| Carrie Devorah/For The Examiner |
World War 2 vs. Iraq
Since he has spent most of his career making historical documentaries on such topics as the Civil War, baseball and jazz, it’s clear that filmmaker Ken Burns spends much of his time in the past. So it should come as no surprise that Burns shares a great affection for how life was in the, well, past.
Burns was at the National Press Club on Wednesday to discuss his latest project, “The War,” a seven-part PBS documentary on World War II that premieres Sunday. And he made it abundantly clear that, when it comes to wars, this generation can’t hold a candle to World War II’s “Greatest Generation.”
Back then? “The second World War touched every family, on every street in America,” Burns said. “We had a sense of shared sacrifice.”
Today? “We are all independent free agents. … We are unwilling to give up anything in the face of what we are told is a threat to our civilization. [After Sept. 11, 2001], we were asked to do nothing. We were asked to go shopping, in fact.”
Back then? “On the heels of the greatest economic dislocation in the history of the world, Americans were asked to give up and give up again and again and, strangely enough, we felt a richness, a sense of community and participation. We were connected to our soldiers in every way.”
Today? “We don’t know what’s going on” in the United States’ current war on terrorism. “We don’t see the caskets. … We have to surf the Net almost like pornographers finding this stuff. We are a democratic people unengaged in a war that requires democratic participation.”
