I guess I wasn’t the only person to note the 1,347 day milestone. I haven’t seen it mentioned in the mainstream media, except for this column by Randall J. Larsen in the Washington Post:

I find it difficult to understand why, 1,347 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States remains inadequately prepared for the two most dangerous threats facing it: biological and nuclear terrorism.

Why 1,347 days? That was the number of days between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day -- a reasonable measurement of progress. Starting from an abysmally unprepared posture, the United States required only 1,347 days to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. I do not expect a World War II-style victory in the war on terrorism, but after 1,347 days it is reasonable to ask: Who is in charge of defending this nation against what most experts agree are the only two existential threats we face -- biological and nuclear terrorism? The disturbing answer: no one.

It seems most of the people who noticed the milestone were bloggers. Ed Fitzgerald:

I’m not claiming I’m the victim of any kind of post-traumatic stress disorder: I’ve been able to go about my life fairly normally in the past four years -- but, on the other hand, I’m still not “over it” completely either. And nothing, not one single blessed thing, that the Bush administration and their neo-con and religious right allies have done since that day has made things any better, for me or for the rest of the world. Instead of using that awful event as a springboard to something good, a potential revolution in the way the world works, they seized on it as a convenient catch-all excuse to put across their warped agenda of rights rollbacks and tax giveaways to the rich and powerful, and leveraged it to reinvigorate the right-wing’s culture war against rationality and secularism.

Another blog, called Bush Lied Again, contrasts Bush’s Mission Accomplished declaration with the end of World War II:

US troops encircle Germans in the Ruhr, Allies liberate Buchenwald and Belsen concentration camps, Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes president, and on May 7, Germany unconditionally surrenders. In August, the US drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki 3 days later. Japan surrenders unconditionally.

Mission Accomplished. (Really!)

Another blogger, Angry Bear:

But this milestone does provide the opportunity to compare the effectiveness of America’s responses to both crises. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, America came together, and with determination, shared sacrifice, and the effective and focused leadership of FDR, George C. Marshall, and many others, America and her allies were victorious.

After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, America once again came together. However, within months of 9/11, the Bush Administration lost focus and never clearly defined a winnable [Global War on Terror].