12/7, 9/11, 10/7: Politics Or Ideology
By
Leonard Zwelling
It never fails to humble. It never fails to sadden. It is Pearl Harbor.
I just made my second visit to this National Park after seventeen years away.
Immediately upon arriving, you can see why the Navy had chosen the site for the Pacific Fleet in 1941. It was meant to intimidate the Japanese who were on the move in Asia having invaded and pillaged China. It was so much closer to the Japanese mainland than California. Surely, the Japanese would never attempt to attack.
The Japanese needed the vast resources in the Pacific area to support its expansionist militarism. At the time of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese diplomats were in Washington negotiating with the United States to ease the oil embargo the U.S. had placed on Japan. The diplomats didn’t have a prayer as the military had taken over the Japanese government and it determined that war with the United States was necessary and that only a crippling of the U.S. Navy would allow that expansion to occur.
On December 7, 1941 over 300 Japanese planes from six aircraft carriers destroyed the Pacific fleet and killed thousands of Americans. American fighter planes at the air bases near-by had been parked wing tip to wing tip to defend against the threat of sabotage the military felt was coming from the 40% of the Hawaiian population of Japanese origin. The ships and the planes were sitting ducks.
But the U.S. surprised the Japanese and did not sue for peace. Instead, the Americans mobilized and, starting at Midway where four of the six aircraft carriers used in Pearl Harbor were sunk by the Americans, the Japanese were on the road to defeat.
The attack on Pearl Harbor came from a real country with political and militaristic ambitions that were impeded by the United States. That’s why the Japanese attacked.
Flash forward to 9/11/01.
The surprise attacks of that day were not perpetrated by a sovereign actor or even a real country. That was Al Qaeda exporting an extreme Islamist ideology. This was not a political attack. It was one of the largest criminal acts in all of history. It was not driven by economic imperatives or the need for natural resources. It was driven by hate and rage against Western freedom.
Flash forward again to 10/7/23 as the fighters of Hamas butchered innocent Israelis in the name of an ideology of Islam capturing the land “between the river and the sea” and the ancient face of antisemitism.
In pondering these facts, I am left to wonder what the greatest threat to our nation is today, political actors like Russia or ideologic ones like Iranian proxies. The answer has to be both.
Just as we had grown complacent in 1941 and 2001 and Israel had done the same in 2023, the next leaders of the United States must reinvest in our defense against state actors as well as ideologic ones. We must not allow ourselves to be victims of a surprise attack again. This time it is likely to be a cyberattack and it could come from a state actor like Russia or Iran or an ideologic one like Hamas.
While we must be willing to live in a world of state actors with whom we share no values like Russia, China, and Iran, we must also prevent any actors, state or otherwise, from surprising us.
If you have never been to Pearl Harbor, it is worth the long flight to get there. It is sobering to stand atop the sunken hull of the U.S.S. Arizona where 1177 Americans died and over 900 are still entombed.
Our leaders need to go annually to remember why they have jobs. The number one job of the President of the United States is to keep us safe—from political actors and ideologic ones.
But most of all, what ties these three events together, is that those attacked suffered from a lack of imagination as to what might befall them. That can never happen again either. The United States and Israel must think one step ahead of the enemy to prevent any further surprise attacks of any kind.
Imagine the worst. Then imagine worse. Then prevent it preemptively.
