Wanting to forget

December 7 ought to be a day that no American should ever forget. Pajamas Media has a great roundup, beginning with what I consider the quote of the day (from SWAC Girl):

"How on God's green earth do we expect people to remember Pearl Harbor, an event that happened 65 years ago... when many have already forgotten the terror from 9/11 that occurred just a short five years ago?"
Excellent question, and I think national amnesia begins with forgetting unpleasant events that require us to take action. Pearl Harbor and the September 11 attacks both fall into this category.

I think one of the reasons why some people would especially like to forget Pearl Harbor is that it's a reminder of a time when this country rose to face the occasion. People today would like to wish the present war out of existence, so Pearl Harbor makes them squeamish.

As Victor Davis Hanson says, 9/11 was our Pearl Harbor:

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?

He explains why it's tougher in many ways. Read it all; there's an especially good discussion of the paradoxes.

I don't think there's much question that 9/11 is our Pearl Harbor, and it doesn't surprise me that the people who'd rather forget about 9/11 would just as soon forget about Pearl Harbor.

I was glad to see that those who would forget does not include the Philadelphia Inquirer, which remembered Pearl Harbor today with interviews of local veterans of the attack.

Noting that the Arizona still bleeds, Bob Owens looks at some hard truths:

65 years later, BB-39 U.S.S. Arizona still bleeds, but we finished the job. The United States destroyed the enemy and the ideology that sent her to the bottom. We fought a far more capable enemy that was armed with far greater resources and weaponry, and we sustained far more casualties in individual battles than we might loose in ten years in Iraq... Yet we prevailed.

If we refuse to finish the job of destroying Islamist terrorism where it lives in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gaza, Sudan, and elsewhere, it will not slink away in the night. Terror will smolder like a peat fire in corners of the world both far and near, until once again one day, we look up to see burning building and burning people falling from the sky.

Then it will be our children--yours, mine and Jules'--sent off to fight what will then be a more widespread and entrenched enemy. This future war will requiring more men, more resources, and more terrible weaponry, and yet, this future war never needs to be... if we have the fortitude to finish this war that they started, now, in our time.

It's a responsibility that begins with remembering.

The truth is, it's just as painful for me to remember Pearl Harbor, because I sometimes worry that this country lacks the spirit it took to have 14 million men under arms -- 400,000 of whom never came back.

It ought to be sobering -- no matter what "side" you're on.

posted by Eric on 12.07.06 at 04:13 PM





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Comments

Indeed a day which must never be forgotten.

But I think the issues today are different. 14,000,000 draftees and 450,000 dead were tragically necessary to defend an America which did not have today's vast arsenal of fusion warheads. Today we do not need to contemplate such massive sacrifices of personal freedom in order to protect ourselves.

The real question is whether we have leadership with the "spirit" to tell the terrorist-supporting states that if we are attacked again, they will be obliterated, not invaded.

Any one attack might not be the work of any one of those states, but all of them together could certainly prevent an attack -- if we gave them a strong enough incentive.

If we're not willing to use our nuclear weapons as a clear threat to protect our territory from attack, then what in the world do we have them for?

Infidel753   ·  December 8, 2006 09:37 AM

Good question, Infidel.

Eric Scheie   ·  December 8, 2006 03:41 PM


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