The Dangers of Mythologizing War

If that is what Americans have learned to think that war should be, that gives Americans a very warped understanding of war.

Jennifer Szalai reviews Elizabeth Samet’s Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness:

Glib treatments of World War II have done real harm, she says, distorting our understanding of the past and consequently shaping how we approach the future. As “the last American military action about which there is anything like a p…