Jules Witcover Wants You to Sacrifice for Defeat

It only seemed that it was a week ago that Witcover was lamenting that more people weren’t personally affected by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on September 26, he did it again, this time comparing life during WWII as portrayed in Ken Burns new PBS mini-series, The War, with the current struggle in Iraq.

Witcover it seems is incapable of separating his hatred of George Bush from his “scholarly” and editorial pursuits and claims that Iraq is “Bush's calamitous failure as a leader in the war into which he blundered, and which has already lasted longer than our involvement in World War II.” But he ignores the lessons of history to come to his conclusion and blames our current consumerism not on the public at large, and the liberal machine of self over others, but rather on a sitting President with whom he disagrees.

The basic Premise of Burn’s documentary is:

Throughout the series, one theme has stayed constant, one idea has continually emerged as we have gotten to know the brave men and women whose stories it has been our privilege to tell: in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

The Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any one accounting. This is the story of four American towns and how their citizens experienced that war.

Witcover then relates how WWII affected him:

“as a 14-year-old high school kid I saw my father, at 42 too old for military service, leave his gas station in my overall-clad mother's hands so he could clock in his night shift at a nearby defense plant. Every day after school, I relieved my mother at the station, pumping gas to customers who had the ration stamps to buy their miniscule monthly rationed allotment. All three of us, and my sister, also manned civil defense posts during nightly blackouts in our town.”

He laments that today the war is being fought not by 14 year olds manning gas pumps dispensing rationed gasoline but rather by a professional military that allows American’s to continue live on in their cocoon of normalcy.

Witcover also complains that:

“The contrast today with America at war in the six years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the four and a half years since the invasion of Iraq, is starkly revealing. Remember how President Bush reacted to 9/11? He told Americans at home to go about their business as usual, and his selective mobilization for the war was the same. There have been, to be sure, plenty of sacrifices made at home, but overwhelmingly just by the families of men and women in the military, notably including those in the Reserves and National Guard. And with Bush's tax cuts mostly benefiting the already comfortable in place, he continues to put the war on the nation's credit card for future generations to pay off.”

Disregarding that it is the Democrats in the form of Harry Reid and John Murtha whom seek to place the burden of the war on future generation, by retreating from Iraq, not because it is a war we should not be embroiled in, but because it does not serve them politically. The lack of sacrifice in America is not an example of American’s unwillingness to suffer for a greater good, but a testament to the strength of our industrial base that every manufacturer has not been retooled onto a war footing. Granted if a few more businesses and manufacturers would step up to the plate, the mine resistant vehicles could have made it into the theatre a lot sooner -saving even more American lives - instead the contracts were mismanaged and mangled by Congress and their archaic contracting process, all in an effort to protect the special interests.

Can you imagine the outcry if the limousine liberals couldn’t purchase their new ride, because every auto manufacturer was spitting out up armored Hummers and Bradley fighting vehicles? What would Al Gore rail against if every topic was off the table if it would detract from the war effort?

Yet, I must admit - I miss the “American suffering for a greater cause” in which my father grew up - but it is not George Bush’s fault, it is the fault of politicians that pander to special interests all for a vote. It is the fault of “journalists” like Witcover who extend the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan by claiming that it is a “calamitous failure” when in reality it is an amazing success. The America of 1942 that Witcover wasn’t an America bent upon ending the war as a defeat, it was an America mobilized towards total victory, and that is the lesson Witcover failed to learn as a child.

Witcover does not seek a total commitment to war to end it sooner, he seeks a total commitment to the war so that more people will be affected by it and hopefully come over to his side and demand of George Bush, an immediate withdrawal so that they can no longer be inconvenienced. In the process he ignores the proven end result of what just such an action would be, the murder of millions of Iraqis, that have chosen democracy over Islamic Fascism.

Witcover isn’t interested in sacrificing for victory, on the contrary he is interested in defeat by any means possible, and if demanding that all of America suffer, then so be it. Witcover is correct in one aspect, America is not a nation at war; America is a nation with its military at war. If Witcover was concerned with, as the nation was during WWII, achieving total victory I would welcome his suggestion, but as he is only interested in embarrassing a sitting President, I’m going to have to pass.