This article from the Washington Times caught my eye today. No time for the mawkish by Jennifer Harper. Regarding December 7, 1942, she writes:
The front pages of the nation's newspapers were stuffed with news of war: a battle raging in Tunisia, the launch of the USS New Jersey at Philadelphia, and, on the front page of the old Evening Star, a single photographic reminder of the destroyed harbor at Honolulu. On an inside page, Pvt. Joe Lockhard, who had first spotted the incoming Japanese planes at a radar station above Honolulu, was the subject of a small item headlined: "Hero of Navy prefers to forget Pearl Harbor."
"We have to give our time to what's happening now," he said, "and wait for history to catch up with it, when the war is won."
Our society is very different now. At present the media and our modern notions of the need closure are causing us to be much more introspective than, as it has been called, "the greatest generation." They were focused on the task and hand. To be fair the enemy was visible with perfect clarity - not the "jihadistan" we face today. President Bush also has to make his case for an attack on Iraq to this country and to the world. He has yet to do so. I pray that we have the resolve to win this war. It is very different from the second great war in some many ways. Read The imperial era begins by Tony Blankley to get an interesting opinion on the current war and what it means for America's future. It's a brave, new world.
