Omahan saw carnage, courage (Air Raid Pearl Harbor, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20091207/NEWS01/712079929

By Dane Stickney
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

The world changed mere feet from Ed Guthrie 68 years ago today.

He was reading a comic book while sitting on the deck of a Navy repair ship docked at Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes snapped him to attention. He watched as they bombed battleships. The planes flew so low that Guthrie could see smiles on the faces of the Japanese pilots. The 91-year-old Omaha resident still remembers the red scarves they wore.

Within minutes, he was in a boat navigating through water turned black with leaking fuel from sinking ships. He and others were pulling bodies from the water — some dead, some alive. As he worked, a second wave of Japanese fighters buzzed by, dropping bombs and torpedoes.

“The water just erupted with explosions,” he said.

The way Guthrie sees it, in some ways, those eruptions haven't ended.

Pearl Harbor, he says, broke a peaceful lull in U.S. history and turned the country into a warring global power. Pearl Harbor pushed America deep into World War II. Ever since, U.S. troops have been stationed around the globe. They've fought in Korea and Vietnam. They escalated arms to match the Russians. They've fought in the Middle East three times since 1991.

The Guthrie family has been right in the middle of it all. After Pearl Harbor, Guthrie served in the Pacific Theater, preparing boats for island invasions. His son, Jim Guthrie, and son-in-law, Paul Murphy, fought in Vietnam. One grandson, Adam Staebell, served in the Marines in Bosnia. Another grandson, Ryan Edward Guthrie, serves in the Army and is stationed in Iraq.

“Ever since Pearl Harbor, we've been in some kind of war,” said Guthrie, the only Omaha member of the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. “It's just not good.”

Guthrie isn't happy with President Barack Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan. He sees the wars in the Middle East as drastically different from the one he fought in nearly 70 years ago.

FULL story at link.

[pinto]

1. Kick

:kick:

[izquierdista]

2. Ending the constant state of war

It wasn't just in the jungles of the Philippines that you would find crazies that won't lay down their arms. It's in the Pentagon, too. They create their own reason for being and growing, aided along by their contractor cohorts, who never saw a weapons proposal they couldn't bid on.