Lessons Ignored: Pearl Harbor and 9/11

On the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, it's important to take a step back and gain perspective on the lessons learned from that tragedy in American history. Better yet, evaluate whether America learned anything useful that was applied when we were again attacked on our own soil in 2001.

Why would I think there was a valuable perspective to be gained from the events of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that apply to the events of 9/11/2001? There are some important commonalities:

• A war was raging while America chose to ignore it... until it cost us dearly in lives lost on our own soil. We avoided involvement in a war that raged all across Europe and threatened democracies and, later, completely ignored the declaration of war (fatwa) from bin Laden.
• America is never fully prepared for war. The disruption of peace is not necessarily something for which we can ever be adequately prepared. It comes suddenly while America is in the sleep of denial about the conflicts of others abroad.
• The leak of classified information is nothing new and it's still scary.
• Anti-war organizations have been active in this country since before the Revolutionary War. (Back then, the Rightwing was the anti-war lobby.) While they can, at times, be voices of reason, they can also be aid and comfort to the enemy; other times, they are not the source of aid and comfort. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And so, my quest for perspective began with these assumed commonalities. It seemed certain that I would find these affirmed through research. I was quite surprised at what turned up in the course of this quest.

"Trouble," an article written by Daniel Moran in Strategic Insights, Volume I, Issue 10 (December 2002) gave me just enough perspective to affirm America's tendency to ignore conflict until it is thrust upon us. Lessons that might have been learned at that point in history are simply not that easy to apply:

[...] History can shed remarkably little light on such disconcerting moments, except to reveal that they happen all the time. The cognitive gap between peace and war is enormous, and no form of preparation or training seems fully able to bridge it. The experience of lethal violence, of mortal danger, grief, and terror, cannot be simulated, and learning from other peoples' experiences, well, it's just not that easy. When I teach my naval strategy course I usually mention that one reason the Russian fleet lost its great battle with the Japanese at Tsushima in 1905 was that the paint on its ships was flammable. The Japanese lacked armor-piercing ammunition, but their shells, bursting on hull surfaces, set superstructures ablaze, killing the crews and rendering gun turrets inoperable. Students mostly react to this little factoid with give-me-a-break bemusement: what could you expect from Rasputin's navy, after all? But then when they find out about the linoleum on the American carriers, the response turns to one of annoyance: had people back then not learned "the lessons of the past?" Which lesson would that be, exactly? Do smart things? Don't do stupid things? [...]

Read his conclusion of this article for an even sharper perspective on the difference in attitudes and purposes between our current conflict and that of World War II.

Oddly enough, I later found myself reading an article published in 1997 titled "The Big Leak" by Thomas Fleming at American Heritage. What a ghastly lesson! Leaks of classified information have not changed since Pearl Harbor -- leaks have always happened to serve on political agenda or another. Aid and comfort to the enemy to turn public opinion against a war or information to the enemy to be used as a catalyst. Our current conflict has been laced with leaks that, during World War II, were warned against in national security campaigns warning that "loose lips sink ships." This article is highly informative and enlightening. Here is a snippet regarding the Nazi's use of FDR's war plan that was leaked to the Chicago Tribune after the events at Pearl Harbor:

[...] After Pearl Harbor everyone in the United States except the FBI lost interest in the Tribune story. But the secret information revealed by Chesly Manly acquired a second life in Nazi Germany. On December 5 the German Embassy had cabled the entire transcript of the story to Berlin. There it was reviewed and analyzed as the “Roosevelt War Plan.” [...]

Whether the leaks coming out of our government during this time of war are aid and comfort or catalysts for further action, the American people continue to fail to demand prosecution for the leaking and publication of classified information. Whether those leaks expose government programs with which we disagree or they expose our knowledge of terrorist tactics, it makes no difference. When politicians and officials privy to classified information can leak this information with immunity while we blindly excuse them under the cover of the First Amendment, we are allowing our future to be manipulated at our own risk.

While the events of 9/11 are indeed different in many respects , both dates "that will live in infamy" share one common trait: the more things change, the more they stay the same. And so, it comes to this: I have gained some perspective, not on lessons learned from Pearl Harbor but from lessons ignored.