Good mornining X,
For all the "cheer leaders" on the sidelines.. Maybe a little reading of Paul Fussell might be in order..
I read some of his works years ago.. No pansy, this guy, like so many men, women,,??. posting on SI.. Was in the infantry in the "good war", I believe enlisting after graduating from UCLA, if I remember right.. Grew up in a upper mid class family in southern California.. To say the least, became very disenchanted with the way war and the selling of it is..
Turned into a great journalist.. on other matters too.. a great observer..He pretty much defines MY thinking on many things.
link.. A good interview.. An excerpt
raven.cc.ukans.edu
<<Fussell: As a former soldier, what struck me is the absolutely heartless way that war was being pursued by the Americans, partly I think because of the race problem. The Vietnamese to us were not merely communists, they were nasty little yellow people without souls. It didn't matter how we blew them up or how we bombed them or how we burned their villages and so on. I was very struck by that. And one thing I was trying to do in The Great War and Modern Memory was to awaken a sort of civilian sympathy for the people who suffer on the ground in wartime, and that's really an act that I've been performing, oh, ever since 1945, I suppose. >>
Another link
theatlantic.com
The Real War 1939-1945
On its fiftieth anniversary, how should we think of the Second World War? What is its contemporary meaning? One possible meaning, reflected in every line of what follows, is obscured by that oddly minimizing term "conventional war." With our fears focused on nuclear destruction, we tend to be less mindful of just what conventional war between modern industrial powers is like. This article describes such war, in a stark, unromantic manner
by Paul Fussell
WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE SECOND WORLD War that moved the troops to constant verbal subversion and contempt? What was it that made the Americans, especially, so fertile with insult and cynicism, calling women Marines BAMS (broad-assed Marines) and devising SNAFU, with its offspring TARFU ("Things are really fucked up"), FUBAR ("Fucked up beyond all recognition"), and the perhaps less satisfying FUBB ("Fucked up beyond belief")? It was not just the danger and fear, the boredom and uncertainty and loneliness and deprivation. It was the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable. They knew that in its representation to the laity, what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied. They knew that despite the advertising and publicity, where it counted their arms and equipment were worse than the Germans'. They knew that their automatic rifles ....>>>>
The Google links
google.com
Just some thoughts...
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