Sunday, December 12, 2010

Keep the myth alive

Do we have to do this again? Every single year, in December?

Well, yes, the story with its assorted lies must be told over and over, to make sure it remains part of the American myth. What else makes white men feel so good about themselves other than that monumental WWII, that supposedly saved the world? The war where they got to kill off hundreds of thousands of other white men, along with some yellow ones -- for the sake of what exactly? Perhaps just for the sake of being able to brag to future generations about their superior courage and military prowess, and to make all those repetitious and insufferable Hollywood war movies.

In It’s Pearl Harbor Day – Trot Out the Official Fable, Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute informs us that historians have long known that the true story of the war with Japan was nothing like the "patriotic fable dispensed each year on December 7 for popular consumption." In two insightful articles, Higgs offers detailed accounts of the facts having to do with America's Beloved War on both fronts. See How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor and How Americans Have Been Misled about World War II.

Higgs writes: "It behooves every educated American to learn this honest history and to pass it along to others when an opportunity arises, because the myth has long contributed, and continues to contribute, to a false view of the U.S. place in the world and to a grave misunderstanding of U.S. foreign policy.

"Ceaseless dissemination and widespread acceptance of this view is the very model of how the U.S. government tends to do foreign policy: provoke foreigners to attack Americans, then tell the American people that foreigners have attacked us for no reason and therefore we must strike back to defeat them or at least to teach them a lesson about treating the United States with deference."

Oh, yes, show deference to the USA! USA! USA! Or else.

1 comment:

Col. B. Bunny said...

I dunno. There was the Japanese invasion of China in 1931 and the Rape of Nanjing in 1937. The economic warfare against Japan that Mr. Higgs thinks provoked the Japanese (apparently out of the blue or for uniquely U.S. perfidious motives) was hardly unwarranted. Japan was aggressive and brutal all by its lonessome.