Wild Blue Yonder

Forty years ago today I enlisted in the United States Air Force. It was the 24th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I commented on that at the time, but the Japanese attack, having come less than a month after my birth, seemed so long ago then that the date connection was no more than a coincidence. At age 64, the passage of 40 years does not seem as long as the 24 years did in 1965. Time and history work like that.

The day after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt famously referred to December 7th as “a day which will live in infamy”. After the attack of September 11, 2001, George W. Bush said nothing about that date being destined for perennial significance, though he has not since hesitated to use the date as a supposed justification for whatever he does not seem able to otherwise justify.

What Bush did say in his first post attack speech was, “The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” At the time, many commentators noted and praised the reference to those who harbor terrorists. I doubt many commentators envisioned that four years after the attack, no one involved in planing the attacks would have been apprehended and no particular effort would seem to be underway to do so. Nor could many have believed we would have invaded Iraq using in part the harboring justification, which the Bush Administration would continue to push on the American public in spite of the fact there is no credible evidence in support of that premise.

The Japanese surrendered on September 2, 1945, ending the War in the Pacific less than four years after it started. There was no insurgency. The Iraq quagmire continues. The Bush administration, staggering under overwhelmingly waning support from the American people, continues to try to re-frame the language used in discussing this debacle. They want to replace “insurgents” with “enemies of the legal Iraqi government”. They now claim to have a “strategy for victory”. In the War against Japan, it was clear who the enemy was, the Imperial Armed Forces of Japan, and victory from day one meant the unconditional surrender of Japan. The so-called War on Terror is not a reality, as pointed out here in Terrorism Is a Tactic, in November, 2004.

December 7, 1941, is a day that has lived in history. The War that was declared and the resulting occupation of Japan are seen as having been necessary, well handled and for the betterment of the world. What will be the assessment in 2069 of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq? I doubt history will treat it favorably.