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I've recently begun reading Caroline Alexander's new book, Skies of Thunder, The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World. Its focus is the theater of operations in which my father served as operations officer for the 1st Air Commandos, an all-volunteer unit, in World War II. And no, he isn't mentioned, though his commander Phil Cochran ("Flip Corkin" in the comic strip of that time, Terry and the Pirates) is. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. was instantly at war in both Asia and Europe and my father, then too old to be drafted, soon volunteered. Though, as a Jew, he undoubtedly wanted to fight the Nazis, he was sent to India as part of that unit's operations against the Japanese in Burma.
By May 1945, the Nazi regime had gone down in flames, and that August, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were A-bombed more or less to smithereens, the Japanese surrendered, ending "his" war, but, as it turned out -- from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan to Iraq -- anything but ending Washington's disastrous urge to be a global war state. Like so many former soldiers of that war, he never really talked to his son about his experiences. Fortunately, he at least got to see (and help) the genuine good guys win.
However, by the time American-style war hit my world -- in Vietnam -- the United States looked like anything but the good guy (at least to me and so many young people like me) and I found myself volunteering (so to speak) to turn in my draft card and protest that war in the streets. By then, of course, the American national (in)security state was already succeeding in a striking fashion at only one thing (other than turning itself into a remarkable growth industry): it was largely freeing itself of us and of Congress. And of course, as retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, historian, and TomDispatch regular Bill Astore, whose Bracing Views Substack is a must-read, makes all too clear today, this country, the globe's (once) dominant power, has only gone from bad to worse when it comes to both preparations for and making war in a big time and, in both cases, remarkably disastrous fashion. Tom
From the Arsenal of Democracy to an Arsenal of Genocide
The Pernicious Price of Global Reach, Global Power, and Global Dominance
During World War II, American leaders proudly proclaimed this country the "arsenal of democracy," supplying weapons and related materiel to allies like Great Britain and the Soviet Union. To cite just one example, I recall reading about Soviet armored units equipped with U.S. Sherman tanks, though the Soviets had an even better tank of their own in the T-34 and its many variants. However, recent news that the United States is providing yet more massive arms deliveries to Israel (worth $20 billion) for 2026 and thereafter caught me off guard. Israel quite plainly is engaged in the near-total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of Palestinians there. So, tell me, how over all these years did the self-styled arsenal of democracy become an arsenal of genocide?
Israel, after all, couldn't demolish Gaza, killing at least 40,000 Palestinians in a population of only 2.1 million, including thousands of babies and infants, without massive infusions of U.S. weaponry. Often, the U.S. doesn't even sell the weaponry to Israel, a rich country that can pay its own bills. Congress just freely gifts body- and baby-shredding bombs in the name of defending Israel from Hamas. Obviously, by hook or crook, or rather by shells, bombs, and missiles, Israel is intent on rendering Gaza Palestinian-free and granting Israelis more living space there (and on the West Bank). That's not "defense" -- it's the 2024 equivalent of Old Testament-style vengeance by annihilation.
As Tacitus said of the rampaging Romans two millennia ago, so it can now be said of Israel: they create a desert -- a black hole of death in Gaza -- and call it "peace." And the U.S. government enables it or, in the case of Congress, cheers on its ringleader, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.
Of course, anyone who knows a little American history should have some knowledge of genocide. In the seventeenth century, Native Americans were often "satanized" by early colonial settlers. (In 1994, a friend of mine, the historian David Lovejoy, wrote a superb and all-too-aptly titled article on exactly that topic: "Satanizing the American Indian.") Associating Indians with the devil made it all the easier for the white man to mistreat them, push them off their lands, and subjugate or eradicate them. When you satanize an enemy, turning them into something irredeemably evil, all crimes become defensible, rational, even justifiable. For how can you even consider negotiating or compromising with the minions of Satan?
Growing up, I was a strong supporter of Israel, seeing that state as an embattled David fighting against a Goliath, most notably during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Forty years later, I wrote an article suggesting that Israel was now the Goliath in the region with Palestinians in Gaza playing the role of a very much outgunned and persecuted David. An American-Jewish friend told me I just didn't get it. The Palestinians in Gaza were all terrorists, latent or incipient ones in the case of the infants and babies there. At the time, I found this attitude uncommon and extreme, but events have proven it to be far too common (though it certainly remains extreme). Obviously, on some level, the U.S. government agrees that extremism in the pursuit of Israeli hegemony is no vice and so has provided Israel with the weaponry and military cover it needs to "exterminate all the brutes." Thus, in 2024, the U.S. "cradle of democracy" reveals its very own heart of darkness.
Looking Again at the World Wars That Made America "Great"
When considering World Wars I and II, we tend to see them as discrete events rather than intimately connected. One was fought from 1914 to 1918, the other from 1939 to 1945. Americans are far more familiar with the Second World War than the First. From both wars this country emerged remarkably unscathed compared to places like France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan. Add to that the comforting myth that America's "greatest generation" pretty much won World War II, thereby saving democracy (and "Saving Private Ryan" as well).
Perhaps, however, we should imagine those years of conflict, 1914-1945, as a European civil war (with an Asian wing thrown in the second time around), a new Thirty Years' War played out on a world stage that led to the demise of Europe's imperial powers and their Asian equivalent and the rise of the American empire as their replacement. Germanic militarism and nationalism were defeated but at an enormous cost, especially to Russia in World War I and the Soviet Union in World War II. Meanwhile, the American empire, unlike Germany's Second and Third Reichs or Japan's imperial power, truly became for a time an untrammeled world militarist hegemon with the inevitable corruption inherent in the urge for near-absolute power.
Vast levels of destruction visited upon this planet by two world wars left an opening for Washington to attempt to dominate everywhere. Hence, the roughly 750 overseas bases its military set up to ensure its ultimate global reach, not to speak of the powerful navy it created, centered on aircraft carriers for power projection and nuclear submarines for possible global Armageddon, and an air force that saw open skies as an excuse for its own exercises in naked power projection. To this you could add, for a time, U.S. global economic and financial power, enhanced by a cultural dominance achieved through Hollywood, sports, music, and the like.
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