Billy:

You're pretty stuck on this "greatest generation" thing -- to the exclusion it seems of everything else. It was Tom Brokaw's locution in the first place, and we're on record here with respect to how we feel about Brokaw.

http://www.instapunk.com/archives/InstaPunkArchiveV2.php3?a=1753

By all means keep making the same point, but your assertions that you don't resent the WWII generation are beginning to sound hollow. Otherwise you're pretty much preaching to the choir here.

But by all means say it all again. Time's yours, as much space as you want. Eventually you may succeed in picking the fight you seem to want. About what, God only knows at this point.

One more quick thing:

"I suppose one could dismiss it as an accident of history, but it was really no accident. It was an unmistakable proof, something very rare in history, of the altruism of an entire nation."

I don't buy that.

We sent draftees to Europe in the 1910s to fight a conflict that was even LESS threat to America--and at that time there were more GERMAN language newspapers than English language papers in this country (of course, that doesn't speak to the circulation of the papers etc.)

And we're here in Iraq today spending cash and blood to try to drag the Mohammedans kicking and screaming into the century of the fruitbat er 20th century. Yes, we're trying to do it in part to keep them from sneaking a nuclear device into Chicago and ruining The Ones home, but there are cheaper ways of solving this problem.

Oh, and it took a considerable amount of propaganda to GET the country to accept our entry into the war in Europe, while there was considerable propaganda *against* this one, and we *still* did it, and we're *still* here.

I don't resent the D-Day vets.

Not at all.

They went, volunteers or not, into harms way for their country, their family, and their friends.

What I resent i the label "Greatest".

If the kids who hit the beach at Obamaha...Omaha were the Greatest Generation what about their leaders and instructors? I see so far because I stand on teh shoulders of Giants--or can i see so far because the people before me cleared ground so nothing obstructs my view? Either way the GG *didn't* do anything that previous generations and future generations didn't do.

What act of Heroism at Normandy beats what SFC Smith

(http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/smith/citation/index.html ) did? (see also http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/smith/profile/index.html )

He didn't give his life for his men, he made the OP4s *take* it, and take it at a TREMENDOUS cost to them (Up to 50 enemy killed).

SFC Smith is of my generation--I'm on the leading edge of "Generation X"--and one of MANY whose shoes I wish I was man enough to fill

I have a friend from college who is about SFC Smith's age, and who just passed the SF Q course about 18 months ago. He's deploying--again--to Afghanistan sometime in the next month or two. With a wife waiting at home.

Or the 19 year Marine I met in 2005 who was deploying over here--he joined (Volunteered, not inducted) the Marines, and he was placed in the Infantry (I don't remember whether he chose or not).

Did he make it? I have no idea. Doesn't matter.

They are every bit the equal of the soldiers and marines who hit the beaches 65 years ago. In some ways they're better--todays soldiers are not only fighting for America (as were the soldiers from 1940s), they're also fighting for the rights and the freedom of people of a different race and a radically different culture.

Last Memorial Day I attended the celebrations at Veterans Cemetery and had lunch and some drinks at the local VFW hall. I've got nothing but respect for them, from the pipe fitters in the navy to the pipe hitters in the Marine Corps (ih whose loving embrace I spent 4 years). WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, wherever.

But some f'ing twit back home who's greatest contribution to the war was a good job on a factory assembly line and eating "liberty cabbage"?

And lets not get into that "fighting facism" trope. Hitler *admired* Roosevelt. Roosevelt and Hitler were after the same thing, the only problems with Hitler (from this side of the pond) was his obsession with the Jews and his attacks on England.

Well, that's over simplifying, but I have to get back to supporting the troops--my miserable little contribution to this effort involves me spending a year away from my family, eating the same food and living in the same quarters as the troops, getting paid a damn site better, so I'm not bitching. Other than having these troops denegrated by comparison.

If one generation is "The Greatest", then the others are less by comparison. And I refuse to believe that these are lesser soldiers.

I'm sorry I am tired of the Greatest generation stuff. Tell it to the men of the Alamo or Valley Forge or the troops on both sides at Gettysburg. Or to the men who fought in Vietnam and came home to the likes of Clinton and Ayers.

As for Presidente Zero, he sucks period. But Clinton and Carter are thanking their lucky stars that someone has relived them of the titles most incompetent and most corrupt.