Pearl Harbor

Graham has transitioned from the Revolutionary War to World War II, having decided to skip the Civil War and World War I. Which is OK, but there's a lot of explaining to do with WWII as well.

So we've been reading a book about Pearl Harbor. And it's pretty serious, and it's hard not to be drawn in by the actual heroism of the military people and their families. WWII was a just war, and a nasty one. There are gory parts of this book that I have to skip past with Graham, which is not so easy now that he can actually read.

And it's hard reading about Pearl Harbor not to think back to 9/11. Sitting at my desk at 9:04, looking north across 5th Avenue at all those people coming out on the balcony of Saks 5th, looking south and gesticulating, wondering what was going on. Then the phone call from Scott, saying a plane had flown into the WTC, and thinking that it was some wack job like the German guy who landed a Cessna on the White House lawn. Then David coming in the door, having put his wife on the PATH train for her office in the towers, but now unable to reach her. Then going down on the street and looking downtown at around 10, watching them burn and knowing that I had to get off the street or I'd start smoking again.

And then, some 5 weeks later, Bush, spurred on by Wolfowitz and Cheney, goes and fucks it all up with the Axis of Evil speech. We had the moral upper hand and righteous indignation, but we just had to go and throw it away for the sake of oil and ideology. A Texas-sized and Texas-themed mistake that may prove to be for us what Afghanistan was for the Soviets.