Re: Thinking for ourselves: Remembering World War II

[Michael Pollak <mpollak@xxxxxxxxx>]

Apropos the use and abuse of the memory of WWII, here's an article c/o of
Sam Smith's Undernews:

   URL: http://www.lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/6749

   May 23, 2004
   Lancaster (PA) Sunday News

   Gil Smart
   Smart News

   <snip>

   Believe it or not, the writer states, the administration of FDR made
   many blunders during that war but everybody was too busy supporting
   the total effort to bash the president or his cabinet!

   Dont believe it.

   Because the fact is that President Roosevelt was pretty much roundly
   bashed by Republicans during the entirety of the war. And during the
   presidential campaign of 1944, things got as nasty as ever.

   Indeed, our local Lancaster New Era noted in an editorial on the eve
   of the election, Nov. 6, 1944, that The surprising thing about this
   war-time presidential campaign is that it was no different from all
   the others. Thomas Dewey, Roosevelts opponent that year, spent much of
   the campaign deriding FDR as a tired old man. The Roosevelt
   administration, Dewey said the week before the election, was the most
   wasteful, extravagant and incompetent administration in the history of
   the nation. Dewey, in fact, spent that fall all but calling Roosevelt
   a communist, insisting that FDR was intent on selling the nation down
   the river to the reds.

   But at least Dewey didnt criticize FDR on the war effort, right? To
   have done that in the wake of the failed Market Garden operation, just
   before the Battle of the Bulge, would have been grossly unpatriotic,
   right?

   Judge for yourself:

   American fighting men were paying in blood through a prolongation of
   the battle of Germany for the improvised meddling of the Democratic
   administration and the confused incompetence of President Roosevelt.
   Thats from an Associated Press article that ran in this very newspaper
   on Sunday, Nov. 5, 1944, the morning after a major Dewey address at
   Madison Square Garden in New York City.

   <end excerpt>

   Full at: URL: http://www.lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/6749