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?
