All I can say is do your research!
--FR POSTED COMMENT
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FDR signed this executive order without any sign of remorse because it was a method of ethnic cleansing which specifically benefitted his political party and his cronies.
Any other characterization of EO9066 is sham history.
Having said this, the columnist is dead wrong about the President's actions in the wake of 9-11-01.
There is a big difference between FDR and GWB. FDR denied 160,000 people their rights and pursued ethnic cleansing policies in Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States. GWB's record stands in stark contrast. This President publicly stated his desire to prevent racism, to protect the rights of all Americans, and to specifically exclude any possibility of unamerican racial profiling or denial of due process rights.
One wonders when SF Chronicle will stop lying about the history of the California Democratic Party and when they will start printing the truth about the current graft, greed, and payola in the Democratic leadership of this state. Simply choosing to not cover California politics is a vice.
To be sure the potential does exist for a devastating terrorist strike. But that's a possibility regardless of what we do in Iraq or elsewhere. Terrorists abound, and weapons aren't that hard to get. All it takes is another mad or evil millionaire to fund the operation.
Harley Sorenson does downgrade 9/11 too much. It was a truly terrible crime, and shouldn't be minimized. But the world situation is very different now from in 1941. Terrorists may cause much death and destruction, but we don't see a situation where most of two continents have been conquered by tyrants. Given time, people will recognize the difference between then and now, if they don't already. The difference is a matter of common sense, though what it means or how much it matters for us now is debateable.
If nothing else, you won't see the draft or mass mobilization or a whole generation at arms unless things go terribly wrong. That in itself makes 2002 different from 1942.
Let's see - hundreds of thousands of American boys were drafted (i.e. forced) to travel thousands of miles from home to live in foxholes and ditches exposed to the elements and risk death, all by the order of the US government. Thousands and thousands of them didn't survive. Their families received a few dollars for their loss.
At the same time, about a hundred thousand other US citizens were removed a few hundred miles from home to live in facilities that were completely safe from the dangers of war. For this completely non-life threatening inconvenience, their families were paid lavish sums.
Was it better to be a draftee half-frozen on a German battlefield choking on his blood and dying in a ditch, or was it better to be a internee huddled in a warm barracks, completely safe from the bullets and bombs, waiting for the war to end?
It's time for these people to quit their bitching, whingeing and moaning. Those Japanese could have all volunteered for military service in Europe (hundreds did). They PREFERRED to stay safe and sound. And now they've been paid for it. Cowardly sadsacks.
I quit reading at this evidence of non-research. Germany declared war on us, not vice versa.