VDH: History's Harbingers

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the differences between the United States post-Pearl Harbor and post-9/11.

On December 7, 1941 -- 65 years ago this week -- pilots from a Japanese carrier force bombed Pearl Harbor. They killed 2,403 Americans, most of them service personnel, while destroying much of the U.S. fleet and air forces stationed in Hawaii.

The next morning, an outraged United States declared war, which ended less than four years later with the destruction of most of the Japanese Empire and its military.

Sixty years after Pearl Harbor came another surprise attack on U.S. soil, one that was, in some ways, even worse than the "Day of Infamy."

Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks -- the vast majority of them civilians. Al Qaeda's target was not an American military base far distant from the mainland. Rather, they suicide-bombed U.S. financial and military centers.

It has been five years since September 11. After such a terrible provocation, why can't we bring the ongoing "global war on terror" -- whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere -- to a close as our forefathers fighting World War II could? Is our generation less competent?

Not really. The United States routed the Taliban from Afghanistan by early December 2001. America's first clear-cut victory against the Japanese, at Midway, came six months after Pearl Harbor.

Do we lack the unity of the past? Perhaps. But we should at least remember that after Pearl Harbor, a national furor immediately arose over the intelligence failure that allowed an enormous Japanese fleet to approach the Hawaiian Islands undetected. Extremists went further -- clamoring that the Roosevelt administration had deliberately lowered our guard as part of a conspiracy to pave the way for America's entrance into the war.

Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq? Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan -- an Axis that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese and Russians.

But there are significant differences between the "global war on terror" and World War II that explain why victory is taking so much longer this time.