A reporter went backstage, showed Senator Gerald P. Nye an Associated Press bulletin, stating that his country had been attacked. Snapped Gerald Nye, all wound up for an anti-war speech: "It sounds terribly fishy to me. . . . Is it sabotage or is it pen attack? . . ."
...
That night he spoke at Pittsburgh's First Baptist Church. His manner and tone were bitter and defeatist: ". . . just what Britain had planned for us"; "we have been maneuvered into this by the President."
That was the day of the Pearl Harbor attack.
More from Time during the Pre-WWII 40's:
While debate on the Lend-Lease Bill rolled on last week, many a U. S. citizen raised shrill anti-war cries. Speaking for the leftist majority of the American Youth Congress, Executive Secretary Joseph Cad-den declared: "America's youth have repudiated every attempt on the part of the Administration and its lackeys to put over this war program."
In front of the British Embassy paraded lady members of the Paul Revere Sentinels and Women's Neutrality League, brandishing placards which blared: "Benedict Arnold Helped England, Too," "Move Over, Unknown Soldier."
"[Sen.] Pepper is a coward," screeched Mrs. Dilling. "He's just an old scaredy-cat and won't talk to us. How much is he getting to sell this Republic out? I'm hot and bothered. We came here to protest against this dictatorship and war bill. . . .
Paul A. F. Warnholtz bellowed, in the Alliance's News Letter: "They are usually old men, sterile biologically, and sterile even of all dreams and memories of life, love and youth, and would deny the right of youth to live. Their senile bodies, their cold, calculating brains, frequently find compensation for their lost youth in hatred and false ambitions for glory and gold. . . ."
Mr. Ford suggested that the U. S. give both England and the Axis powers "the tools to keep on fighting until they both collapse." Said he: "There is no righteousness in either cause. ... If we can keep both sides fighting long enough, until they cannot fight any more, then maybe the little people will open their eyes. . . . When both nations finally collapse into internal dissolution, then the U. S. can play the role for which it has the strength and the ability."
Sound familiar? (The American Dictatorship, war for money, anyone who wants war is wrong, etc...)
A popular voice is not always the right one; it is better to stand up for what is right than to take the easy way out of a hard fight.
5 comments:
If you believe it's such a good fight to fight, why don't you join in? Or is it only important enough for others to die for?
If the country were to call upon my services I would. But right now they have enough people. And besides I doubt that my stature makes me the ideal soldier.
But you are saying that if someone supports a war they should fight it?
And you do see the similarities of then and know though don't you?
Actually by most accounts we are vastly under the number of soldiers needed. The fact that we called the National Guard (a group that is only supposed to defend this country on the U.S. soil) shows that. They won't call a draft because it would be like shooting the republican party in the foot.
I believe that no one should ask someone else to die in battle for a cause that they themselves are not willing to die for. I do not want to die for Iraqi freedom (if that's even what they've gotten from this war), thus I would not ask anyone else to do so for me.
While I certainly see the similarities of then and now, I would venture a guess that it is the same thing people have said at nearly every war. Remember in Braveheart where the peasants are saying that they are only fighting because the Lords make them and they are tired of just making the Lords richer. It is a common motif. I would guess that people said the same thing about the Vietnam war. Just because people oppose wars and sometimes the cause for those wars is justified, doesn't mean that all wars are. The Vietnam war was clearly a terrible waste of human life wtih little or no point. Perhaps this war is somewhere between WW2 and the Vietnam war in its cause.
"Perhaps this war is somewhere between WW2 and the Vietnam war in its cause." I agree with you here. I would even go as far as saying between WWI and Vietnam.
But I do not see why American freedom worth fighting for and Iraqi freedom is not. Are we not all people?
First this assumes that Iraqis are really more free now than they were before we came. So we got rid of a dictator? Is living in fear of civil war or death at American hands really freedom? If the people of Iraq do not find it a war worth fighting, why should we fight for them? If it was really about freedom, why not start elsewhere? The Congo, Cuba, North Korea, China. Freedom is merely the lie we tell ourselves so that politicians can sleep at night while other people's children die.
You might find this interesting...
http://wonderlandkat.livejournal.com/202276.html
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