In the prologue of Victor Davis Hanson's The Soul of Battle, he describes the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945. A total of 334 B-29's loaded with Napalm bombed Japan. The losses were horrific: 80,000 dead, 40,918 wounded and over 250,000 buildings destroyed. U.S. Losses were 14 planes.

Then he makes this incredible statement regarding U.S. public opinion on this action, and the following similar attacks:

There was to be no public objection to LeMay's burning down the industrial and residential center of the Japanese empire - too many stories about Japanese atrocities toward subjugated peoples and prisoners of war had filtered back to the American people. To a democratic nation in arms, an enemy's unwarranted aggression and murder is everything, the abject savagery of its own retaliatory response apparently nothing.

In some ways, the terrorism we face today is similar to the imperial Japanese army. Both exhibited wanton disregard for the lives of their enemies. Yet today, the American media and a portion of her public are screaming - not about the execution of Nick Berg and the American contractors in Fallujah, but about the mistreatment of a few enemy prisoners at the hands of a few dishonorable U.S. soldiers.

How many 9/11's will it take to galvanize the resolve of the United States and the Coalition members to truly seek to destroy terrorism in the same way it sought to remove the Japanese threat in 1945?