The Good Columnist

In a few days, I'll go back and re-read The Good Columnist. Just for old time's sake. I'll re-read Edward R. Murrow and Ernie Pyle with respect and gratitude, and remember a time when newspaper columnists may have had political agendas, but the took the time to get the story right before they sat down at their Smith Coronas.

But first, I have to deal with Ellen Goodman.

Goodman's latest column is all about the disillusion she feels about this war - in contrast, I guess, to the breathless support we'd come to expect from her?

In a few days we'll go back to the good war. Just for a visit. We'll rerun the tape of World War II with respect, gratitude and, maybe, nostalgia.

The memorial to what we have dubbed "the greatest generation" will be dedicated on the Washington Mall on Saturday. The 60th anniversary of D-Day will be commemorated eight days later on June 6.

So we'll listen to words carved into stone monuments. Dwight David Eisenhower exhorting the D-Day troops off on "the Great Crusade." Franklin Delano Roosevelt extolling the "righteous might" of the American people.

We'll bring to these ceremonies an appreciation of a time when victory was uncertain, sacrifice was enormous and the alternative terrifying. We'll celebrate a time when GIs were indeed greeted with sweets and flowers. When American armies were truly liberators -- of concentration camps.

Not unlike Hussein's prison system, right, Ellen?

Ellen?

When Hitler was not a name we used all too loosely to label our enemies. And war wasn't a choice -- it was thrust on us.

But I hope we also bring to these ceremonies an understanding of how the idea of a "good war" has been chiseled into our collective memory. For better and, maybe now, for worse.

Ah, yes.

Where to start?

World War II was the "Good War", largely because the press made sure it was covered that way - and the government had a lot it could do to ensure that it was.

World War II was the "Good War" because in the days before email and iridium phones, soldiers' and sailors' mail was rigorously censored.

It was the "Good War" because American command blunders - like the battle of the Huertgen Forest, the Rapido River, Patton's assault on the fortresses of Mainz - which cost thousands of lives, never saw the public light of day. The commanders involved were relieved and shunted away (usually - Patton survived his Mainz debacle), troops' communications were redacted of all mention of the carnage.

It was the "Good War" because the immense casualties suffered by American units in Western Europe were never publicized. And they were immense; by the end of the war, units like the 4th, 29th and 83rd Infantry and 101st Airborne suffered over 200% casualties; they turned over their complement twice (and it's worse than that; these 15,000-man divisions' casualties were mostly concentrated in their nine rifle battalions - about 7,000 men).

Or because the 50,000 men we lost bombing Germany, to very little long-term gain, didn't get any publicity.

And it was the "Good War" to the likes of Goodman and her baby boom generation only when they became old enough to respect their parents, the veterans of tha war, in the first place.

Had the likes of Ellen Goodman been working for newspapers in 1943, and had they had the means of gathering and moving information they do today, do you think we'd still be calling it the "Good War"?

For that matter, do you think that Europe would be free, even now?

Posted by Mitch at May 24, 2004 07:43 AM