Allow THEM the earned right to determine who is an enemy and who isn't ...
Allow THEM the earned right to attempt to bring America back to what they left 70 plus years ago and went off to war to protect from what HAS happened anyway to their beloved country ...
Allow THEM the earned right to sleep with their fathers knowing they've done a good and effective job in maintaining peace in our land, free from communism (their thought and mindset) and free to come and go as we always used to please ...
Allow THEM their dignity and respect for becoming older men with the thoughts and memories none of us dare entertain ...
Thanks is not good enough
Because if I was a Normandy vet, and I looked around today, I'd be nail eating, anvil tossing PISSED at what evil people have allowed ...
and it wasn't supposed to
Excellent point
“... give the survivors absolute amnesty ...
Allow THEM the earned right to determine who is an enemy and who isn’t ... attempt to bring America back to what they left 70 plus years ago ... the earned right to sleep with their fathers knowing they’ve done a good and effective job ... Allow THEM their dignity and respect for becoming older men with the thoughts and memories none of us dare entertain ... “
Emotionally moving, even compelling, perhaps.
But things were never so clear at the time, and have only grown more muddled since.
For years after WWII began, Americans hoped the nation could avoid it. It’s accurate to say that the “America First” movement - led, driven and supported by those who’d be called “Paleoconservatives” today - spoon-fed the populace that notion. It was a delusion.
And after VJ Day, the nation could not disarm quickly enough. The dismantling of the military establishment was not a Left/Progressive conspiracy; it was demanded by “regular Americans”. Not a few were veterans of operation OVERLORD.
The victory of capital-L Liberalism was seen as complete and comprehensive, not merely in the war, but over every aspect of American life great and small, public and private. Not one single Conservative policy alternative, cultural construct, nor moral imperative could be put forth in reply. Conservatism had been reduced to a set of “irritable mental gestures,” as Calvin Trillin put it.
Friedrich Hayek did not rate mention as an eccentric academic, Russell Kirk had just begun studying at St Andrews, and William F. Buckley Jr was just getting the first taste of undergrad life at Yale. Milton Friedman was making sense of his wartime service as a policy wonk for the US Treasury Dept and remained an apologist for New Dealism, his Nobel Prize decades in the future. Whittaker Chambers was writing for Time Magazine, commuting to his farm in rural Maryland for weekends; he had not yet formed the notion that Conservatism might become a “side” to join, then lose with. And Ronald Reagan had left behind his wartime service in intelligence to resume his acting career.
Most important of all, we must recall that a majority of Americans voted for Democrat majorities in Congress, Democrat Presidents, or what this forum angrily vilifies as RINOs. And they did so for decades on end. That includes a majority of WWII veterans.
It is risky to assume that because some people face great sacrifice and prevail in war, they necessarily become superior leaders forever after, leading well in all circumstances, smoothly governing a vast polyglot country, making the “right” policy choices in the short run and the long.