“Historically, despite Washington’s experienced and cogent advice to make due preparations for war, it is traditional for us to be inadequately prepared.”
Captain Ernest King USN, 1932
On December 7th, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched an attack on the United States military installations on the Island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. Six Japanese aircraft carriers launched 350 combat aircraft in two attack waves. 2,403 Americans died at Pearl Harbor, and another 1,178 were wounded. Eighteen ships were sunk, including five battleships. 188 American aircraft were destroyed. Beginning at 7:55 AM, and lasting only ninety minutes, the brilliantly conceived and executed Japanese aerial attack catapulted the United States into World War II. On the same day, Japanese naval and air forces attacked the British in Malaya, the Dutch in Java, invaded Siam, and attacked the American forces on Guam, the Philippine Islands, Wake Island, and Midway Island. In attacks spanning the Pacific Ocean, the Imperial Japanese forces handed the Americans and their allies a continuous series of defeats, until the US Navy finally destroyed the heart of the Japanese carrier striking force at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
The Japanese attack could not have been avoided unless the Americans, British, and Dutch governments had given in to Japanese demands and effectively abandoned the South Pacific to the Emperor. However, the loss of life, and the material damages, could have been much less severe if… If the US government had known that Japan was planning those attacks.
Unfortunately that last statement is untrue. Thanks to radio intercepts, US intelligence agencies did know that the Japanese were coming. They just didn’t know exactly when or where. However, the State Department, the War Department, the Navy Department, and the President of the United States all knew that war was coming, and knew to within a day or so of when it would start. Due to government secrecy, and bureaucratic fumbling, nothing was done with that information until far to late. It took months for the US to “get it’s act together”, but World War II ended four years later, at a cost of trillions of dollars and tens of millions of human lives, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On September 11, 2001, a small group of suicidal Islamic terrorists hijacked four US airliners and used them as improvised missiles to attack the United States. Two of those airliners struck the Twin Towers in New York City, bringing them down. One struck the Pentagon in Arlington Va. One aircraft, it’s target the US Capitol building, crashed into a Pennsylvania field when the passengers decided to fight the terrorists rather than remain in their seats meekly waiting to be killed. In addition to the nineteen hijackers, 2,973 people, predominately civilians, died in the course of this attack.
Many government officials have denied any similarity between Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Another untruth, at least in part. US intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies very definitely did know that an attack was coming. They also had information indicating how it would occur. What they didn’t know was the exact timing or location. And once again, due to government secrecy, and bureaucratic fumbling, nothing was done with that information until far to late.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, a few heads had to roll to assuage public opinion, primarily those of Admirals Stark and Kimmel, along with that of Army General Short. Now, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented. Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and appointed chairman of the 9/11 commission by President Bush, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame. "This was not something that had to happen." said Kean, “They simply failed”. Politics? Perhaps, but that’s the name of the game when government fails in it’s duty to protect the nation.
To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political minefield, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on the administration statement that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building. "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said then national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on May 16, 2002. How is it possible that we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records stating that this is a distinct possibility? It’s simple really. Government secrecy, jealous bureaucratic infighting, and simple “careerism” prevented the various agencies from comparing notes, and connecting the dots.
Still, even with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack, there was little that could have been done to stop it. As in 1941, the US military was in no position to stop those airliners, or any aerial attack against the US. The United States Air Defense Command was deactivated as a budget cutting measure in the 1970’s, because as one congressman stated, “there’s no longer a threat of aerial attack against targets in this country.” Only a handful of Air National Guard fighter aircraft are tasked with air defenses, along with a mirade of other duties.
(This article is being written the morning of December 7th, 2006, at nearly 8 AM, the hour of the Japanese sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, sixty-five years ago. I’m sitting at my desk, remembering the family stories about two of my fathers cousins, young sailors who are still aboard the USS Arizona.)
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