Pearl Harbour: a Lesson and Warning From the Past

Pearl Harbor is on AMC and I found it just in time to see the attack.  I remember seeing this in the theater with my husband and his shaking and fighting tears while he watched.  I had never seen a movie affect him like that before, and I've never seen one affect him like that since.  My husband is a Navy Veteran, my eldest son is a Marine, my grandpa was also a Navy veteran.  Pearl Harbor is personal.

Pearl Harbor happened for one reason and one reason only, when the Axis Powers started their aggressions NO ONE STOPPED THEM.  At the beginning Europe tried appeasement which resulted in their being attacked.  WE ALSO DID NOTHING.  Our lack of standing up to the Axis powers to stop them not only allowed them to have victories which made them more bold, but our inaction made us look weak.  Our leaders thought that what happened on the other side of the world wasn't our problem and we should stay out of it.  Pearl Harbor was the result.

WWII started with with Japan taking Manchuria; Italy taking Ethiopia; and Hitler deciding that all German speaking peoples should be one, so he invaded and annexed Austria, the Rhinelands and the Sudetenland (sound familiar).  Japan's leadership talked peace to us while planning the attack on Pearl Harbor.   Our president is either ignoring history, or worse, is well aware of what he is doing.  One makes him a fool, a pacifist coward.  The other makes him a traitor aiding and abetting the enemy.  Either way, he likes playing with an imaginary marker drawing pretend "red lines" that make us look weak and vulnerable while the leadership downsizes our military.    I wonder if it will really take another Pearl Harbor to wake people up to the dangerous situation we are heading for.

Time to take to heart the following quote from George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  (The Life of Reason; Vol. 1 Reason in Common Sense 1905-1906)