It’s time we learn from our past mistakes

There is a famous quote attributed to philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

There is much we can still learn from Pearl Harbor, not the least of which is the value of remembrance itself.

Those few words contain great wisdom, and on this day, 73 years after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, an event that propelled the United States into one of the greatest challenges in its history, those words have the ring of truth.

The story of the Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval fleet station in Hawaii is well known, told repeatedly on film and in print. At 7:48 a.m. Hawaii time, Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes attacked the U.S. Naval base. All eight U.S. battleships docked there were damaged, four were sunk. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, and another 1,178 were wounded.

It was, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the nation, “A day that will live in infamy.”

The day after the attack, the United States entered World War II, arguably the last time the military might of this country was deployed for crystal clear and absolutely justifiable reasons.

The men and women who fought that war were later dubbed “The Greatest Generation.” They won the war, saved the world from tyranny and then built an economic powerhouse that helped fulfill the American dream for millions. They are now passing into history, and we would do well to learn from them, to heed the lessons they learned in such dire circumstances.

Yet in the history of Pearl Harbor, there are lessons that have been forgotten, lessons that have condemned us to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The attack came as a profound surprise to many Americans. Yet the United States had been engaged with the Japanese over its aggression in China and Southeast Asia for years.

At one point, with the Japanese

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana. philosopher

poised to invade the Philippines, a U.S. territory, the U.S. military came up with a plan to defend the islands by deploying a 40,000man elite force. There was opposition to the plan, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who claimed the force was insufficient to win any conflict with the Japanese army. The military leadership heeded that warning and did not deploy the troops, leading to the U.S. eventually ceding the Philippines to the Japanese.

Now recall when the U.S. was planning its invasion into Iraq, and some in the Pentagon claimed they would need more troops to invade and secure the country. The military didn’t get the troops, and we all know what followed, a war that dragged on and is still in some sense being fought today.

The breakdown of diplomatic efforts to quell Japan’s military aggression also echo circumstances of decades later. Those efforts failed and led to the surprise attack. There are those who have posited that we should have seen it coming, that the U.S. should have anticipated a bold move by Japan, that it served as a warning to be vigilant and prepared.

There was no such diplomacy prior to Sept. 11. But there was the infamous daily briefing memo that concluded that Osama bin Laden was determined to attack America. And there are those who say that should have served as ample warning of a pending attack and should have prompted the U.S. to be vigilant and prepared.

Even afterward, in the historical archeology that occurred after Pearl Harbor, there were conspiracy theorists who concluded that the U.S. and Britain knew about the attack and permitted it to happen to draw the United States into the war in Europe. Those theories have been discredited by most serious historians.

World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. That sentiment was also voiced at the end of World War II. We never learned.

There is another, not as famous quote from Mr. Santayana.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

And again, it contains great wisdom.