Fourth of July

On the 6th of June, 1944, less than two years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor catapulted the United States into WW II, armed forces of the United States, England, Canada, and Free France, landed on the French coastline in a province called Normandy. The Invasion Fleet was drawn from 8 different navies, comprising 6,938 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,125 transport vessels, ships and landing craft, and 1,600 support vessels which included a number of merchant vessels, put more than 170,000 allied troops ashore. In the initial phase of the Normandy operation, The US Army Air Force’s Ninth Troop Carrier Command alone dispatched 1,662 aircraft and 512 gliders, landing 17,262 troops behind enemy lines. The names of Utah and Omaha Beaches became permanently enshrined in American military history. The Normandy invasion was, without a doubt, the single greatest military effort in recorded history. The success at Normandy, and the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany, was the defining moment in American history and aptly demonstrated the great feats an aroused, free people were capable of.

A couple of days ago we celebrated the 4th of July, this year it was our nation’s 231st anniversary. The United States has seen a lot of change over the course of those two hundred and thirty-one years! We’ve gone from being thirteen rather insignificant colonies squabbling with the home country (and each other usually), to fifty states comprising the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. From holding a small strip of land down our eastern seaboard, we now take up a large part of the North American continent. From only a few million hard scrabble colonists, we’ve expanded to around three hundred million people with ancestors hailing from just about every land imaginable. (And we’re still squabbling with each other as well.)

For the first seventy five years as a nation, the US was primarily an agricultural country slowly encroaching into the interior of the continent. During that time we proved ourselves to be a “mind our own business” bunch of people, tough, durable, and inventive. We certainly weren’t a world power of any note, and we managed to keep friendly relations with (almost) all other countries. Our Navy was small but potent, our merchant marine sailed the seven seas, wheeling and dealing in every port of the world. The small American Army wasn’t much to brag about, but it was backed by a citizen militia that, while having a problem in taking orders from higher authority, certainly did know how to shoot! Our industrial capability wasn’t very large either, but it was growing by leaps and bounds, and was nearly always “cutting edge”. Our farms were easily feeding the country and a part of Europe as well. We enjoyed seemingly boundless natural resources, and we could welcome the “poor and downtrodden masses” of Europe with open arms and vast lands to be settled. Our arts and culture were a bit rough around the edges perhaps, but the world was beginning to take notice of the brash young upstart on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. All in all we were a fairly well-to-do young country, flexing our muscles, and enjoying the good life.

By the end of the Civil War in 1865, we had nearly overnight become a world power of some note. Certainly not in the same class as Britain, France, or Russia, but you might remember that when the US Army began moving toward our border with Mexico in response to a perceived violation of the Monroe Doctrine, the French under Napoleon III suddenly decided to un-annex Mexico, leaving a puppet Emperor Maximilian to face a bunch of rather angry Mexican citizens. Our farms, mines, and industry were producing more than ever, with American technology leading the world in many areas. Immigrants continued to pour in, and our national expansion was nothing short of awe inspiring.

By 1918 and the end of WW I, the United States suddenly and unexpectedly found itself one of the worlds leading financial, industrial, and political powers. When WW II ended in 1945, diplomats and politicians had to find an entirely new word to describe the position of the United States in the world hierarchy, that of a “Superpower”. And we remain the world’s leading superpower, sixty years later.

How did this amazing transformation come about? To start with, the original colonists had fled Europe for many reasons, usually religious, economic, or political. They were, for the most part, entirely fed up with established authority telling them how to worship, how to live, where to work, and what to think. European society severely restricted any possibility of individual advancement, such that if your parents were servants at the local manor house, that was usually your ultimate fate as well. Anything more than a rudimentary education was restricted to the ruling elite. Taxes were inevitably “all the market would bear”, and the possibility of owning your own land was slim indeed.

On arrival in the new world immigrants found themselves with considerably more individual independence and freedom of choice than they had ever dreamed of. Land was available at ridiculously low costs, and there was nobody around to tell you what you had to do with that land. If you had a job you didn’t like, you had the option to go elsewhere. And advanced education was available to all. The industrious flourished, leaving the lazy to fall by the wayside. Americans co-operatively met every national challenge head-on, and emerged victorious.

During the length of time that our current generation has been flailing about responding to the 9/11 attacks, the “greatest generation” of World War II rebounded from the attack on Pearl Harbor, defeated the axis powers, built a worldwide military capability second to none, built the atomic bomb, massed and organized industrial power, and laid the foundation for the network of alliances that stabilized the world for 60 years. To add icing to the cake, they put Americans on the moon by 1969. Their achievements should be an inspiration to us today as we face the present Islamic fundamentalist assault on human freedom. At present, the current generation seems to be flailing around, with no real idea of who the enemy is, or just how serious the threat is. Thanks to incessant political infighting we seem to be loosing not only the war on terror, but our national character as well. America has defeated its enemies before, and with a little cooperation we can certainly do it again.

We know how Americans respond to an attack calculated to intimidate us into submission. We saw it on the morning of 9/11, and on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.