Brokaw must have studied under Bluto

Not Popeye's nemesis but rather the eminent scholar John Blutarsky. I’ll return to this momentarily.

This morning on Meet the Press, Mr Brokaw had this to say:

The president has been talking a lot about the comparison between World War II and now saying that the choices are the same between tyranny and liberty. In the Air Force Academy speech, he said we were the subject of a ruthless, treacherous attack. I pointed out to him that that attack came from al-Qaeda, not from Iraq, but he plainly believes that the choices are the same in terms tyrannical behavior.

His voice carried with it overtones of superiority while revealing he corrected the President.

Of course in Brokaw's zeal to show up the President, he demonstrated his own ignorance. It's just a shame that Bush isn't as quick-witted as Reagan or Clinton, or Brokaw would have been given his comeuppance.

To set the stage, the interview took place on the escarpment above the beaches at Normandy where American, British, Australian, and other Allied forces were killed or maimed fighting the... wait for it... Germans. That's right, the celebration you were attending was the Allied victory over the Germans. So Tom, when President Bush was comparing 9/11 (committed by Al-Qaeda) to "a ruthless, treacherous attack" from WWII, which German attack was he referring to? You see, Tom watched Animal House a bit too often and began believing that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. Bush should have pointed out that Tom was right that it wasn't Iraq that attacked the US Homeland. Then with a thoughtful pause, followed up with, "It wasn't the Germans either."

From a State Department webpage,

Soon after the United States entered the war, the western Allies decided that their essential military effort was to be concentrated in Europe, where the core of enemy power lay, while the Pacific theater was to be secondary.

We were hit hard by the Japanese. We not only had to deal with them, but had to save the rest of Western Europe as well. Pearl Harbor got us into a war which had already been raging all around us. We took on and beat all comers - Germany, Italy, and Japan. It did not matter that neither the Germans nor the Italians attacked American soil. There was evil afoot in many places and we stopped it. September 11th may have been 19 individuals with coordination from a cave in Afghanistan, but it doesn't mean the core of enemy power starts and ends there.