Sixty-five years ago today, Japan launched its sneak attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour. The day before the attack, the Soviet army stopped the Germans on the outskirts of Moscow.
On these two days, December 6 and December 7, 1941, the outline of the world order to come over the next half century became dimly visible.
The Americans, who had wrestled with their attitude to Hitler’s war, were suddenly forced into a Pacific and a European war. From the disaster of Pearl Harbour, the American Empire (largely a Western Hemisphere affair until then) was catapulted into a true world empire. And the Soviet Union gave the first convincing demonstration that it would survive Hitler’s invasion.
This week the Baker-Hamilton Report, and Defense Secretary Designate Robert Gates in testimony before Congress, have said that the U.S. is not winning the war in Iraq. Just over a month ago, before the Republicans lost the Congressional elections, this would have been heresy. The Baker-Hamilton Report, not only advocates a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq sometime in 2008, but calls for negotiations with Syria and Iran, leading examples of states that sponsor terror according to Bush administration orthodoxy.
While releasing his report, James Baker, patrician elder statesman from the Bush Sr. administration, reminded the media that it was American policy to talk to foes during the more than four decades of the Cold War.
On December 7, 1941, Americans resolved that they would mobilize their unmatched industrial might to defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (war with Germany came four days later when Hitler declared war on the United States.)
In the United States, the theory that, given a chance, war can yield stellar results, lasted only until the Korean War in the early 1950s. Fought to a standstill by North Korean and Chinese troops, Americans turned to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean conflict. Eisenhower, the conqueror of Western Europe, enjoyed the standing to negotiate a halt to the fighting. That was something Lyndon Johnson, who was not a war hero did not dare to do a decade later when he inherited the presidency and the Vietnam War. The quagmire and humiliation of Vietnam (ending with Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in August 1974), inoculated the American people and future administrations against serious wars, that is, until George W. Bush came to office. (George Bush Sr.’s first Gulf War was a cake walk with few American casualties, but he was wise enough not to march to Baghdad.)
September 11, 2001, the terror attack on New York and Washington, was the defining event in the presidency of George W. Bush. It was regularly compared to Pearl Harbour in the weeks following the attack. But September 11 did not turn out the way Pearl Harbour did. While Pearl Harbour provoked the rise of an American global empire, September 11 spawned two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of them going badly for the United States. While the New York Times still calls the Afghan conflict “the good war”, it too will not end in a glorious American victory.
December 7, Pearl Harbour Day, is usually an occasion for Americans to watch war movies and to remind themselves that they must never allow themselves to be taken by surprise by any foe again. This year, two-thirds of a century on from the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “would live in infamy”, Americans are contemplating the limits of the utility of force.
On these two days, December 6 and December 7, 1941, the outline of the world order to come over the next half century became dimly visible.
The Americans, who had wrestled with their attitude to Hitler’s war, were suddenly forced into a Pacific and a European war. From the disaster of Pearl Harbour, the American Empire (largely a Western Hemisphere affair until then) was catapulted into a true world empire. And the Soviet Union gave the first convincing demonstration that it would survive Hitler’s invasion.
This week the Baker-Hamilton Report, and Defense Secretary Designate Robert Gates in testimony before Congress, have said that the U.S. is not winning the war in Iraq. Just over a month ago, before the Republicans lost the Congressional elections, this would have been heresy. The Baker-Hamilton Report, not only advocates a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq sometime in 2008, but calls for negotiations with Syria and Iran, leading examples of states that sponsor terror according to Bush administration orthodoxy.
While releasing his report, James Baker, patrician elder statesman from the Bush Sr. administration, reminded the media that it was American policy to talk to foes during the more than four decades of the Cold War.
On December 7, 1941, Americans resolved that they would mobilize their unmatched industrial might to defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (war with Germany came four days later when Hitler declared war on the United States.)
In the United States, the theory that, given a chance, war can yield stellar results, lasted only until the Korean War in the early 1950s. Fought to a standstill by North Korean and Chinese troops, Americans turned to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean conflict. Eisenhower, the conqueror of Western Europe, enjoyed the standing to negotiate a halt to the fighting. That was something Lyndon Johnson, who was not a war hero did not dare to do a decade later when he inherited the presidency and the Vietnam War. The quagmire and humiliation of Vietnam (ending with Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in August 1974), inoculated the American people and future administrations against serious wars, that is, until George W. Bush came to office. (George Bush Sr.’s first Gulf War was a cake walk with few American casualties, but he was wise enough not to march to Baghdad.)
September 11, 2001, the terror attack on New York and Washington, was the defining event in the presidency of George W. Bush. It was regularly compared to Pearl Harbour in the weeks following the attack. But September 11 did not turn out the way Pearl Harbour did. While Pearl Harbour provoked the rise of an American global empire, September 11 spawned two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of them going badly for the United States. While the New York Times still calls the Afghan conflict “the good war”, it too will not end in a glorious American victory.
December 7, Pearl Harbour Day, is usually an occasion for Americans to watch war movies and to remind themselves that they must never allow themselves to be taken by surprise by any foe again. This year, two-thirds of a century on from the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “would live in infamy”, Americans are contemplating the limits of the utility of force.
2 comments:
Off topic-Another Book,"The Acadians",awesome.Can't wait to get my copy.
Recall that it was Britain that goaded the US to war.
Starting in the 1930's with the book "PROPAGANDA IN THE NEXT WAR"
( http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/PROPAGANDA_IN_THE_NEXT_WAR_FOREWORD.html )
And finding its fruition in the McCollum Memo:
(
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/McCollum/ )
SUMMARY:
"On October 7, 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence submitted a memo to Navy Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox (whose endorsement is included in the following scans). Captains Anderson and Knox were two of President Roosevelt's most trusted military advisors.
The memo, scanned below, detailed an 8 step plan to provoke Japan into attacking the United States. President Roosevelt, over the course of 1941, implemented all 8 of the recommendations contained in the McCollum memo. Following the eighth provocation, Japan attacked. The public was told that it was a complete surprise, an "intelligence failure", and America entered World War Two.
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