Today is the anniversary of the second worst attack on American soil in our nation's history. Unlike the 911 attacks and the Ground Zero mosque, the Japanese have not asked to build a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese have not announced their intent to break ground on December 7th for such a shrine; nor have they applied for taxpayer funds from a Pearl Harbor Fund for a Shinto Shrine at Pearl Harbor.
The very idea would have been unthinkable. Not anymore.
I suppose now we should be grateful to the Japanese for not building a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor or a Nazi memorial outside of Auschwitz -- the Islamic supremacists behind the Ground Zero mosque have taught us to take no act of common decency and human compassion for granted. They have also taught us that there are many different ways to wage a war on a people, a culture, a civilization......
The USS Arizona after being hit by torpedoes
The attack on Pearl Harbor. American exceptionalism defeated the enemy.
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.[...]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.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.
UPDATE: Go. HERE NOW
Some of the best i have ever seen. John Jay has linked them here via Barking Moonbat and the Denver Post. Very moving tributes to those who served.
