D +1

On this 64th anniversary of D-Day plus one, Roger Kimball gives us a chilling look at what the "great crusade" to liberate humanity from the dark forces of fascism would look like today:

June 6, 1944. -NORMANDY- Three hundred French civilians were killed and thousands more wounded today in the first hours of America’s invasion of continental Europe. Casualties were heaviest among women and children.

Most of the French casualties were the result of the artillery fire from American ships attempting to knock out German fortifications prior to the landing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops. Reports from a makeshift hospital in the French town of St. Mere Eglise said the carnage was far worse than the French had anticipated and reaction against the American invasion was running high. “We are dying for no reason,” said a Frenchman speaking on condition of anonymity. “Americans can’t even shoot straight. I never thought I’d say this, but life was better under Adolph Hitler.”

The invasion also caused severe environmental damage. American troops, tanks, trucks and machinery destroyed miles of pristine shoreline and thousands of acres of ecologically sensitive wetlands. It was believed that the habitat of the spineless French crab was completely wiped out, threatening the species with extinction.

It'd be funny - except for the fact that we live a world in which probably 70% of college students couldn't tell you who started WWII, or why it was fought. Which is why if the same titanic struggle were to be re-fought today we probably couldn't do it. Hell, at this moment in time, WWII revisionism is taking hold - as noted in this piece by by VDH which overviews Pat Buchanan's new book, the main thesis of which is basically "the Poles were asking for it" and Nicholas Baker's new book which indicts the Allies as war criminals for their campaign of strategic bombing in Germany.

Oh yeah, we bombed civilians in WWII. Not by accident, but as a policy, to demoralize, terrify and degrade German industrial capacity. Because IT IS WAR. And in war you do everything you can to bring it to the swiftest possible conclusion.

Not today. Today FDR would be sitting in The Hague on a war crime rap. Because we have never had to think about the horrors of war. And so we graduate more and more kids from institutions of higher learning who have no concept of history, or what is necessary to preserve freedom. (Or any notion that freedom is something worth preserving - it's just another "value.") So of course they would be duped by people like Buchanan and Baker into thinking that WWII was not an epic struggle to liberate humanity from the dark forces of tyranny - but rather just another "war of choice" by blood-thirsty Americans.

In 20 years, college kids will be walking around with swastikas on their t-shirts along with their "Che" shirts.