[Jeff Higgins]

Face it, we were ALL asleep at the wheel when it mattered most. My father in law (a WWII combat vet that walked literally across North Africa in pursuit of Rommel, then all the way up Italy and into Berlin) says we were in the same state pre-WWII. Not so much with the Germans, because that wasn't really considered our problem (again), but with the Japanese. We were far too distracted with our own problems to be paying attention to anything else. Granted our problems of that era were far more serious, but the net effect was the same.

The lesson learned might be that we will always have enemies; enemies that will take advantage of us the moment we drop our guard. And not just militarily, or in the form of some kind of violent attack. It has happened economically as well.

Maybe our internal politics have finally become too divisive for our own good. We have been attacked twice in the modern era. The first time, we were busy trying to rebuild a nation economically; working together on that. The second time we were dealing with a President's personal indescretions; fighting each other on that, on some contrived political battlefield made up for us by our favorite parties' leaders. My how times have changed. My how they have played us...