When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we declared war on Japan. When al Qaeda attacked the United States, we declared war on a country that America had been planning to invade for years (see the 2000 report “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” by the Project for a New American Century). The Afghan government expressed willingness to turn Bin Laden over, but American officials refused. The invasion date had been set that summer. We also illegally invaded a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
One of these things is not like the other.
You think I should be grateful that people of your generation are in power, but I’m not. Boomers yearn for the moral clarity that the Greatest Generation had when it went to war. You resort to these tortured analogies when you know goddamn well that the United States went to war on a lie. It spent trillions to make us less safe and the world less stable, and hundreds of thousands died in the process.
Go read a book on Patton or something. Current events isn’t your strong suit, Tom.
