CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

Americans remember that we won World War II.

But nobody seems to remember how we did that.

First of all, we didn't do it alone. We were part of the Allied Forces. It was a serious strategic blunder for Japan to attack us at Pearl Harbor. We entered the war to fight alongside of Great Britain and her Commonwealth countries. It was a fatal strategic blunder for Nazi Germany to attack the Soviet Union in 1943. The Red Army fought back with brutal ferocity, and were the ones to enter Hitler's Berlin in 1945. We did our part, and can be proud of that. But we didn't win the war single-handedly.

And, secondly, much of the war effort that led to victory occurred here in the United States, not on overseas battlefields. We built war machines in numbers that overwhelmed the opposition. For example, at the start of the war, Japan had 10 aircraft carriers in commission, and the United States had 8. At the end of the war, Japan's force had been reduced to only 4 carriers. The United States had 114. For example, the German Panzer tank was more powerful and more durable than the American Sherman tank. But American Sherman tanks outnumbered Panzers by a ratio of 5 to 1. We won the war partly because of our manufacturing might.

So how are things going these days?

A decade of jingoism and cowboy highjinks severely damaged our relations with our historical Western allies. The present administration is trying to repair things, but the jingoistic and partisan GOP seems to have forgotten the idea that politics stops at the water's edge. Once most of the world saw us as the good guys. That was before Abu Ghraib. They thought our leadership could be trusted. That was before we re-elected Dubya.

And our manufacturing might? Our corporate leaders, seeking to enrich themselves more by paying less to their workforce, have relocated much of that to foreign shores and foreign workers. China now has much of our manufacturing capability and expertise. They are now the world's second largest economy, and growing rapidly while we sputter along.

We were on the winning side in 1945.

But times have changed.

There are clouds on the horizon.