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Where is the outrage?
By Michael Oren
"December 7, 1941," declared president Franklin D. Roosevelt, was "a day that will live in infamy," and the vast majority of Americans instantly agreed with him and united to avenge that infamy.
Today, by contrast, a year after an even more infamous event, Americans are divided in their feelings. They have yet to decide whether the attacks of September 11, 2001, have left them angry, hurt, traumatized or bewildered - or all of these combined.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in which numerous US Naval boats were sunk and more than 2,300 American soldiers killed, was viewed throughout the US as a criminal act of aggression. The country reacted resolutely with an immediate declaration of war, and mobilized its entire economy for battle. Universal conscription was instituted, and more than 16 million men and women served in the armed forces, while those remaining on the home front willingly submitted to a regime of belt-tightening and rationing.
America went to war not only against Imperial Japan, but also against the other Axis countries, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, as well. The GIs fought on virtually every continent, on shores and fields imponderably distant from their homes. Four hundred thousand of them never returned. Throughout, opposition to the war in the US was negligible, and there was rarely any doubt about the reasons Americans were fighting.
Impelling them always was the slogan "Remember Pearl Harbor" - it was also a popular song - and the memory of those murdered on that bloody December Sunday.
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were by any standards far more egregious than that on Pearl Harbor.
The targets were purely civilian and situated on the American mainland; significantly more casualties were incurred. Unlike Japan, which was already at war with America's allies and straining under a US embargo of vital industrial supplies, the perpetrators of September 11 had no justification for their assault beyond their hatred of Western civilization. The objective of the Pearl Harbor strike was to neutralize the American threat to Japanese designs in the Pacific. The goal of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida followers was nothing less than the destruction of the US.
Yet compared to the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the American reaction to September 11 has been restrained, if not muted.
President George W. Bush was quick to promise retribution, to divide the world between forces with and against America in the war on terror, and to identify an "axis of evil" spearheaded by Iran and Iraq. American troops were dispatched to Afghanistan where, in a swift and efficient counterstrike, they ousted the Taliban regime that had hosted bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Apart from these relatively limited initiatives, however, most of the actions taken by the US in the aftermath of September 11 were by nature defensive: heightened security at airports, tighter controls on immigration, extended powers for police and intelligence services. There was no revival of the draft, no marshaling of America's resources for war. Though flags and other expressions of patriotism abounded, Americans showed little readiness to make personal sacrifices, nor were they asked to.
Government spokesmen, meanwhile, along with many commentators, sought to downplay the dimensions of the threat facing Americans, portraying the attacks as the work of a lunatic fringe rather than of a global religious movement. Smaller but equally vocal groups, particularly within the arts and academia, opposed any attempt to retaliate for actions which, they claimed, had been provoked by noxious American policies.
Resistance to continuing the war on terror spread over the course of the year, reaching even mainstream circles. Many Republican leaders are now questioning the wisdom of Bush's intention to intervene militarily in Iraq, and recommending detente with Iran. The same European allies that urged America to fight in 1941 are now insisting that it hang fire until Saddam Hussein proves, once again and manifestly, his ties to international terror.
Today, in September 2002, Americans are looking back at the events of a year ago less with rage and unmitigated demands for justice, than with sadness and an abiding sense of pain. Books about the attacks, vivid with photographs, proliferate, but their thrust is on the suddenness of the horror, the heroism of firefighters and policemen, and the massive loss of life. The calls to arms, meanwhile, have grown fewer and dimmer.
"Remember 9/11" may still be chanted, but with a melancholy, rather than military, ring.
How, in historical terms, can one explain the radical difference in America's reaction to 12/7 and 9/11?
THE MOST obvious reason is the disparate nature of the attackers. America's enemies in 1941 were sovereign states with standing armies that could be fought, and defeated, by force of arms. Al-Qaida, on the contrary, is amorphous, extraterritorial, and secret.
Moreover, terrorist elements can be found in many friendly countries - indeed, even in the US - and the means for combating them are not at all clear-cut. Taking on the dominant powers in Europe and the Far East was one thing, grappling with a worldwide movement with hundreds of millions of potential followers is quite another. It is not even certain how victory in such a war could be demonstrated or how the enemy, even if vanquished, could surrender.
And yet, stark as they are, the differences between the enemies of today and those of 60 years ago cannot alone account for the disparity in America's response to the two attacks.
The principal reason must lie in America itself - in the profound changes that have occurred in American society, identity, and culture since the end of World War II. A half-century of unprecedented prosperity, the impact of the 1960s - the "me generation" and the nightmare of Vietnam - and a growing opposition to big government, have left many Americans wary of foreign military entanglements, unwilling to forfeit their affluence, and resentful of federal interference in their daily lives.
The thought of leaving a comfortable suburban home, of forgoing college and a high-paying job, and of - worst of all - risking and perhaps even losing one's life in a faraway desert and merely at the president's behest, is remote from the minds of many, if not most, Americans.
Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Pearl Harbor attack, later lamented that Japan had "awakened a sleeping giant." His prophecy proved entirely accurate. Today, we look back on America's recovery from that catastrophe with overwhelming awe and pride. It will be interesting to see, then, how posterity judges the aftermath of September 11. Questions may well be raised about America's failure to respond to terror more vigorously, and its preference for mourning over vengeance.
Why, historians might ask, were young people so reluctant to enlist? Why would the president entertain the leaders of the country that supplied most of the perpetrators of - and the funding for - the murder of 3,000 Americans?
One conclusion, however, is already indisputable.
Had it responded to Pearl Harbor as it did to September 11, the US would not have won World War II, and conversely, only by displaying the same selflessness, unity, and determination they showed 60 years ago, can Americans now triumph over terror. History rarely repeats itself, but for freedom's sake, Americans must assure that it does.
Michael Oren, a historian and Senior Fellow
at the Shalem Center, is author of
"Six Days of War:
June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East."
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