Ryan asks...

Got a text from Ryan just now (one of many since this news broke) asking why I picked the War of 1812 to compare 9/11 to rather than Pearl Harbor.

A fair question...

I was looking for a greater cost in lives and property than 9/11... and the 2,459 servicemen and civilians that died at Pearl Harbor couldn't excede the 2,996 dead from the September attacks. I know that the last time a foreign army was actually fighting American troops on our own soil was during the 1812 War... and I had thought that the taking of Detroit in July of 1812 had been by an invading British and Canadian force. However, I was wrong. Once the "declaration" of war had been made by both sides, the first actual armed attack against the enemy was not by the British, but by the Americans.

We invaded Canada in July of 1812... and got beaten so badly that when we retreated back to Detroit, we were forced to surrender not only the town of Detroit, but most of the Michigan territory that it controlled. That defeat cost the Americans more than 3,000 troops... and I thought it the greatest loss to an invading force on American soil in our history.

However, I was wrong. So, I retract my previous comparison, and admit that no greater loss of American life can be found in our history than that suffered when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941.