Episode 20: The Myth of the Good War

Elizabeth Samet on American Nostalgia

World War II is nostalgically remembered throughout American culture as the “good war”––a conflict where Americans idealistically banded together to free the world from tyranny. Of course there is more to this story, but is this simplified popular understanding dangerous?

In this week’s episode of None Of The Above, the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah talks with West Point English professor Elizabeth Samet about the importance of literature for preparing America’s future officer corps for life in and out of uniform, and about Americans’ collective memory of the Second World War. Elizabeth shows how our romanticized reading of history has led US policymakers to overstate the effectiveness and righteousness of military force.

Elizabeth Samet is the author of Looking For the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness and a Professor of English at West Point. The views Elizabeth expresses here do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Show notes:

Looking For the Good: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness (Elizabeth Samet, 2021)
“Politics and the English Language” (George Orwell, 1946)

Archival audio:

The Early Show - 9/11 and Pearl Harbor: The tale of two days (CBS News, September 7, 2011)
George W. Bush giving his axis of evil speech (iconic, November 2, 2010)
Comparing The Fall Of Kabul To The Fall Of Saigon: Is It Fair? (NBC News, August 24, 2021)
Syria 'This is our Munich moment', says John Kerry (Intidings, September 8, 2013)
MARCH 2003: McCain "We Will Be Welcomed As Liberators" (C5g74d3, September 25, 2008)
President Bush Announces Start of Iraq War (C-SPAN, March 13, 2013)
Congressman: US troops are a force for good in Iraq (January 13, 2020)

Transcript:

January 11, 2022

ELIZABETH SAMET: We emerged from that war with perhaps a false sense of what American military force could achieve in the world. And I think that false sense has given us an illusion about what we could accomplish with military might.

MARK HANNAH: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Mark Hannah. In August, the United States ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan. The war was provoked by the attacks of September 11, which conjured comparisons to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and America's evacuation from Afghanistan drew comparisons to the Saigon airlift of 1975. While such analogies might be tempting, do they cloud our understanding of current conflicts and distort our debates about war?

This week, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Elizabeth Samet. She's the author of a new book, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness. Elizabeth paints a more complicated picture of World War Two than is often remembered and explores how America's sentimental reading of the so-called “Good War” has led the United States to overstate the righteousness and effectiveness of its military might.

Elizabeth, it's a pleasure to have you.

SAMET: Thank you. It's a pleasure to join you, Mark.

HANNAH: Elizabeth is not only an author; she is also an English professor at West Point. And before we continue, I want to note to our listeners that the views Elizabeth is about to express here do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States government, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or anything like that.

So, Elizabeth, with that out of the way, let's get into it. Starting off, I just want to ask you what it's like to be an English professor at the US Military Academy. When I think of West Point, I think of a training ground for America's warriors. So, studying literature isn't necessarily the first thing that pops into my mind. Why is literature important for the development of an officer corps?

SAMET: The way in which I see my role there and the way in which I see the value of studying literature for future officers is that I want to prepare them for any near-term crises they may face, but I also want to prepare them for the long term. So, if they're unlucky enough to have to go to war and lucky enough to survive that war, I want to make sure they can come home. What I mean is I want them to be able to imagine themselves living rich and productive lives after they have seen, and experienced perhaps, some truly horrible things. And in order to do that, one needs a robust imagination. I think having a robust imagination also helps one in uniform. But I think it provides them a way of seeing the future and of seeing their own role in it. The chief thing that it does is help them to see alternatives and to foster their imaginations. I think literature in particular—that discipline, my discipline—is one that can equip them for that. And so, that's really how I see the role of literature. And of course, there are other disciplines that contribute to this—having a rich sense of history, having a sense that people have done these things before.

This book is all about a kind of amnesia, a kind of forgetting. And I think literature and history and other disciplines help to combat that kind of forgetting

HANNAH: Much of your book, Elizabeth, is about this kind of amnesia—this sort of forgetting that Americans experience collectively when we think about or try to remember World War Two. Your book argues that Americans think of the United States and its involvement in the war in a much more positive and heroic light in hindsight. And you reveal how amnesia about war in particular has real consequences for America's relationship with military force. How so?

SAMET: I should say first that the argument is not that our participation in that war—in World War Two—was either unnecessary or unjustified, and it's not an attempt to diminish in any way the cruelty and crimes of the regimes defeated by the Allies. But because of the extraordinary nature of that war and because of the consequences of that war, the defeat of fascism in Europe in particular—which is the one I think we focused on most often—the violence itself, in a sense, became gilded by the particular consequence. And I think we emerged from that war—and this took some time for it to develop—with perhaps a false sense of what American military force could achieve in the world. And I think that false sense has been what's dogged us and what has, in many ways, given us an illusion, particularly in our most recent wars, about what we could accomplish with military might.

HANNAH: World War Two is often referred to as the “Good War,” and this shapes how it is remembered and serves to distinguish it from America's more inconclusive and divisive wars like Vietnam, the Iraq War, and even the Afghanistan War to some extent. But as Elizabeth makes clear, this is an alluring myth, not historical reality.

SAMET: I think first it's important to acknowledge the real seductiveness of the “Good War” and the Greatest Generation as ideas, as concepts. There's a reason they're so popular. They offer us, I think, the most flattering—or one of the most flattering—versions of ourselves. One of the most flattering versions of America as a force in the world. And so, that's the reason for their popularity. And there is a double edge to all of these mythologies. Myths are crucial to one's understanding of self and nation, but the flip side of this particular myth is this lionizing without any real discussion of the deep ambivalence at the time of the fact that the government in particular was concerned Americans had in fact become complacent in the months after Pearl Harbor, rather than enthusiastic or rather than invested in the war effort. There were all sorts of concerns that become submerged and erased in later histories. And so, as a result of that, I think we have thought of ensuing conflicts always in the shadow of this particular war.

So, the many failures—the manifest failures—of Vietnam, I think, only fueled the idea that we once had a “good war,” and we need to find a way to get back to that. And so, the wars after Vietnam then became a way to sort of erase—as the first Gulf War was manifestly in terms of the rhetoric that surrounded it—a way to beat the “Vietnam syndrome,” in the first President Bush's words—I’m paraphrasing him there. There’s the idea that we could somehow recover this ideal past.

HANNAH: So, Elizabeth, our idealized memory of World War Two can certainly exaggerate differences between the past and the present. It can also reveal some similarities which, while sometimes helpful, can distort our understanding of contemporary events. So, the upshot is that we should essentially avoid these faulty analogies or these sentimental readings of the past—is my takeaway. But I want to ask you: How do we do that?

SAMET: Well, I'm not sure we could ever escape the tendency to make analogies. I think we're hardwired to do that. And as a result of that—you mentioned the evacuation of the Kabul airport and compared it to Saigon, which of course, many have done. That happened with the fall of Fallujah. There were similar analogies made. I think we're just drawn to do that.

Interlude featuring archival audio

SAMET: They have their uses, but historical analogy also has its obvious limitations. And I think knowing we tend to do that is the first step. It's important to know that. That's how we learn, and that's how we figure things out. But it's also important to know when these analogies are false or not wholly pertinent. And I think together with analogy, we have a set of terms and a vocabulary. The vocabulary, for example, of the “axis of evil,” which was a clear echo of the Axis Powers. The use of the term fascism, which George Orwell warned us long ago had already become unmoored from actual fascists and became useful for labeling any potential enemy—so, the recycling of that term with Islamofascism.

And all of these things, I think, revealed to us the extent to which we are embedded or caught within a way of looking at the world or a way of talking about the world and a way of talking about war that we've inherited from World War Two.

HANNAH: The “Good War” evokes images of American GIs liberating Europe from the scourge of fascism. But this consequence is often confused as the cause or the impetus for America's entry into the Second World War. Confusing cause and effect is something Elizabeth argues the Second World War has in common with our intervention in Afghanistan.

SAMET: Well, on the one hand, I think we have to acknowledge consequences, and in terms of World War Two, certainly one of the consequences of our going to war was the liberation of Jews and other groups who were being systematically exterminated by the Nazis. But to say that was the reason we went is, of course, what emerges in hindsight and what emerges because it is more flattering to say that. It is more palatable to say that than it is to say we went to war to take vengeance. We did not go to war to liberate the Jews of Europe. But after the war, that narrative, as you suggest, became deeply flattering and very compelling. But even after the war, Truman's own representative, whom he sent to investigate what was happening in the displaced persons camps, came back with a scathing report about how we were treating those who had been liberated from the camps. The other crucial part there in terms of World War Two is that the war against Japan was one of vengeance, and the war against Germany—I mean, it was Germany that declared war against us a few days after Pearl Harbor, so that was our reason for joining that conflict as well, or at least, again, the catalyst.

And I think in these most recent wars, we have tended to do the same thing, particularly, I think, with the fate of women in Afghanistan. I think that has become an increasingly popular narrative to which people return. And again, no one went to Afghanistan to liberate women.

HANNAH: Sure. And that's a really important point I think you make. But I'm curious: Is this tendency to idealize and romanticize war as an extension of national greatness exclusively an American phenomenon, a trait that's inherent to America's notions of exceptionalism? Or is it not something that can be found across many different cultures or many different countries?

SAMET: Well, I do think and acknowledge that war and sentimentality crosses cultures and crosses periods. I think for Americans, it has a particular connection to the notion of happy endings and a kind of fundamental American optimism—again, not unique to Americans, but I think very strong—that suggests these adventures will have a kind of happy ending and that they are driven by a sort of optimism that the exceptional nature of American force will automatically produce a happy ending.

Interlude featuring archival audio

HANNAH: A main argument in your book, Looking For The Good War, is that American sentimentality tends to not simply exaggerate or distort history but tends to mislead, and it disables, actually, rational or sincere conversation or debate around these issues of war and peace. Why is that?

SAMET: Yes. One of the epigraphs to the book is Wallace Stevens’ statement that sentimentality is a failure of feeling. It's also, of course, a failure of reason and of a cool, rational approach to these things. That's one of the reasons I close with Abraham Lincoln, who talks about the relative merits of passion and reason and the sense that certain periods call for certain approaches. I think when we sentimentalize, we don't necessarily engage in a real and meaningful connection. A contemporary example of that is the “thank you for your service” phenomenon that arose, I think, as a way for Americans to atone for their treatment of veterans or their perceived treatment of veterans in Vietnam. And I think we all feel really good about ourselves when we thank a veteran for his or her service and then blithely move on to the next thing. That is not the same as a real, meaningful extended engagement with those who exercise force in our name. And so, I think sentimentality is a way to dismiss and, in a sense, to make anonymous all of those people we would put in one group.

HANNAH: The title of your book, Looking for the Good War—I want to ask you: Are you suggesting America's postwar history of mostly long and inconclusive wars is, somewhat ironically, a product of Americans longing for a kind of self-congratulatory satisfaction, which comes with a conclusive victory? The one we thought we had, and to some extent did have, after World War Two.

SAMET: Yes, that had a comparative clarity, that had a victory, that had an end. That would be a whole separate conversation we could have about whether wars ever really end. But it is connected to the idea of one war being read through another or fought through another or bleeding through another. But certainly, I think we have been looking for that punctuation mark. We have been looking for that end. We tried to find it, I think, when Osama bin Laden was killed. We tried to find it at other moments, but they didn't seem to ever end anything. I think we are looking for that. And again, I think that's only a natural human desire. But I think part of that stems from the idea that we sort of knew what the end of World War Two would look like. I think those who superintended the war knew that. I don't think anyone knows what the end of this kind of military action could possibly look like.

HANNAH: After reading your book and learning about the problems with sentimentalizing war, as a father, I can't help but feel that I shouldn't be letting my toddlers watch these superhero TV shows and these comic books because a lot of what kids consume idealizes and romanticizes these “good guys versus bad guys” narratives.

SAMET: Well, we're never going to get rid of comic books. We’re never going to get rid of Captain America. We're never going to get rid of movies. And I'm glad for that. After all, I study literature and culture and film. So, I don't imagine we are going to do that, and I'm not advocating that. What I am advocating, though, is—particularly for those whose business it is to send people to war—to be honest about the stakes and to be deeply reflective about what it is war can accomplish and what it can't accomplish.

HANNAH: Well, that's a great place to end.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us today.

Elizabeth's book is Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness.

I'm Mark Hannah, and this has been another episode of None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. Special thanks go out to our None of the Above team who make all of this possible. Our producer is Caroline Gray. Our associate producer and editor is Luke Taylor, and Lucas Robinson has helped with his research support. If you enjoyed what you've heard, we'd appreciate you subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Do rate and review us, and if there's a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us. Stay safe. Catch you next time.

(END.)

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