As a followup to my previous post, here’s a New York Times editorial from December 7, 1951, the 10th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. (It starts at the bottom of the left column, so you have to scroll down to begin reading.)

Even though World War II is not morally or legitimately equivalent to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, parts of the editorial feel eerily resonant today. Here are some excerpts.

DECADE OF FAME AND INFAMY

Ten tremendous years have passed since that terrible Sunday of Pearl Harbor which President Roosevelt described as “a day that will live in infamy.” …

When the American people woke up on Dec. 7, 1941, they were living in an age in which there still lingered some of the easy-going optimism of the nineteenth century. They still believed that without too much effort and too much pain things might be made to turn out all right. They knew about Hitler but many of them didn’t quite believe that he existed. They knew about Japanese imperialism but they couldn’t quite get it out of their heads that the Japanese, despite their foul record in China, wouldn’t get far in an up-to-date war.

These illusions perished along with many hundreds of men on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 7. …

… Pearl Harbor signed the death warrant of many thousands of men who did not die that day. It changed the whole lives of countless others. …

…Today we cannot look back to Pearl Harbor as men do “to old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago.” We lack the tranquility that might soften the ten-year-old tragedy. We lack the certainty that such tragedies will not be repeated. People in this city had an air-raid drill a few days ago. The conceivable enemy was not the Japanese and not the Germans. As we commemorate the dead of Pearl Harbor we may hope and pray that no such commemorations of a new Pearl Harbor will be exacted of our descendants or of ourselves grown older. But after ten years the struggle against absolutism is not yet finally won. …