Time to stand up, I think

When I was a young man in the Navy and we were embroiled in the war in Vietnam, the anti-war folks had a saying of sorts. You'd see it on their protest signs, on T-shirts, and various other places. It went like this:

What if they gave a war and nobody came?

Although I was young and stupid, I could easily see the logical flaw in that.

Well, it has come to pass... "They" have given a war and we have not shown up.  You see, it will never happen that nobody will show up. Ever heard of a party where the host felt it was a failure because "nobody came?" Somebody showed up, maybe only a small number but it became their party, not the host's. And that is exactly what would happen with war. Someone will show up and they will end up the winners.

Japan and Germany did this in the 30's... they went to war and the other side didn't show up. Did they stop waging war? No. They widened their war, they expanded their aggression, they sought more and more. They were emboldened.

We would rather that people not be like this, not be war like. But that is fantasy. People are war like, they are aggressive. And they are encouraged by success.

It is long past time that we recognized this. It cost us a "bloody nose" at Pearl Harbor before we showed up in 1941.  It took that attack to wake us up. I would have thought 9/11/2001 would have done it this time around.