History’s harbingers

On December 7, 1941 — 65 years ago this week — pilots from a Japanese carrier force bombed Pearl Harbor. They killed 2,403 Americans, most of them service personnel, while destroying much of the U.S. fleet and air forces stationed in Hawaii.

The next morning, an outraged United States declared war, which ended less than four years later with the destruction of most of the Japanese Empire and its military.

Sixty years after Pearl Harbor came another surprise attack on U.S. soil, one that was, in some ways, even worse than the “Day of Infamy.”

Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks — the vast majority of them civilians. Al Qaeda’s target was not an American military base far distant from the mainland. Rather, they suicide-bombed U.S. financial and military centers.

It has been five years since September 11. After such a terrible provocation, why can’t we bring the ongoing “global war on terror” — whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere — to a close as our forefathers fighting World War II could? Is our generation less competent?

Not really. The United States routed the Taliban from Afghanistan by early December 2001. America’s first clear-cut victory against the Japanese, at Midway, came six months after Pearl Harbor.

Do we lack the unity of the past? Perhaps. But we should at least remember that after Pearl Harbor, a national furor immediately arose over the intelligence failure that allowed an enormous Japanese fleet to approach the Hawaiian Islands undetected. Extremists went further — clamoring that the Roosevelt administration had deliberately lowered our guard as part of a conspiracy to pave the way for America’s entrance into the war.

Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq? Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan — an Axis that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese and Russians.

But there are significant differences between the “global war on terror” and World War II that explain why victory is taking so much longer this time.

The most obvious is that, against Japan and Germany, we faced easily identifiable nation-states with conventional militaries. Today’s terrorists blend in with civilians, and it’s hard to tie them to their patron governments or enablers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan, who all deny any culpability. We also tread carefully in an age of ubiquitous frightening weapons, when any war at any time might without much warning bring in a nuclear, nondemocratic belligerent.

The limitations on our war-making are just as often self-imposed. Yes, we defeated the Axis powers in less than four years, but at a ghastly cost. To defeat both Japan and Germany, we averaged more than 8,000 Americans lost every month of the war — compared to around 50 per month since September 11.

So far the United States has encouraged its citizens to shop rather than sacrifice. The subtext is that we can defeat the terrorists and their autocratic sponsors with just a fraction of our available manpower — ensuring no real disruption in our lifestyles. That certainly wasn’t the case with the Depression-era generation that fought World War II.

And in those days, peace and reconstruction followed rather than preceded victory. In tough-minded fashion, we offered ample aid to, and imposed democracy on, war-torn nations only after the enemy was utterly defeated and humiliated. Today, to avoid such carnage, we try to help and reform countries before our enemies have been vanquished — putting the cart of aid before the horse of victory.

Our efforts today are further complicated by conflicting Internet fatwas, terrorist militias and shifting tribal alliances; in short, we are not always sure who the enemy cadre really is — or will be.

So paradoxes follow:

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