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Guest Column

The ungrateful generation

by Timothy White

April 21, 2003

On April 9th,the Iraqi people were dancing in the streets, giving thumbs up to American soldiers, jubilant with their newfound freedom. V-Day was here and Uday and his father were gone. While Iraqis were quick to behead Saddam’s statues, there remained pockets of resistance by doomed Saddam loyalists. And yet theirs’ wasn’t the only resistance to the American liberators. It was here as well in North America with the naysayers and critics of Bush who predictably refused to acknowledge the victory. It seemed as though they were disappointed that Iraq hadn’t turned into another Viet Nam so they could prove their point and justify their 1960’s view of the world.

I had to tune into one of their forums, Much Music, and I wasn’t surprised to see that the anti-war mantra continues. Some little chicky VJ, bragging about her role in the recent LA protests, played that obnoxious Michael Moore piece of work entitled "Boom." While the Iraqis danced in Baghdad, the Moses Znaimer puppets were dancing to the defiant theme of "Boom," a nasty protest song portraying the coalition leaders as, of course, the real terrorists. Yet another cash grab for the large-living Michael Moore (no pun intended), who like Znaimer, capitalizes on socialist causes. Leftwing lemmings that kiss the feet of these socialist slumlords believe America had no right in ending the tyranny, genocide, death squads, and torture chambers endured by the Iraqi people. ‘Iraqis should have been left alone’ they have argued. ‘So let’s dance on’.

What concerns me is this stuff comes home. My 13-year-old stepdaughter returned from school the other day and announced that George W. Bush was the real terrorist. What are our schools teaching? I told her the people in Baghdad are jumping with joy because the "terrorist" Bush has liberated them. She scratched her head.

Why do many in this generation act so differently than our parents’, who proudly took on the last great dictator, Adolph Hitler? Why have so many in this generation refused to endorse what is right when faced with similar circumstances that our parents/grand-parents faced in WWII? And yet their generation didn’t have to witness Pearl Harbor real, live, and in colour the way we did with 9/11. While every forum from history books to Hollywood to rock stars salutes the WWII generation vowing never to let history repeat itself, suddenly so many have had a change of heart when faced with yet another "darkest hour."

Even though this war has spared more civilian lives than any of its magnitude on record, many in this generation continue to call the War unwarranted and abominable. Even the radical left-wing rag, The Militant, states:

"The U.S. armed forces have occupied most of Iraq with a relatively small number of casualties and are winning support among many Iraqis in the process" (4/21/03).

The Americans could have ended this war in a six-hour air attack, but because the Bush administration has never forgotten that life and liberty for Iraqi people is what is right, U.S. generals risked using ground forces in favour of saving Iraqi civilians. At this stage, the ratio appears to be one dead coalition soldier for every ten civilians killed.

If it was wrong to have taken on today’s dictator, then what a terrible thing we did 60 years ago when millions fell in stopping the Nazis. The naysayers will of course claim that this war involves different dynamics, that it’s not comparable. Let’s examine this a little.

Before WWII broke out, Churchill was a lone voice beating the drums of war in his commitment to stop Hitler. At that time, there existed the same type of rumours we’ve been hearing for years about Saddam. Like today, the world faced a nation that had already caused a war just a few decades earlier, a nation that had broken the directives of the International Community (League of Nations Treaty of Versailles) which demanded Germany not build arms behind the scenes. Like today’s situation, this compelled Churchill to speak out against the complacency of his countrymen and the rest of the world. As with the current suspect alliance between the Talaban, Al Quaeda, and Baath party, the axis of Germany and Italy felt the wrath of America because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. And, like today, the war effort took a conservative (Churchill) leading a liberal (Roosevelt) to spearhead the way. Sound familiar? Yet at that time the world wasn’t even faced with weapons of mass destruction.

Tom Brokaw recently wrote The Greatest Generation, a book about our parents’ generation and their valor and bravery in facing Hitler. I ask the question: what would the Greatest Generation do with today’s dilemma regarding Iraq? I think the answer comes before the question is complete. Faced with the same scenario, they went ahead and did what they knew was the right thing to do--to rid the world of ruthless dictatorships and human rights violators, who threaten all of us.

Today, many children of the Greatest Generation don’t feel they should do likewise. I guess they concluded that the Greatest Generation wasted a lot of lives in an unjust war. Maybe that’s why they gave their parents the finger in the 60s. Now it’s their children we see dancing with them in defiance. Thank God some of this later generation rebelled against their parents and have become conservatives like David Frum, leaving behind leftwing conformists such as Avi Lewis. Of course it is mostly these new conservative rebels who are ‘over there’ fighting for humanity in the spirit of their grandparents.

 

So why is our generation hesitating in doing what is right? This is a topic that could fill volumes. In short I would argue that we are the selfish "Me Generation," what I call the "Ungrateful Generation." Many, like the ones who were against Bush and the war in Iraq, mask their narcissism by pretending to be tolerant, sensitive, and caring for others, while all they really care about is themselves. Look at how too many of the Greatest Generation are pushed into old folks homes and forgotten about, while the grown children take the cottage.

The sons and daughters of parents who risked their lives for their children have experienced the most privileged and pleasurable existence of any society in human history. Baby boomers only seem to understand what is pleasurable to them. After all, life is all about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Taking away their toys and candy and telling them to do something responsible and dutiful makes them scream and cry. And worst of all, just like Children’s Aid, the left-wing mentors hastily step in and accuse the parents (the Greatest Generation) of intolerance and war mongering.

The left wooed the youth in the 60s with poetry and song, in a mind-altering cult-like fashion. Like the intrigue of the bad boy on the other side of the tracks who cruises through town on his Harley, the baby boomers latched on and rode off with Dennis Hopper. Many never returned and the grand kids never got to appreciate the virtues of their grandparent’s generation and how they took on tyranny. Instead they watch Much Music or MTV and dance to counter-culture mutants like Michael Moore.