Elizabeth D. Samet, in an interview:

World War II gave us a way to look at the world as an unambiguous contest between good and evil. We have used a vocabulary that was inherited from it: Fascism became Islamofascism, the Axis Powers became the Axis of Evil, the second President Bush’s term to describe a constellation of unrelated adversaries. It also left us with the belief that the exercise of U.S. force would always magically bring about victory and would serve the cause of liberating the oppressed. As a result of that, we find ourselves, after decades of war and loss, having to reckon with the fact that our way of thinking and talking about war and about the world is hopelessly out of date.

A very interesting point! Because World War II was “the Good War,” American politicians regularly attempt to create a linguistic association between their own endeavors and that one. I wonder how long that will last, especially since the last WWII veterans are rapidly disappearing from the scene.