BuzzMachine

Monday-morning moralizing
: On the way home in our spring blizzard, I was listening to Leonard Lopate, host of the WNYC (that’s NPR) midday show, talking to Richard Schickel, movie critic, and they both said that as late as 1944, between 30 and 40 percent of Americans wanted us to negotiate an end to the war against Germany. It was after the war and after we uncovered the full extent of Hitler’s atrocities and evils that, Schickel said, that the necessity of the war became accepted and that the assumption of history became that virtually all of America backed the war with vigor. He noted that the percentage in favor of that war then was roughly the percentage in favor of this war now. So perhaps this war is every bit as popular as World War II. And perhaps after we uncover the full extent of Saddam’s atrocities and evil, the rest of the country (and the world… or at least Europe) will accept the necessity of this war.