Trump’s Military Nostalgia (or Victory at Sea All Over Again)

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176254/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_winning_world_war_ii_in_the_twenty-first_century

Trump’s Military Nostalgia (or Victory at Sea All Over Again)
Rebuilding a Last-Century Military to Fight Last-Century Wars
By Michael T. Klare
If you are an American male of a certain age -- Donald Trump’s age, to be exact -- you are likely to have vivid memories of Victory at Sea, the Emmy award-winning NBC documentary series about the U.S. Navy in World War II that aired from October 1952 to May 1953. One of the first extended documentaries of its type, Victory at Sea traced the Navy’s triumphal journey from the humiliation of Pearl Harbor to the great victories at Midway and Leyte Gulf in the Pacific and finally to Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Drawing on archival footage (all in black and white, of course) and featuring a majestic sound track composed by Richard Rogers of Broadway musical fame, the series enjoyed immense popularity. For many young people of that time, it was the most compelling, graphic imagery available about the epic war our fathers, uncles, and classmates’ dads had fought in.
Why do I mention this? Because I’m convinced that President Trump’s talk of rebuilding the U.S. military and “winning wars again” has been deeply influenced by the kind of iconography that was commonplace in Victory at Sea and the war movies of his youth. Consider his comments on February 27th, when announcing that he would request an extra $54 billion annually in additional military spending. “We have to start winning wars again,” he declared.  “I have to say, when I was young, in high school and college, everybody used to say we never lost a war. We never lost a war, remember?”http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176254/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_winning_world_war_ii_in_the_twenty-first_century