Immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attack, some people compared that attack to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 12/7/1941. It now seems that the comparisons might be more appropriate than anyone could have imagined.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt administration ignored increasing signs that a surprise attack somewhere in the Pacific was imminent. And now we find, 8 months after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration did the same thing.
Yet, in fairness to Bush, the most that could be said of officials in his administration is that they’re guilty of “gross negligence.”
There is considerable evidence that Roosevelt, on the other hand, was guilty of a much more serious offense—at best “conscious disregard” and at worst “knowledge aforethought,” given FDR’s fervent desire to involve the United States into World War II (despite his public assurances to the contrary) and given his continuous efforts to “squeeze” the German and Japanese military into making the first attack on U.S. forces.
One can understand the Bush administration’s desire to avoid an investigation into “what it knew and when it knew it” regarding 9/11. But why do federal officials continue to steadfastly resist opening the files on 12/7/41 some 60 years after the Pearl Harbor attacks?
