Wampum

For the love of old film

Earlier this week, pre-Condi, I watched a film. It was December 7th: The Pearl Harbor Story (1943), directed by John Ford, with Walter Huston as the complacent Uncle Sam. Now I was really struck by the final minutes of the film, which I'd like to write about, but something's come up.

Over on NRO Chris May wrote this:

"President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor."

Now Ford's work in documentary form (all the exploding models and the exchanges between Uncle Sam (Walter Huston) and his conscence, aka "Mr. C" (Harry Davenport), the tiresome ethnic spies-R-us segments, and the final segment I want to write about were removed) won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (1943). I do not understand how Chris May missed this. Then again, he missed the fact that FDR didn't live to see VJ Day.

But all this mindless blother is about criticism within a democracy of that democracy's prosecution of a war during that war. The timid would prefer to be above criticism during the pendancy of the present war.

When FDR asked Congress for a declaration that a state of war existed on December 8th, Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) voted "No". Throughout the war Rankin spoke against Roosevelt and his policies. She wasn't alone. There was criticism about the North African Campaign, 1,000 dead at Kasserine Pass, about the equipment, about ... and the criticism didn't stop there.

Enough about the amazing Mr. Chris May, who has an interesting and readable bio here.

There is important reading to do. I've found some gems:

• from Home Front and War Front: September 1944,
  
• from FRD's Fala Speech to the Teamsters Union at the Hotel Statler, September 1944,
  
• Reflections on German and American Foreign Policy, 1933-1945
  

The good stuff is in the extended entry. Enjoy the evening, and remember to send MB more gelt. I've spent enough time on this, and its time to go color with the children. Motivation to go googling down memory lane courtesy of Roger Ailes via Atrios (who linked to the extended entry with the lovely Dewey quote last night).

While ironing tonight I listened to Dewey's second (and I hope last, for me) campaign speech concerning foreign policy. If I were an editorial writer I would liberally intersperse my critique with such words and phrases as "immature", "startling Republican amnesia concerning the facts and causes of the last depression", "vague", etc. etc. The only concrete thing one could get out of the speech was the un-Christian, Republican unwillingness to do anything about future international relations except stand by with pious neighborly smiles as if to say, "Uncle Sam is watching you and wishes you all the luck in the world." He openly deprecated the idea that we could be of economic aid to depressed nations or that we have any kind of economic intercourse with anybody except of the cutthroat 19th-century variety. There's certainly no doubt in my mind how that his administration, if he were elected, would be a bad one.

From Home Front and War Front: September 1944

"These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks and my family does not resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars - his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to, libelous statements about my dog."

From FRD's Fala Speech to the Teamsters Union at the Hotel Statler, September 1944.

It's worth recalling Thomas Dewey's remark of 26 September 1944 to General George Marshall's messenger, Col. Carter W. Clarke. In reply to Clarke's plea to suppress the whole issue during the election campaign, Dewey said: "From what I know of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt, instead of being re-elected, ought to be impeached."

From Reflections on German and American Foreign Policy, 1933-1945 Posted by at April 10, 2004 03:17 PM | TrackBack