the Depression worse”. He was trying to keep the govt. on an even keel, until WWII and the Marshall Plan blew that all to hell. He certainly didn’t spend the surplus just to spend the surplus, like W did at the beginning of his reign with his “tax refund”.
Even if Anna Roosevelt was their only child, then she still did more to help her father’s adminstration than both Bush twins put together. And her each one of her brothers did more in the armed services than all of Poppy Bush’s boys.
Yes, FDR had internment camps for Japanese Americans, and that was A Bad Thing. Still, there was no water boarding, sleep deprivation, or any of the other fun activities like at W’s camp Guantanomo. Nor did FDR deny US tortured anyone, only to be found out that he endorsed it.
Nope, W never threatened nor defied the Supreme Court, but since most of them have been chosen by him, his dad, and his dad’s old boss, he doesn’t really need to.
Besides, If I really wanted to be irrelevant, I’d mention that Poppy’s poppy was one of those rich men involved in the “Businessman’s Plot” to install a fascist dictator in the White House. But I won’t.
But thanks for the suggestion; I’ll go read the required platform. I bet that Shrub was never called “a traitor to his class” or “that Man in the White House.”