The Opinion Blog

The Day That Lives In Infamy

Sunday’s editorial recalls how the Japanese attack in 1941 changed the course of history, and contemplates the lessons it has for the present.

Monday is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which pulled the United States into the wars already raging in Europe and the Pacific. It was war that most Americans did not want. Japanese forces also attacked on Dec. 7, 1941 throughout the Pacific region, including the Philippine Islands, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island, Malaya and Hong Kong.

“Isolationism and the America Firsters vanished overnight,” writes Winston Groom in his new book “1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls.” Americans everywhere “went around in a kind of daze, the conflagration enveloping the entire globe now reeling in their minds. For nearly a year they had known the thing was there and had groped to make out its form and nature and to comprehend how it came to be and have so much power. . . . It was a true world war now, and America was in it to the hilt.”

Obama 'celebrates' America's foreign decline

Ripped from the wires ... Columnist Charles Krauthammer takes a more masculine view of Obama's overseas performance last week:

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

'When you're the big dog, you can afford to smile'

Ripped from the wires ... Kathleen Parker takes issue with those who argue that President Obama wasn't quite manly enough during his recent overseas trip:

 By KATHLEEN PARKER

A few decades on the planet confirm a certain consistency among males in their approach to love and war.

Suffice to say, there is usually much talk of sabers, missiles and such. "Speak softly and carry a big stick'' was how Teddy Roosevelt framed his foreign policy.

Dick Cheney aspired to be a just man

Ripped from the wires ... In his weekly New York Times piece, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard offers this positive assessment of Vice President Cheney (with an aside on Gov. Blagojevich):

By WILLIAM KRISTOL

You gotta love Dick Cheney.

OK, OK ... you don't have to. But consider this exchange with Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday'':

WALLACE: Did you really tell Sen. Leahy, bleep yourself?

CHENEY: I did.

Writing off the U.S. economy? Not so fast

Ripped from the wires ... Do you believe the U.S. economy is headed down the global sewer? A Georgetown University business prof sets you straight:

By James P. Moore Jr.

For months now, the nation's economic obituary has been splashed across the front pages of nearly every newspaper in the country. Journalists and pundits alike have warned that America's long-running global dominance has come to a screeching halt, eclipsed by growing markets in such places as China and India and frittered away by our own mismanagement, excesses and myopic approach to the future. We're long past due for a reality check. The United States and the incoming Obama administration face formidable challenges, but the country is by no means on its last legs. Here are a few key myths that need to be dispelled.

We need to reinvent the global economy

Ripped from the wires ... Britain's prime minister makes the case for a more unified and coordinated global economic system:

By Gordon Brown

This is a defining moment for the world economy.

We are living through the first financial crisis of this new global age. And the decisions we make will affect us over not just the next few weeks but for years to come.

Blame McCain for Saakashvili's Russia blunder

From the afternoon e-mail ... Whose fault is it that the Georgia president thought he could take on Russia and we would help him get away with it? John McCain's, says Gerald Plume:

How did Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ever get the idea he could prevail in South Ossetia against Russia? How could he have missed or disregarded the signs that Putin was spoiling for this fight? Did he really think the U.S. would rush in and support his fight against Moscow? Where did Saakashvili ever get the idea that the U.S. would step in?

World changed for the worse this summer

Ripped from the wires ... Harold Meyerson notes that a new undemocratic world order is rising -- and that the U.S. has diminishing power to shape it:

By Harold Meyerson

On or about last Friday, the world changed. With two very different coming-out parties -- the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and the invasion of Georgia -- China and Russia put everyone on notice that the power relationships of the past have been reshuffled and that formidable new powers are challenging the established order.

From Vladimir Putin's inbox ...

Ripped from the wires ... Kathleen Parker "reports" on three recent e-mails to Russia's Vladimir Putin:

By KATHLEEN PARKER

From President George W. Bush:

Dear Vlad:

Beijing is weird. First of all, you can't breathe the air. Second, how 'bout those drummers? Sure, they're perfect, but that's the point. A billion Chinese see 2,000 drummers in sync and say, "Well done, my little emperor son.'' I see 2,000 drummers all moving with one motion and I'm thinking: "Whoa.'' Can anybody say MIL-I-TAR-Y PRE-CI-SION?

Mutual treachery begets war in the Caucasus

Ripped from the wires ... For those who are curious about the pop-up war between Russia and Georgia, here's a nice explanation of how it came about:

By Thomas de Waal

LONDON -- In the space of a few days, a catastrophe has unfolded in the Caucasus, sparked by a conflict over a tiny piece of land. It is a conflict that easily could have been averted.

South Ossetia is a tiny and vulnerable place with more than 75,000 inhabitants in a patchwork of villages and one sleepy provincial town in the foothills of the Caucasus.