We grew up with war — World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War and then Vietnam. We learned all about World War II because it was the subject of books, magazine articles, plays, movies and TV documentaries.
What’s more, most of the men in our life and some women were World War II veterans.
Fifty years ago, we would get in front of the TV every week without fail to watch the best of the World War II documentaries, “Victory at Sea.” It was a stunning, enthralling, rousing patriotic tour de force, excellently produced, written and narrated. And the musical score was superb.
Tonight, after all these years, we watched a half-hour segment on a local PBS station. It was about the pivotal year 1942, about the battle for Guadalcanal, and it still had the power to make our spine tingle.
If we could have our way, “Victory at Sea” would be shown in its entirety to every young American as part of their high school curriculum. It’s that good and that important.
Victory at Sea! One of my uncles and my step-father were
in the Navy in the Pacific Theater. So often they would
add to what we had just seen – never knew then that we
were being taught a history lesson. I, too, have seen a
few of the half-hour shows in the past few years, and I
always feel such a sense a pride in our United States
and those I knew who had been in the midst of WWII. The
saddest revelation of all was my sudden realization as I
watched with my “children” one of those episodes that
they have never felt that pride of “Right” as the entire
world came together to fight for freedom against the
aggressors.
MarchDancer, I know exactly what you mean. There is a concept known as “just war.” It means waging war to defend your homeland and way of life when its been attacked.
The war against the Axis powers was certainly a just war and so is the war against Islamic extremist terrorists. The problem, as things have developed, is that world War II was, overall, waged brilliantly, with exceptionally good leadersip, while today’s war against terrorists is being fought ineptly under the worst leadership I’ve ever seen.
What do you know about the leadership during WWII? Were you there, or do you just go by what Tom Brokaw tells you? As for the current situation, it’s a bit different than WWII, but you lefties just want to find fault with all things Bush, having endured eight years of an asshat who couldn’t keep his zipper up long enough to do squat about terrorism.
So how old are ya, Anderson? Old enough to remember Jimmuh Carter’s failed presidency? I doubt it; your professor probably tells you that Jimmuh was a great president too, huh?
Frank, if you had spent a little more time reading and trying to comprehend my post  as opposed to jumping to conclusions and responding with preconceived notions, harsh judgments and lame name calling  you’d find most of your questions answered.
FYI, my first recollections of a president involve Harry Truman, as depicted in newsreels at the theater and on TV. I don’t recall any professor telling me Jimmy Carter was a great president. I consider Carter an exceptional ex-president after being a disappointing president, albeit he did manage to do some good things during his term.
“…world War II was, overall, waged brilliantly, with exceptionally good leadersip, while today’s war against terrorists is being fought ineptly under the worst leadership I’ve ever seen.”
I’m not so enamored of WWII leadership and stragegy. There was plenty of wastage and missteps to rival or exceed anything in Iraq. The WWII leadership also gave us the foolishness of a divided Vietnam and Korea, that still gives us problems today.
The US military today is orders of magnitude more effective than its WWII counterpart. We are asking them to take on a more difficult task. The German army attempted a similiar task in Yugoslavia, a smaller country than Iraq, circa 1940, and they lost 100,000 men in 5 years before being forcibly pushed out.