I think we need to communicate better

And by "we" I mean our elected leaders.  To the rest of the world.  As is obvious from other posts, I was thinking about Pearl Harbor today.  It was a horrible miscalculation by the Japanese.  They may have underestimated how America's incredibly mighty industrial production machine could respond to the sneak attack by cranking out more military weaponry than the rest of the world put together.  Since the beginning of mankind.  Personally, I doubt they miscalculated how much America could do if it wanted to.  I think they miscalculated whether America would do everything it could until the Japanese were destroyed as a military (and imperial) power.  Osama did the same thing.  In fact, history is littered with similar figures (hope Osama said hi to Saddam when he saw him in Hell).  As I thought about it, the problem became very clear.  We (America) are not communicating our will to use our might sufficiently clearly to the right audiences.  We have before, such as when the Great Communicator Ronald Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down that wall.  And it worked.  The old Soviets not only knew we could beat them, Reagan did a good job of communicating that we would beat them.  The rest is history (largely written by us since we won).  I am going to vote for the best person to communicate with the rest of the world.  Not sure who, yet.  But he sure won't need a teleprompter.

Be a skeptical paranoid

Especially when reading about anything you did not experience first hand.  It is not that I recommend never reading historical accounts.  A great deal can be learned from them since mankind rarely invents new ways to fail, we merely implement the failure in different ways.  Nonetheless, always remember that any account you read in the press is going to be colored (tainted, spun, slanted--take your pick) by the author and the publisher.  The same can be said doubly for an historical account.  History is written by the victors to serve their own purposes and, of course, to make them look good.  Since it is Pearl Harbor Day, that brings us to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese leader of the horrific and illegal raid on the peacetime American naval base in Hawaii.


Yamamoto was a fascinating man.  He was the hero of the battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War, long before he was the architect of the worst attack on American soil until 9/11.  He was also the leading voice in Japan against going to war with the United States.   But we won and we got to write the history.  Don't get me wrong.  He still killed over two thousand unsuspecting US servicemen in an unquestionably illegal, immoral and despicable act of military aggression.  Had he not died by having his plane shot down by a P-38 while doing an inspection of the Solomon Islands in 1943, I have no doubt he would have been executed as a war criminal.  Still, the fact that he lead the opposition to war with the US makes me think because that fact is rarely reported.  So do yourself a favor and always be a skeptical paranoid.  Even when reading my blog.  Maybe especially so.