This line comes from the introduction of the movie Patton. In an inspired piece of cinematic brilliance, George C Scott is shown standing before a gigantic America flag, giving one of the greatest solilliquies in film history.
In order to inspire his troops, General Patton asks a rhetorical question: “When you’re sitting many years from now with your grandson on your knee and he asks you ‘what did you do during the great WWII?’ you won’t have to answer: ‘well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.'”
For the past two decades, commentators have been bloviating ad nauseam about “the greatest generation” and how we’re losing hundreds of these heroes daily. Liberals especially have been full-throated in their undying admiration for these sons of the Depression who went on to storm the beaches of Guadalcanal and Omaha; who fought massive wars on three gigantic theaters of operations, and who saved the world from the clutches of fascist neo-paganism.
You would think that with a Liberal president, ticker-tape parades would be held to mark the seventieth anniversary of VE Day. After all, this was a war presided over by the great FDR, the father of the modern nationalist American hyper-state.
No such luck. *Yawn!* It’s almost as if it was all a big nothing-burger. Tom Brokaw, the chief propagandist of the Greatest Generation is nowhere to be found.
On the other hand, the Russians put on a show to end all shows. All leaders of the allied nations were invited. After all, there were “allies” in that great conflict as well as an “axis.” You know, countries like the United States, Great Britain, and France (where, by all rights, they should be speaking German by now.) Our Establishment however chose not to attend. Probably the greatest diplomatic gaffe of the last fifty years. I guess it’s because Putin has been beastly to gays. Gotta have our priorities right after all.
And let’s not flatter ourselves. It ain’t because they’ve come to the realization that pace Churchill, this was “the Unnecessary War.” Churchill was an inveterate warrior –no doubt about that–but he was able to see the Big Picture and he only wanted to fight if his nation’s interests were at stake. No, our leaders are all too happy to engage in unnecessary (and fruitless) wars. It’s good for the stock market. That’s why they’ve ginned up wars on the Russian periphery. They’re more than willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
No, I’m afraid they decided not to show because the post-Soviet world wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Russia was supposed to be prostrate by now, begging the IMF for another bailout. Kind of like Greece only spread out over fourteen time zones. Its resources were to be exploited by the Harvard Boys. The problem is that the Harvard Boys had a good run of it during the Yeltsin years but Vlad the Bad took over and showed them the door. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
What value is R Hunter Biden (Joe’s son) going to bring to the Ukrainian oil company (of which he is a Director) if he can’t get the 101st Airborne Division to take over the Donbass area of the Ukraine? How is Nancy Pelosi going to be able to maintain her Northern California vineyards if Putin won’t allow Monsanto to sell genetically modified foods in Russia? (Her husband is CEO of Monsanto in case you didn’t know.)
That’s all for another day. In the meantime, take the time to watch the spectacular parade that took place in Moscow the other day. And pay special attention to the Chairman of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation as he leads the procession. For those who didn’t know (thanks to a media blackout), Gen Shoigu –a Buddhist–reverently made the sign of the Cross. By this simple act, he caused a torrent of emotion to erupt throughout Russia.
Sigh. Had he done so in America, he would have been cashiered in 24 hours. And probably forced to march for a mile in four-inch stiletto heels.
Somewhere, in a cemetery in Luxemburg, Georgie Patton is rolling in his grave.
You nailed it.
Wow! Thanks for the story and details not told elsewhere.
George:
Once again your ignorance is showing.
To start with, Mr Brokaw’s low profile is due to the fact that he is undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, an incurable hematological malignancy. The best hope for a durable remission for myeloma patient’s is an intense 4 year course of therapy: induction chemotherapy, followed by back to back tandem stem cell ’transplants’ (high dose chemotherapy for bone marrow ablation, followed by autologous stem cell rescues); followed by 3 years of maintenance chemotherapy. Such treatment is arduous even for a patient in excellent physical condition.
The Putin extravaganza is little more than an attempt to distract the Russian public from the economic crisis in Russia. The average Russian family has seen its monthly income drop by 50% to $700. Putin’s counter sanctions against imported food have caused inflation especially for food. Friends who were recently in Moscow report that cheese, chicken and pork are largely gone from the shelves in supermarkets. Beef has never been routinely available in Russia. Newly built shopping malls stand empty as Russians hold onto the cash on hand. Unemployment is rising rapidly. The Russian government is likely to run out of the cash needed to pay pensions by the end of this year.
For more read on:
Entire article may be found at:
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=43895&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=27&cHash=a923dd63774648013d5f84e0aa0fadad#.VVPK6aY-Bjc
Once again Francis Frost’s DEEP hatred for anything Russian is exposed with false propaganda …. and of course no mention of the Ukrainian army bombing Orthodox churches….
Dear Nu, pochemu:
I have no hatred for Russia or Russians. I grew up among Russian emigres, in the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Metropolia – predecessor of the OCA. Our family spoke Russian at home and we still do. Get over it.
While I have no hatred for Russia or Russians, I absolutely despite the atheistic communists who drove our family out of Russia and for the current atheistic, neo-Soviet Putinist cult!
Putin has not served Russia, nor the Russian people. Putin has amassed a $40 Billion USD fortune while looting and beggaring the Russian nation. See the prior articles above.
Putin’s wars against Russia’s Orthodox neighbors have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent lives and the exile of hundreds of thousands. Thousands of young Russian boys have died for the sake of Putin’s egomaniacal imperialism. see the article from today’s N Y Times. This is your hero of Orthodoxy ???
Who is for Russia? Those who cheer on the man that its systematically destroying the Russian nation and the Russian Orthodox Church, or those few who dare to speak out against the abomination of desolation?
Get real!
Your incessant mewling about how bad things are in Russia because of Putin are shopworn and pathetic at this juncture. Do you have any idea at all how terrible things have gotten for almost all demographics in the US since Obama has been in power? How blacks especially have been hurt the hardest? How race relations are at an all-time low and we are close to a real civil war (as opposed to the War Between the States)?
All but the top economic quintile has seen an erosion in real wealth –and even among the top quintile, the number of Americans who have renounced their citizenship has never been higher.
Mote, meet plank.
Not what Newsweek and Bloomberg are reporting.
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/24/putin-was-right-be-confident-about-russias-economy-321934.html
http://russia-insider.com/en/mainstream-cracked-russias-bullet-proof-economy/5626
Oh?
http://atimes.com/2015/05/u-s-wakes-up-to-new-silk-world-order/
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/24/putin-was-right-be-confident-about-russias-economy-321934.html
http://russia-insider.com/en/mainstream-cracked-russias-bullet-proof-economy/5626
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150407/1020550449.html#ixzz3WZhsTUDu
Everything that Obama has tried has come-a-cropper.
Talk about wishful thinking! “Everything that Obama has tried has come-a-cropper.” That sounds like something that IMBECILE, Senator Cotton might utter!
George:
And one more thing….
After WW II the U.S spent enormous sums of money to rebuild Europe and Japan. Former enemies became valued allies and successful democracies. The Truman plan saved Greece. The Soviets, on the other hand, enslaved all of eastern Europe. The communists, stole children. Perhaps, you have forgotten the Paidomazoma?
Your readers might want to read the book “Eleni” by Nicholas Gage, which describes the murder of Mr. Gage’s mother who rescued the children of her village from the communist Paidomazoma.
Even today, Mr Putin, and his neo-Soviet empire conspire to re-enslave his neighbors with covert invasions, occupations and ethnic cleansing.
This is what you are celebrating?
Sometimes, your ideas are simply incomprehensible.
As the Ukrainians say: “Tuzhe weirdo”
The Soviets did indeed “enslave Eastern Europe.” We can thank FDR for that for not giving Patton the fuel he needed to overrun all of Germany. Entire German divisions were going out of their way to surrender to Patton because they knew that the Americans would not be brutal.
But I got a newsflash for your Francis: the Soviet Union is on the ash-heap of history. The Russia that exists today is a mixed-economy, proudly Christian and open to all comers. Is it a tyranny? Not in comparison to what came before. Is it authoritarian? Yeah, so what? There is a robust press, religion is free, people speak without fear, the federal income tax is 13%, etc.
Nor is the Russia of today hell-bent on conquering the world, much less Estonia. And a dirty little secret: Russia doesn’t want the Ukraine. It doesn’t need it; Russia has already achieved its objectives. It’s a bombed out, economic hellhole thanks to the Maidan junta. Nobody wants Ukraine at this point. And fortunately, John Kerry came to his senses after his come-to-Jesus meeting with Putin and warned Pereshenko to back off any further military action in the East.
George, you’ve given us yet another tour de farce!
2 out of every five Americans believe it is safe to eat genetically modified foods: 9 out of 19 scientists believe it.
during WW!! we kept track of the Eastern Front in geogrphy class by using red string and pins to mark it on our maps in Geography class. We learned of such places as Dniepropetrovsk, Rostov, Belgorod, etc. We contributed to Bundles for Britain and Bundles for Russia. At election time we wore either FDR or “One World”Republican Wendell Willkie) butttons We kearned that police states obsessed about “papers” (IDs), dossiers and “HOMELANDS”.
Yes, George C Scott realy chewed up the scenery in his purple-voiced part in the canonization of a general widely feared by many GIs as a chiken-s–t b–rd, exceeded in chicken-s—tednessonly by General ‘I’ll be r-i-i-ght back” Mac Arthur, who “faded away” like Sarah Bernhart or Ethyl Barrymore.
The thrilling “integration” of the Sudetenland and Austria’s Anschluss, with its preparatory Plebiscite, did, indeed, provide the template for Israel’s “integration” of the West Bank and Putin’s “reunification” with (Tartar) Crimea.
Putin’s pedophiliac history would have been revealed by an eye witness if the eye witness, Litvinenko, had not succumbed to plutonium poisoning.
The Axis lost that war, and their ideology survived only (for a time) in the America First party and the like, until recently when Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, etc. gave it a new lease on life….with an injection of bad testosterone from that imbecile, SentatorCotton.
I’m beginning to suspect that the retired OCA bishop in California is attempting satire on this blog.
Surely he cannot be serious in his latest ad hominem rants against three U.S. Army heroes and, unlike himself, decorated combat veterans: General George Patton, General Douglas MacArthur, and Captain Tom Cotton (now U.S. Senator from Arkansas). What political philosopher Leo Strauss coined as the reductio ad Hitlerum is neither humorous nor an indication of wisdom. And yet the retired OCA bishop in California invokes the Third Reich in his gratuitous, cheap, and pathetic verbal assaults on (1) Israel concerning Palestine, (2) Putin concerning Crimea, and (3, 4, 5, 6) four Republican federal office-holders, including the most recent Vice-President of the United States and the bishop’s favorite political punching bag–Sen. Tom Cotton.
As it happens, Sen. Cotton earned his A.B. degree from Harvard College before his military service and a J.D. degree from Harvard University Law School after his short but distinguished service, for which Captain Cotton received a Bronze Star, the Combat Infantryman Badge (C.I.B.), and the Ranger Tab. The mean-spirited epithet “imbecile” hardly describes such academic and military accomplishments.
If, however, the retired OCA bishop in California thinks that such absurd Nazi comparisons have merit, then he truly requires our intercessory prayers.
Fr. Alexander, regarding Fitz’s comments, as we say in Texas “you can’t fix stupid; not even with duct tape”
Francis Frost wrote: “Friends who were recently in Moscow report that cheese, chicken and pork are largely gone from the shelves in supermarkets. Beef has never been routinely available in Russia.” As a native of Moscow who keeps in touch with friends and relatives, I can assert that this is nothing but wishful thinking. Food became more expensive but it is certainly available.
There shall be suffering, which is greatest suffering that shall eve be. This is Holy Scripture, not exactly quotelind, but is full context. The Russians know somewhat of what this may be like. We in the US, only lost soldiers and Merchant marines.Patton makes my stomach churn, glorifying warrior courage. GW Bush started the He-goat attack against the kings of Media/Persia. Saying, well,(smugly and contemptuously) it look like we finally got rid of the Vietnam syndrome. I think he ought to be hung, where they hung the Lincoln assignation conspiriters. Endless war only satisfys the love of death. Our leaders will prove worse than Lenin and Stalin when the bank runs start. These chimps cause all the suffering for everyone.
From Today’s New York times:
MOSCOW — Members of Russia’s political opposition published a posthumous report by the politician Boris Y. Nemtsov on Tuesday that documented the deaths of 220 Russian soldiers in the fighting in southeastern Ukraine, even though the Kremlin denies being involved in the war there.
The report, which goes into various clandestine aspects of the war in Ukraine, became particularly noteworthy after Mr. Nemtsov, an opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin, was assassinated in February.
A committee completed the 64-page work, called “Putin. War: According to the Materials of Boris Nemtsov,” which draws on handwritten notes and documents found after the shooting of Mr. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and opposition leader, outside the Kremlin walls.
“The report gathered definitive evidence of the Kremlin’s military intervention in the conflict in Ukraine,” Ilya Yashin, a political ally of Mr. Nemtsov and an editor of the report, said at a presentation in Moscow.
After the fatal shooting of Mr. Nemtsov in central Moscow, the police detained five ethnic Chechens as suspects. But the investigation stalled there, as is the case in almost every politically tinged killing in Russia, and quickly dropped out of the headlines.
The core of Mr. Nemtsov’s work had been in ascertaining whether the families of Russian soldiers who apparently died in the fighting in Ukraine were being paid death benefits.
The report claims that about 150 Russian soldiers died in eastern Ukraine in August and an additional 70 or so in January and February, as separatists assaulted the Ukrainian-held town of Debaltseve.
… Mr. Nemtsov had been in touch with lawyers representing the families of 17 paratroopers from the city of Ivanovo who believed that their relatives had been killed in the battle of Debaltseve, but who had not received death benefits.
The soldiers had been compelled to resign from the military before crossing the border, the report said, following a widely documented pattern of encouraging soldiers to fight in Ukraine as individual “volunteers.” However, the families of the dead paratroopers said the soldiers had been assured that not all ties would be severed with the Russian government: They were told that the Ministry of Defense would pay death or disability benefits commensurate with those due a soldier.
In other cases, benefits were apparently paid as promised, the report found. Families received a death benefit of about two million rubles, or about $39,000 at the current exchange rate.
Elsewhere, the report largely walked through widely published accounts of a Russian presence in Ukraine, sometimes using humor. It highlighted Mr. Putin’s shifting explanations for the appearance of Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms, the so-called Green Men, on the Crimean Peninsula.
Mr. Putin called them “local self-defense forces” in March 2014. “Go to our stores, and you can buy any uniform,” he had said.
By this year, with Russia’s military deployment in Crimea openly acknowledged, Mr. Putin had told a television interviewer that he ordered the Ministry of Defense “to deploy special forces of the main intelligence directorate, marines and paratroopers.”
The Russian Ministry of Defense denies that Russian soldiers are deployed in the eastern Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Mr. Yashin, Mr. Nemtsov’s political ally, took pains to point out that the report drew largely on public sources, other than the work on death benefits.
“We cannot prove that Nemtsov was killed for preparing this report, and we cannot prove that he was not killed for this reason, as we are not investigators,” Mr. Yashin said. Nevertheless, he said, it was important to complete the pamphlet, so far as possible. “We knew this was dangerous work.”
Egregiously russophobic, anyone:
http://russia-insider.com/en/reminder-why-russian-opposition-has-single-digit-approval-ratings/6121
This really is worth a look:
http://www.pravmir.com/russian-orthodox-church-in-the-second-world-war/