‘Even Americans who detest war
and recognize that nearly every war is the product of mendacious, power-hungry
political leaders generally make an exception for World War II, the so-called
Good War. They believe that the Americans fought for an entirely good and
proper cause, that they fought only after having been attacked without
provocation, that their enemies were vile monsters, and that their victory made
the world a better and more hopeful place for all mankind. In short, they believe
in a myth. 

Perhaps they do so in part
because so many of those who composed the so-called Greatest Generation had
engaged personally in the war and needed a way to understand their involvement
and to forgive themselves for what they had done or witnessed their comrades
doing without objection. In any event, their actual actions in that war, which
contrast starkly with the story line of the prevailing myth, might well teach
valuable lessons to Americans today, as they ponder the meaning of atrocities such
as those committed by U.S. soldiers, airmen, and Marines at Abu Ghraib,
Fallujah, and Haditha, among many other places in Iraq yet to receive
comparable publicity. 

After "forty months of war
duty and five major battles" in which Edgar L. Jones served as "an
ambulance driver, a merchant seaman, an Army historian, and a war
correspondent," he wrote an article titled "One War Is Enough"
for the February 1946 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Some of the actions
he described in that article may come as a shock to many readers today; they're
not the sort of actions John Wayne was taking in all those postwar movies about
World War II. Yet, over the years, many soldier-memoirists, such as Paul Fussell,
William Manchester, and E. B. Sledge, and many historians, such as Michael C.
C. Adams, John W. Dower, and Gerald F. Linderman, have confirmed them. The text
that follows is excerpted verbatim from Jones's article.’ 

Atrocities In The 'Good
War': A Tract For Today