Is war on terror like World War II.
One of the truly unfortunate tendencies in contemporary punditry is the reflex analogizing of any foreign threat to Hitler and the casual, mindless, invocation of World War II as a source of guidance for current policy. But as Richard Overy reminds us, the real thing is quite a bit removed from our current experience:
The two devastating world wars are remembered as symbolic reference points in support of national myths of triumph or victimhood; the suffering is memorialized or commercialized. Children visiting museums are invited to enjoy the â??blitz experienceâ? or the â??trench experienceâ? (though neither is in fact experienced at all). But the raw reality of what happened in Europe and in Asia almost defies the modern imagination. How would the modern world cope now with the World War II death toll of 55 million (or more) and the tens of millions of displaced, disabled, psychologically damaged and homeless people who stood among the ruins of their cities in 1945?
Worth keeping in mind when someone dubs a loosely knit terrorist group living in the world's poorest countries an "existential threat." Could they exact such a toll in Europe and Asia?
