Sucker punched - again

"Back to the present. It is 2020, and we have been sucker punched once again. Not by Japanese Zeros attacking our ships, not by Muslim terrorists flying jetliners into buildings - this time we are being attacked by an invisible virus."

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. The day which will "live in infamy". Next year will be the 80th anniversary of this surprise attack on our fleet, docked at Pearl Harbor. It is also our first "sucker punch". History has shown we probably should have seen it coming. But we did not, and it catapulted our "isolationist" country into the throws of World War II. Japan had awoken the "sleeping giant", and the United States not only helped defeat the Axis Powers, but it was the start of this nation becoming a super power.

Well, that will never happen again! Nobody will ever "sucker punch" us again! That is until the warning shot came in 1993. That is when radial Muslims tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Only by luck, the attack failed. That should have been a red flag for us. The radical Muslims could try that again. But we got wrapped up in other things, including the 2000 election, which really turned out to be a cluster. The 1993 World Trade Center attack? That was so very yesterday. Then September 11, 2001 came. Sucker punched again.

Now I will digress for a minute. On one of my active duty experiences, I was stationed at a cryptology station in northern Maine. Upon arrival, I met with the CO to get my assignment. He gave me the most unusual, yet interesting assignments I had in my Naval career. The CO wanted me to "think outside the box", think like a Russian terrorist, and come up with three different ways I could sabotage the station, and take it off line.

In the armed forces, we are taught to think like "good guys". For two weeks, I had to think like a "bad guy". I turned my report in before I left, and the CO loved it. Of the three scenarios, one of them he never thought of. And he agreed that scenario was plausible and could take the station off line for a long period of time. 

Back to the present. It is 2020, and we have been sucker punched once again. Not by Japanese Zeros attacking our ships, not by Muslim terrorists flying jetliners into buildings - this time we are being attacked by an invisible virus. It caught us totally unprepared. It shouldn't have - as we have had uninvited virus' come here before. Many of which came from China. 

We need people in our government to think outside the box more. Come up with plausible scenarios which can screw up our lives. Kill people. Stunt our economy. We need to predict and prevent the next sucker punch. Whatever it is, from visible to invisible, we need to take a "do better" in preventing the next sucker punch. We owe that to ourselves, our kids, and our grandchildren.