Lessons of Pearl Harbor

David M. Shribman has an interesting column on the subject of Pearl Harbor:

"Never again will we present so easy a target to potential adversaries. But now we need to revise our perspective, and consider that for all of the great change we are experiencing now, the greatest change in our history may have begun when 354 Japanese planes arced toward Hawaii, destroying 188 American aircraft and sinking or damaging 18 American warships in a great American tragedy and military defeat. 'Pearl Harbor continues to haunt its survivors, as well as their descendants,' Thurston Clarke wrote in the evocative volume 'Pearl Harbor Ghosts.' But as we consider what happened here, let us remember, too, how almost every ship — though not the USS Utah, USS Arizona or USS Oklahoma — was put back into service, and that America recovered, and then some.Remember Pearl Harbor, but remember its other lessons, as well."