Remember Pearl Harbor!

Sixty-four years ago today, a sneak attack by the Japanese military machine upon the American naval base at Pearl Harbor basically took out our fleet of battleships and killed some 2400 of our citizens, suddenly catapulting our nation into a great conflict with the two most powerful and malevolent nations of the time: Nazi Germany & the Empire of Japan.

Some things come to mind here of historical significance, especially in light of our current global war on terror that often appears to pervert the very ideals we claim to fight for.

Today’s right-wing -- which is ever so militaristic as well as preachy on the lessons of appeasement -- are the political descendants of the isolationists of the day who did everything they could to block American entry into a war that had already been in full swing for at least a couple of years; longer if you count Japanese imperialism that was already five years old by the time of Pearl Harbor.

The United States President back then was a remarkable man named Franklin Roosevelt, crippled yet undeterred by polio, who is considered by most historians the greatest President of the 20th century and among the top three presidents (along with Washington & Lincoln) in U.S. history. Roosevelt was unabashedly a liberal, a term which today has become almost a slur in the political lexicon. That disabled liberal came to power in an America in the midst of economic devastation, yet he inspired a nation to press on against all odds while behind the scenes he led the effort to aid Churchill’s desperate struggle against Hitler. When the war was finally thrust upon us irrevocably, he managed the war effort abroad and economic recovery at home in what was a truly epic battle of freedom vs. tyranny.

Most important in light of current conditions, we conducted a war that was without doubt the greatest threat to our survival as a nation since the Civil War without crushing civil liberties, while conducting open and fair elections, and without trampling upon human rights in order to prevail. Sure, there was some curtailment of democratic life, including a degree of press censorship, although it should be noted that the media cooperated willingly in the war effort because the threat was real, not propaganda. There was also the national shame of interring Japanese-Americans, which has left an indelible blot upon American history. And there were some atrocities of war that cannot be excused.

But at the same time we were the incontestable heroes of global human rights, the champions of international law and the Geneva Convention, the nation that held all others – including ourselves – accountable to a higher law. We showed our collective disdain for those who violated the rights of man and when the war was done we subjected the guilty to an international conscience by civilized and restrained war crimes trials that held the monsters accountable for their actions and punished them accordingly.

We didn’t advertise torture as an option. We didn’t abuse prisoners of war. We didn’t announce to the world that we were above international law.

Franklin Roosevelt was dead by then, but when his successor made the peace he did so in Roosevelt’s spirit and the United Nations, with all of its flaws, was our gift to the international community. We dreamed of an international court of justice, we dreamed of universal human rights. Today’s American foreign policy is a mockery of that dream, so as we honor the Greatest Generation that sacrificed for our freedom some sixty-odd years ago, let us dedicate ourselves to renewing the promise of the dream that the current powers-that-be have so determinedly abandoned.