75 years ago: “A date which will live in infamy” « Hot Air: Seventy-five years ago yesterday, most Americans believed that the two vast oceans on our coasts kept us safe from war as long as we pretended not to be part of it. Seventy-five years ago today, an “unprovoked and dastardly attack” on Pearl Harbor woke us from that fantasy — at the cost of over 2400 American lives. Pearl Harbor shattered our pretensions of isolation, and forced the US to perpetually prepare for war even during periods of peace, a lesson that we have occasionally forgotten a few times since.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt immediately went to Congress to demand a declaration of war against the empire of Japan. Roosevelt offers one key observation near the end, though, which cuts to the heart of the need to recognize war when it arrives, rather than live within fantasies of peace (via Jeff Dunetz, who has the whole speech transcript):
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