In his book Thank God For The Atom Bomb, Paul Fussell notes that those opposed to the bomb were distant from the front and unlikely to associate with any who served there:
"The future scholar-critic who writes The History of Canting in the Twentieth Century will find much to study and interpret in the utterances of those who dilate on the special wickedness of the A-bomb-droppers. He will realize that such utterance can perform for the speaker a valuable double function. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. And second, by implication it can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone else's."
Change "A-bomb" to "Guantanamo" and "war" to "war on terror" and you have modern liberal thinking in a nutshell. Preserving today's exquisite moral sensibilities requires a remoteness and a capacity for cognitive dissonance that the average person finds unsustainable. Indeed, to Fussell, a rifle platoon leader in Europe when Germany surrendered, it's hard experience that instructs our essence and equips us for life. Like thousands of Americans who "miraculously" survived the mechanized carnage at the front, he was to deploy for the invasion of Japan when the A-Bomb spared him from the coming bloodbath. That kind of experience, common among the "greatest generation" and our armed forces today, seems increasingly uncommon and insignificant to Oprah Nation, where one engages in a non-stop blabfest about their thoughts, dreams and concerns. By contrast, it's not so easy to share that an artillery blast sent your company commander's West Point ring through your buddy's head, blowing his brains out. It's no coincidence that Oprah was one of Mr. Obama's earliest and most devout supporters. Which brings us to the "experience" of Obama.
Much has been made of Obama's hybridity and rootlessness. His constant ambition, facility at self-promotion, speechmaking (oceans falling, blah, blah, blah) and the wall he maintains with an adoring media - all speak to his ego and aloofness. The most damning criticism has always been about his lack of experience. Community organizer, president of the Harvard Law Review, newsletter writer for Business International Corporation, senior law lecturer and state and United States senator. Despite the impressive sounding titles on his resume, he's moved rapidly from job to job, never displaying excellence in any of them-save writing best sellers about his favorite topic, himself. In short, his experience is parochial and mainly intellectual-devoid of hardship and sacrifice, and unlike, for example, those of John McCain or Winston Churchill, who fought with the Malakand Field Force, covered the Boer War as a correspondent and escaped from captivity. In Obama's background, I see no evidence of hardship greater than a hangnail or suffering a reporter's impudent question about his qualifications to be president.
Obama's inexperience was all too evident during the campaign. Many feared he did not understanding how the world works, promising unconditional talks with our enemies. He'd close Guantanamo but had no plan for the detainees who had tried to kill our troops. He'd tax the rich-who disproportionally create the most jobs as business owners and executives. He was wrong about Iraq, not surprising given his lack of experience there and general unfamiliarity with the military. Having won the election on promises of hope and change, the media assured us that he and his superb transition staff would hit the ground running.
And yet, Obama's first few weeks were a disaster. He outsourced his Stimulus Plan to professional porkmeisters in Congress, and then faulted republicans for not jumping behind an 1100 page deficit spending package that no one had time to read in its entirety. This despite his promise of administration transparency and bipartisanship. Aside from campaign style cheerleading and complaining about the lack of bipartisan support, Obama failed to address the pork in the Stimulus. Senator Graham called him AWOL on the debate. In his version of "pimp my presidency," the audacity of hoax then launched a sham fiscal responsibility summit days after signing the biggest spending bill in US history. Others note his penchant for talk vice action, his special envoys spanning the globe to lower the oceans and bring harmony to mankind. Lately, every time Obama or one of his tax cheat appointees talk, the stock market tanks. I doubt Obama socializes with many who understand the daily realities of building a business, navigating stifling bureaucracies or hunting down terrorists. Americans elected a guy who wants to be above it all, stay clean and act cool. And why not? The media and enough Americans mistook his demeanor and rhetoric for governing skill.
Obama will ultimately fail in his attempt to remake America along European (socialist) lines. Old school Americans were (are) raised on the ideals of hard work and fair play. Our traditions of self-reliance and perseverance were shaped by the frontier, creating a culture and sense of opportunity and optimism unlike any other. Americans will not accept a super-state, no matter how soothing the rhetoric from our organizer in chief. Now, facing a small but growing tax revolt, Obama puts Joe Biden in charge of overseeing the "Stimulus." Here's a man who never met a speech he couldn't cop. He's so obtuse that he told Gwen Ifill and Missouri state senator Chuck Graham, both confined to wheelchairs, to "stand up, let the people see you."
In at least one area Mr. Biden has proved prophetic: our enemies are already testing the president and the foreign policy disaster is coming. The Iranians admitted they've got 6,000 centrifuges up and running, apparently unconcerned with our response. North Korea's rolled out a new ballistic missile that can strike the US. Dictators and despots tend to be shrewd observers of human nature and sniff weakness in our greenhorn president. With Obama's rise, the wreckage to the nation continues.
One president who was not a greenhorn was Harry Truman. The only US president since 1897 not to earn a college degree, he's also the last with small unit, ground combat experience. In 1945, as allied forces closed on Japan, the battles for Okinawa and Iwo Jima hinted at the butchery to come. Writes Fussell in Thank God For The Atom Bomb:
"He knew war, and he knew better than some of his critics then and now what he was doing and why he was doing it. 'Having found the bomb,' he said, 'we have used it....We have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans.'"
In 1945, America had an adult at the helm. We've settled for a lot less today.
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