Pearl Harbor Should Remind Us That the World Is a Better Place When the United States Leads From the Front

As we remember and mourn those servicemen and women who died when Imperial Japan launched a surprise attack on the American military installations at Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, we should also remember that was not just one of the bloodiest strikes on American soil. Pearl Harbor also marked "an end to illusions," as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr described the United States' sudden mindfulness of the threats posed by Japan and Nazi Germany.Until that day of infamy, many Americans had held optimistically to certain beliefs about war and international politics that proved illusory. Such as that dictatorship and aggression in faraway lands did not concern the United States; that alliances were a source of vulnerability rather than strength; and that a strong military made war more rather than less likely.The classic 1970 movie about Pearl Harbor Tora! Tora! Tora! quotes the operation's mastermind Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto warning ominously that Japan had "awakened a sleeping giant." Whether Yamamoto actually penned those words remains disputed, but the phrase reflected his sentiments. In the words of historian David Kennedy, America's "industrial base and large population would make it a formidable foe if it ever mustered the political will to fight, and probably an invincible foe if the conflict were protracted."And so it came to pass.  Continue reading...