COMensarations
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
D-Day: Another Candidate for a National Holiday?
Musings on D-Day, which have become an annual tradition.
I think I’ve been making comments on D-Day for the past two or three years. This year I’ve noticed how I’m more aware of the D-Day anniversary than I am of the day it finally all ended, or V-E Day. (I think the end of WWII was about August 10, right?)
Most people celebrate the victories. We Americans seem to celebrate beginnings: July 4 is the day we began as a country, not the day we finally won the War for Independence. D-Day is the day the final assault began in Europe during WWII. The day the Allies made it clear we’d be kicking butt and taking names. It’s not the day the war was over.
In a similar way, we remember the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the day the U.S. was officially dragged into the war, more than we remember the day the treaties were signed.
I suppose the reason is simple: action is more interesting than people standing around a desk signing papers, or even people standing around exchanging swords. Nevertheless, I believe it might really be because it is these occassions where we answer the call, and start acting with purpose.
The attacks on 9-11 were another such event. However, it is hard to predict what the outcome will be at this point. During WWII it was possible to envision a defeated Axis and the dignataries signing the treaties. People knew what it would look like, and maybe that’s part of what makes it less than memorable. However, what does the end of the War on Terror look like? Who would be signing the papers? How do we know it’s really over? I think if people had a better vision of the outcome, then they would be more willing to fight it through and there would be less talk of “timed” withdrawals.
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You are struggling to visualize the moment of final victory in a so-called War on Terror for one simple reason: the designated enemy in such a war lacks any precise definition.
Moreover, the whole complexion of warfare has changed and seemingly has left you trying to figure out why the “enemy” doesn’t play by your rule book. In the Napoleonic wars and even up through the American Civil War, the enemy obligingly lined up in neat rows so that you could mow him down by the hundreds with grape shot. WWI saw the advent of trench warfare, which dictated whole new methodologies and technologies for killing.
Today, the “enemy” has abandoned even the heretofore obligatory uniform and insignias of rank, blending into local populations with studied ease. And finally, even leadership has been redefined, so that the absence of anything resembling a top-down command structure renders any efforts to go for the head guy impotent and useless. We now have Al Qaeda franchises operating everywhere.
Your enemy is infinitely more sophisticated than you give him credit for. For an investment of only $500,000, Mr. Bin Laden has precipitagted U.S. military expenditures on the order of $500 billion, and after four years, the man still remains at large, thumbing his nose at you. Haven’t you learned the lesson you taught the Soviets? You can bleed your enemy to death until his own people will take no more.
And all of this disregards the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that the blitzkrieg to off Saddam Hussein was a monumental act of stupidity.
When the Reichstag building burned in 1932, the Nazis were handed the opportunity they needed to arrest and detain their political enemies, and in the ensuing hysteria, whipped to firestorm proportions by Goebbels, the full Reichstag passed the Enabling Acts which effectively legalized the complete Nazi seizure of power in Germany.
George W. Bush’s Reichstag Fire was, of course, the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States by a small band of Al Qaeda operatives. The Bush propaganda machine lost no time in conjuring up the prospect of additional, even more horrific attacks. Whatever psychological terror had been inflicted by Al Qaeda was cynically magnified and enlarged by the Bush crowd.
A half-hearted effort was made to track down Osama bin Laden, the man claiming responsibility for the September 11 attack. But Bush’s advisors certainly knew that bin Laden was far more valuable to their designs alive than dead. Like the arch-enemy Goldstein in Orwell’s 1984, bin Laden became the ready-made focus for the daily Two Minutes’ Hate. But the failure to capture him necessitated a diversionary campaign, so it was decided to attack Iraq, and a case was quickly fabricated to justify an invasion
The blitzkrieg was launched. The President, intent on fanning the flames of fear to volcanic levels, went before Congress and demanded their blessing, painting a future of nuclear destruction if they failed to support him. I have no doubt that the majority of Congressmen and Senators saw through this facile ruse, but the public didn’t, and that was all that mattered. The public, ever gullible and stupid, stood by eagerly to cheerlead an invasion of Iraq, which, after all, promised to become the spectator event of the season. And the brave members of Congress found cowardice a more prudent method for saving their jobs than telling the truth.
With his signature, George W. Bush stripped the decrepit and near-useless Constitution of whatever teeth it had left. No longer would anyone be free from arbitrary searches and seizures. No longer would privacy be considered a right. No longer could the accused count on their day in court. No longer was it necessary for the government to charge someone of an actual crime in order to arrest and detain him . . . forever. The rights which far braver men than he had fought to win, had bled and died for, he consigned to the trash can. The police were now omnipotent. They could do whatever they wished, to whomever they selected, without fear of punishment. All they had to do was invoke the holy Patriot Act.
When, in 2006 the Democratic Party swept the mid-term elections, the chilling truth became evident. Hardly had the last ballot been counted when Nancy Pelosi, Speaker-apparent of the House of Representatives, crowed exultantly that “impeachment was off the table,” and that her party would “work with” the President. Whatever sums of cash had exchanged hands, whatever threats had been made, whatever blackmail or extortion had been committed, the fate of freedom had been sealed. One had to admit, grudgingly, that perhaps George Wallace was right in 1968 when he said that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.
The Republicrat juggernaut is gathering momentum. It will crush you. Freedom is dead.
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