Slapping down Robert FiskReader Jim

Slapping down Robert Fisk
Reader Jim Hogue from the great state of Texas (where else) sends a far better response to Robert Fisk. He sent these excerpts from the afterward to Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldier, a book I have not read, but will now.

In the spring of 1945, around the world, the sight of a twelve-man squad of teenage boys, armed and in uniform, brought terror to people’s hearts. Whether it was a Red Army squad in Berlin, Leipzig, or Warsaw, a German squad in Holland, or a Japanese squad in Manila, or Beijing, that squad meant rape, pillage, looting, wanton destruction, senseless killing. But there was an exception: a squad of GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever saw to people and joy to their hearts.
Around the world this was true, even in Germany, even — after September 1945— in Japan. This was because GIs meant cigarettes, C-rations, and freedom. America had sent the best of her young men around the world, not to conquer but to liberate, not to terrorize but to help. This was a great moment in our history.

But slowly, surely, the spirit of those GIs handing out candy and helping bring democracy to their former enemies spread, and today it is the democracies—not the totalitarians—who are on the march. Today, one can again believe in progress, as thing are getting better. This is thanks to the GIs—along with the millions of others who helped liberate Germany and Japan from their evil rulers, then stood up to Stalin and his successors. That generation has done more to spread freedom—and prosperity—around the globe than any previous generation.

Now that Ambrose is dead, maybe Fisk will crawl out from under his rock to try a rebuttal of Ambrose. AtlanticBlog will be watching little Bobby Fisk’s rock closely.
I don’t want to obsess on the little creep, but I watched a crowd of 700, largely drawn from my colleagues, give him a standing ovation. I am fighting mad.