December 7th

1941 - Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Back when I was a young'n, my father was stationed on Oahu. I remember being about eight when Dad took us to the USS Arizona memorial. There's still oil coming up from the Arizona, in tiny little drops, blossoming into rainbow circles on the water's surface.

The Arizona is treated as a tomb, which it is. There's a reverence in the way the Memorial staff treat the site, and they expect the same from the visitors.

Pearl Harbor happened because America was not ready to go to war. It wasn't that we weren't aware of what was going on - we as a country knew that by cutting off oil supplies to Imperialistic Japan, we were poking a hornet's nest. We had volunteers fighting against Japan in China. Roosevelt had the Lend/Lease program going with Great Britain. But we were officially not-at-war, while the world went to hell in a handbasket. Jews were being herded into gas chambers while pacifists at home and abroad screamed that we must make peace with our enemies. And so we sat around with our thumbs up our ass. Until December 7th. And then we wept.

Appeasing bullies only makes the bullies stronger. You cannot stop a madman by ignoring him. Hope isn't enough to stop a genocidal dictator. These lessons should have been pounded into everyone's head. And for a while, they were. But not anymore. I thought that September 11th would be stuck in people's heads for a while, but obviously not.

I fear the next September 11th. I fear the next December 7th.