20170426 War lies destroy freedom

From Collateral Murder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

Born in 1943 I have only infant memories of WWII which are so formless as to be inconsequential except for one which I described in my blog, The Whole Truth and Nothing But, (http://filosuferz.blogspot.com/2015/06/20150608.html), about a flight of B24s directly overhead celebrating the end of the war. 

Everything else, films, eventually TV shows, interspersed here and there with stories about my uncle Tony who had been in the US Navy, taken captive in the the Philippines early on, spending almost the whole of the war in a Japanese POW camp. Another uncle had miraculously survived a rotation in the Eighth Air Force returned to marry my mom’s step sister. But he didn’t talk much. Tony stayed in San Diego, somewhat recovered from his 95 pound release weight, but became a roaring alcoholic.

Periodically my parents were visited by “DPs,” foreigners from the war countries, typically Poland, who were vaguely related to us, oddly dressed, and unable to speak English. I was six at the time and the concept of refugees made no sense to me. I didn’t like them; their kids broke my toys.

All I knew about the war I learned years later but by then I had incorporated all the generally accepted public notions about it. We had been attacked sneakily by the slant-eyed, yellow peril whom we bombed with two dramatically “holy” weapons, thereby sparing the lives of millions of our “boys” who would have been killed in an invasion.

We, and we alone, maybe with some help from the Brits, none from the French, won the war in western Europe and had nobly stepped aside to let the Russians claim the prize. Only then to discover our great eastern ally couldn’t be trusted. Good thing too, since my dad worked for a defense industry that kept producing when everything else retooled for domestic goods.

Another soldier came back to marry another of my mom’s step-sisters, and the uncle from the bomber group went on to college on something called the GI bill. Remarkable benefit everyone in the larger family thought. They studied science and became insurance agents.

We learned a lot more about the war the farther we got from it. Freedoms? “The slip of a lip can sink a ship,” so, don’t talk—some weapons production still couldn’t be discussed in view of the Soviet threat looming over us. Watch who you’re befriending—anybody could be a Communist, they’re secretive. A few people actually were German soldiers during the war. People kind of knew but gave them the benefit of the doubt—they were starting over in America. We never encountered Japanese in the midwest.

Still things got discussed. The navy could read Japanese military communiques. How early? Early enough to put the Pacific stations on alert? Didn’t it occur to anyone when the Japanese diplomats all walked out a war might be in the works? Hey, not FDR, we loved FDR. He saved us during the Depression. 

There were lots of lies about their cruelties to us but not much about our cruelties to them. We fought fair and square like good Christian gentlemen. They were the bad guys who killed Jews

in concentration camps. Only if you searched did you hear about a ship full of Jewish refugees being turned away by us from the east coast.

When you limit what a person can know, even in the primitive pre-surveillance atmosphere of the 1930s, you are severely limiting their choices. Keeping them confused and misinformed following the war accomplished the same. They can’t act if they don’t know, so don’t tell them. Feed ‘em a lie if you have to.

Films of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims of the atomic flashes were deemed so horrid they were locked away in the archives for decades before anyone could see them publicly. We’re still building bombs, even worse, more lethal bombs, don’t let them know how bad it can get. The anti-bomb activists are Communists and traitors who should be locked up.  

Then there were the moral questions being discussed in my college years. We switched from factories as targets to cities as targets because we couldn’t bomb accurately enough? Did that speed the end of the war like we were told it would? The British resisted more. The German factories were moved to caves.

Weren’t the Japanese ready to surrender before the atom bombs fell? Couldn’t we have just demonstrated their effectiveness on some empty island? Or were we telling the Soviets we’ve got these great bombs and the willingness to drop them on real people so don’t mess with us? 

Did our policy of accepting only “unconditional surrender” prolong the war and lose many lives who could have been saved?

Turning to current conflicts, we see again the lies are all over the place. Our own officials are caught lying to our own congressional committees. Our soldiers who blow the whistle on war crimes are thrown into prison. We violate our constitution and international laws so broadly who knows how Bin Laden got killed? We torture but deny it.

We are currently in a state of several undeclared wars with a chief executive who can decide any one of us can be hauled away or eliminated on his say so. Be careful what you say on the phone it’s all being recorded and kept for when it’s needed. They can track the books we read and people we call. Most are convinced it’s all for our own good. After all, if you haven’t done anything, why worry about them snapping you out of line next time you’re at an airport?