We understood World War II.
Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and in the Philippines.
So we were forced into a worldwide war that already had been raging for many years because of Japanese aggression in China, and because Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Fascist Benito Mussolini’s Italy had initiated aggression in Europe and Africa — and against American merchant ships on the high seas.
Americans stood as one, armed and fought at huge cost in lives and expense — and won victory in 1945.
However, we had hardly celebrated and caught our collective breath before we were confronted by the evils of Communist aggression as the Soviet Union created the long Cold War.
But after great anxiety, cost and dangerous events over several years, that threat almost miraculously decreased through internal Soviet dissolution.
But meanwhile, we were confronted by the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Korea ended in great losses, then stalemate, with Communist North Korea still threatening today.
The Vietnam War ended as Americans simply grew tired of costly victories that were indecisive, leading to U.S. withdrawal, with Communists filling the vacuum. Fortunately, Vietnam somehow now has disappeared from our current major world concerns.
In all those wars, we knew who our enemies were, where they were, and what they were seeking to do.
Today, however, we still do not enjoy peace. We are engaged in three very painful, very costly, very frustrating wars that are taking American lives at high cost, and are threatening the lives of many American civilians here at home.
One of these wars is in Afghanistan, a distant and inhospitable terrain, where factional tribal forces — we center our attention on the name Taliban — conduct deadly guerrilla warfare upon us and on Afghan civilians, and in neighboring Pakistan.
Another of these wars is in Iraq, which was not pacified by the defeat and death of Saddam Hussein. As in Afghanistan, guerrilla war has continued for many years in Iraq, with decreasing but still frequent casualties among Americans and Iraqis, at great financial cost.
Our third contemporary war is against varied identifiable and unidentifiable terrorists: Remember Sept. 11, 2001, and the deadly airliner hijacking attacks upon the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington. And there continue to be other scattered, dangerous incidents in the Middle East, Africa — and inside the United States.
These enemies are hard to identify, hard to defend against, hard to thwart and are highly frustrating as they inflict varied dangers and great costs and inconveniences upon all Americans.
Most of us, fortunately, feel personally “safe,” expecting no personal danger, but bear an irritating awareness that there are enemies who seek the destruction of our way of life. We must continue to confront them, at great cost.
Life and danger in 2010 are quite different from life and danger in 1941, and in subsequent decades. But evils never cease to challenge. We must never let down our guard, or our resolution never to surrender.
Barbarians remain at our gates — and some are inside them — as we enter 2010.