Since the turn of the 20th Century, the United States has embarked on an almost continuous series of lengthy wars: the Spanish-American War, World War I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam and now Iraq. The nation has also regularly sent troops abroad to overturn democratically elected governments. The one struggle in which the United States fought heroically for freedom and to preserve its way of life is World War II, a struggle that conflicts with the nation’s traditional war agenda. And it is accounts of World War II that still dominate the U.S. media more than sixty years later. Think that’s an accident? Then you probably believe that PBS would have approved a 7-part, 15-hour Ken Burns series on the immoral Vietnam War in the midst of our national debate over Iraq, instead of a further exhalting of "The Greatest Generation."

I will not be among the millions watching the Ken Burns documentary, “The War.” I’m tired of this endless rehashing of a struggle that teaches an entirely false lesson about the United States role in the world, a role that, contrary to World War 2, has sought to undermine freedom and the principle of self-determination for all peoples.

The lessons of World War 2 have not only been lost on Americans, but they have been so maliciously twisted that we have President Bush comparing that righteous struggle for the preservation of freedom to the United States invasion of Iraq. Neo-conservatives have cited the “appeasement” of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the face of Hitler’s ambitions to justify Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and the overthrow of democratically elected governments in our hemisphere.

We need a series that challenges Americans to wonder why their nation so often wages wars that have nothing to do with self-defense, and why the United States since World War 2 has funded wars in Vietnam and Iraq but not universal health care for its residents. Instead, we get another rehashing---with never-before seen archival footage!---of the only longterm military conflict of the last 110 years of which the country can be proud.

World War 2 remains a thriving industry in the United States, and the Burns saga shows it has no signs of abating. Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation” appeared to be the high-point of this cultural phenomena, despite demonstrating a cultural amnesia that defined as the “greatest” a generation that endorsed racial discrimination and the systematic violation of African-American civil rights.

Burns regularly provides a “liberal” patina to his works---such as “The War’s” coverage of the internment of Japanese-American citizens---and his showing “history from the ground up” has left critics like the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Goodman breathless with praise. But all the gripping testimony from veterans, and footage of medics and troops on the ground obscure a larger truth: the United States has plunged into more unjustified longterm military conflicts than any other nation on earth.

The reasons for this would make a valuable PBS series. But any Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) exec who greenlighted that program would soon be out of a job, and federal funding for PBS would likely be cut or entirely eliminated if such a series became a reality.

That would never happen with a long series about World War 2.

Nor would CPB fund during the Bush Administration a 15 hour series analyzing the Vietnam War. And given it a $10 million publicity budget, as it has for "The War."

That would provide too good a history lesson. One that would have even more Americans asking why the United States has again sacrificed the lives and needs of its residents to invade a nation toward which it posed no security risk.

Some will argue that “The War” builds opposition to military force by showing that war is a brutal business. But that point was made by dozens of films at least two decades ago, and none of this acknowledged brutality deterred U.S. intervention into Iraq.

Ken Burns has spent years and millions investigating the wrong question. We do not need to further examine the righteous conflict of the 1940’s; rather, the American people need to understand the reasons for the nation’s bellicosity--- particularly when the end of the Cold War left the U.S. in clear military supremacy---and who has primarily profited.

Contrary to the Chronicle’s Goodman’s claim that Burns’ series “invigorates history,” it actually trivializes it. It breaks down military actions into such small particles that the larger truth----that the United States has spent the post World War 2 era in almost continuous war--- is lost.

As President Bush erases history through false analyses of World War 2 and Vietnam, Ken Burns could have helped make a stand for historic reality. Instead he focused on a project whose lessons have long been lost, and has simply added to the cultural fog obscuring reality in the Bush era.

Send feedback to rshaw@beyondchron.org