I don’t understand why we celebrate Pearl Harbor Day. After all, we lost, we got bombed by surprise, we bungled it.

In the early nineties  when Kosovo was trying to get away from the yoke of the Serbs, much was made of the fact that a sacred Serbian battlefield was in Kosovo and the Serbs didn’t want to let that battlefield leave greater Serbia. Several newscasters, by way of showing how wrong the Serbs were, commented on how old grudges never die in Serbia and the Battle of Kosovo Field – lost by the Serbs over 600 years ago in June 1389 – was, stupidly, still a big deal.

But we do the same thing in celebrating Pearl Harbor (we even have Pearl Harbor license plates in California so, I guess, the car owner can remember – every time they go to their car – that 2400 sailors and soldiers were killed on December 7th). It is the same thing with The Alamo lost by a hearty group of volunteers fighting for their right to keep slaves which Mexico had outlawed. All three battles were loses.

Why don’t we celebrate April 18 when we killed – by surprise in semi-Pearl Harbor fashion – Isoroku Yamamoto, commander t of the Imperial Japanese Navy that launched that attack on Pearl Harbor? Or the Doolittle Raid when we bombed Tokyo on the same date one year earlier? Or some win in the Texas war against Mexico?

I have no idea. It seems we – humans – prefer to remember when we got our ass kicked sometime in the past. Anyway, Happy Pearl Harbor Day, and many more.