My poisoned typing has generated rage from the loyal readers, yet again.
In a letter addressed to the Cap'n it stated that I'm a DumbF for linking and comparing September 11 and Pearl Harbor. It's like when I quoted Glen Beck.
Allow me to respond, oh reader of Blasphemes. First, I read Glen Beck's quote on the electronic inter-tubes. I don't watch CNN or Headline News, so I really didn't know who this jackass was. At the time - his quote assisted my position. His quote still assists my position. However, he is a bit of a jackass and for that I should have looked a little more closely at his credentials. Perhaps I should only be quoting the comedians Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken from now on? Would that make you feel better? At least I bother to attribute and link to sources. Drudge and Kozz don't make a habit of that - but I do. I think that I try hard to cutn'dapaste a little harder than the typical blogger out there. Why, because I care.
And, I don't want to be accused of flat out plagiarism.
On to the 9/11 - 2/26 - 12/5 Connections/Similarities.
When Japan attacked the United States by air on December 7, 1941 they killed some 2,500 Americans. It was a sneak attack, as the US and Japan weren't exactly friends at that point, there was no formal declaration of war. Those were the rules, and Japan didn't follow them.
The next day, President Roosevelt, in a ten minute presentation (see my previous post), asked the Congress for a declaration of war and got it. The president simply said, "Hostilities exist," and promised we would "win through to absolute victory."
29 Japanese ships were involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Twenty-two of these ships were ultimately sunk by Allied attacks, another six had to be scuttled following Allied attacks, and the remaining one was disabled. That's 29 for 29, and that's the way we used to do business. That's why we became the world's leader, that's why Americans led the wars against Japan and the Germans, and against the former Soviet Union --- 29 for 29.
Since 1979 Islamic hostilities against the US have killed about 3,500 Americans. It is imperative that we, as Americans, and the Western world understands the implications of these hostilities.
On September 11th, American soil experienced a second air raid sneak attack.
Civilian commercial airlines were hijacked by Islamic enemy forces, they were piloted by Islamic enemy forces. These enemy forces employed these aircraft as flying kamikaze missiles. This was a premeditated, calculated, and, as FDR would say, "unprovoked and dastardly attack" by enemies of the United States against the country and its people. How does this attack differ completely from Pearl Harbor?
Do we need to stop for a moment and talk about the Japanese kamikazes and think about them in terms of the contemporary Islamic terrorist kamikaze? Oh, well, the Japanese wore uniforms and put giant rising suns on their Zeros. Yeah, they at least followed a couple of rules there. Good luck getting a terrorist to wear a uniform, let alone paint a giant red crescent on their hijacked plane!
And what about the 'hostilities since 1979?' crack I made a second ago. Here's an ever so brief timeline of those 'hostilities':
Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979
Beirut, Lebanon, Embassy, 1983
Beirut, Lebanon, Marine Barracks, 1983
Kuwait, US Embassy, 1983
Beirut, Lebanon, abduction and murder of US CIA Station Chief William Buckley, 1984
Kuwait, US Embassy Annex, 1984
Lockerbie, Scotland, Pan-Am Flight 103 to New York, 1988
First New York World Trade Center attack, 1993 - The significance of this attack is enormous. This is the first major Islamic enemy attack on the continental United States and its citizens. If this had worked out, as planned, Tower One would have fallen into Tower Two - before lunchtime. 25K to 125K casualties if it had worked out? They missed the main support by, and it has been hotly debated, 5 or 7 mm. That's millimeters folks!Day of Terror Plot, 1993 - thwarted
Kuwait, Attempted assassination of President Bush, 1993
Manila Air Bomb Plot, the "Bojinka Plot," 1994 - thwarted
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Khobar Towers Military complex, 1996
Nairobi, Kenya, U.S. Embassy, 1998
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, U.S. Embassy, 1998
Los Angeles International Airport, California, 1999 - thwarted at the Canadian border
Aden, Yemen, USS The Sullivans, 2000 thwarted, bombs too heavy, sank before reaching target.
Aden, Yemen, USS Cole, 2000
Final thoughts:
We were sleeping on December 5th, and we were sleeping to the threat from Islamic extremist islamo-fascists since 1979. We got an alarm on February 26, 1993 - but we hit the snooze button. Then on September 11th, we lost 3000 lives due to inaction. Of course we over reacted, that's what we do. We're 'Mericans. But if you look at that over reaction as making up for doing nothing - it's like running a two minute drill. We've got a lot of yardage to cover, we're past the two minute warning, and we're all out of time outs.
Capn,
ReplyDeleteI see we have another false equivalency argument to shoot down. Later on we can discuss how Saddam Hussein was not actually Hitler. Before we begin, can we make an agreement that if you don’t use the term “Islamofacism” I won’t use the term “gross oversimplification”?
The only thing that Pearl Harbor and the attacks on September 11, 2001 had in common was that they were sneaky. Of course depending on which conspiracy theory you believe this was because of either incompetence or willful blindness on the part of the men in charge. But for the sake of argument let’s stick with sneaky.
I know you know the whole history leading up to Pearl Harbor because I have watched Tora Tora Tora with you on one of those weekends where you didn’t leave my house for three days because of a snowstorm. But in summary, the Japanese had a limited strategic objective which was to knock out the U.S. Fleet including the carriers so they could have free reign in the eastern Pacific and Indian Ocean. Dirty, underhanded, and ultimately self defeating on their part. But keep in mind, according to the book At Dawn We Slept, if all had gone according to plan, the declaration of war was to have been delivered to Secretary of State Cordell Hull a few minutes before the attack was to begin, they just couldn’t find a fast enough typist.
Declaration or not, the attack on Pearl Harbor was conducted by the military of a nation state following specific strategic goals against a military target of another nation state. The United States then went to war against that country and destroyed their military in the course of three and a half years. At no time was there a legitimate threat that the Japanese military would “dictate peace terms in the White House” as Adm. Yamato said would be the only way to win a war against the United States. And by the way, Kamikazes were not used at Pearl Harbor; they were used for the first time in 1944 when it was undeniable that they were losing and that the United States would only accept an unconditional surrender.
On September 11, 2001 civilians who were citizens of a country allied to the United States high jacked four airlines and used them to destroy two buildings and damage another. In excess of 3000 Americans and over 700,000 Iraqis died as a result of the attacks and still counting.
The September 11 attack then was cynically used by the administration to distract the people with fury and bloodlust into agreeing to attack another country that had nothing to do with it. (Don’t forget abject fear of weapons that never existed, remember the “smoking gun” was going to be a mushroom cloud over NYC?) How about “September 11 means we need to attack now!!” or all the other such nonsense. How about when Colin Powell flushed what little credibility he had left down the crapper at the U.N.?? Well everything that they said has been revealed to be a total lie not an intelligence failure.
My point being is that the nature, motive and results of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attack on September 11 are totally different and by linking the two, the result is an attempt to attach some honor and positive historical significance to the biggest blunder of a great power since 1914 at the very least and what probably qualifies as full on war crime at worst.
Now before your hair catches on fire with visions of islamists dancing in your head let me ask you some questions. Do you honestly in your heart believe that the nation of Iran is capable of actually destroying the United States of America? Really? Do you see the President of Iran making a grand triumphal entrance on the streets of Washington D.C. on a chariot pulled by fire breathing black stallions dragging the charred remains of the generals who dared stand against the mighty Persian War Machine?? Do you really see a man whose headquarters is a cave in the middle of Central Asia taking over the entire world and forcing us all to live under religious law?? Just because these clowns start saying things doesn’t mean they are capable of doing it. I have seen several times on your blog point out that Ahmadinejad has said he wants to wipe Israel off the map!! Let him try, Israel probably has around two hundred nuclear warheads with the capability to deliver them, if they tried, their first shot better be a damn good one. Even without nukes do you think any leader of any Islamic or Arab nation in the world has forgotten 1967 or 1973?
Now let’s say Iran is able to construct an atomic bomb despite what every credible expert on the subject in the world says (notice I said CREDIBLE). How are they going to get it anywhere? A first generation fission bomb is pretty damn big and fragile. They aren’t just going to whip up a five megaton hydrogen device the size of a cell phone on the first try. And even if they did construct something deployable within the next ten years, do you honestly think that the Iranian military high command (who are probably all veterans of the Iran Iraq war) is going to let the Iranian President who is just a figurehead anyway just give it away?
Sure you can go down the list of every major attack or attempted attack on the u.s. in the last thirty years and call it “hostilities” but all you are doing is lumping several different and disparate groups all together under one umbrella that belies any true understanding of what the hell is going on. The guys who blew up the U.S. Marine barracks in 1983 have little or nothing in common with the people that did the embassy bombings in 1998. Similar tactics were used but that doesn’t make them all part of the same movement, if it did then throw the IRA or the Basques in Spain in with all of the Muslim groups because all of them use car bombs. Does that make sense?
The way I am reading your post, you are saying that the United States is at war with the entire Muslim world and has been since 1979. That is a gross oversimplification (damn you get to say “islamofacism” now) and ironically grounds for locking up most of the surviving high ranking members of the Reagan and Bush I administrations which means I won’t dismiss it out of hand.
Sure there are state and non state actors in the world that wish to damage United States interests and kill U.S. citizens. And we need to be aware of this fact and keep an eye on them. It has been like that since the Revolution. But none of them, absolutely none of them is capable of laying waste to the United States and destroying our way of life unless we help them. We do this by living in constant fear, refusing to talk to countries we don’t like and undermining our own credibility in the world by violating our stated principles as a nation for the entire world to see. If you want to talk about a true existential threat, take a look at our relationship with the Russians since President Asshat looked into Putin’s heart, blah blah blah. He recently said he is scrapping the Conventional Forces Europe Treaty and the Intermediate Range Ballistic missle ban. Nice huh?