Sadly, the current misbehavior in Europe reminds me of this post from last summer:

Sixty years after Paris was seized by the “Allies,” and the beginning of the American occupation, France remains a failed nation, mired in political corruption and beset by vast pockets of Muslim extremism and anti-semitism, into which the gendarmerie fear to tread…

…The growing Islamic insurgency in the suburbs of the capital and other cities is particularly troubling, and even after six decades of training, it’s not clear that the native security forces are up to the job, with many of them refusing to even enter disputed areas.

Advantage, Transterrestrial!

October 28th, 1944

WASHINGTON (Routers) As this bloody and futile war enters its fourth year, the casualties continue to rise, and while it’s hard to know how many American soldiers have been lost, due to a secretive Roosevelt administration, many analysts think that the number of deaths in brutal battle is now approaching a quarter of a million, with many more millions of civilian casualties in Europe and Asia. Even ignoring all of the innocent loss of life, the loss of American soldiers alone is now almost equivalent to that of the entire population of a medium-sized American city.

This mark is being reached amid growing doubts among the American public about the seemingly endless European and Pacific conflicts, hastily and, some say, thoughtlessly launched in December 1941 to avenge the attack on Pearl Harbor by radical Japanese Shintoists.

Here in the nation’s capital, many urged the U.S. Senate to observe a moment of silence in honor of the fallen 250,000.

“We owe them a deep debt of gratitude for their courage, for their valor, for their strength, for their commitment to our country,” said a prominent Democrat leader.

Critics of the war also acknowledged the sacrifice, even as they questioned the policies of those who lead it.

“Our armed forces are serving ably in Europe and the Pacific under enormously difficult circumstances, and the policy of our government must be worthy of their sacrifice. Unfortunately, it is not, and the American people know it,” said a well-known Republican Senator on background.

Another veteran Republican Senator said today that Americans should expect “many more losses to come.”

“Millions of U.S. troops remain overseas. They did not ask to be sent to war, but each day, they carry out their duty while risking their lives. It is only reasonable that the American people, and their elected representatives, ask more questions about what the future holds in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and how we got into this situation,” he said.

“Anyone who examines the record can see that this president has lied his way into this war. Over the two years before December 7th, while he was telling the nation that we’d never send these boys into a foreign war, he was making backroom deals with the bellicose British government, holding secret talks with them without informing the Congress, supporting them with war material, which could be considered an act of war in itself, providing naval patrols in the north Atlantic and giving orders to fire on German submarines, occupying Iceland, freezing Japanese assets…the list goes on.”

“He knew that the Japanese extremists were going to attack us, and let it happen to get us into his illegal war. It’s time for us to ask why the world hates us, and why they continue to fight against us and kill hundreds of thousands of our soldiers.”

It should be noted that while he disagrees with the characterization of his actions prior to December 7th, President Roosevelt has also warned in one of his fireside chats last year that “…the war is going to last a lot longer than you think. The plans we made for the knocking out of Mussolini and his gang have largely succeeded. But we still have to knock out Hitler and his gang, and Tojo and his gang. No one of us pretends that this will be an easy matter.”

This past summer, he said that we “…shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself. The Germans have retreated thousands of miles, all the way from the gates of Cairo, through Libya and Tunisia and Sicily and Southern Italy. They have suffered heavy losses, but not great enough yet to cause collapse.”

Unfortunately, the message was lost in the understandable furor over his crude language, referring to the Japanese and German governments as “gangs” and, even more appalling, his unapologetic use of racist language in the same speech, in which he repeatedly referred to the Japanese people and troops as “Japs.”

In cities across the country, anti-war protesters and others concerned about the mounting death toll created tiny, glimmering cemeteries in public places. The anti-war group People for Peace And Justice organized many solemn candlelight ceremonies.

The anti-war movement has rallied around Etta Mae Hanberg, whose son was killed in Italy early this year. She gave a speech prior to the ceremony here last night:

“It is insane that there are so many people living and working in the White House that are responsible for war crimes, high crimes and misdemeanors and other crimes against humanity and they are wandering free to enjoy their lives and live fat off of their war profits. We will probably be arrested for exercising our rights to freedom of speech and freedom to peaceably assemble.”

“Besides asking him for What Noble Cause did he kill 250,000 of our wonderful and brave young people, I would also like to ask Franklin Delanodamngood Roosevelt what he is sacrificing. Is he even sacrificing a good night’s sleep? Is he sacrificing his future with his child? He is not sacrificing anything. He and his cabal of warmongering crooks are asking us Americans to give up our lives and our children’s lives for his lies and mistakes and I am sure the grim milestone is barely causing a blip in their souls. Franklin Delano Rosenfeld, the syphillitic Dutch Jew, and his wealthy buddies don’t even have to pay more taxes for the horror in Europe or to rebuild Houston and Galveston [referring to last year’s devastating hurricane, about which the White House and the War Department have suppressed almost all news], which is another Rosenfeld horror.”

Former military personnel are involved in the protests as well.

“We wanted to show people the immensity of the 250,000 people dead,” said Harvey Whitmeyer, a veteran of the first world war who has spent the past several months with a handful of other veterans making the quarter of a million candles that people have been arranging in a vast circle over the past few weeks on the mall, 200 rows deep. “The Roosevelt administration has done everything in its power not to connect this war with death,” Whitmeyer said. “We will rectify that with this peace display.”

Joe Ferguson, a wounded veteran of the military disaster at Kasserine Pass a couple years ago, told the small, quiet crowd he had trouble looking at the shining monument. “These are my people,” he said, shielding his eyes from the quarter of a million candlepower of intense light.

Anti-war activists, many of them wearing elaborate costumes and giant papier-mache heads fashioned in the likenesses of President Roosevelt and Secretary of War Stimson, danced around the peace inferno and chanted slogans such as, “Hey, hey, FDR, how many kids have you killed so far?”

Sadly, grief and mourning turned to tragedy anew as the radiance of the heat caused the wings of one of the giant Birds Of Peace to catch fire. Its wearer ran around in a panic, ablaze and screaming. The horror was increased as other protestors attempted to help by beating the fires out with cardboard plowshares, further spreading the flames and torment. The grim event seemed a living symbol, a flaming metaphor of what is apparent to many–the heartless callousness and indifference of this administration to human life and dignity.

In unrelated news in the past month, General MacArthur has retaken the Phillippines, many atolls continue to fall to American forces in the Pacific, and General Patton continues to roll through France on to Germany.

[Copyright 2005 by Rand Simberg]

It’s almost Halloween, and Iowahawk is celebrating with a repeat of that scary horror classic, The Blog. Here a trailer:

“I’ll teach that thing to target journalists! This is Jordan Eason, signing off!” The television reporter suddenly dropped his microphone and hurtled down the street screaming, headlong into the Blog, which was now over 20 feet tall.

“No… Jordan, you suicidal fool, you can’t stop it!” cried Professor Von Kleinstein, but it was too late… the reporter was quickly swept up into the pulsating plasmoid mass. Suddenly, instinctively, it began heading for the Eastvale movie theater…

…”It’s got to have some sort of central nervous system,” said Biff. “Jeepers, if we could just find its brain, maybe we could kill it.”

“That’s just it, Biff — it doesn’t seem to have any head whatsoever! It seems to be some sort of pure unedited energy, and any attack only seems to make it stronger!”

March 3rd, 1945

IWO JIMA (Routers) Controversy has erupted among the press corps in the last few days as news has spread that the now-famous picture of the “victorious” flag raising over Iwo Jima a couple weeks ago was staged. Many believe that, as the huge number of casualties mounted in the ill-fated and pointless invasion of this tiny island, the Roosevelt administration, desperate for a bit of pro-war propaganda, arranged to have the photo taken for dissemination to the world’s news services.

It has been revealed that the picture was actually of a “recreation” of an earlier flag raising of a much smaller flag, though even that event has now been cast into doubt by the apparent attempt to mislead the press.

There is abundant evidence that the picture was not only unspontaneous, but orchestrated on orders from higher ups.

“None of the men in the picture actually carried the flag to the top,” one reporter noted. “It was brought up by a lieutenant in charge, probably at White House orders.” In addition, none of the men in the picture had even been injured in the fighting to that point.

The latest propaganda ploy from the administration comes in the midst of doubts about the war strategy, with many thinking this latest bloody adventure particularly misguided. Several thousand Marines have died already in the invasion, and many more have been injured, many losing limbs. Moreover, despite the “victory” implied by the “flag raising,” the brave Japanese continue to resist in caves dug deep into the volcanic rock of the doughty little island, with continuing “Allied” casualties. One Republican staffer on the Hill declared that it was Roosevelt’s attempt to prematurely declare “major combat operations over,” when it was clear that the Japanese were going to continue to fight on to the last man.

Beyond the distaste at what now seems an obvious public-relations ploy, some military strategists argue that the Iwo Jima invasion wasn’t worth the cost in resources and blood, or even necessary at all, since the only reason the island is desired is as an auxiliary air base for emergency landings of “Allied” bombers attacking the Japanese homeland.

Some of the anti-war groups are particularly outraged. “We’ve killed tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers, and several thousand of our own, just so we can save the lives of a few American air crews while they kill hundreds of thousands of helpless Japanese civilians,” read a press release from one of the more prominent groups. It continued, “Now we find the Roosevelt administration attempting to cover up its criminal actions by staging events meant to hide the fact that we’re losing this cruel war, with massive casualties on all sides.”

The White House, of course, attempts to defend its actions. A spokesman points out that no claims have been made that fighting was over, and that the photo was a depiction of a real event that had occurred shortly before, but not been captured by the cameras. He also noted that Mount Suribachi was in fact taken that day, and had not been relinquished since.

This does not satisfy critics in the press or the anti-war movement, however.

“It’s important to demonstrate the perfidy and mendacity of this administration now,” said one leading spokesman, “before it becomes fixed in the mind of the public as an American ‘victory,’ or something to be admired and emulated in the future. If we don’t set the record straight now, who knows how history will record it? For all we know, they’ll decide to put up a bronze statue in Arlington to commemorate it, or something.”

August 2, 1943

HOUSTON (Routers) In this hurricane-ravaged city, a large number of Houstonians are now questioning the misplaced priorities of the Roosevelt administration, an administration that many increasingly see as valuing war mongering over the actual safety of the American people.

Last Tuesday’s storm, which killed almost two dozen people and injured dozens more, with property damage in the millions of dollars, was the worst to strike the area since 1915, when hundreds were killed in Galveston.

“This hurricane completely blindsided us,” said one resident. “The first we heard about it before it hit was when one measly airplane flew out over Galveston Bay to see how big the storm was.”

Many find it shocking to consider how much more warning these stalwart southeast Texans could have had, had the hundreds of B-17 bombers sent to England in order to attack Germany, that had never been a direct threat to us, been instead pressed into service closer to home to look for storms in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, supposedly as a result of “threats” from German U-boats, ships were under orders of radio silence from the administration, further preventing warning of the storm from reaching the unaware Houston-area residents.

Another consequence of the administration’s focus on the war could be seen at Ellington Field. Many Army Air Corps personnel were diverted to the task of physically holding down warplanes to keep them from blowing away, instead of being freed up to help maintain order in the wake of the disaster.

Many think that this is a sign of prejudice on the part of a haughty, patrician president from the northeast.

“It’s very clear that Franklin “Delanodamngood” Roosevelt doesn’t give a damn about ordinary folk down here in Texas,” said one local man. “It’s been almost a week now since the storm, many of us don’t have water, and he hasn’t even come down here to see how we’re doing. All he can think about is his pointless war.”

(Copyright 2005 by Rand Simberg)

March 12, 1944

WARM SPRINGS (Routers) A Minnesota woman whose son was killed in the recent Anzio offensive has demanded a private audience with President Roosevelt, and has taken up residence outside his Georgia retreat until she gets one.

Mrs. Etta Mae Hanberg, of Fergus Falls, had a son, Lawrence, who died after stepping on a land mine near the Italian village of Aprilia on January 25th. Overcome with grief, she now questions the war, and laments the apparent purposelessness of her son’s sacrifice. She has set up camp outside the president’s vacation retreat here, and refuses to leave until the president agrees to meet with her. Her plight has attracted many who are equally unhappy with the war, and they’ve established a tent city nearby.

Following a rousing speech to the assembled by Father Coughlin, in his first public appearance in many months, she was interviewed.

“I just want answers,” she says, in her soft-spoken, upper Midwest manner. “Why are our helpless babies dying in Italy when it was Japan that attacked us? And I think that the president knew that the Japanese were going to attack, but let it happen so he could get rich off this war in Europe.”

She is just warming up.

“The president says that Germany declared war on us, but I haven’t seen any declaration of war, and I don’t believe that there are any Germans in Italy. And even if there were any Germans there, who can blame them, with all of our support for Britain? If it weren’t for that nasty little island, always interfering with the rights of German lebensraum and Vichy self determination, and their desire to get rid of all those Jews that are occupying their land and stealing all their money, there wouldn’t be any trouble in Europe. And the way we treat our war prisoners is just a disgrace.”

“I don’t blame whoever planted that land mine. This president is the murderer of my son. With all due respect to the office, I think that this is all just an imperialist grab for olive oil to benefit him and the rest of his crooked business cronies. I think that Franklin Delanodamngood Roosevelt and everyone in his corrupt and bloodthirsty administration ought to be impeached, all the way down to his little dog Fala.”

Sympathetic demonstrators who have gathered from all around to support her cheer at the words, with shouts of “Roosevelt lied, Larry died!” and “No blood for pesto!”

When it was pointed out that she was just one mother of many, and asked how the president could possibly meet with all of the mothers of the hundreds of thousands of American men killed in this war to date, she replied, “My child died. I’ll never see him again. I have absolute moral authority here. And anyway, it’s not hundreds of thousands. I think that there have been hundreds of millions of our children killed and that this lying administration is just covering it all up.”

Roosevelt administration officials have pointed out that the president regrets the loss of Mrs. Hanberg’s son, as he does the losses of all of the families of casualties of this war, but that he can’t meet with just one mother without slighting the thousands of others who are in similar pain. But this, appropriately, doesn’t assuage the grief-stricken woman.

“I have a right to see the president,” she responded. “Are they trying to silence me? Are you? I have a right to be heard. I have a right to have my words broadcast across this nation, and printed in every newspaper. I have a right to this press attention. Why are you trying to deny me my rights?”

(Copyright 2005 by Rand Simberg)

In Crawford.

[Update early Wednesday morning]

Thomas James advances Scrappleface’s ball further down the field in comments:

Mother Sheehan’s war is just a distraction from the Global Whinge on Bush. The left was arguably justified in going into the Plame/Rove scandal (remember that?) after the catastrophic 11/2 attacks which damaged Ohio’s electoral system and brought down the Twin Johns. But since then, they have squandered the unprecedented and heartfelt outpouring of support they once received from George Soros. The left went into this war on the basis of fraudulent estimates of Mother Sheehan’s capabilities as a weapon of mass media destruction, an “imminent threat” which has since been proved bogus, and their appalling conduct in this “illegal” ditch-occupation is serving as a recruitment tool for anti-idiotarian insurgents.

In Crawford.

[Update early Wednesday morning]

Thomas James advances Scrappleface’s ball further down the field in comments:

Mother Sheehan’s war is just a distraction from the Global Whinge on Bush. The left was arguably justified in going into the Plame/Rove scandal (remember that?) after the catastrophic 11/2 attacks which damaged Ohio’s electoral system and brought down the Twin Johns. But since then, they have squandered the unprecedented and heartfelt outpouring of support they once received from George Soros. The left went into this war on the basis of fraudulent estimates of Mother Sheehan’s capabilities as a weapon of mass media destruction, an “imminent threat” which has since been proved bogus, and their appalling conduct in this “illegal” ditch-occupation is serving as a recruitment tool for anti-idiotarian insurgents.

In Crawford.

[Update early Wednesday morning]

Thomas James advances Scrappleface’s ball further down the field in comments:

Mother Sheehan’s war is just a distraction from the Global Whinge on Bush. The left was arguably justified in going into the Plame/Rove scandal (remember that?) after the catastrophic 11/2 attacks which damaged Ohio’s electoral system and brought down the Twin Johns. But since then, they have squandered the unprecedented and heartfelt outpouring of support they once received from George Soros. The left went into this war on the basis of fraudulent estimates of Mother Sheehan’s capabilities as a weapon of mass media destruction, an “imminent threat” which has since been proved bogus, and their appalling conduct in this “illegal” ditch-occupation is serving as a recruitment tool for anti-idiotarian insurgents.