Pearl

The USA suffered an incredible wake-up call in 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Big Trunk at Power Line writes about this better than I can - I'm a linker not a thinker dammit... bq. Pearl Harbor Day 2004 The day after the devastating Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the Congress with his eloquent speech requesting a declaration of war. The clarity of his words remains bracing, even 63 years after the horrible day:

Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with the government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

The entire speech is at the above link. The Big Trunk then says: bq. The events of December 7 echo down the corridors of history. Among the comments on the significance of the attack, none surpasses Churchill's immediate assessment:

"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."

bq. Let us invoke Shakespeare's words as our prayer for this day: "What's past is prologue..."