The War

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven . . . A time for war, and a time for peace.

Last night Jonathan and I watched the final episode of Ken Burns's new series for PBS, entitled The War. As a nearly fourteen-year-old male, Jonathan finds the subject of warfare, guns, trenches, and bombs fascinating, and his interest in history made this great television for him. As usual, Burns took an intriguing approach, telling the story of World War II through the eyes of the everyday, ordinary person who was there, with a few well-known personalities adding their commentary as well.

While I didn't watch as faithfully or as attentively as Jonathan, I couldn't help but make some interesting observations, especially given the fact that our own nation is embroiled in a controversial war.

While none of the men Burns featured who fought in the war relished the fact that they were required to kill--there was no glamorization in this piece--they all believed that what they did was necessary, that the world faced a tremendous threat that had to be addressed. One woman from Alabama, whose brother and other friends fought in the war, commented about the end of the war that no one would ever convince any member of her generation that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a bad thing. They brought an end to the war, an end to bloodshed, and finally all of the boys could come home.

All of the men in particular that Burns interviewed throughout the hours of footage had been profoundly affected by the war. Some still broke down in tears as they discussed memories that several of them confessed they really didn't like to talk about. One man said that he had returned from the war, gotten married, had a family--had had a good life. And yet there was still the war. But it was a worthy cause--something that had to be done.

It seems like in hindsight, the threat was obvious. This was a cause worth fighting for, and freedom was definitely at stake. But there were many at the time who just wanted it all to end, wanted the boys to come home, and if it had been up to them, the war would have ended when Germany surrendered--never mind the Japanese. A co-worker and I were talking about all of this today, and she wondered if this generation has the stamina, the strength, the sense of commitment that it took to fight--and triumph--back then. It's a good question.

One of the profound statistics revealed last night was that two out of three European Jews were killed during World War II. Would even a third have survived if Hitler and the Nazis had not been stopped? Probably not.

So what if, fifty or sixty years from now, we look back on our current war and recognize that Islam was, in fact, a real threat. That it was a threat that we underestimated at one time. That some farsighted people acknowledged the threat at the time and tried to do something about it, but that those farsighted people were ridiculed, slandered, and their actions undermined and eventually overturned because more people didn't think there was a real threat. That we should have listened. What kind of a world will the world of fifty or sixty years from now be like?