PBS Newshour announced that coverage tonight would be all about D-Day. New York Times is talking about "awkward diplomacy" because Obama and Vladimir Putin are going to both be at Normandy today to celebrate the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe 70 years ago. Each year it seems the "celebration" of D-Day gets bigger. Now it's imperative that presidents and potentates go there on the anniversaries. I wonder why this is? Is the Nazi regime the last horror on earth that everyone agrees was so heinous we should celebrate the beginning of its end? Surely not. Not everyone: since we should consider the Italians, Romanians, Japanese, Austrians, Vichy French, and numerous other people in their thousands who thought the Nazis were just fine, collaborated with them, or joined them as allies. And surely not the last horror. We have had genocide and war ever since Hitler. Ever since. And we carry on like we had put an end to these things in June, 1944.
World War II was the last "good war." Which of course is bullshit, but let's leave it. It's the last time we can really applaud ourselves for defeating a really bad guy. And that event is 70 years ago and counting. Ever since then, it seems the question has been: who really is (or was) the bad guy?
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