December 7: Living in Infamy

Have we learned nothing?

VDH of this day here. hat tip Pam

On Dec. 7, 1941 - 65 years ago this week - pilots from a Japanese carrier force bombed Pearl Harbor. They killed 2,403 Americans, most of them service personnel, while destroying much of the American fleet and air forces stationed in Hawaii. The next morning, an outraged United States declared war, which ended less than four years later with the destruction of most of the Japanese empire and its military.

Sixty years after Pearl Harbor came another surprise attack on U.S. soil, one that was, in some ways, even worse than the "Day of Infamy."

Nearly 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks - the vast majority of them civilians. Al-Qaida's target was not an American military base far distant from the mainland. Rather, they suicide-bombed the United States' financial and military centers.

It's been five years since Sept. 11. After such a terrible provocation, why can't we bring the ongoing "global war on terror" - whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere - to a close as our forefathers fighting World War II could.

Is our generation less competent?

Not really. The United States routed the Taliban from Afghanistan by early December 2001. America's first clear-cut victory against the Japanese, at Midway, came six months after Pearl Harbor.

Do we lack the unity of the past?

Perhaps. But we should at least remember that after Pearl Harbor, a national furor immediately arose over the intelligence failure that had allowed an enormous Japanese fleet to approach the Hawaiian Islands undetected. Extremists went further - clamoring that the Roosevelt administration had deliberately lowered our guard as part of a conspiracy to pave the way for America's entrance into the war.

Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq?

Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan - an Axis that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese and Russians.

The most obvious is that, against Japan and Germany, we faced easily identifiable nation states with conventional militaries. Today's terrorists blend in with civilians, and it's hard to tie them to their patron governments or enablers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan, who all deny any culpability. We also tread carefully in an age of ubiquitous frightening weapons, when any war at any time might without much warning bring in a nuclear, non-democratic belligerent.

The limitations on our war-making are just as often self-imposed. Yes, we defeated the Axis powers in less than four years, but it was at a ghastly cost. To defeat both Japan and Germany, we averaged over 8,000 Americans lost every month of the war - compared to around 50 per month since Sept. 11.

So far the United States has encouraged its citizens to shop rather than sacrifice. The subtext is that we can defeat the terrorists and their autocratic sponsors with just a fraction of our available manpower - ensuring no real disruption in our lifestyles. That certainly wasn't the case with the Depression-era generation who fought World War II.

And in those days, peace and reconstruction followed rather than preceded victory. In tough-minded fashion, we offered ample aid to, and imposed democracy on, war-torn nations only after the enemy was utterly defeated and humiliated. Today, to avoid such carnage, we try to help and reform countries before our enemies have been vanquished -putting the cart of aid before the horse of victory.

Our efforts today are further complicated by conflicting Internet fatwas, terrorist militias and shifting tribal alliances; in short, we are not always sure who the enemy cadre really is - or will be.

 

But there are significant differences between the "global war on terror" and World War II that do explain why victory is taking so much longer this time.

Read it all. Saw the press conference with Bush and Blair. Don't have time to go into detail but suffice to say Bush is still talking the talk. But will he walk the walk?

Comments

[Richard Davis]

What have we learned? That our troops are just as brave and noble as any that served in WWII.

Our Troops are ready willing and able to destroy the jihadists and deter them FOREVER from wanting to pursue their vicious jihad on us or Israel.

Our troops have the stomach for the fight, they know there will be losses, but they are willing to accept whatever it takes to defeat our enemies.

But... our nation, our leaders especially, do not have the stomach for war. They cannot take losses.

I saw this firsthand, while at sea during Gulf War I, as the weeks and days swept past that Nov and Dec and into Jan 1991, we all wondered if America will have the stomach to take losses, most felt they wouldn't but hoped they would.

Sadly, this started in the 70's, with the pussification of America, not wanting any losses, not wanting to make anybody mad, I saw it in 1991 and we're all seeing it now.

To this day, we have the greatest military in the world, our troops are just as heroic, but unlike after Dec 7, 1941, today's civilians don't have the stomach or the patience to let our troops win. Shame on us.

Thank You Troops!
Thank You Military Families!

Remember Pearl Harbor!

[ExPreacherMan]

Pam,

I was 12 years old 12/7/41. I recall with horror the sounds and graphics of that day.

I have posted quite a few still pics of that day taken by sailors and soldiers on the scene.

http://expreacherman.wordpress.com/2006/11/30/remember-pearl-harbor-1271941/

I am afraid we have learned nothing -- and we are doomed to repeat Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

The Jihadis are smiling today.

ExP (Jack)

[Richard Davis]

When did the pussification begin?

I say it began with John F'n Kerry - he stole the honor of the soldiers and simultaneously caused the nation to lose it's will to fight at all.

He indoctrinated a nation to believe that no one should die for America's imperialistic wars.

I say John F'n Kerry's lethal statements have fucking ruined and stymied an entire generation into not wanting to win, and reinforced the belief that all lives lost are "wasted".

THAT's why we suck at war.

The more I think about the damage he caused to this country, the madder I get.

[Irish Cicero]

Boortz:

http://boortz.com/nuze/200612/12072006.html#pearlharbor

[BillBowen]

IrishCicero, good post!! Absolutely LOVE Boortz! He's been doing talk radio since 1969 (started as a part-time fill-in when a regular host at the station died unexpectedly and has been there ever since).

He is not your typical conservative - actually more libertarian, but an absolute straight shooter. My old boss got me turned on to him about 10 years ago (she used to live in Atlanta).

His article about Pearl Harbor Day, the ISG Report and the connections between the two is right on as well.

Folks, if you look at the Boortz page, go to the top right and read his "tag line" (inside the yellow box): that says it all.

His show is streamed live on WSB Radio 8:30AM~1:00PM ET

(http://www.streamaudio.com/listen/cox.asp?station=WSB_AM)

[PMarc]

RD: Actually, it wasn't John Kerry per se who led us down the primrose path to pacificism, but the entire `60s generation who embraced "the New Left," and who after Kent State entered the ranks of "The Establishment" with an eye on "changing it from within." I know this to be true because I used to be one of them.

The thinking was, and has been ever since, that you don't have to bring down a country with weapons if you can corrode its traditions and values from within, thereby irrevocably weakening it and preparing it for collapse. All in the name of the upcoming Revolution and the "utopia" that that would bring.

There are a lot of adherents of that way of thinking who have never given up the Marxist - er, excuse me, "Progressive" - philosophy they had when they were twenty years old. Now they are tenured professors and media people. Is it any wonder that the so-called universities really have more in common with the old Maoist "re-education camps" of the 1950s than with classical institutions of learning, and that most news reports are filled with leftist, anti-American, "multiculturalist" verbiage?

Incidentally, back in the day when John Kerry first appeared on the national scene, he had no street cred whatever with those of us who were real Marxists. He came off like the high school class president who wants to charm the "cool" kids, so he buys a leather jacket, grows his hair long, and awkwardly starts speaking profanities, all the time blissfully unaware that everyone is laughing at him behind his back. In short, he was always a joke to everyone but the media and those who didn't know any better. There's no way he could have debased this country all by himself. He had plenty of help.

[Richard Davis]

PMarc - I agree he had plenty of help, but the fucking Senate and news media couldn't get enough of him, and like they say, "one picture is worth a 1000 words" - I believe his fucking mouth created an bad-image of soldiers and America. In his case, "one word was worth a thousand pictures"

You're right, he was laughed at behind his back, but the fuckin camera's didn't take your pictures, they just propped HIM up as the key witness to our crimes against the world.

(bottom line, I'm not disagreeing with you at all, as far as how his fellow liberals at the time saw him, I'm just saying that, to me, he was the face, the mouthpiece, that the American-hating drugged induced media used to drag America and our soldier's image into the world's toilet and the fuckers flushed it.)

[PMarc]

RD said: "...the fucking Senate and news media couldn't get enough of him..."

The media perhaps, but Congress was pretty divided between hawks and doves in those days. Kerry was an articulate nobody in their eyes, but a nobody just the same. They listened to what he had to say but at least half of them wrote him off. (It's today's media who've rewritten history so as to make it appear that Congress hung on Kerry's every word. Bullshit!)

Look, I'm not defending John Kerry. I despise the man and always have; it was very obvious in 1970 that he was already running for president, and that everything he said was calculated toward that end. He's an opportunist, pure and simple.

All I'm saying is that someone that mediocre never had the power to create single-handedly what has become a poisonous, self-flagellating, anti-American atmosphere within our own borders. Yes, the media propped him up, but they made MUCH more hay out of the My Lai "massacre" that they did from anything Kerry said. (In fact, I suspect that Kerry got the idea to trash our soldiers from the testimonies that came out of Lt. Calley's My Lai trial. (My Lai happened in 1969; Kerry didn't appear until a little over a year later.)

It's important to remember also that the armed forces back then were stocked overwhelmingly with draftees who resented being sent to Vietnam in the first place, and for whom the mission was ill-defined. (The latter was the government's fault.) Those young fellows were infiltrated by agents provocateurs from the Left who stirred the pot of discontent by casting their situation as a front in the "class war." By the time John Kerry started flapping his yap, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, their ranks swollen with resentful draftees, had existed for a couple of years and had demonstrated in every large city in the country. Kerry was a johnny-come-lately (literally) to the anti-war movement, and THAT's why people found him so ridiculous (along with the other reasons I've mentioned).

Despise him if you want, but don't give him more power than he deserves.

[Bearster]

We know *exactly* who the enemy is.

Iran and Syria for starters. Saudi Arabia for another. Every country in which Islam holds power.

[tazzerman2000]

Our 'pussification' is caused by TV. Think about it and you'll see that I'm right. (Don't have time to elaborate right now, sorry)