Table Of ContentCRASH COURSE
From the Good War to the
Forever War
H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New jersey, and London
Praise for H. Bruce Franklin's Crash Course
"Two threads are skillfully interwoven in this absorbing memoir: the record of
a remarkable life, with rich and varied experience; and astute analysis of the
background of critical historical events. The outcome is a fascinating picture of
post-World War II America, all under the grim shadow of'forever war."'
-Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT,
and author of Requiem for the American Dream
"A scorching overview of the militarization of America that is simultaneously the
engrossing autobiography of an historian who came of age in World War II and
the early Cold War years. Crash Course is a vivid and sobering eye-opener for
readers at every level from students to feilow seniors to everyone in between."
-John W. Dower, MIT Ford International Professor of History,
Emeritus, and author of The Violent American Century:
War and Terror Since World War II
"A passionate activist scholar, Franklin skillfully harnesses his lively and scrupu
lously candid autobiography to a deeply researched history of the emergence in the
U.S. since World War II of what he calls the Forever War, which he places in com
pelling counterpoint to the growth of the widespread antiwar movement and
allied progressive causes to which he himself was an important contributor. Ater-
rific read." -Michael Cowan, Professor Emeritus, American Studies,
University of California Santa Cruz, and author of City of the West
"Crash Course is a fabulous blend of exceptional memoir and astute political
analysis. A quintessential American story of political coming-of-age. Highly
recommended." -Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus, International
Law, Princeton University, and author of
Palestine's Horizon: Toward a Just Peace
"Brooklyn boy, New York longshoreman, U.S. Air Force navigator, English profes
sor, and human rights and antiwar activist, H. Bruce Franklin is one of our most
important and enduring public intellectuals. Part memoir and part historical
analysis, Franklin's newest book explains how our 'glorious atomic victory in World
War II' carried us relentlessly into the disastrous Vietnam War and our present
campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Will we ever learn? Crash Course
should be required reading by every American."
-John Carlos Rowe, University of Southern California,
author of The Cultural Politics of the New American Studies
"Only the late great Howard Zinn comes close to H. Bruce Franklin as truth
telling historian whose 'the personal is political' oeuvre should be read by every
American, left or right, who aspires to be informed beyond headlines and rumor.
Franklin's Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War, meticulously
researched, factually inarguable, is also a fascinating memoir in which the past is
always prologue to the nearly out-of-body experience in which we find ourselves
today. From r939 through WWII to Korea to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to
Syria to whatever is next: isn't it time we figure out how we got here? May H. Bruce
Franklin's incendiary Crash Course crash into discussion on every street corner, in
every boardroom, classroom, and bedroom in these our United States, and in the
world beyond." -Jayne Anne Phillips, National Book Award finalist and
author of Machine Dreams and Lark and Termite
"This is a deeply personal and compelling account of Franklin's lifelong entangle
ment with America's perpetual war state, from his youthful enthusiasms, to his
years of flight in the Strategic Air Command, to his sustained resistance to the
Vietnam War, which changed his life in so many ways. Franklin has been one of
the major scholars of America's post-WWII commitment to war as policy, and
here we learn how that happened. It's a rousing and inspirational life story!"
-Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo Award winner and author of New York 2140
"A required course for everyone concerned about how militarization has shaped
American society and national identity from World War II through interventions
in Korea and Vietnam to the current endless War on Terror. Especially engaging
is the interweaving of personal memoir and political analysis, of social life and
foreign policy, by one of our greatest myth busters."
-Amy Kaplan, University of Pennsylvania, author of
Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance
"It's especially stunning for me personally, to read Franklin's gripping account of
the era we both lived through-three years apart in age-and to realize that we
followed the same unusual trajectory in beliefs and attitudes: both committed Cold
Warriors at the outset-my service in the Marine Corps and working on nuclear
war plans in the Pentagon overlapping his active service in the Strategic Air Com
mand rehearsing the catastrophic enactment of such plans-his disillusion with
the Vietnam War and his turn to active resistance shortly preceding my own.
Readers of any age will find this an exciting and startlingly self-aware memoir of
a life transformed in our dangerous epoch, and most will find in it radically new
perspectives on these perilous times, up to the present mind-boggling moment.
A terrific book!" -Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine:
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
CRASH COURSE
WAR CULTURE
Edited by Daniel Leonard Bernardi
Books in this series address the myriad ways in which warfare informs diverse
cultural practices, as well as the way cultural practices-from cinema to social
media-inform the practice of warfare. They illuminate the insights and limita
tions of critical theories that describe, explain, and politicize the phenomena of
war culture. Traversing both national and intellectual borders, authors from a
wide range of fields and disciplines collectively examine the articulation of war,
its everyday practices, and its impact on individuals and societies throughout
modern history.
Tanine Allison, Destructive Sublime: World War II in American Film and Media
Brenda M. Boyle and Jeehyun Lim, eds., Looking Back on the Vietnam War:
Twenty-First-Century Perspectives
Jonna Eagle, Imperial Affects: Sensational Melodrama and the Attractions of
American Cinema
H. Bruce Franklin, Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War
Aaron Michael Kerner, Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11: Horror, Exploitation, and
the Cinema of Sensation
David Kieran and Edwin A. Martini, eds., At War: The Military and American
Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett, Hollywood's Hawaii: Race, Nation, and War
Nan Levinson, War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement
They Built
Matt Sienkiewicz, The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern
Media Since 9/11
Jon Simons and John Louis Lucaites, eds., In/visible War: The Culture of War in
Twenty-First-Century America
Roger Stahl, Through the Crosshairs: The Weapon's Eye in Public War Culture
Simon Wendt, ed., Warring over Valor: How Race and Gender Shaped American
Military Heroism in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
OTHER BOOKS BY H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology
Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the 19th Century
Who Should Run the Universities (with John A. Howard)
From the Movement: Toward Revolution
Herman Melville's Mardi (edition)
Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man (edition)
Back Where You Came From
The Scarlet Letter and Hawthorne's Critical Writings (edition)
Prison Literature in America: The Victim as Criminal and Artist
Countdown to Midnight
American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners: An Annotated Bibliography
Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction
Vietnam and America: A Documented History (with Marvin Gettleman,
Jane Franklin, and Marilyn Young)
War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination
M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America
The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs, and Poems
Prison Writing in 20th-Century America
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies
The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America
CRASH COURSE
From the Good War to the
Forever War
H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2018015317
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copyright© 2018 by H. Bruce Franklin
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University
Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 089oi. The only exception to this
prohibition is" fair use" as defined by U.S. copyright law.
8
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
www.rutgersuniversitypress.org
Manufactured in the United States of America
For JANE
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be
dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And
armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing
the many under the domination of the few. ... No nation could
preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
- Jame s Madison, April 20 1795
1
This is an endless war without boundaries, no limitation on time and
geography.
-Lindsey Graham, U.S. senator and leading war hawk,
"Lawmakers to Revisit 9/n Law Authorizing
Ever-Expanding War," New York Times,
October 29 2017
1
