Sixty-Five Years Later

December 7, 1941...you know the rest of FDR's war speech. Sixty-five years ago this morning WWII began in earnest as the United States entered the war following the devastating attack at Pearl Harbor.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson draws some parallels between 1941 and today:

[I]n 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.

So paradoxes follow:

A stronger, far more affluent United States believes it can use less of its power against the terrorists than a much poorer America did against the formidable Japanese and Germans.

World War II, which saw more than 400,000 Americans killed, was not nearly as controversial or frustrating as one that has so far taken less than one-hundredth of that terrible toll.

And after Pearl Harbor, Americans believed they had no margin of error in an elemental war for survival. Today, we are apparently convinced that we can lose ground, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, and still not lose either the war or our civilization.

Of course, by 1945, Americans no longer feared another Pearl Harbor. Yet, we, in a far stronger and larger United States, are still not sure we won’t see another Sept. 11.

We've become so allergic to casualties in war that we now try to finish them in record time, sometimes without fully defeating the enemy. Stopping the 1991 Gulf War in 100 hours made for a slick marketing slogan - the 100 Hours War - but it didn't solve the problem in Iraq. Similarly, we won the 2003 war in Iraq in only three weeks, if victory is described as overthrowing the government and occupying the country. However, we didn't completely and decisively defeat the enemy, and we've been paying the price ever since in the form of insurgency and terror bombings.