In the early morning hours of December 7, 1941 a combined naval armada and aerial threat had quietly slipped past the reconnaissance of the US Pacific Fleet and in the predawn darkness launched a sneak attack. Perhaps the most devastating military surprise attack in history awaited a sleepy Pearl Harbor as Japanese Zeroes, dive bombers, and torpedo aircraft left the carrier decks of Admiral Yamamoto’s task force and headed for Hawaii on that fateful day.
Threat Ignored
For months the controversy had raged over whether America should enter the war in Europe. Congress fought President Roosevelt every step of the way on appropriations for sending embattled Great Britain military aid across an Atlantic Ocean gauntlet of German U-boats. Specifications for new US warplanes were being issued to US defense contractors and peacetime manufacturing, but America’s role in another world war was unclear. US citizens wanted little to do with a war on either side of the globe. Although Japan had been mercilessly laying siege to China for years.
Disaster revisited
The tragic lessons of history had been overlooked again as America in remaining an isolationist was only emboldening Nazi Germany and the Imperial forces of Japan. With a lack of preparedness and a skeleton of armed forces located in the Philippines and across several island chains over the Pacific, a tragedy was in the making as America could only dream that it would not have to react to the inevitable. Japan’s war machine had been fortifying island bases and invading China for almost a decade now. Germany was overruning Europe as combined British and French armies were overcome by Rommel’s “Blitzkrieg” offensives.
Tragic fate
By under estimating its enemies and wanting to deny the looming aggression, Americans unknowingly sealed the fate of Pearl Harbor as blood was destined to be spilled. Even with the unclear signals of threat detection already sounded by naval intelligence, still the vast and unsuspecting Pacific Fleet was unsure of the action it should take. The wrong tactics were used to establish island and base defenses that ensured American aviators would be strafed and shot out of the air before they could ever rise to meet their opponents. The horrid death and destruction that awaited Pearl Harbor was a only a grim taste of the string of losses that would be suffered by American forces over the remaining months of 1941 and into 1942.
Conspiracy theory or fact?
Some have ventured to interpret historic evidence as indicating that FDR and the US Naval encryption decoders knew of the coming attack on Pearl and simply allowed it to happen so that America would jump into the war effort angry and full of revenge. There would no longer be any need to sell the American people on a costly world war! The tragedy would speak for itself and young men would line up in the halls of the draft boards ready to join. Whatever the case may be, today may very well be a dangerously similar scenario.
Drawing parallels
An Putin in Russia seems to have designs on resurrecting the old Soviet Union beginning with Crimea, Iran is being allowed to complete its nuclear weapons program under the guise of creating power plants. The US State Department fails in negotiations to either persuade or intimidate our enemies to cease their plans for domination or to stop financing the war on terror. Our Obama White House continues to send foreign aid to such terrorist organizations as HAMAS while it opposes efforts by our border states to enforce federal immigration law. Homeland Security has allowed known terrorists while in detention to be released. ICE has been forced by the Obama Administration to release criminal offenders back into the US population after being arrested as illegal aliens.
Consequences of refusal to act
Our White House has allowed ISIS to grow into a deadly force in the Middle East and has taken minimal measures in opposing that well funded terrorist group who had been using captured American weapons to defeat the Iraqi army. It seems that not only is the Obama Administration reticent to meat terrorist aggression with force, but it has allowed infiltration across our borders here in the United States. The White House has been gutting the US military of its experienced leadership, cutting back funding to our armed services, and is even preventing our fighting men and women from exercising their rights as Christians to prayer.
Uncertain future
Perhaps what happened at Pearl Harbor in the face of that devastating attack will be nothing compared to what lies ahead for America under a federal government that seems intent upon inflicting damage to our national security while compromising the ranks of our military leadership. There are many angry and frustrated soldiers in the Army and Marine Corps who echo their contempt for the present administration and its insane political agenda! Do the events of the terrible past have validity on the stage of the present? Many are convinced that the past may again repeat itself as riots in the streets of America go on condoned by the Obama administration. Who are the radicals that Eric Holder refuses to investigate that have taken part in the burning and rioting of Ferguson?
Is it the intention of Washington?
Pearl Harbor happened because of what Americans did not want to face though history would tell us it was inevitable. Yet, we are now facing an even more dangerous threat from many theaters at once while our own borders are going undefended. As our most experienced officers in the Army, Marines, and Navy are being forced into retirement, our enemies grow more determined emboldened by the actions of President Obama and his ambivalent administration seemingly bent on handing America over to its enemies. Is Pearl Harbor a sad reminder or a harbinger of things to come too terrible for most of us to imagine? Was “a day that shall live in infamy”, as FDR proclaimed in his speech after the attack, small loss compared to what America stands to lose under the negligence of the Obama White House?
