After the Apocalypse by Andrew Bacevich

After the Apocalypse by Andrew Bacevich

Author:Andrew Bacevich [Bacevich, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub


The Freedom Narrative Undone—and Renegotiated

In the American collective consciousness, the conflict enshrined by Why We Fight remains the definitive war for freedom. Even today, notwithstanding the impact of the Trump presidency, the coronavirus pandemic, painful economic recession, and Black Lives Matter, World War II still serves as a wellspring of national legitimacy, arguably surpassing that stemming from the Revolution and the Civil War.

Best of all, the conflict ended in total victory, the newspaper headlines on V-J Day proclaiming PEACE! The end of World War II did not give way to peace, however. Instead, a decades-long emergency almost immediately commenced, marked by further wars and innumerable crises, with Armageddon hovering in the shadows. With the coming of the Cold War, political leaders of both parties fell into the habit of privileging national security over all other concerns, including race. While not ignored, racial inequality became a problem to be managed rather than confronted. In the Congress, stalwart southern segregationists like Carl Vinson, John Stennis, and Richard Russell proved to be staunch Cold Warriors, courted by the Pentagon and subsequently honored as great statesmen.6

For African Americans, the onset of the Cold War imparted a further complicating twist to the question of why we fight. During World War II, the vile white racists who threatened freedom’s very existence (the German ones, at least) demanded a response from all Americans, regardless of color. This was Capra’s summons, with Black Americans by and large rising to the occasion. During the Cold War, however, U.S. forces went into battle against enemies who were neither white nor overtly racist.

What those new enemies shared in common was a professed affinity for Communism. From their own exposure to that ideology, however, politically aware African Americans knew that Communist dogma steadfastly rejected racism in whatever form. During the 1920s and 1930s, while Republicans and Democrats either affirmed or turned a blind eye to segregation, the Communist Party USA loudly proclaimed its commitment to racial equality.7 More than a few leading lights of the Black intelligentsia, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Paul Robeson, and Richard Wright, either joined the party or flirted with doing so.8 From a Black perspective, the incompatibility of freedom and Marxism-Leninism was not immediately apparent.

Then, in the summer of 1950, the imperative of standing steadfast against Communism prompted the Truman administration to intervene in Korea. According to President Harry Truman, the U.S. forces hurriedly dispatched to authoritarian South Korea were fighting for “liberty and peace.”9 This was at best an oversimplification. Framing the Korean War as another fight for freedom proved to be a tough sell, especially when an ill-advised allied counteroffensive into Communist North Korea brought the People’s Republic of China into the conflict. The Korean “police action” had become longer and bloodier than Truman or the American people had expected.

That said, while never popular, the Korean War did improve the status of Black soldiers by putting an end to Jim Crow in the U.S. Army. Given the complexity of ensuring



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