Well, you know the rest.

I'm reading Desert War by Australian Alan Moorehead. First published as the African Trilogy in 1944. Moorehead (1910-1986) was the pre-eminent uniformed British war coorespondent of his day. His reporting spanned the Spanish Civil War thru VE day and he was no stranger to combat, preferring (unlike his collegue Hemingway) to spend as much time with the front line troops as possible. This book covers his experiences in the Middle East, North Africa, Inda, England, and the US from 1940 thru 1943. The overwhelming majority of the time he was up with the troops in the desert. I find his prose a bit dated for my taste, reading sometimes like a travelog. Understandable in a time before television when authors needed to paint a picture for their readers. A good book by an author with a decidedly gingoistic bent with more than a touch of wartime propaganda thrown in. Which brings me to my point..... Getting a few months off to bring his young family to safety in Canada, he is able to make a short trip to New York to try and understand how these strange Americans are reacting to the world war they lately (it's November 1942) find themselves in. One short section rang bells.... Everywhere I went people seemed to be gripped by the same sense of irritation and frustration. It made no difference whether you talked to a cab driver on Fifth Avenue or a businessman just in from the Middle West. They were in the war but not of it. They were beginning to suffer the discomforts of the war without seeing any definite result. The papers were full of war talk and the streets full of slogans, but where was the action? Where was the money going? Production was coming along fine, but what happened to all the thousands of tanks and guns and jeeps? Why didn't somebody use them? Were the Russians the only people who could fight? ...But the ugly, unthinkable thing that nobody dared mention was beginning to creep into the back of people's minds. Did the nation really want to fight? Were not the Germans and the Japs really better soldiers? Look what was happening on Guadalcanal.... The leadership was wrong. Washington was a hell's kitchen of double-dealing politicians and war profiteers. 'Washington'...was the place where rogues bribed one another to get government contracts, where foreigners intrigued, where men bought themselves out of active service, where fools and incompetents were falling over on another in every government department. American boys were paying with their lives for the mistakes made in the White House. The navy was at loggerheads with the army. The draft was crooked. The whole thing was crooked and there was no firm direction anywhere. Emphasis mine.

Look familiar? And this was the begining of the 'good war' fought by the 'greatest generation'. ...the more they stay the same.