Unravelling Wartime Myths

Author Edward W. Wood Jr. gives a WWII veteran's take on the dangers of glorifying war.

Some readers just don't want to hear it from me -- writing about the myths of World War II.
Maybe they'll feel better if it's coming from Edward W. Wood Jr., a guy who was awarded the Combat Infantryman's Badge, the Purple Heart, and the Bronze Star. A retired city planner and author of "Worshipping the Myths of World War II," Wood is quick to point out: "I was wounded in France, 60 miles east of Verdun ... after only a day and a half in combat. I'm no expert on long-term combat experience." But it's way more combat experience than any of the leading architects of the war in Iraq.
"I got hit in the head, the small of my back, and pelvis with shrapnel from artillery fire," he told me last week. "The wound shattered my life. In those days, you couldn't talk about the emotional impact."
He's 82 now and has spent a lifetime trying to understand war and its impact on those involved. "Worshipping the Myths of World War II" is a product of his very personal, honest and courageous exploration.
Some people consider talk about the myths of World War II disparaging to veterans. Why do some equate demythologizing with anti-Americanism?
Edward W. Wood Jr.: There's two kinds of soldiers: those who have been in combat and the guys who haven't. I think those two groups have vastly different attitudes about war. Another reason people react that way is because people in the United States have absolutely no idea what war entails. I think a lot of very good people believe that these myths really describe what war is. Therefore, to demythologize means, for them, putting down people who have been involved.
But I don't think we want to look at what our tax dollars are doing. We just don't want to look at the reality that's there. None of this is a disparagement to those who've really seen combat. I am really anti-war now and yet, in terms of my own personal life, I have no regrets about having been in World War II. I believe in nonviolence. But, I'm in favor of a draft because I think we all would think a lot more carefully about war.
Why do you think these myths are so persistent?
These myths are really rooted in our past and go beyond World War II -- going back to the King Phillips War. There were Manifest Destiny wars with Mexico, Phillipines and the rest. Teddy Roosevelt believed you weren't really a man unless you served in war. I don't think we really want to look at that and it's not taught very much in school. It's a very subtle message. I think that's why it persists. The myths exist because we don't look carefully at our history and because it gives people a great glow to wrap themselves in it. But I think it would be healthy to just be open about.
What criteria do you use to judge artistic interpretations of World War II?
There are essentially two really important criteria, I use:
1) Does the author or filmmaker say something about himself that he didn't want to tell the world? Does it really delve into what combat does in the deepest kind of way? Does it wrestle with the moral dilemma of killing -- seeing and watching people get killed -- and how is the act of killing treated?
2) Does it reflect the extraordinary complexity of human reaction to death? And modern war is not just about soldiers in combat but also the impact on civilians. If you don't have that part of the equation, you're missing at least 50 percent of the story.
How do you see these myths impacting the way people view the war in Iraq?
If you look at how we got into the Iraq war, you see the president and his administration using (World War II) as an example for Iraq; comparing Saddam to Hitler and comparing themselves to Churchill and Roosevelt. I don't think that's quite appropriate.
We appeal to the idea of the 'Good War' and a war against evil where the enemy is dehumanized into this monstrous evil ... But, actually, World War I and World War II were really one war. If you look at it that way, what happens in the 1930s was a function of the Versailles Treaty and the terrible reparations imposed on Germany ... So we built up a situation that was going to inevitably lead to another war.
Iraq itself was made out of whole cloth in the early 1920s almost by fiat, putting the Kurds, the Shias and Sunnis in one country. So, even now, we are dealing with the consequences of World War I.
Do combat veterans who've served in the infantry have a different perception of what war means, compared to soldiers in the Navy or Air Force?
The guys who flew in World War II I respect beyond measure -- the 8th Air Force, for example. But I do think it's a different experience for soldiers in the Air Force and Navy, compared to soldiers involved in ground combat. It gives you a very different attitude about what war is.
In the final chapter of your book, you write: "the issue today is not just the simple one -- how can we leave Iraq? -- but, rather one far more difficult: How can we turn from war as the solution to our international problems?" What do you see as the answer to the important question you raise?
I don't have the answer. But we need to get away from the myths and try to understand what war is really like. In this war, the only ones who pay the price are the soldiers and Iraqi civilians. That's so terribly unfair. It infuriates me. If we are in a war, the whole country should pay a price for it.
I've turned against war but if we're at war, we can't have a war and all these people making money off it and living normal lives. It hurts me to see people who go about their lives while terrible death and suffering are occurring in Iraq.
America is not very good at recognizing who its real enemies are. We get it all confused with this problem of evil. We see it in others but never in us.
That's hard for people to even hear, never mind think about.
I'm running against the grain and it gets lonely sometimes.

Aerial Wildlife Hunting

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has put out an ad on Sarah Palin's promotion of (and personal fondness for) aerial wolf hunting, describing the practice "brutal." The ad features disturbing, graphic footage of a wolf's death. "Do we really want a vice president who champions such savagery?" it concludes. Watch:





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Leaked Draft Agreement Calls for Indefinite Occupation

Iraqi Blogger Raed Jarrar: The U.S./Iraq agreement legitimizes long term bases and calls for an indefinite number of U.S. troops to remain in Iraq.
Amy Goodman: President Bush announced Tuesday he would withdraw 8,000 troops from Iraq by February. He also called for a, quote, "quiet surge" in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The President outlined his plan in a speech at the Naval War College.

President George W. Bush: [General Petraeus has] just completed a review of the situation in Iraq, and he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended that we move forward with additional force reductions. And I agree. Over the next several months, we will bring home about 3,400 combat support forces, including aviation personnel, explosive ordinance teams, combat and construction engineers, military police and logistical support forces. By November, we'll bring home a Marine battalion that is now serving in Anbar province. And in February of 2009, another Army combat brigade will come home. This amounts to about 8,000 additional American troops returning home without replacement.

AG: Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, criticized President Bush for keeping troop levels in Iraq largely unchanged. Speaking in Ohio on Tuesday, Obama said, "In the absence of the timetable to remove our combat brigades we will continue to give Iraq's leaders a blank check instead of pressing them to reconcile their differences."
But neither Senator Obama nor President Bush made reference to a recently leaked draft of an Iraqi-U.S. agreement that outlines the long-term status of U.S. forces in Iraq. Iraqi blogger and political analyst Raed Jarrar has read and translated the leaked document. He says the agreement doesn't set a deadline for the withdrawal of non-combat U.S. troops in Iraq. He joins us also from Washington, D.C.
Welcome, Raed. Talk about what you have found, what this leaked document says that you've translated.
Raed Jarrar: Well, it's a long document. It has twenty-seven articles. And most of them are outrageous. They give the U.S. unprecedented authorities and rights and immunities. Maybe a major point that is related to this discussion is the fact that the agreement legitimizes or legalizes these long-term bases, that indefinite number of U.S. troops will stay there.
Now, this is a huge issue that is not being discussed in the U.S. enough. We usually get stuck in discussing troops level, how many troops are the U.S. going to keep in Iraq, or what's the mission of these troops. But from an Iraqi point of view, the majority of Iraqis and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians and other representatives of the Iraqi community are demanding a complete withdrawal that leaves no permanent bases, no troops and no private contractors. And unfortunately, from this side, from the U.S. side, both of the ruling parties and both of the mainstream candidates are planning to leave permanent bases with troops indefinitely.
AG: And what about the Iraqi leadership right now? What are they saying?
RJ: Now, the Iraqi leadership in the executive branch, which is a non-elected branch of the Iraqi government, are allied with the Bush administration. They are using the same terminology of the Bush administration. They're asking for a withdrawal, a partial withdrawal or withdrawal of what they call "combat troops," without really defining that. And they are OK with leaving permanent bases and U.S. troops in the long run that have immunity inside and outside the bases.
Now, the Iraqi leadership in the other branch of the government, the only elected branch, the parliament, actually is asking for a complete withdrawal. And these calls do reflect -- the calls for a complete withdrawal do reflect what the majority of Iraqis want. More than three-fourths of the Iraqi population are asking the U.S. to leave completely, not leave, you know, half and keep some tens of thousands of troops behind to do some extra missions.
AG: And Barack Obama, does he represent something different, Raed?
RJ: Maybe from a U.S. point of view, there is a difference in rhetoric. But from an Iraqi point of view, I think both the candidates, Obama and McCain, are planning to leave troops in the long run. So from an Iraqi point of view, I don't think there is a major difference in the U.S. foreign policy in Iraq between the two candidates, because both of them are not for ending the intervention in Iraq. Both of them are for keeping troops in Iraq. They call it residual force; they call it whatever they want to call it. But they want to continue interfering in Iraq militarily and politically in the long run.
And this is something that is completely rejected by Iraqis. Iraqis see the complete U.S. withdrawal as the first step towards their national reconciliation and reconstruction, not the same way that some of the candidates now are trying to use withdrawal as a tool to punish Iraqis or, you know, make sure that Iraqis are not being lazy or sleeping. I mean, it's not that way. Iraqis are fighting politically and in other ways to end this illegal occupation of their country. And it's not a gift that -- or not something that we should be bargaining with them. It's their right to ask to get their country back. And unless they get their country back completely, I don't think Iraq will become a stable place.
AG: Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has said all U.S. troops should be out by the end of 2011. How does that fit into this picture? And what about the latest deal that has been made between, I think the report was, Shell, the oil company, and the Iraqi government?
RJ: Again, what Nouri al-Maliki is saying is that all U.S. combat troops will leave, but there will be exceptions that will stay in Iraq indefinitely. Now, this view that Mr. al-Maliki is representing in Iraq is completely rejected. Iraqis do not support the idea of half-withdrawal and leaving U.S. troops on the long run. In fact, the full agreement, that can be viewed on my organization's website now, on afsc.org, can show you in details how the U.S. will stay on the long run and who gets to decide the troops level and the troop tasks. It's neither the Iraqi nor the U.S. elected officials.
Now, a good thing that you bring up the issue of the oil deals, because we went through a very similar discussion to what we're discussing now last year about the oil law. The Bush administration and al-Maliki's administration tried to pass an oil law, and then the Iraqi legislative branch blocked it, the same way that now they are trying to pass this long-term agreement and the Iraqi parliament is blocking it. And they ended up losing that battle, because the majority of Iraqis and the majority of Iraqi parliamentarians rejected the law … Many people are expecting that the Iraqi parliament will reject this U.S. long-term agreement, and maybe they will end up finding other loopholes to pass it.

Sarah Palin: Saddam Hussein Was Involved in 9/11-attacks

When everyone's attention was focusing on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's less-than-reassuring interview about foreign policy with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson, the Republican nominee for vice president was off delivering a speech in which she suggested a dramatically greater ignorance of recent history and international affairs than was on display in the interview.

Speaking at Alaska's Fort Wainwright on Thursday, where she hailed the combat deployment of her son's Army unit to Iraq as a "righteous cause," Palin explicitly and repeatedly renewed the discredited claim that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was initiated as a necessary and credible response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"You'll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the deaths of thousands of Americans," Palin told the departing soldiers.

Palin's assessment directly contradicts that of President Bush and key members of his national security team.

After his administration got called out for trying to suggest an Iraq-terrorism connection -- following an over-the-top appearance by conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Dick Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press," in which the vice president made the false claim that Iraq had been the "geographic base" for the 9/11 attacks -- Bush acknowledged on September 17, 2003, that, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the 11 September attacks."

Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld agreed. At a Pentagon briefing on the same day Bush spoke, Rumsfeld was asked if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or those around him were personally involved in the September 11 attacks. Rumsfeld replied, "I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was serving then as White House National Security Adviser, went even further. In an ABC "Nightline" interview, she insisted that, "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either direction or control of 9/11."

Of course, that was a stretch, especially considering some of Cheney's comments.

But there is no question that, a full five years ago, the Bush administration had explicitly rejected any suggestion that it was appropriate to link the Iraq mission to September 11.

Yet, on the seventh anniversary of attacks on New York and Washington that were never legitimately linked to Saddam Hussein or Iraq, Sarah Palin was telling soldiers headed for Iraq that they are part of "the broad conflict that began seven years ago today."

Palin also told the troops: "America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001."

Fair enough.

But isn't Palin creating a "false sense of security" by suggesting that the Iraq fight is an appropriate or meaningful response to 9/11? And isn't it unsettling that, as the United States prepares to see off a vice president who got in trouble for peddling fantasies regarding Saddam and terrorism, the Republican nominee to replace Dick Cheney sounds an awfully lot like, er, Dick Cheney?
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