Infamy

[WilliamPitt]

Living in shock and infamy, years later
By James Carroll
December 7, 2009

WHEN THE waves of Japanese dive bombers flew in on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the good news was that the US Navy had previously sent its Pacific fleet aircraft carriers out to sea. Otherwise, they would have been sunk or damaged at their moorings as the fleet’s battleships were. It was those surviving carriers that turned the tables on Japan little more than a half-year later at the Battle of Midway.

The Japanese preemption marked what Franklin Roosevelt called “a day which will live in infamy,’’ and in the American memory its character as a sneak attack has signified the height of political immorality. (“Now I know what Tojo felt like,’’ Robert Kennedy remarked as he contemplated an attack on Cuba, “when he was planning Pearl Harbor.’’)

(snip)

Pearl Harbor was revived as a milestone in the American imagination on Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, 9/11 replaced Pearl Harbor as the motivating trauma of American power, but once again the shock was mostly to our sense of national superiority. The anger sparked by the Japanese assault was in direct proportion to the fear it instilled, but in the conventional war that followed there were multiple channels into which that fear could run. Bloody as the battles were, the enemy was readily identified, and definitions of victory and defeat were clear.

Not so after 9/11. Instead of battleships and aircraft carriers, the real danger comes from variations on box cutters and explosive charges hidden in shoes. The revelation is that such small bore threat can frighten a nation as much as an armada. After Pearl Harbor, the scale and meaning of mobilization was crystal clear. After 9/11, with our futile, misdirected, ongoing wars of vengeance, which lay nary a glove on Al Qaeda, the mobilization has mainly been against ourselves.

The rest: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/07/living_in_shock_and_infamy_years_later/

[lyonn]

1. It's too bad the U.S. hasn't figured out how to outsmart

the Muslim Fundamentalist instead of trying to take over, or try to convince muslim countries how to conduct their politics and beliefs. Best I can tell our bombs, etc., only stir the crazies. As they say, it only takes them getting lucky once, in a war position we must try to cover all bases and that's nearly impossible. We have done covert actions since we became a country, why not continue sneaking around and getting the bad guy when no one is looking? Nope, send those troops overseas and stomp around someone elses turf. That is going to slow the radicals down?

I'm pissed, what's that saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Invading countries to catch a few radical leaders makes no sense.

[Hissyspit]

4. The point was never to outsmart the Muslim fundamentalist.

[wizstars]

2. The example of the Munich Olympics should be instructive to us..

Israel didn't mobilize militarily against the perpetrators of the Olympic massacre. Instead, they quielty sent the Mossad out to track them down. And when it came time to knock them off, they did it quietly and ruthlessly, only letting those perps know that it was the Mossad doing it and why. We could learn a lot from that policy.

[Time for change]

3. James Carroll is a terrific author

His "House of War", essentially a history of the Pentagon's role in our country, is a masterpiece, one of the best books I've ever read.

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. Good read!

[David Zephyr]

6. 1 Trillion Dollars, eight years of wars, hundreds of thousands of troops, over 1 million dead and...

1.) we never got the billionaire Saudi who orchestrated the crime
2.) we never got the "weapons of mass destruction" or the "oil" that would "pay for the war"
3.) we never have caught the lousy little 100 jerks in Al Qa-eda hiding in Pakistan

Other than that, it's been just a brilliant use of American blood and treasure.

Senator John Kerry had it right from the very beginning: this should have been a multi-national police action.

I like to point out here from time to time that it is still Bill Clinton who has come the closest to killing Osama bin Laden, and he did it without starting a war, without losing one soldier's life and without bankrupting the country. Bill Clinton quietly came the closest to killing Osama. And they mocked him when he did it.

And, I'm still pissed about the 3,000 that perished on 9/11. Why?

Because we have attacked just about everyone in the entire Middle East who had nothing to do with 9/11, except the handful that did: That tiny little crowd whose scary "WMD" was box cutters.

Go figure.

[whyverne]

7. The Japanese are too smart to declare "Bush Doctrine"

for Pearl Harbor, but I'll bet some of them think it. After all, they didn't attack our ships in San Francisco. Why was our war fleet in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

A couple of nuclear weapons do go a long way towards convincing others that whatever we do is "right" and whatever they do is "wrong".

The difference between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor is that 9/11 could have been prevented by a half dozen FBI agents with their pistols. "Sorry, you are not getting on that plane, we have reports that there is some trouble afoot."