The Difference Between WWII & Vietnam

There seems to be a direct connection between the loss of faith in the military in those conflicts, the Korean conflict and then the Vietnam conflict. Whereas we don't think about it that way when we think about World War II. When we think about World War II, we think about it as the good guys versus the bad guys. And we won and we came back and there's the famous kiss on V-Day. Sure. You know, in the middle of the street. There's all these romantic notions attached to World War II that aren't attached to Korea and aren't attached to Vietnam. Yeah. I mean, Eisenhower speech, people pull out that military industrial complex line, but people should listen to the whole speech. Listen to it and watch it. It's fascinating, but something shifted and I don't know exactly what it is. I can't put my finger on it, but it keeps coming back to accountability. But my question is, why do we lose that sense of accountability? Why did we lose the importance of accountability following World War II, particularly in 1947 when we reorganized really our defense intelligence agencies and the military got reorganized in 1947. We changed the name of the War Department to the Department of Defense. So we have precision in language, precision in thought. There's a shift there. We used to have a secretary of war. What do we have after 1947? We have a secretary of defense. So there's that little thing, little thing, but language is important. And then for some reason, we stopped holding our senior level leaders accountable. And I don't know why you could point to this essentially a triad of politicians, of think tanks, of the defense industry, kind of how people float between all those things. So it became big business. NATO became big business. So there's a lot of things that came into play that weren't at play before World War II that become reality after World War II. So I don't know what it is. I can't put my finger on it. But then we have that same generation that came home and what did they do? They got to work. They didn't whine about what they'd been involved in. They got to work and they built this country into what it is today. And it's so hard to see what we're doing to ourselves really in this country. That last book in The Devil's Hand, I put myself in the enemy's shoes and I thought, hey, what did they learn from us on the field of battle over the last 20 years at war? And during the time I was writing that, COVID hit, summer of civil unrest, very contentious political season and election cycle. The enemy's learning from all those things. And the sad part of my takeaway from that research was that, hey, if I'm the enemy, I might just watch. We're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside right now. I might just wait and watch and see what happens. But of course, I had to figure out in a fictional sense how to deal with that. And I did in a very creative way that was fun to figure out. But it's sad to think that we've lost this appreciation, I think, for what was sacrificed so we could have these freedoms and options and opportunities that we do today. So from the inception of this country up until today, people have sacrificed everything or they've risked everything so that we can have these freedoms. And now we have a segment of society that wants to undercut those freedoms because I don't think they appreciate what was sacrificed so we could have them. And that part's that sad. I took my daughter to Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary commemoration events this last December. And we volunteered with an organization called the Best Defense Foundation, Donnie Edwards Foundation that takes people back to the World War II battlefields primarily so they can say goodbye. They can make peace with what they did there. And a lot of them, it's their last trips to these places. A lot of them, it's their second trip. The first one was actually going over the beach in Normandy or going to Iwo Jima and fighting. And now they're getting to go there in the last years of their lives and say goodbye. But we went to Pearl Harbor and so my daughter is 16 and she sat at, we volunteered. We took 64 veterans, age 96 to 104. Wow. And in wheelchairs, we're getting them on and off the buses, taking them to the events, getting the dinners, making sure they're taking their medications, all that stuff. And it was a turning point in her life because she got to sit down across the table from this generation that, yeah, she's heard me talk about and she's read about, but to hear them tell their stories. And a lot of them haven't even told their stories until just a few years ago. There's one guy, Jack Holder, who was on the airfield at Pearl Harbor. He watched the planes, Japanese planes come over the mountains, drop down, strafe the runway. He jumps into this, what was then a sewage ditch and he showed us the bullet holes in the runway, still there, in the hangar, still there. And so he jumps into this sewage ditch. He watches the planes take this left hand turn, bank, and he jumps up, runs to the edge of Pearl Harbor right there on the water and watches them and watches the first torpedoes get dropped in Pearl Harbor. And then he went back, he flew a PBY, which was a sea plane. And then he went on to fight in the Pacific and he sunk a Japanese submarine and helped sink a Japanese aircraft carrier. And then he goes to the Mediterranean and sinks a German submarine. I mean, incredible, incredible. That's what this generation did for us. And so she got to see that. So she appreciates, point being, is that she appreciates what that generation gave us. And then by default, what previous generations have given us. So we're going to go to D-Day here this June, taking her out of school. We're going to go do that and go to Normandy and take the same group of veterans back to Normandy. And a lot of them, it'll be their last trip, but she'll get to help again, get them to the events, get them to dinners, get them on and off the buses, in and out of the wheelchairs and experience that place with them. So... I can't imagine what it must be like for them to go back to Normandy and to be on that beach and I mean, I've seen the photographs and, you know, I think probably one of the best theatrical representations of it is Saving Private Ryan, right? It's just horrific. I mean, imagine that. They nailed that scene. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it's, it puts things in relative terms. And for me, it was in buds on the beach in Hell Week, you know, doing pushups, getting yelled at, you're freezing, you're on the verge of hypothermia, people are quitting. And I thought, hey, you know what? I'm not coming off of a boat on to a beach in Normandy where I'm running through a hail of machine gun fire that's set up in an elevated position with no covering concealment between me and that position. Right. I'm like, I can do a few more pushups here on the beach, you know, I can shiver here in the water a little longer here. Those guys sacrificed that so I could follow my dream and I could be here on this beach in Coronado, California, testing myself in this crucible of buds. So I think about that, that generation in particular quite a bit and what they gave us. I see when they review storming the beach at Normandy, is there alternative methods of approaching that situation that people have proposed that would have been, caused less casualties? Because it's such a crazy thing to just dump everybody off at the beach and run towards the gunfire. I mean, I will always wonder like, why didn't they do something differently? Why didn't they shoot at them with planes and soften them up first? I mean, it seems. Well, we had some of that. So we did drop people behind the lines. We had gliders going in. We bombarded the shore first. And gliders is because no sound? You know, that is a good, I mean, that must be a part of it. I can't remember exactly why, but that must be it. But they have the gliders going in and oh my gosh, what a crazy thing to be involved in just in the, especially back then. Yeah. In the 1940s being in the back of a glider, going essentially crashing and getting out and then having to figure out where you are and then to figure out without radios who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, which direction are we going, all of that. So we dropped off in the right place. Right. Some of them were shot down and then they, you know, a lot of them were shot down. But so they did do things. They did do things to soften up those beaches and all of that. But we're dealing with 1940s technology coming off of Lessons of World War I, which was even more horrific. Did they have missiles back then that are capable of like being precise? No. Or did they just sort of launch them in the general direction? No, the Germans had some missile. I believe they had a missile technology that was a rocket technology that was far superior to ours, I think you can check me on that. But no, it was mostly like a gigantic bullet coming out of a battleship. Wow. And hitting something or not. So yeah, it's an amazing place to go for people who haven't been to go to these memorials, especially to take kids to these memorials and to go to Pearl Harbor and to go to Normandy and to go stand up on Point D'Hoc and look down and see where the Rangers had to climb up ropes and ladders. And the Germans are firing right down on them from these positions and they just kept climbing the longest day, that old movie. It shows that as well. And I grew up with that film. It's an old black and white movie that people should watch. They should watch that and Saving Private Ryan. But that's the power of popular culture. These movies play an important part in our popular culture and in our history because you can show these things and create this appreciation. And we're just losing that, I think. I mean, Hollywood used to be our most prolific and valuable asset that we would export. And so people from all over the world would see these movies and see this opportunity that was the United States. And I think that's shifted. That's shifted over time. But that's why those war films, I think, are so important because you can watch that and say, oh my gosh, I am so appreciative of what those guys did. And you know what? My life here, maybe I should make it. I can make some changes here and I can appreciate what they did for us so that I can make my own decisions and I can have these freedoms and opportunities rather than just complain about it because really, you know what I'm not doing? Running into a hail of machine gun bullets as I cross this beach. So there's a lot to be appreciative of to appreciate the previous generations and what they did for us.