Remembering Pearl Harbor, and a Final Reagan Republican Word about President George Herbert Walker Bush

REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR. Pearl Harbor, a US naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. • The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, but Japan and the United States had been edging toward war for decades. The United States was particularly unhappy with Japan’s increasingly belligerent attitude toward China. The Japanese government believed that the only way to solve its economic and demographic problems was to expand into its neighbor’s territory and take over its import market, leading Japan to declare war on China in 1937, resulting in the Nanking Massacre and other atrocities. American officials responded to this aggression with a battery of economic sanctions and trade embargoes. They reasoned that without access to money and goods, and especially essential supplies like oil, Japan would have to rein in its expansionism. Instead, the sanctions made the Japanese more determined to stand their ground. During months of negotiations between Tokyo and Washington, neither side would budge. It seemed that war was all but inevitable. • Pearl Harbor is located in Hawaii near the center of the Pacific Ocean -- 2,000 miles from the US mainland and about 4,000 miles from Japan. No one believed that the Japanese would start a war with an attack on the distant islands of Hawaii. Further, American intelligence officials were confident that any Japanese attack would take place in one of the European colonies in the South Pacific that were closer to Japan -- the Dutch East Indies, Singapore or Indochina. Because American military leaders weren't expecting an attack so close to home, the naval facilities at Pearl Harbor were relatively undefended. Almost the entire Pacific Fleet was moored around Ford Island in the harbor, and hundreds of airplanes were squeezed onto adjacent airfields. • To the Japanese, Pearl Harbor was an irresistibly easy target. The Japanese plan was simple -- destroy the US Pacific Fleet so that the Americans would not be able to fight back as Japan’s armed forces spread across the South Pacific. On December 7, after months of planning and practice, the Japanese launched their attack. At about 8 a.m., Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor. Bombs and bullets rained onto the vessels moored below. At 8:10, a 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck of the battleship USS Arizona and landed in her forward ammunition magazine. The ship exploded and sank with more than 1,000 men trapped inside. Next, torpedoes pierced the shell of the battleship USS Oklahoma. With 400 sailors aboard, the Oklahoma lost her balance, rolled onto her side and slipped underwater. Less than two hours later, the surprise attack was over, and every battleship in Pearl Harbor -- USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS California, USS West Virginia, USS Utah, USS Maryland, USS Pennsylvania, USS Tennessee and USS Nevada -- had sustained significant damage, but all except the USS Arizona and USS Utah were eventually salvaged and repaired. In all, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor crippled or destroyed nearly 20 American ships and more than 300 airplanes. Dry docks and airfields were also destroyed. Most importantly, 2,403 sailors, soldiers and civilians were killed and 1,000 people were wounded. But the Japanese had failed to cripple the Pacific Fleet. By the 1940s, battleships were no longer the most important naval vessel -- aircraft carriers were, and as luck would have it, all the Pacific Fleet’s carriers were away from the base on December 7. Some had returned to the mainland and others were delivering planes to troops on Midway and Wake Islands. And, brutal as it was, the Pearl Harbor assault had left the base’s most vital onshore facilities -- oil storage depots, repair shops, shipyards, and submarine docks -- intact. As a result, the US Navy was able to rebound relatively quickly from the attack. • President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of the US Congress on December 8, the day after the crushing attack on Pearl Harbor. His famous line is iconic : “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan....No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.” • The Japanese had wanted to goad the United States into an agreement to lift the economic sanctions against them; instead, they had pushed their adversary into a global conflict that ultimately resulted in Japan’s first occupation by a foreign power. "Remember Pearl Harbor" became a rallying cry for Americans during World War II. We remember those who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, and honor them and the other Americans who subsequently lost their lives in World War II. • • • REMEMBERING PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH. President Bush was a Navy pilot in the Pacific theatre during WWII. His plane was hit and he and his crew had to parachute out. Only President Bush survived. As with many who survive a disaster, President Bush, according to his presidential historian John Meacham, always asked himself, "Why me? Why was I saved while the others died?" • As she analyzed past and present media coverage of former President George H.W. Bush on Monday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham noted that : "Mainstream media members 'don’t treat [Republicans] fairly in life' and only 'embrace' them 'in death.' Bush, who served as the nation’s 41st President from 1989 to 1993, passed away at age 94 in his home in Houston on Friday night. Media members and outlets delivered extensive tributes to Bush as they recounted the extraordinary sacrifices he made to serve his nation as a World War II veteran, a House member, a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a CIA director, a vice president, a president -- and more. But it didn’t take too much effort for many in the media to use their glowing tributes of Bush as a stepping stone to criticisms of President Donald Trump. The media embrace a Republican in death, but don’t treat them fairly in life when they’re actually in office appointing people like Justice Clarence Thomas,' Ingraham noted, pointing to the bias at the time against Thomas’ nomination in 1991. Presidential historian and Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley shared the same sentiments, telling Ingraham that the media 'like Republican Presidents who no longer have power. They bashed the heck out George Bush when he was in office,' Shirley said. 'They viciously attacked him all during his presidential career.' Shirley also explained that Bush banned Newsweek from his campaign plane in 1988 after the outlet published a cover story about him with the headline, 'Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor.' ” • And, the media are negatively contrasting Trump to Bush. Governor Mike Huckabee, whose daughter is White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, told Ingraham : “The media...have reminded us why most Americans absolutely don’t trust them and hold them in contempt. And it’s unfortunate that they’re taking what ought to be the celebration of a great patriot, a great statesman, a great selfless servant of this nation, and instead of focusing on his qualities, they’re trying to focus on what they perceive to be the lack of qualities in Donald Trump -- the very qualities that many Americans, frankly, believe to be the reason he’s President right now,” Huckabee added. • • • DEAR READERS, George H. W. Bush was a man with a first-rate resume -- combat pilot, diplomat, CIA director, vice-president, then President of the United States -- but his list of presidential accomplishments is slim. Yes, we can mention the First Gulf War, but only if we forget the misery it would lead to in the Middle East. • The President who ended the Cold War and brought down the Soviet Union was not George Bush, despite what we have listened to in the past few days. It was Ronald Reagan who brought down the Soviet Union, and the people who deserve credit for that along with President Reagan, are Soviet leader Gorbachev AND Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II -- the two allies not mentioned at all in this week's adulation of George H. W. Bush. • "Reagan" Republicans knew that George Bush was a moderate. We nevertheless supported his candidacy for the presidency in 1988 because President Reagan asked us to do it. We knew George Bush would not be a committed Right-to-Life President -- he was once pro-choice on abortion -- but he took the anti-abortion pledge as part of his effort to win Reagan Republicans over. And, in fact, he became an ardent foe of abortion rights, saying his views had "evolved." • That was George H. W. Bush -- an instinctive politician whose views "evolved" to suit the situation at hand. He was loyal, reliable, and acted in deference to the leaders who chose him. Walter Mears of the AP said : "The loyalty instinct was part of Bush’s Republican establishment heritage. He was the son of Prescott Bush, who served as Senator from Connecticut. In the post-World War II era, centrist eastern Republicans dominated party councils. It was a system of trust in which custom counted and rules were unspoken but understood. When Bush ran for President in 1980, he was in a field of seven Republicans led by Reagan. That’s when he dismissed Reagan’s budget notions as “voodoo economics,” a line he would regret when as vice-president he wound up defending the same program. Bush narrowly upset Reagan in the Iowa caucuses in 1980, but Reagan trounced Bush in the New Hampshire primary and easily won the nomination....Nominated to succeed Reagan, he spoke of a kinder, gentler nation -- and then balanced the soft words with hard ones, in the phrase that became a trademark until he erased it. 'Read my lips,' he said. 'No new taxes.' While Bush would one day write that he had no use for cutthroat politics, his 1988 campaign certainly fit the description. He did not deal with what he wanted to do as president but with the undoing of Democrat Michael Dukakis. Bush questioned Dukakis’ commitment to the Pledge of Allegiance, denounced his Massachusetts policy on prison furloughs, called him an emotionless ice man beholden to liberal interest groups, blamed him for the pollution of Boston Harbor. The campaign was so negative and irrelevant that Richard M. Nixon and Barry Goldwater publicly told Bush he should deal with real issues. No matter. Bush won easily. But he was a President without a blueprint, and within weeks of taking office he had to deny that his administration was drifting without clear purpose." • That is not to detract from the fact that President George H. W. Bush was devoted to America. His entire adult life was spent in public service. The point is that his service was best when it was committed to the programs and agendas of others. He was not an "idea" man. He was not a President who Americans loved or understood -- because he was hard to get close to. He had a cool, detached demeanor that covered up his real and abiding affection for people. His presidency became four years of wandering in a desert of issues, none of which he could bring to closure. Not even the First Gulf War. He later acknowledged that he had miscalculated by expecting a regime change in Baghdad. But, Saddam Hussein survived the First Gulf War and would be ousted in the Iraq war launched by his son, President George W. Bush. • The Bush family patriarch’s casket lay in State at the US Capitol this week before Wednesday's services at the National Cathedral in Washington. His family has made an effort to avoid a politicized funeral. It began when they contacted the White House this summer, saying that President Trump would be welcome at H.W. Bush’s services -- a rather useless blustering gesture because the sitting President of the United States is by title the head of any state funeral. That President Trump gave the Bush family carte blanche and honored their every request concerning the funeral and its surrounding pomp and circumstance says far more about the character of Donald Trump than it does about that of the Bush family. • I'm a Taft Republican who became a Reagan Republican. I worked for him. And, I feel sure he would have told George Bush that attacking the Republican candidate in 2016, and publicly announcing his vote for the Democrat, was unworthy of a Republican President and an undignified show of contempt for the Party that gave him his career, right up to the White House. I try to forgive the act, but I cannot forget it. For someone who believed loyalty was the glue that holds the Republican Party together, it was a particularly vindictive display of disloyalty. It casts a long shadow over the life of a man whose memory will forever in my eyes be tied to an act of political treason. • I offer sincere condolences to the Bush family. Looking at Laura Bush's face on Wednesday, we read the story of a family that has suffered through a year of personal trauma, suffering and loss. The Bush family deserves the gratitude of Americans for its public service and devotion to America, even if its vision of what America needs differs from that of us Republicans who are more conservative. • Rest in Peace, President Bush. And, when you meet President Reagan in Heaven, he will forgive you for your small betrayal and thank you for your service to the country that he and President Trump love every bit as much as you did. For, we are all Republicans, the children of Abraham Lincoln, the inheritors of the Constitution and its Republic under God. "Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," and we sing with Lincoln, "As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free." His truth IS marching on. Never doubt it.