November 10, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES ernment. Americans all over the country beat up their German-American neighbors, broke their store windows, and gave up German classical music. The Zimmermann Telegram was a preposterous pretext. Mexico was no threat. The U.S. Army had just returned from riding roughshod over Mexico in a fruitless search for Pancho Villa, and Mexico’s chances of taking over Texas, let alone marching into Washington, were nil. Japan could have been a threat, but Japan was allied with Great Britain and had just evicted the German garrisons from the German colonies in China and the Pacific. Japanese ships were helping the French and Italians fight U-boats in the Mediterranean. The Japanese could see that, with or without the United States, Germany was not about to win the war, and they weren’t interested in flipping over from the winners to the loser. The real motivation may have been that American banking interests had tendered huge loans to Britain and France and knew they weren’t likely to collect if the Germans pulled off a stalemate. That’s how we got into World War I. The brave young Americans were told they were fighting “the war to end war.” They gave their lives to evict Kaiser Wilhelm II, and this led to the Kaiser’s eventual replacement by Adolf Hitler. Hitler did not want war with the United States. The German Foreign Office sent specific warnings to the Nazistyle knuckleheads of the German-American Bund to seek nothing more than strict American neutrality. German Uboats at war with Britain in the Atlantic were ordered not to fire on American destroyers even if they came under attack, though two of them did, possibly because the American destroyers were identical to the American destroyers Franklin Delano Roosevelt had already given to Britain. Polls showed that about 80 percent of the American people didn’t want to fight Germany. The Allies had stiffed us for the money we loaned them for World War I and many Irish Americans were not fond of Great Britain. Moving deftly to protect Britain, Dean Acheson, a transplanted Canadian in the State Department, toughened the oil embargo that Harry Dexter White, a Soviet agent, had concocted to start a U.S.-Japanese war to save Stalin from fighting on two fronts. The Japanese negotiated desperately, to the point of agreeing to a gradual withdrawal from their invasion of China. But when Japan was presented with terms that would have touched off a revolution, they elected to attack the deliberately menacing U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. The success of the attack was so enormous that FDR and Hollywood did everything in their power to make the American people believe that Japan and Germany were allied in a vast conspiracy to take over the Western Hemisphere. This was hokum: Their generals had attended staff colleges with our generals, their diplomats had been educated in the United IV • Page 21 A few weeks ago, a local official was conferring a welldeserved honor upon a veteran who had served America in war and the community in peace. The tribute closed with the statement, “If it weren’t for you guys, we wouldn’t have our freedom.” I flashed back to Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series with a movie of the Japanese Army on parade transposed to show the Japanese marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to dictate peace at the White House. Political language needs to be free of hyperbolic discourse. Right after the attack on the World Trade Center, a newspaper that fired several World War II and Vietnam combat veterans because the new managing editor wanted an all-Ivy League staff, printed an editorial that described the attack as “cowardly.” The attack was a terroristic mass murder, and the attackers were murderers, fanatics, and possibly maniacs. They cannot be described as “cowards,” because they calmly sleuthed their way through the sleepy surveillance of overpaid bureaucrats and then threw away their lives murdering civilians who didn’t deserve to die. They were murderers, not cowards. People who fail to see a distinction are deluding themselves. In just such a way, we run the risk of nurturing and triggering future wars if we digest the Capra-corn of the “Why We Fight” series as fact rather than propaganda. Superbly executed using a mixture of real newsreel footage and Hollywood staging, Capra’s “Why We Fight” films told the boys who were about to die what the War Department wanted them to hear: They were going overseas to make sure the bad guys didn’t come here and take over baseball and the PTA. Let’s take a cautionary look at some of the people we purportedly fought to protect Mom’s apple pie. In 1898, “the Spaniards” blew up the U.S.S. Maine, an American battleship anchored in Havana Harbor, and the United States went to war crying “Remember the Maine.” In 1911, when the U.S.S. Maine was temporarily salvaged, it became obvious that the battleship had not been destroyed by an external explosion, and that the Spaniards, who had rushed to the rescue of the American sailors, were almost certainly not involved in the sinking. Spain had made a fair bid to take over the world, but that bid ended in the 16th century. Three centuries later, the Spaniards were less of a threat than the Sioux. In 1917, we learned with the decoded Zimmermann Telegram that the Germans – fighting most of the rest of the world with the burden of a handful of useless allies – had offered Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico to Mexico and suggested that Mexico offer Hawaii to Japan if Mexico and Japan declared war on the United States if, and only if, the United States declared war on Germany. (Arthur Zimmermann was stupid enough to authorize the telegram, but he wasn’t stupid enough to unilaterally declare war on the United States). Woodrow Wilson, who won reelection in 1916 with the slogan “He kept us out of war,” asked Congress to declare war, not on the German people, but on the German gov- Question the wars, but honor the vets States, and they knew that no such seizure of Brooklyn or Milwaukee was about to happen. In their commendable zeal to rid the world of Hitler, the State Department and Treasury Department knocked over the two leading anticommunist powers of the world, other than the faltering UK, and paved the way for the Cold War. Near the end of the war, but before the atomic bombs, the Japanese concocted a plan to infect America’s coastal cities by using seaplanes to drop pneumonic plague and anthrax. They decided not to use germ warfare against the land of Walt Disney and Shirley Temple – or knew they couldn’t win anyway. Take your choice. Win or lose, they weren’t about to occupy the United States. They saw their war as entirely defensive. Given America’s pro-British and pro-Stalinist diplomacy before Truman kicked out FDR’s 347 communists, they were largely correct. Three factions fought for control of Korea after the defeat of the Japanese Empire. Dale Cumings, an American married to a South Korean woman, anti-Japanese and not a communist sympathizer, recently disclosed that “our guys” (the Syngman Rhee faction) appeared to have killed about six times as many civilians as “their guys” (the communist faction led by Kim Il Sung). Acheson, the same zombie who provoked Japan to Pearl Harbor, opined in public that South Korea was not part of America’s defense perimeter. Stalin, our former ally against Hitler and Hirohito, sanctioned a full-dress invasion of South Korea. The United States and the United Nations got involved after all. North Korea is still communist and 32,000 American soldiers and millions of Korean civilians are still dead. Kim Il Sung wasn’t planning to float his Russian tanks to California. Vietnam, a former French colony, was engaged in a civil war when the Americans bungled their way in. Kennedy was about to write the whole thing off – but not before the next election. Instead, he sanctioned the arrest and probable murder of “our guy” who also wanted the United States to leave. The result: 58,000 dead Americans, two million dead Vietnamese, and a tactical stalemate that was a strategic defeat. What about our veterans? Did they really save our freedom and our lives? Not in the sense that talking heads use to justify the Greatest Generation winning The Good War while leaving Eastern Europe and Eastern Asian both mired in Communist slavery. But the courage, strength, and generosity of spirit our veterans showed by serving are immensely impressive on the human level. These are brave and worthy men and women of character. They risked their lives for the rest of us. We owe them our respect. No nation can survive without men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line. Let us always honor the veterans – but let’s not be afraid to question the statesmen who have all too often manipulated their courage and devotion. Letters to the Editor Urges observance of flag etiquette Dear Editor: As we all know, Thursday, Nov. 11 is Veterans Day. It is a day set aside to honor all veterans, past and present, living or dead. It is not a day set aside for sales and shopping. It is also a day that we should be proudly flying our American Flags. However, when doing so, please be sure your flag is in good condition. The Stars and Stripes should never be displayed if it is worn, torn, faded, dirty, old, or in any kind of disrepair. If your flag is old or worn, do not throw it in the trash. Bring it to an American Legion or VFW Post. There is a proper way to “retire” flags and your veterans’ organizations will be happy to help. Nancy Nielsen, President American Legion Ladies Auxiliary Unit 57 Waldwick Bookworms The Joyce Kilmer School in Mahwah recently held its Fall Book Fair featuring hundreds of great books for students to purchase. Pictured: Students from Mrs.Tamburro’s class 4th grade class make their pick of books to purchase.