I read posts on here about the tragedy of the casualty count going past 1000. I think the whole country needs a lesson in perspective. Lets say we were attacked, and the attack was not followed up with an invasion of the place that was attacked, but some distant "protectorates" that we didn't even rightly "OWN" were seized. Further some of these "protectorates" were only kept to provide our Navy with coaling stations that were becoming obsolete, and for way stations for aircraft to refuel enroute to other places. How many troops would be acceptable to lose to take all those places back, especially when the enemy didn't show any REAL intrest in taking any sovereign US territory? What if the Goverment formented or at least allowed to spread, rumors that the mainland US might be invaded? What if the Government had advance warning we might be attacked and witheld warning the public, and even misled the troops in the area about the nature of the attack? What if, instead of focusing our efforts on the people who attacted us, we went after someone who was allied (however loosely) with them, and totally destroyed their civilian infrastructure, with countless civilian casualties, to wrap that threat up before focusing 100% of our efforts againt those who actually launched the attack? What if the President thought the "other people" were a greater overall threat than the ones who actually atacked us??????? What would you think of that situation? Suppose we abused prisoners, using them for slave labor on public projects? Would there be a great public outcry?
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Admiral Yamamoto planned to catch the carriers in port, and desroy them. The Japanese envisioned taking the Dutch East Indes and the Phillipines and Wake Island, and Guam, and much of Southeast Asia unopposed from the US, and by the time the US was able to mount a response, saying, we have what we want, there's no need to fight, we want nothing of yours. They just knew we wouldn't hold still while they took those things. Washington had already broken the Japanese code, and knew they were going to attack, but warnings were very vague, and Admiral Wainwright and his Army counterpart clustered planes and other assets in the middle of airfeilds to thwart attacks from saboteurs throwing bombs over fences, not an air raid. In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, other than Dolittles Raid, the main focus of the war was directed against Germany, which FDR had been trying to figure how to justify getting into, because he saw Hitler as the greater threat. People were panicing on the west coast thinking that the Japanese were about to invade California, and it suited the governments purpose to allow the hysteria to remain in place to motivate the public. The Phillipines were won from the Spanish in the Spanish-American War, ans we also "won" the insurgency movement from them. Other than a coaling station for our ships (by WWII almost all our ships were burning fuel oil, and the need for massive storage facilities for coal were passed) and Wake Island and Guam were only used for airfields. We utilized the German POW's to work on a scale model of the entire TVA flood control project, and when the war was over, it was incomplete, and many former German POW's returned to the States voluntarily to finish the project they started! (For pay, when they came back, not while they were prisoners) As I said, our initial focus was against Germany, not the Japanese who attacked us. We waged total war against Hitler, and decided that the stategic approach was to starve the Nazi war machine by taking out ball-bearing factories, as bombing plane factories would not take away tank production, or small arms production, but taking away ball bearings would eventually bring ALL production to a grinding halt! Ball bearing plants in Dresden and Frankfort were bombed day and night, creating so many fires that the massive updrafts created their own weather patterns, with hurricane-force winds (firestorms). No hue and cry was raised by the press or the American Public about excessive civilian collateral damage. Japan was allied with Germany, but Germany hadn't actually attacked us, and Germany only declared war on the US when we declared war on Japan (their ally) but we focused at least 80% of our efforts agains Hitler.
We lost 2400 people, mostly military at Pearl Harbor
We lost 2700 people on 9/11, mostly non-combattant civilians (except for some people at the Pentagon, who were in non-cobattant billets at that time)
How many people were lost in ONE DAY on Tarawa? Iwo Jima? Normandy? the Death March of Battan? Pelileu? Anguar? Guadalcanal? Battle of the Coral Sea? Midway? Bastogne? St.Lo? Remagen?
What makes the current conflict pointless and the folks alive in the 1940's the "Greatest Generation"?
Let's get real here!
