Nearly seven decades ago today...

[thatcrazycajun]

Today is the 67th anniversary of the "date which will live in infamy"...and it just so happens that this year, said date falls on the exact same day of the week as the original, a Sunday. In the dawning light of a mid-Pacific Sabbath morning in 1941, over 2,000 people in and out of uniform lost their lives and over 1,200 more were wounded as the Imperial Japanese Navy staged an overwhelming surprise assault on our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack crippled our Pacific fleet, enraged Americans from coast to coast and finally ended our national reluctance to enter into the Second World War. To this day, only the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have surpassed this battle in numbers of Americans killed in a single incident.

Whatever you may be doing today, please take a moment at some point to remember the sacrifices of those who served...at Pearl, and in all the battles that followed. And pray our incoming new President, Secretary of State and Congress can help to keep such bloodshed from happening again.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

keep such bloodshed from happening again.

You can't do that. You cannot keep everyone safe all the time. Just won't work. What you can do is keep the people united and freedom-focused so that when such an occurrence does happen, (a) nobody gets their knickers in a knot and calls for draconian security measures (which in my mind is aiding and abetting the enemy), and (b) the response to such a thing is focused, surgical, overwhelming, and decisive. See also, what happened after Lockerbie.

And frankly? WWII was done *almost* right. We focused on Germany first, because, especially after Midway, Hitler was a lot more dangerous to us than Tojo. We took it to'em with everything we had - including our honor - and didn't take "no" for an answer. We used The Bomb when we had to, probably saving close to two million lives, and when they finally gave up, we helped them put things back together. Of course, it helps in that latter effort that even the Japanese sense of honor is something us Murkins can get our heads around... and that that sense of honor includes the idea that once you surrender, you stay surrendered.

(I say "almost" in that, had we given Patton his gas and told him his destination was the Russian border, no more and no less, things might have been a lot different.... OTOH, the fact that they got Germans to compete with our Germans meant that people like Yeager and Shepard and Glenn and Armstrong and eventually Ride and Dunbar - that last illustrious lady astronaut whom my fair city has claimed for her own - got to show their stuff.... and so did people like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, men who give me hope even now.)

But still. It is a reminder that Americans are at their best when the chips are down. I should know; I grew up just a few miles where another such American was born, in an earlier time. You might've heard of him. I believe his name was Crockett. :)