Pearl Harbor stands for vigilance

Some say the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago this week marked one of the greatest intelligence failures our country has ever experienced.

Others say the technology and code-breaking science weren’t developed to the point of anticipating such an attack.

From any perspective, however, the Pearl Harbor attack stands as a stark reminder of the dark forces on this planet that require constant vigilance if we are to protect our cherished freedoms.

Pearl Harbor also reminds us that at any moment, thousands of American troops are stationed in combat zones at outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq. For those troops, attack is a constant possibility, and vigilance is a requirement for survival.

An ancient Chinese treatise called The Art of War says the greatest successes are the wars that are never fought.  When it comes to war, the wisest and most lavish allocation of resources, it says, should be on the spies - the intelligence network - that can allow a nation to anticipate, to address problems when they’re small and to avoid the huge drain on a nation’s resources that wars represent.

A recent poll of the all-volunteer U.S. military found those citizens generally consider themselves more patriotic than the rest of the population and less favorable about Barack Obama’s performance as president.  In one area, though, they agreed with the rest of the majority: their view that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been worth fighting.

Consider the amount of valuable intelligence we could have been gathering at just a fraction of the cost of those two wars.

Not long after Pearl Harbor, rapidly advancing intelligence gathered by the United States allowed our Navy to strike a retaliatory and crippling blow at the Japanese fleet at Midway in the Pacific.  In September 1945, the Japanese surrendered on the deck of the battleship Missouri.

When the Fort Miles Historical Association brings one of the Missouri’s last 16-inch guns to complete the artillery display in the Cape Henlopen military complex, we will have one more important reminder of the sacrifices of Pearl Harbor and the importance of constant vigilance to ensure our troops never needlessly get sent into war.