September 11 & Pearl Harbor

America is attacked!

The people are stunned. The President orders the military to strike back.

This all sounds very familiar to us, and it should, since it has happened twice in the past 60 years.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacks the US fleet at Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war (one had been prepared but the Japanese ambassador in Washington was late in delivering it). Thousands of American sailors and soldiers are killed and 8 battleships become twisted wrecks of metal.

The US initially reacts with horror at the unprovoked attack. Then the questions come: why did it happen, could it have been prevented and so on.

This is all followed by anger when they see young men who are their brothers, sons, and fathers, dead or dying. The Japanese have crossed the line, so they say, and now must pay!

Americans in 1941 did not place blame on themselves for the horrendous attack, though easily could have. Did not President Roosevelt order the embargo of oil to Japan, which is their lifeblood?

But this was in retaliation for Japanese bombing of civilians in China wasn’t it?

How about the American fleet at Pearl? Since the 20’s the Americans have openly prepared for war with Japan. Surely this was provocation enough to wage war. Wasn’t this a knife pointed at their throats?

Pearl Harbor is thousands of miles from Japan, though. The fleet could just have easily been based in the Philippines, if it were meant as a threat.

The American of this era does not ponder these things. All he or she sees is the smoke and the flames rising from US soil, the screams of young men, trapped in sunken ships, dying a slow death. They see burnt scrap from what were once proud symbols of US military and economic power.

They see brothers, and sons, and fathers.

After September 11, 2001, the US was accused of provoking the attack on New York by our Iraqi policy, our friendship toward Israel, troops on sacred soil, blah, blah, blah.

All we can see is the smoke from the Twin Towers as two of our own jetliners crash into the upper floors. We see people running for their lives and the choking cloud of dust as the Towers fall. From the rubble come the screams of trapped men and women, thousands with little hope of rescue.

This time it isn’t sailors or soldiers, but everyday people going about their everyday lives.
There are no threatening warships, but symbols of American prosperity and hard work.

The war on terrorism is not about George Bush, or oil, or forcing our way of life on the world.

It is about our brothers, and sons, and fathers, and sisters who were struck down without warning and without mercy on September 11, 2001.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of American was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.