OT: "The War" on PBS

I think people are willing to sacrifice, but we have not been asked. In the wake of 9/11, we were told to go shopping. ?!@?!

If it came down to a war on the magnitude of WWII ,americans would indeed answer the call. I don't think you can say that todays generation loves the country any more or less, or would make any more or less sacrifices based on what you believe to be a weaker generation. This was a pointless war that would never draw in enough supplies to warrant the rationing and such. (unless somehow bush becames dictator for life and continues abusing this great country, with HIS pointless war)

If the US was truly threatened, the call would be answered.

I'm willing to argue that things are completely different than in 1941. Even if I'm wrong there is the fact that most people think things are different than in 1941. Change that, I think, and then we might have a better idea of if or if not we would be able to pull though.

I think many were sacrificing already considering the economic times of the depression still lingering.

I would have to question our country's ability, or willingness, to handle such a situation. In 1941 the United States was just a few short years out of the Great Depression. The Depression itself was a pretty big hardship, consumerism was down and shortages of all sorts of goods were widespread. The majority of the people alive in 1941 had just dealt with this and the sacrifices they made were comparable to ones they had already dealt with. Older people also would have recalled the sacrifices, although to a lesser extent, of WWI.

Our population today, particularly the Generation X'ers, grew up in the 1980's and 1990's a period of time in which consumerism pretty much exploded. And with the exception of a few fuel shortages, people have been able to acquire what ever they want. I believe our short term history leading up to WWII and our short term history leading up to today have been vastly different and have produced vastly different cultures.

To make a running analogy... the 1930's was a period of intense hard training, resulting in a magnificent race performance for our nation during WWII. The 1980's and 1990's was a period of purchasing new running shorts, power gels, Endrox, ipods and heart rate monitors resulting in our nation being metro looking slow pokes.

the world is different that the 1940's due to TV. people can't be herded by the fed gov't after vietnam & watergate.

the nazis and soviets killed caucasians and half-caucasians in as many numbers as the u.s., british, japanese, dutch, french, china, etc. did in their own empires. yet the bad guys in ww2 from the way the propaganda was written then, were germany, austria, hungary, and japan.

if we had TV in the 1940's the media would have let the world known of imperialism and genocide and people would have at least known the truth of what was happening.

perhaps america and europe would have pulled out of asia and pearl harbor and the wholesale annihilation and genocide of european colonialist troops and civilians in asia by the japanese might have been adverted.

europe was in the midst of ugly nationalism with nations split along ethic lines. i doubt if anything could have prevented ww2 in europe.

today, nationalism still raises it's ugly head in israel, controlled by zionism, which is a racist, apartheid, jim crow, peculiar form of nationalism, aligned along religious mythology rather than ethnic or tribal distinction.

Two things came to mind as I watched the shows so far.

First of all, it became very clear to me that we have lost this current war already.

but more importantly I think, the reasons why it still goes on are:

1. apathy at home

2. no draft

3. press censorship of the realities of whats going on over there.

Remember, tens of millions in uniform, 44% of the GNP, going to a two front war. No protesters, if you protested, you were likely to be in jail for the duration, or so my father said.

I was amazed at the fact of only 139 cars being built as everything was converted to war production. How was that accomplished? Did the government "requisition" the capacity, or was this all voluntary, through purchase?

ROTC wrote:

No protesters, if you protested, you were likely to be in jail for the duration, or so my father said.

There was a reason there were no protesters, and it wasn't just because you would be punished. Hitler was trying to take over 1/2 the world killing 10's of millions, and Japan had attacked us. Sorry, but that was a weeee bit more grave of a situation than Vietnam becoming communist or Saddam misbehaving.

Today's Americans would step up. However, the economic advantage we had over Europe back in the 40s does not exist today. Bush has squandered it and today America is China's bitch, economically speaking.

ROTC wrote:

No protesters, if you protested, you were likely to be in jail for the duration, or so my father said.

Your father has no idea what he is talking about.

Our biggest disadvantage today is that we've lost so much manufacturing capability. During WWII we produced everything here and were able to convert those capabilities to support the war effort.

I think we underestimate the capacity of our current population to to great things. WWII gave America a clear and compelling reason to make those material sacrifices; we don't have that today. If the Iraqis launched a successful offensive strike against Norfolk, we probably would have launched a more brutal and effective attack, and there would be much more public and political support.

No draft is a GREAT thing... mostly because it keeps us out of going to war without a good reason (or so it should, in theory).