If Ernie Pyle Had Worked for CNN

mensnewsdaily.com ^ | 11/10/2003 | Doug Patton

[SAMWolf]

This is exactly what is happening today and yet when applied to 1944 it reads as being "funny". How sad.

[Soaring Feather]

How sad indeed. Sam, thanks for the ping.

[radu]

This is exactly what is happening today and yet when applied to 1944 it reads as being "funny". How sad.

You're right, this is what's happening today. Not funny at all...very sad indeed. No, not sad. Disgusting. And scary when you think about the media, and the Dark Side, propaganda these days. I don't care at all for the direction they're going.

[Darksheare]

Such is the warped perceptions of the left.
And when applied to history and how we know things tohave turned out, it's funny.
But then we see what currently is, and it isn't funny.

[SAMWolf]

I think "disgusting" is just the right word for what's being done today. Our internal enemies are more dangerous than outside threats.

[snippy_about_it]

Good find SAM.

Our "news" media and the democrats today are pathetically anti-American.

[radu]

Our internal enemies are more dangerous than outside threats.

Whew! That's the truth! What they're doing almost scares me more than the threats of terrorism in this country.

[U S Army EOD]

Well Joe Kennedy WAS saying it in 1940 and it wasn't funny. There was a congressman who thought the Japanese pilots were renegades and Pearl Harbor was just a big mistake.

To bad Joe Kennedy could have children so they could create the modern democratic Party. What we have now shouldn't be much of a surprise.

[SAMWolf]

I forgot about Joe Kennedy, the Nazi sympathizer, but then you don't see it mentioned too often in any news items.

[Samwise]

Off with the talking heads. Bring back the embeds.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Interesting find, Sam. But Pyle would never have written like this, even though he saw enough of the war first-hand to be able to. His loyalty to the common soldier would never have allowed it. Allow me to elaborate in his own words:

"We have won because we have had magnificent top leadership, at home and in our Allies and in ourselves overseas. Surely America made its two perfect choices in General Eisenhower and General Bradley. They are great men - to me doubly great because they are direct and kind.

"We won because we were audacious. One could not help but be moved by the colossus of our invasion. It was a bold and mighty thing, one of the epics of all history. In the emergency of war our nation's powers are unbelievable. The strength we have spread around the world is appalling even to those who make up the individual cells of that strength. I am sure that in the past two years I have heard soldiers say a thousand times, 'If only we could have created all this energy for something good.' But we rise above our normal powers only in times of destruction.

"We have won this war because our men are brave, and because of many other things - because of Russia, and England, and the passage of time, and the gift of nature's materials. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud. I hope we can rejoice in victory - but humbly. The dead men would not want us to gloat."

- Ernie Pyle, August 1944

Of course, Pyle himself did not survive the war.

[Mike Darancette]

Asked about the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dewey said that no link has ever been conclusively established between Hitler and the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Naval forces in Hawaii by the Japanese. “No such link has ever been proven, because no such link exists,” he said. “Roosevelt made it up.”

There was no linkage - Hitler wanted Japan to attack the USSR from the East.

[Valin]

There was no linkage - Hitler wanted Japan to attack the USSR from the East.


But a similar mindset. And in the end that's what we were fighting then....and now. The idea that you can kill people because of the race, religion, nationality, or that they are in your way. It'a a war that's been going on forever, and I don't expect it to end until the King returns.

[SAMWolf]

Bring back the embeds.

Except for Geraldo!!

[SAMWolf]

I know Pyle would have never written like that, Edward R Morrow wouldn't report like that either. Pyle used words like Mauldin used his pictures. The world is a poorer place with their loss.

[SAMWolf]

Correct, the Germans were as surprised about the Pearl Harbor sneak attack as we were. Hitler was really stupid to declare war in the US when the pact between germany and Japan didi't call for it. It would only came in to effect if we had attacked Japan.

[SAMWolf]

Germany and Japan were Allies, fighting separate wars against the same enemies. The was really very little co-ordination or cooperation between them. They really didin't trust each other.

[rmlew]

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to neutralize the US fleet. The Japanese wanted to plunder and concquer the colonies of empires conquered by or at war with Germany and Japan.
The Dutch East Indies, French InoChina, and the British colonies and Commonwealths were tempting targets.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Conservatives may have their own arguments with Ed Murrow (anyone for a discussion of "See It Now"?) but in the end I think you're right.

Pyle was accepted precisely because he didn't write that way. Mauldin's work was the same.