-Eric
In any case, Islam is not a race, it's a religion. Anyone can join, no messy baptisms or circumcisions needed. All you have to do is profess your belief, and you're in. There's no central registry, so it is impossible to say who is a Muslim.
Was it immoral for FDR to intern some west coast Japanese, in order to protect the vital secret of the broken Magic and Purple codes?
These broken codes shortened WW2 by years, and saved millions of lives, there is NO disagreement on this fact.
If the FBI had rounded up only the Japanese spies and sabateurs whom the broken codes revealed, the secret of the codes would have been revealed to the Japanese. The Japanese would have changed codes, and the war would have dragged on years longer, to an uncertain outcome, with millions more killed.
Go back to Churchill again: was it wrong to allow Coventry to be bombed with no warning? What is worse, to intern some civilians, or to allow a city to be flattened and civilians killed without a warning?
Protecting the secret of the broken codes was more valuable than Coventry, or the internment of the west coast Japanese.
Why is it that some like to go the opposite of Bill Clinton when BC does something wrong? I don't get it. MM is dead wrong.
"The internment of innocent people based solely on their ethnic origin is, to put it mildly, indefensible. "
I think trying to justify the actions or inactions taken in a war 60+ years ago when only a few of us were alive at the time is rather futile and non productive. (But its great fun on Civl War Threads!)
As my mom says, "people today don't understand the fear we had the we might loose the war, especially in the beginning".
Off topic: Had today's media been around during WWII there would have been no allied victory, the war would have ended after our first theatre invasion, defeated by a pacifist and leftist media..."North Africa is a quagmire".
E Rocc, Physicist, you two have said it far better than I ever could.
How is it different from quarantine? Depends on internment conditions, I suppose.
I seem to recall that internment of "enemy aliens" once hostilities have been declared has been a commonly accepted practice in the western world for several hundred years. This seems to serve a dual purpose, isolating potential saboteurs and spies from their targets and protecting innocent aliens from misplaced retribution exacted by citizens enraged by the conflict.
Being targeted for internment is certainly uncomfortable and likely to inspire deep, long term resentment; but membership in an insular, unassimilated group will uneluctably lead to limit sympathy from the rest of society. Even in case of war with Vietnam breaking out again, I cannot imagine internment of American Vietnamese as they have successfully assimilated and are now as American as anyone. However, Islamists are setting themselves up for mass deportation or worse by their resistance to becoming Americans.
By the way, members of my own family changed their last name in early 1942 so it would not be so obviously Italian and my grandparents were required to register as enemy aliens (despite their three sons in military service).
So cry me a river for the Nisei, it just goes to show that war is not nice.
Quit your whining, Eric! It was only for a couple years. At least most people came out alive. My mom said there were lots of Japanese taken away in her town, and the worst thing about it was that the price of vegetables went up. Plus lawn care.