December 7, 2004

• “A Day Which Shall Live in Infamy”

  
  

  Today is the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I make it a point to remember each and every year. This year I would like to send a prayer to the memory of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short, the Navy and Army commanders of the Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii in 1941. These men were “blamed” by the military, and stripped of their rank, even though the chief code breaker for the Navy admitted in 1944 that important information was witheld from Pearl Harbor prior to the attack. More info can be found at NPR’s website. In America of 2004, when we go to war for any number of unfounded reasons, it is interesting to note that the Democratic Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt practiced some strange tactics during a time when the majority of Americans were against the “war in Europe” possibly to find a reason to get the States involved. WWII has been called the “last good war” and the generation that fought it, my father’s generation, was no more righteous or evil for that matter, than the generations which came before, nor the generations which followed. There is always more to any situation than most people think, and it is always a good thing to study history, and to look beyond the media for answers. I hope that Kimmel and Short are vindicated. In post Watergate America, we certainly know that everything is never quite what is sometimes presented to us.

  
  

  EDIT: 8:43am. My Reuters feed tells me that as of 11:30am Dec. 7th, Baghdad, the 1000th U.S. soldier has been killed in the line of duty. My prayers go out to our fighting forces all over the world, and especially in Iraq.

  • 9:13 am
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