Despite some compelling evidence to the contrary, the boys over at the Smithsonian are not all dumb.
A few weeks after scrapping an exhibit on dropping the bomb on Hiroshima because it was too controversial, they've decided to postpone one on the war in Vietnam for at least five years (and probably forever). Because it's too controversial.
This is great news.
If there's one thing we don't want in America, it's a museum exhibit that might cause somebody to think.
We like our history as taught in the movie "Forrest Gump." You saw it. Simple-minded Gump, guided by his heart and not by his head, instinctively and invariably takes the right turn on his path through our recent troubled past. This kind of history did $300 million in ticket sales.
Now, you'd think that 50 years after dropping the atomic bomb, it might be a good idea to look back on the event and see if it actually was a good idea.
But no.
You might also think that as the Cold War era shuts down, it might be time to examine the divisive battle we fought in Vietnam in the Cold War's name. And why Bill Clinton and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich chose not to participate.
But no. Again, no.
All countries, including this one, like their history neat.
The French don't want to examine too closely their war-time collaboration with the Nazis. Former East Germans want to close the files on their buddying- up to the Soviets. The Japanese don't like to admit that they brutalized much of Asia before and during World War II.
In fact, in Japan, they have their own museum in Hiroshima dedicated to the atomic destruction there. The museum makes no mention of Pearl Harbor. It is as if Japan were an innocent victim.
The controversy at home began because the folks at the Smithsonian seemed to follow the Japanese lead. For example, in the first draft of the exhibit, there was this line: "For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against western imperialism."
Huh?
For most Americans, the war in the Pacific was the direct result of Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. We lost a lot of lives because of that attack. You could see where some people might get emotional about squishy, all-points-of-view-are-equal thinking.
That quote -- and some others like it -- could have been fixed. As it happens, when people objected, they were fixed.
But the American Legion and some congressmen wanted more fixing. They didn't want pictures of burned children or of mushroom clouds. They didn't want any suggestion that the bombing might have been morally unacceptable. They didn't want any discussion about how bombing Hiroshima was the single most important event in the 20th century, one that shaped the next 50 years.
What the critics wanted was a celebration of a great victory and maybe to honor the brave men who died along the way. Don't the winners get to write the history?
But maybe winning isn't everything. And maybe it's not a bad thing to discuss the consequences born of that day over Hiroshima.
Here's a quote that was knocked out of the early planning, even before the American Legion stepped in: "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it was unnecessary to beat them with that awful thing. . . . I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
If you can guess who said that, you didn't get your history out of a John Wayne movie. The speaker was that well-known revisionist, Dwight David Eisenhower, who made the statement in 1963.
I don't know if Ike was right or not. William Styron, the famous author, was a young Marine lieutenant training for the invasion of Japan when the bomb dropped. His reaction, he said, could be summed up in one word: ecstasy.
My father was a grunt infantryman training for the same invasion. His reaction was identical.
All these years later, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I'd like to know more. I won't find it at the Smithsonian, now terrified by a Congress threatening budget cuts. Instead, the museum will simply show the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb,
TC and leave it at that.
Folks will line up to check out the bomber -- "Gee, Marge, that's a durn big plane" -- and never have to give it another thought.