Sunday, June 06, 2004

World War Two ~ War on Terror? What bollocks

I left a comment on this (previously referenced) thread on Dean’s World a while back, and more recently posted the comment below. I’m posting it here because, well, I think it matters enough to say it here too.

There was a victory of patriotism over partisanship [in World War Two]. I’d be inclined to emphasise the monumentally extreme nature of the Nazi threat to the allies collectively a little more, and individual patriotism a little less, however, but that’s a moot point.

However, if (as I suspect) this discussion also attempts to draw a few sneaky parallels between the War on Terror and World War II and the rightness / worldwide agreement / worldwide fear / political acceptability / imperative of truly historic proportions thereof, those parallels will fail.

I say this with my mind concentrated on the goods and evils of World War II and not on those of the War on Terror: these two conflicts are not comparable. No succour for the present war, or for any other war, can be drawn from the specific and horrible threats the Allies faced in the 30s and 40s.

I say the above after having also spent more or less an entire half–year reading various books about WWII. I, like everyone here, am living through the current war. Right or wrong completely aside, I simply don’t sense that we are living through a period which ‘matters’ as much as that one did. Or (the usual naysayers you get in every war aside) that we are in a war agreed upon by as many people worldwide as those who agreed at the time about the absolute necessity of overcoming the Nazis back then.

These are just two completely different wars. Mixing them up with comparisons will be done. Colleagues of mine will be among the guilty parties. I just don’t feel it would serve a purpose, I don’t think it would work — I just don’t think parallels can be drawn between the two. Enough said.

Well, maybe not quite enough said. Over at Dean’s World, even though I despise a lot of the politics there, the discussion on this topic is decent, as you habitually find there, and circumspect. But if I hear of a single proponent of the “War on Terror” directly trying to milk World War Two of some sort of support for their agenda, I’ll want to rip the insensitive f———er limb from limb.

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