Today is a date which will live in infamy. These were the words spoken by President Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor December 7th 1941. I wasn’t around then, but I have a friend whose father was there. He talked about going through the harbor the next day in a small boat picking up body parts. Afterwards he got a tattoo on his arm in case his was ever the body part in the water. That way they would know it was him. Now more than seventy years later, Japan is one of our strongest allies.
In the last hundred years there have been two major attacks on Americans: Pearl Harbor and 9/11. In both cases thousands of Americans were killed resulting in many young adults being sent overseas to fight a long war. The first was considered a “great” win and the second is still to be determined. I talked to an Army Ranger Captain last 4th of July who had been to Afghanistan twice. I asked him what he thought would happen in Afghanistan after all the troops left. His answer perplexed me. He said “I don’t care.” If we don’t care why are we there? If we leave a big void, there’s a good chance a radical insurgence will happen again. We’ve been at war there for over a decade but the people of Afghanistan have been at war for more than three decades. There are places around the world where most of the people have never seen peace or a stable government. What will it take to bring peace everywhere if only for a day?
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