I am struck by the tone and tenor of respect on this thread. Can you picture Democrat Underground behaving like this?
And then there’s reply 22...
In 1985, McGovern was lecturing at the University of Innsbruck. A director of Austrian television’s state-owned stationed contacted him to ask if he would do an interview for a documentary he was producing on Austria in World War II. He wanted McGovern to talk about what it was like bombing Austrian targets. McGovern was not inclined but finally let himself be talked into it. A woman reporter did the interview. She said that Senator McGovern was known around the world for his opposition to the war in Vietnam, and especially the bombing of South and North Vietnam. Yet he had been a bomber pilot in World War II. The reporter asked, “Senator, did you ever regret bombing beautiful cities like Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and others?”
McGovern answered, “Well, nobody thinks that war is a lovely affair. It is humanity at its worst, it’s a breakdown of normal communication, and it is a very savage enterprise. But on the other hand there are issues that sometimes must be decided by warfare after all else fails...I thought Adolf Hitler was a madman who had to be stopped.
“So, my answer to your question is no. I don’t regret bombing strategic targets in Austria. I do regret the damage that was done to innocent people. And there was one bomb I’ve regretted all these years.”
The reporter snapped that up. “Tell us about it.”
McGovern told her about the bomb that had stuck in the bomb bay door and had to be jettisoned, on March 14, 1945. “To my sorrow it hit a peaceful little Austrian farmyard at high noon and maybe led to the death of some people in that family. I regret that all the more because it was the day I learned my wife had given birth to our first child and the thought went through my mind then and on many, many days since then, that we brought a young baby into the world and probably killed someone else’s baby or children.”
When the documentary appeared on Austrian TV, the station received a call from an Austrian farmer. He said he had seen and heard McGovern. he knew it was his farm that was hit, because it was high noon on a clear day and exactly as McGovern described the incident.
“I want you to tell him,” the man went on, “that no matter what other Austrians think, I despised Adolf Hitler. We did see the bomber coming. I got my wife and children out of the house and we hid in a ditch and no one was hurt. And because of our attitude about Hitler, I thought at the time that if bombing our farm reduced the length of that war by one hour or one minute, it was well worth it.”
The television station called McGovern and told him what the farmer had said. For McGovern, it was “an enormous release and gratification. It seemed to just wipe clean a slate.”
You are right Laz. du threw a virtual cyber party when Reagan died.
To ask the question is to answer it.
Decent respect requires virtue on the part of the person who expresses it. Today's Leftists eschew all virtue, even while many of their forbears did not; that is why they so frequently lie without regret.
George McGovern was a man of a different, and a better generation. I agreed with him about almost nothing, but always respected his common decency, his bravery in war and his love of his family. RIP.
“I am struck by the tone and tenor of respect on this thread. Can you picture Democrat Underground behaving like this?”
To McGovern? Probably not. They don’t respect anyone except themselves.