It has been 73 years since the Imperial Japanese Navy launched its surprise attack on U.S. Naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The date Dec. 7, 1941 has indeed lived on in infamy, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt predicted in seeking a congressional Declaration of War.

The attack indelibly changed the course of history, its repercussions still evident today. The United States, which until then had counted on the vast Atlantic and Pacific oceans to buffer it from war, took a new posture in the wake of the attack and its subsequent entry into World War II.

Abandoning a history of isolationist tendencies, the United States sought the ability to project its military might around the world and use it as a tool in achieving foreign policy goals. The United States defense spending now roughly equals the next 10 biggest defense spending nations combined.

The Japanese attack destroyed or severely damaged 20 American naval vessels, killing almost 2,500 American sailors and soldiers, including 1,177 of the 1,512 crewmen on board the USS Arizona when an 1,800-pound bomb smashed through the deck into its ammunition magazine.

The Japanese strategy was ultimately self-defeating, enraging and uniting the people of America in their quest to defeat Japan and its allies, Germany and Italy. What Japan began would end with the first and only use of atomic weapons and the surrender and occupation of its island nation.

While American military might has grown, the Japanese have foresworn war, their 1947 constitution reading: "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes."

Its energies and ingenuity turned to peaceful production; Japan emerged as a major economic power.

Now the United States faces a new threat from Islamic jihadist terrorists, who on Sept. 11, 2001 launched a devastating surprise attack on the mainland nearly 60 years after Pearl Harbor. This new enemy does not control any nation that can surrender. With each defeat, these fanatics mutate and reemerge in different forms and places. Finding unity of purpose in defeating such an enemy is far more difficult, yet it is a challenge the nation cannot afford to shirk.