Leonard Pitts Jr.:

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack that devastated the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And the United States rose in righteous fury, immediately declaring war on Thailand. Because, you know, it was in the same part of the world as Japan and the people kind of looked alike and besides, those Thais had been getting a little uppity and were due for a smackdown.

Which is not the way it happened, of course, but if Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wants to use World War II allusions to describe the war on terror, I submit that my fantasy comes a lot closer to the truth than his...