I haven't had time or inspiration to write one of these lately (and I'm actually still working on compiling previous efforts in a book in my non-copious free time), but Victor Davis Hanson (who actually started this and originally inspired me with his Pearl Harbor piece back in ought one) wonders anew how today's media would cover WW II.

It is not out of “Roosevelt hating,” but out of the need for truth that requires this paper to remind the American people that Mr. Roosevelt, in whose hands our collective fate lies, has been untruthful to his wife about his liaisons, untruthful to the American people about the extent of his crippling illness, and thus, not surprisingly, untruthful to the United States Congress about the extent of our prewar involvement with the British Empire in its European war and the secret nature of our present commitments.

Recently we have learned that President Roosevelt, the former law school dropout, once again has violated basic freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. Supposed German suspects were subject to military tribunals, tried in secret, and then executed. Tens of thousands of Italians, Germans, and Japanese war captives are detained in hundreds of American prison compounds, without charges and often in secret. How many were truly captured in uniform, and under what conditions, is never disclosed.

Unfortunately this violation of American values comes not in isolation, but on the heels of the unlawful internment of thousands of American citizens in Western concentration camps, the cover-up of the Cobra disaster in Normandy and the criminally negligent killing of General McNair, and still more rumors that hundreds of American soldiers perished in secret in training exercises on the eve of the Normandy invasion. Yet, the American people to this day have no precise idea how many of their enlisted men and officers have been killed, much less where they perished or how.

Indeed, what little we know comes to light only due to the brave efforts of a few unnamed operatives in the Office of Strategic Services who have in secret provided such information concerning patently illegal activities to the responsible news organizations.

How many times can somebody do the same kind of parody (media portrayal of war on terrorism vs. media portrayal of World War II) and have it seem fresh? Two times? Three? Five?

And it's also a weak analogy. WWII and our current situation are not similar in scope, or degree, or even ideology. The terrorists have not conquered half of Europe, nor are they sending millions to the gas chambers. So equating the two struggles doesn't work very well. And neither does equating the response to the threat. They're different battles entirely.

The terrorists have not conquered half of Europe

No, they've merely conquered much of the middle and far East, and Africa.

nor are they sending millions to the gas chambers.

Certainly not for lack of desire. The Germans hadn't sent millions to the gas chambers in 1938, either. How long should we have waited?

The difference between World War II and the current "war" is that, in the former case, the future of democracy was in imminent peril due to the rapid and brutal conquest and destruction of all that stood in front of the Reich, while in the latter case, democracy is in peril due to the internal erosion of our nation by those who live in fear, and those who exploit that fear.

While the media have exploited that fear to their own ends, they have also exposed others have who taken advantage of it. I am comfortable condemning them for one set of behaviors while commending them for another.

The current conflict is not one which will be won on a battle field, whether overt or covert. It will won by conveying the ideals of liberal society into the Middle East, Central Asia, and other regions, and by convincing the citizens of the nations in those regions that we want the best possible future for them, while applying massive diplomatic pressure on their governments, just as we did with the Warsaw Pact. Some of our best allies now are the new democracies of Eastern Europe, because they understood clearly that we supported them while staring down their unjust former leaders.

Per wikipedia, the Battle of Okinawa lasted from April 1, 1945 until June 21, 1945. Two and a half months.

Had we still been fighting in Okinawa during 1947 then yes, it would truly have been a quagmire.

More from wikipedia:

Throughout 1944 American submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. In 1944 submarines sank three million tons of shipping while the Japanese were only able to replace less than one million tons.

Cut off the oil revenues flowing to Islamicist nut-jobs and then we can get serious about winning the war on the enemy you say we should be fighting.

Somewhat off thread but still interesting. Again from wikipedia.

Operation August Storm, along with the two atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined to break the Japanese political deadlock and force Japan's surrender; they made it clear that Japan had no hope of holding out, even in the Home Islands. Soviet-occupied Manchuria would also provide the main base of operations for Mao Zedong's forces, who proved victorious in the following four years of civil war in China. In fact, military success in Manchuria prevented the Soviet Union from receiving bases in China—promised by the Western allies—because all land gained was turned over to the People's Republic of China after they gained power. Before leaving Manchuria, however, Soviet forces looted its considerable industrial plant and relocated it to war-torn Soviet territory. As agreed at Yalta, the Soviet Union had intervened in the war with Japan within three months of the German surrender, and they were therefore entitled to the territories of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and also to preeminent interests over Port Arthur and Dairen, with its strategic rail connections. The territories on the Asian mainland were transferred to the full control of the People's Republic of China in 1955, and the other possessions are still administered by the most powerful of the Soviet Union's successor states, the Russian Federation. Though the north of the Korean peninsula was under Soviet control, the economic machine driving the invasion forces had given out before the entire peninsula could be seized. With the American landing at Incheon [8Sep45]—some time before the Red Army could have remobilized and secured the entire nation—Korea was effectively divided. This was a precursor to the Korean War five years later.

If no A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki all Korea would have gone Soviet. I have always supported Truman's use of the A-bomb, now this is one more argument.

Bill,

Hell yes. Embargoing Iranian oil would preemtively neutralize the only trump card they think they have.

Iran is not the only problem. How many 9/11 hi-jackers were Saudi?

Coal gasification, shale oil, nuclear power and - gasp - conservation. Conservation to win a war, just like in WW2.

*yawn*

These were funny, and topical, and well written... the first dozen or so times. Last five dozen are repetitive dross.

From R. Emmett Tyrell:

In 1942, when all Americans recognized that we were at war, the press was more disciplined. Of course, President Franklin Roosevelt encouraged this discipline with such instruments as the Office of Censorship, authorized under the War Powers Act. Codes of reportage were established, and news organizations submitted thousands of stories to the censors. Some of the self-censorship appears preposterous today. On Palm Sunday of 1942 a blizzard dumped more than two feet of snow on the east coast. Neither the New York Times nor any of the Washington newspapers reported the mess that had blanketed their cities. You would not want the Nazis to know.

Yet now our enemies know about our propaganda in Iraq and plans being made for bombing Iran. During World War II the Times science writer, William Laurence, got word of our progress on developing an atomic bomb. He was warned by the Manhattan Project's General Leslie Groves not to publish his knowledge. Legend has it that Groves told Laurence he knew too much already and "I shall have to hire you or kill you." With the agreement of Times editors Laurence disappeared into the Manhattan Project, reappearing on the bomber that leveled Nagasaki. After that he wrote a series of articles on the development of the bomb for his newspaper and won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize.

America is at war, and it is not just the Republicans' war.

I read the posts, here and elsewhere, when anologies and parodies are brought between WWII and WWIII, and I smile.

I smile when people say things like the Islamofascists don't want world domination. O.K., then name a country, not already under some other hard core regime, in which they are NOT currently active.

Again. I smile when people say things like the Islamofascists aren't putting people in gas chambers. I'll agree that they are not. Is blowing them up any better? The majority of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan from homocide bombing are the locals. Dead is dead. The Islamofascists may not be trying to kill off a group they disdain, except the Jews, but they are killing people. Everyday killing people. How many people do you have to kill, in an effort to bring your fascist regime to power, before it's wrong? 50, 100, 10,000 or 12 million? Let me know what the number is, so I can wait to post again on this subject.

Actually I have a number in mind already. 2986, was enough for me.

The analogies and parodies do hold up. If anologies aren't valid why do Kerry, Kennedy, Edwards, Obama, Pelosi et. al. keep screaming, "Viet Nam, Viet Nam!!"?

Which by the way naysayers was ecalated by the Democrats starting with Truman.

All the trite, "..oh we've seen a dozen other "parodies" just like this", comments p1ss me off. If you don't like these paodies, don't read them. Go over to the Puffington Palace and get soothed by lefty rhetoric.

Tens of thousands of Italians, Germans, and Japanese war captives are detained in hundreds of American prison compounds, without charges and often in secret.

====

Incorrect, the International Committee of the Red Cross kept
track of US help POW's. In Return the Germans gave the
ICRC access to US POW's. It was all because of the Geneva
Convention, something the Bush Administration has decided
doesn't apply anymore.

It was all because of the Geneva Convention, something the Bush Administration has decided doesn't apply anymore.

Nonsense. It's the enemy that ignores the Geneva Convention, not the administration. And Geneva doesn't require granting Geneva rights to those who refuse to abide by it. In fact, it's counterproductive to do so, since it rewards their flaunting of it.

Anonymous:

Did the ICRC get access to Manzanar and the camps holding Japanese-Americans?

Ironically, iirc, the ICRC got access to some of the German death camps. Must mean the Germans were actually better at obeying the law than we were, eh?

Please, Rand. We do have the little fact that we forbade torture in all three of our past wars of survival (the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and WW II). And we did so for Japanese POWs despite the fact that Imperial Japan not only refused to follow suit but took glee in inflicting one atrocity after another on our POWs -- and that, after Pearl Harbor, the Aemrican public would probably have approved wholeheartedly of our following suit.

So why didn't the FDR Administration? For the simple reason that they knew damn well that we couldn't occupy Japan permanently, and so we wanted a Japan which was independent but non-hostile -- which would have been a hell of a lot harder to get if we'd abused their POWs. Now consider how much more important this is with the Moslem world, which we can't even begin to occupy in toto. So -- even if you ignore those little moral questions about tortuing POWs (under whatever name) for relatively trivial reasons -- doing so is strategically idiotic.

In short, we just have here further proof that Mr. Simberg's attic is not overly endowed with toys.

I'd forgotten that George Washington forbade the abuse of POWs in the Revolutionary War -- despite the fact that the British and Hessians routinely abused ours -- for exactly the same (obvious) strategic reason that applied in WW II and applies even more in the current situation: it makes unnecessary enemies. Lots of them.