The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Imperial forces on December 7, 1941, catapulted us into the Second World War.
The declaration of the war against the Japanese was followed by a declaration of war against the Nazi monsters the day after.
Can you imagine if Roosevelt went before today’s Congress and Senate after such a wartime type disaster and sought such a vote?
Many would argue today that we shouldn’t fight, that we should make nice with the enemy in the hopes he would just go away.
Many others would ponder the value of going to war.
They’d say too many were going to die, too much American blood was going to be spilled, and for what? To save Europe and the rest of the world?
Who cares about that?
America first is what matters.
In today’s world, the press would write stories about where the red states stand as opposed to where the blue states stand on entering the war.
In today’s upside-down world the casualties at Pearl Harbor would be measured by whether or not those who gave their lives were Democrats or Republicans, and we’d want to know what states they were from – red states or blue?
There would likely be huge protests in Washington challenging the government’s right to declare war on Japan.
Some would righteously claim such a war against Asians was unconstitutional and a civil rights abomination.
Many would be found to make the claim the bombing of
Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy. Many would claim it didn’t happen, even while watching film clips of our ships sinking and Japanese bombers spreading death and destruction every- where in Hawaii. And there would be millions to embrace such conspiracy theories.
Environmentalists would be shouting loudly that a war would be bad for the environment, therefore it shouldn’t be fought.
Generals wishing to fight back, to attack the Japanese, and then the Germans would be denounced as warmongers, people who we can’t trust.
And there would be many who considered the Japanese the aggrieved party to the events at Pearl Harbor, that somehow their attack was justified and any response to it would be wrong or somehow immoral or illegal.
The Democrats would launch an investigation on the Republicans. The Republicans would opt to do the same on Democrats.
The America of today will not stop to give hard credence and notice to what Pearl Harbor spawned in the American people of that era, nor will it much care about the December 7, 1941 anniversary which has passed with anything else but something perfunctory.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor and everything that followed proved to the world the power of American resolve to fight evil and to liberate the world from the Japanese and the Nazis.
Which brings to mind the famous words by the great American writer and philosopher George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”