Has the American myth of the Good War helped ensnare us in bad ones?
By Carlos Lozada, The New Yorker
The terrorist strikes of September 11, 2001, supposedly launched a new kind of American war, with unfamiliar foes, unlikely alliances, and unthinkable tactics. But the language deployed to interpret this conflict was decidedly old-school, the comfort food of martial rhetoric. With the Axis of Evil, the menace of Fascism (remixed as “Islamofascism”), and the Pearl Harbor references, the Second World War hovered over what would become known as the global war on terror, infusing it with righteousness.
This latest war, President George W. Bush said, would have a scope and a stature evoking the American response to that other attack on the U.S. “one Sunday in 1941.” It wouldn’t be like Desert Storm, a conflict tightly bounded in time and space; instead, it was a call to global engagement and even to national greatness. “This generation will lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future,” Bush avowed.
![Romanticization of war](https://progressivehub.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Graphics-November-49-uai-258x145.png)
Elizabeth D. Samet finds such familiarity endlessly familiar. “Every American exercise of military force since World War II, at least in the eyes of its architects, has inherited that war’s moral justification and been understood as its offspring: motivated by its memory, prosecuted in its shadow, inevitably measured against it,” she writes in “Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
Recent Posts
VIDEO: A Blueprint For Countering American Fascism
July 26, 2024
Take Action Now Our First Annual Henry A. Wallace Symposium offered lessons from real-life heartland organizers on how to fight for a multiracial…
Gavin Newsom Orders Removal Of Homeless Encampments
July 26, 2024
Take Action Now “The only way to end homeless encampments in California is to end the need for homeless encampments,” an expert said.…
The Crackdown On Antisemitism Doesn’t Have Much To Do With Antisemitism
July 26, 2024
Take Action Now Republican lawmakers increasingly conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in an effort limit pro-Palestine speech and criticism of…
Netanyahu’s Unhinged And Bellicose Congressional Address Draws Scorn
July 25, 2024
Take Action Now ‘Our enemies are your enemies,’ the prime minister insisted, setting up confrontation with Iran. By Blaise Malley,…