The Romans blaming the Pope? Figures . . . Europeans!
During President Bush's visit to Rome a couple of years back - to bestow on John Paul II the Medal of Freedom (I think) and to receive as the pope's thanks a scolding penned by one of the anti-American European Curial Cardinals (Sodano? Martino? Tauran?) - my young Italian cousins told me on the phone that they were heading out to join their young friends in a protest against Bush's visit.
I told them, "Make sure you start on the beach at Anzio."
Of course, they didn't know what the hell I was talking about, so I filled them in: "You all profess to love my father (he's the 86 year old patriarch of the family). Well, back in 1940, even before Pearl Harbor, he put his life on hold, and a year later was heading over the Europe TO BAIL YOUR ASS OUT! And what was Italy doing? Swearing allegiance to Hitler. Have a great demonstration!"
Of course, I sent a similar email to Martino's office when he criticized the US for showing pictures of the captured Saddam . . . asked him what his father was doing in the late 30s, early 40s, and if he remembered which army liberated Rome while his predecessors were biting their nails and keeping their noses clean behind the Nazis' white line.
And when Cardinal Hamao issued some big decree about August 6 being the day of infamy (Hiroshima); I got an email address for him and suggested that he might switch the date to December 7 in honor of HIS nation's brave attack on us which led to August 6.
True Hamao's a transplant, but the rest of them are Europeans . . . of course, so is Pope Benedict, but he's head and shoulders over all of them, and don't think that his days in the US POW camp didn't give him a more benign view of the USA in wartime - in fact, my father finished up World War II helping to guard the German prisoners at Regensberg (he wondered the other day, "Could the Pope have been one of those guys?").
Let him at least hear, Viva il Papa, from the grandchildren of those who left Europe long ago, the children of those who went back to defend the lands their parents had left - we who recognized in John Paul II the God-given champion against Communism and, I suspect, in Benedict the God-given champion against Islamo-fascism and the terrorism it espouses.
Good on you! Great letters and much needed reminders to Europeans (and Japanese). The giant leftist eraser has swept across history and people can now conveniently ignore any facts that don't fit their agenda.