Posted on 05/17/2002 8:27:09 AM PDT by Registered
Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost. It includes gaps in intelligence, but also intelligence that, like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it. It includes the alarm that fails to work, but also the alarm that has gone off so often it has been disconnected. It includes the unalert watchman, but also the one who knows he'll be chewed out by his superior if he gets higher authority out of bed. It includes the contingencies that occur to no one, but also those that everyone assumes somebody else is taking care of. It includes straightforward procrastination, but also decisions protracted by internal disagreement. It includes, in addition, the inability of individual human beings to rise to the occasion until they are sure it is the occasion-- which is usually too late. (Unlike movies, real life provides no musical background to tip us off to the climax.) Finally, as at Pearl Harbor, surprise may include some measure of genuine novelty introduced by the enemy, and possibly some sheer bad luck.
The results, at Pearl Harbor, were sudden, concentrated, and dramatic. The failure, however, was cumulative, widespread, and rather drearily familiar. This is why surprise, when it happens to a government, cannot be described just in terms of startled people. Whether at Pearl Harbor or at the Berlin Wall, surprise is everything involved in a government's (or in an alliance's) failure to anticipate effectively.
I would add that a certain lethargy and complacency developes among organizations in which action becomes ritualized and alertness deteriorates.
ROFL...knew it was a matter of time till the nitwit brigade started posting that "Roosevelt knew!"
Actually, 9/11 and Pearl Harbor are fairly comparable in the level of warning and information known prior to the attack, and in the sense that a Japanese attack was totally expected, just not in the style and location it actually occured, etc.
Just as rabid hatred of Bush is driving the Demonrat frenzy over the supposed 9/11 "warnings", rabid pathological hatred of Roosevelt (partially deserved, of course, as the creator of the American Welfare state) drives the silly conspiracy garbage (that is internally inconsistent with logic, and also inconsistent with the facts) that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor and "let it happen."
As I always do in these threads...foil hatters..please explain this....what possible gain does Roosevelt get from NOT warning Pearl Harbor, if he knew about the attack? Still waiting for the first remotely adequate or logical answer.
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are so similar it's scarey.
Over the past few years, books have been read that FDR knew about the suprise attack but let it happen.
I disliked FDR but these books are built on sand. We knew the Japs were going to attack... but we didn't know where.
Pearl was on a “War Warning” alert but had everything buttoned-up on Sunday morning.
Niether Kimmel or Short feared of a strike there. Afterall, the Japs all wore those thick glasses.
On Tuesday morning 9/11/2001, America revisited Dec. 7th, 1941. Blunders, faulty intelligence and laziness rose it's ugly head again.
Yeah they went for scapegoats after Pearl... but the feat was so outrageous at the time, no punishment should have been metted out.
Same as in 9/11, hi-jackings occur and usually, they end up resolved... peacefully. Kamakaze airliners into NYC and DC were not taken seriously.
Save the head-hunting for the bastids who are in this country right now. Worry about our power stations, dams, reservoirs, nuclear facilities and bridges.
The war has just begun... and the next attack will be as much of a suprise as the last. These vermin are from the dark ages but they are not stupid.
Although we went on the offensive in 1942, we had a real targets in the Pacific. These bastids are like a fluid gas that blends into our diverse culture.
In this war, we the civilians are the real targets.
It has been over sixty years since Pearl Harbor and not a single "raw" Japanese naval message has been declassified, a myraid of FOIA requests notwithstanding.
When "sensitive" data comes to light vis-a-vis 9-11 is anyone's guess.
Stalin got far more Lend-Lease aid than England or China - for example, tens of tons of nuclear materials were sent in 1943 (the Trinity Test took place in 1945).
But then, Harry (the Hop) Hopkins was Soviet agent 19 )known from the Venona Project decrypts).
Which "facts" are those, please?
On the SS Lusitania - some funny things there.
A. Sinking did not get the US into WWI - the Zimmermann telegram and un-restricted submarine warfare did. But recall, Wilson went to the Congress and asked for a declaration of war.
B. For decades the US government denied she was carrying war materiels. Only after a British film crew released photographs from the wreck showing tons of canon shells, ... etc. did the Archive produce the SS Lusitania's original manifest. Yup, war materiel as the German government said - bye the bye, making her a legitimate target of war.
C. The US government knowingly placed innocents in "harm's way" and,
D. Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time - and none of his paper on the Lusitania incident have ever been released.
Go figure.
Also, please see Wilford's "Pearl Harbor Redefined" - just out in January 2002.
Just how long have you been listening to Art Bell?
Are you a fakir... a priest... a person of deep feelings and low common sense?
Perhaps the most over-hyped overblown book in history. Books like that could only come out after Gordon Prange (the author of "Tora Tora Tora") had died. No one dared publish that nonsense while Prange was alive because he would shoot these ridiculous theories.
Of course, Roosevelt, Stimson and the rest of the people accused of being in the supposed conspiracy have been dead for a long time. But, it seems that the death of Prange in 1980 was really what opened the flood gates on these conspiracy books.
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