Posted on 12/07/2005 3:48:02 PM PST by mdittmar
On December 8, 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and asked for an official declaration of war against Japan.
The previous day, Japan had launched a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base in the Hawaiian Islands. Losses were devastating: six of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than half the island's aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,380 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded.
In launching the surprise offensive, Japanese military command hoped that, in addition to disabling the U.S. naval fleet, the attack would depress American morale and push the isolationist U.S. deeper into a strictly defensive role in World War II. However, Pearl Harbor had the opposite effect.
Overnight, American society rallied behind President Roosevelt, who over the last two years had been progressively pushing for an active military alliance with Great Britain against Germany and Japan. On December 8, with only one dissent, Congress declared that a state of war existed between the United States and Japan, and America formally entered World War II. Representative Jeannette Rankin, a Republican of Montana, cast the sole dissenting vote. An espoused pacifist, she had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I. The same day, Great Britain declared war against Japan.
With war declared in Washington and rumors of an impending Japanese attack on the American mainland running rife, a total blackout was declared in southern California on the night of December 8, 1941.
NEVER FORGET
I'm sure glad Murtha, Pelosi, Kennedy and Kerry (The Cut and Run Generation) weren't around on December 8, 1941.
Thanks for the post. Mark Levin just played the address on his show as well.
I strongly believe and think emerging evidence shows that Pearl was sacrificed.
mc
My dads best friend went down on the Arizona...he never forgot that...along with all of America, who remember Pearl Harbor my dad remembered that horrible day, every time it came around each year...but he also always reminded us, to remember his very best friend, who died that day...
My deepest sympathy for your father and his loss. Time does not dim the pain. I'm widowed, so I know.
God bless all those who sacrificed all to keep this country free.
Thanks...I have lost a son, and you are right...time never takes away the pain...we who are left behind, just have to endure it...
If they were really all about non-violence and opposing war under any and all circumstances- I might disagree with them but be able to respect their consistancy of principle.
I don't remember any significant hue and cry from these people when Clinton attacked Yugoslavia. Certainly nothing like we hear now.
Does anybody believe, that if the same exact sequence of events, from 9/11 to today, had happened with a Democrat administration in office, that Pelosi and Kennedy, et al. would be shreiking about 'peace' from the rooftops? Or that there would have been any significant number of 'peace demonstrations' on the Mall?
The 'peace' crowd has nothing whatsoever to do with peace. It's all about power.
The Men and Women who serve gave us that freedom.
In short, it has absolutely nothing to do with the troops, the war in Iraq, Victoria's Secret panties or any of that Abu Ghraib stuff. THIS WHOLE MURTHA/PELOSI/KERRY/DEAN FIASCO is the 'RATS trying to wrestle back control of the taxpayer's wallet via the House, the Senate and the Oval Office.
Once again. "Your" is a possessive pronoun
Is that your dog?
You're is a verb contraction.
You're (you are) entitled...
Will we ever get that right?
Grammar police, signing off.
You are correct,training,training,training
If the Left had any actual claim to the principles that they espouse, they'd have to support taking down a regime that feeds people into plastic shredding machines, gasses subsets of it's own population that it doesn't like with nerve agents, fires long range missiles into Israeli cities and the rest of it.
So they're clearly not about principle.
Not to mention the ever present use of 'to' meaning towards which is a preposition, when the writer means 'too' meaning also, which is an adverb.
I just got through reading a thing where Murtha said that only a very small percentage of the "insurgents" are actually terrorists. The boy is sick. Really sick. I guess he has joined the crowd that believes that anyone who kills American GIs and innocent Iraqis are "freedom fighters."
He might be playing with definitions. If we define a terrorist as being someone who uses violence deliberately against an innocent non-combatant civilian population, and if it is also true that most 'insurgents' are confining themselves to acts of overt combat against uniformed military personnel in a combat zone, then he may have had a point.
The 'insurgents' however, seem by their actions to think nothing of killing regular Iraqi civilians in the process. We try to avoid it in combat, the 'insurgents' don't really seem to care. If they're not *deliberately* killing civilians though, then it can be argued that their conduct is legitimate warfare.
In short- to me it boils down to this:
An 'insurgent' is one who fights against our troops, and makes a legitimate effort to not harm civilians.
A 'terrorist' is one who fights against a civilian population. He's still a terrorist even if he also fights against uniformed troops.
The distinction is one of intent.
I think that there are not a lot of 'insurgents' by that definition running around in Iraq right now.
But if the "insurgents" and "terrorists" are fighting on the same side, and the "insurgents" aren't even bothering to condemn the "terrorists", is there really much of a meaningful distinction between the two?
I ain't no lawyer, but to my eye, yes there is. The Wehrmacht and the war criminals of the SS fought on the same side. There were plenty of examples of German troops that just fought against Allied military units and didn't bother civilians at all. I don't care for people shooting at my tribe, but Joe Landser shooting at American troops is legitimate warfare.
If we capture Joe, there isn't any special requirement that he speak out against Treblinka or Ravensbruck or Sobibor, or any of the rest of it. He's known and judged by his conduct.
The problem is that the enemy in Iraq doesn't have the regimentation or formations that allow us to distinguish the 'soldiers' from the 'concentration camp guards'.
Thank you for the affirmation to go on. I'm not alone, God bless.
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