Originally posted by carolm:
One question I pose to them... Given today's news media, could we have won WWII? Would CNN et al been calling for a pull out of Europe by June 10, 1944? What about Iwo Jima or Guadalcanal, etc?
If CNN were around during World War II, they would have advocated learning to speak Japanese following Pearl Harbor and telling us how little we had to fear from Nazi Germany.
We would never have even gotten to 1944 with organizations like today's CNN or MSNBC or CBS. The call to surrender or pull out would have happened after our defeat at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa or after the Bataan Death March and our loss of the Phillippines.
Wolf Blitzer would have accused President Roosevelt of exaggerating the danger when he said that December 7, 1941 would be "a day that would live in infamy".
Pinchy Sulzberger would have demanded that we put a wall around the intelligence services and would have decried warrant-less wireless intercepts after breaking the Japanese code just before Midway and after our P-38 Lightnings shot down Admiral Yamamoto's plane after our code breakers learned about his itinerary.
After our victory at Midway, Aaron Brown would have been criticizing Rear Admiral Spruance for sinking all four Japanese heavy carriers, saying that was overkill and would only anger the Japanese.
Lou Dobbs would have demanded that we return the artwork and gold "stolen" by high-ranking Nazis from museums all over Europe to the thieves since we didn't have the right to confiscate them.
The invasion of Italy would have prompted calls for impeachment from Christiane Amanpour, who would wonder why President Roosevelt was hinting that Benito Mussolini had something to do with Pearl Harbor. And that wallpaper hanger guy with the funny mustache. What did he ever do to us?
Even if by miracle we made it to D-Day, the failure to break out from the hedgerows on D-Day plus one would have prompted calls of quagmire. We'd have been accused of littering with all those parachutes hanging over the steeples of St. Mere Eglise. Operation Cobra, the breakout in France, would have been called demeaning to snakes. George Patton's dash across France would have drawn accusations of pollution for using up too much gasoline. MSNBC would have demanded a speed limit on the autobahns to keep those Sherman tanks from going too fast. Shouldn't we be using electric tanks?
Our defeat in Operation Market-Garden, which prompted Cornelius Ryan's brilliant book, A Bridge Too Far, would have caused Paula Zahn to say that our commander-in-chief was incompetent and that the enemy was too strong for us to beat.
The Battle of the Bulge would have had Dan Rather saying that we needed to lose weight. Then he'd spy that Snickers bar in the corner and say, "Aww, nuts!"
And the signing of the peace treaty between the Allies and Imperial Japan on board the battleship, Missouri, would have been criticized for embarrassing the Japanese.
Nope. I'm convinced we would never have made it past Kasserine.
