What if? Rethinking 1941 with Edward R. Murrow.

President Roosevelt will call for a joint session of Congress today to discuss yesterday's bombing of Pearl Harbor and the reported loss of 2,400 Americans. I can report that our commander-in-chief is calm and will not ask for a precipitous "outright" declaration of war against the Japanese, but instead leans toward a general consensus to "hunt down the perpetrators" of this act of "infamy." Speaking for the Congress, Senator Arthur Vandenberg promised bipartisan support to "bring to justice" the Japanese pilots. Many believe that the "rogue" airmen may well have flown from Japanese warships. In response, Secretary of War Stimson is calling for "an international coalition to indict these cowardly purveyors of death," and will shortly ask the Japanese imperial government to hand over the suspected airman from the Akagi and Kaga — "and any more of these cruel fanatics who took off from ships involved in this dastardly act." Assistant Secretary Robert Patterson was said to have remarked, "Stimson is madder than hell — poor old Admiral Yamamato has a lot of explaining to do."

Secretary of State Cordell Hull, however, this morning cautioned the nation about such "jingoism." He warned, "The last thing we want is another Maine or Lusitania. We wouldn't want to start something like a Second World War and ruin the real progress in Japanese-American relations over the last few years." Hull himself is preparing for a long tour to consult our allies in South America, Africa, and colonial France: "If we get the world on board, and make them understand that this is not merely an aggressive act upon us, much less just an American problem, such a solid front may well deter further Japanese action."

Even as Hull prepares to depart, special envoy Harry Hopkins is calling for a general statement of concern from the League of Nations, condemning not only the most recent Japanese aggression, but also an earlier reported incident in Nanking, China. "If we can get an expression of outrage from the League, Japan may well find itself in an interesting pickle. We're looking for some strong League action of the type that followed the banditry in Ethiopia and Finland." Hopkins finished by emphasizing the rather limited nature of the one-day Pearl Harbor incursion, and suggesting such piecemeal attacks were themselves a direct result of past American restraint. "We did not rattle our sabers when they went into China. Had we listened to the alarmists then, we might well be seeing Japanese anger manifesting itself from the Philippines to Wake Island in the coming days."

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., a few hours ago reminded the nation of the current disturbing economic news. "Four million Americans are still out of work. Americans are not out of this Depression by any means. Are we to borrow money to build planes that we don't even know will fly?" The industrialist Henry Kaiser was no more optimistic: "There is simply no liquidity in these markets. We shouldn't even be considering rearming. It is not as if we are going to build a ship a day. Even launching a carrier every couple of years could put us back to 1932."

Military leaders, smarting over yesterday's losses, were no more ready for war. Even the usually colorful Admiral Halsey sounded a note of concern to this reporter, "Look, they have all the cards, not us. The bastards over there could give us a decade of war at least. Where do I get bases for my subs and flattops? Who gives me strips for the flyboys? This could be a new war with no rules. Believe me, brother, we ain't going to Midway or some place like that in six months and cut down to size the whole damn imperial fleet. It's just not going to happen." Admiral King was nearly as blunt, "Hell's bells, no one has ever conquered Japan since they kicked the Portuguese out. Do the American people really want to go over to that part of the world and fight those samurai madmen? The logistics are impossible. These people have been at war for years. I've seen these Zeros — you put a suicide basket case with a wish to die for the emperor in with a tank of gas, and you've got a guided rocket that will blow our ships out of the water." Colonel James Doolittle was even more cautious than the top brass when told of calls for potential early American counterattacks. "Swell — the last thing we need is to send in some hot-dogger to drop a few bombs for the press boys that cause no real damage and get our fellas killed in the bargain."

On the home front, prominent voices in the arts expressed far stronger reservations about possible American "revenge". Robert Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago explained to me that the Pearl Harbor incident cannot be separated from its larger cultural context. "We must guard against this absurd and ongoing moral absolutism on the part of the United States in seeing complex cultural differences in black and white terms of the Occident and the Orient. We have no monopoly on morality or justice." His colleague, Mortimer J. Adler, elaborated: "Far too often we look at the world through Western lenses. But in Japanese eyes, this rather desperate attack is seen as a "slap", a lashing out of sorts to get the attention of the United States, really more of a desperate cry of the heart than anything else." Adler went on, "Japan has had a tradition of isolation from and distrust of Western civilization — rightly so in some respects, given everything from past European missionaries to racism, economic exploitation, and colonialism. If we inflame passions, they may well simply divorce themselves from the world community — or worse, set off a conflagration of pan-Asian hatred toward Occidentals that could last for generations. It seems to me Pearl Harbor is rather more of a case of Admiral Perry's chickens at long last coming home to roost."

Contacted at home, the noted naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison was pessimistic about the strategy involved in any U.S. response: "Good God, do they want us to fight the entire world — Germany, Italy, Hungry, Bulgaria, Romania, and now Japan? We lose 2,400 sailors — less than an annual poliomyelitis outbreak — and then we start a World War II? I find these calls for mindless retaliation not only naïve, but disturbing as well in their failure to take account of America's strategic impotence. That's a part of the world we know very little about."

Prominent American clergymen blasted the very idea of armed retaliation, calling instead for interfaith services and greater tolerance of Japanese religious beliefs. Cardinal Cushing warned against castigating the entire Japanese people for the actions of a few fanatics, adding that "Bushido, is, in fact, merely a variant of Shintoism, itself an age-old and misunderstood faith that is as humane as anything in Christian teaching." Cushing added, "There is nothing in Bushido, much less Shintoism that is inherently bellicose or at all anti-Western. These few extremists are hardly representative of either public or religious opinion in Japan." Cushing concluded, "The Emperor himself is a pacifist, a Zen scholar in fact deeply devoted to entomology, with no interest at all in bloodshed. And so the better question might be posed: 'Why does so much of Asia hate us?'"

Celebrated director John Ford reflected Hollywood's unease with the early rumors of war. "Hell, we are artists, not mouthpieces. What are we to do — join the Navy to make movies on government spec? Had we had more Japanese films available to the American people in the first place, we wouldn't have had this misunderstanding." A few Hollywood stars who were willing to speak on the record agreed. Jimmy Stewart called for a world conference of concerned actors and screenwriters. "There have been some great Japanese movies. We need to reach out to our brother actors over there. The last thing we need is a bunch of us would-be pilots storming over to Burbank to enlist." Clark Cable was adamant in his belief in keeping America from doing something "stupid," as he put it. "If you haven't heard lately: We're actors, artists really, not war-mongers. I'm sure that our Japanese counterparts feel the same way. We need to put away the B-17s and get the cameras rolling on both sides."

Celebrated veterans were especially angered about knee-jerk American anger. Alvin C. York, Medal of Honor winner and hero of the Great War, was reported as "madder than hell" at the "war scare." "We shouldn't fight in some jungle island just because the Japanese hate old man Rockefeller as much as we do."

In an in-depth newsmaker interview, 81-year-old General John J. Pershing told Henry Luce of Time magazine, "I've made war before — long and hard. I've seen it. These sunshine sluggers talk a great game, but wait until our dead pile up. No, it is time to collect our thoughts and think like adults for a change. Lashing back is just what these extremists want us to do. If a war breaks out, then their mission is accomplished. I'd hate to see us playing into the hands of a few militarists who want to topple the moderates and the emperor. This ocean war with carriers is an entirely new challenge, nothing like we have ever seen before. Why get our boys killed only to make a few samurai martyrs?"

And so it is with confidence today that this reporter assures the American people and the world that sobriety, maturity, and prudence — not bombs — are the watchwords on the home front. Remember — our enemies can only win if they make us answer their violence with more needless violence.

Is this for real? I would love to think that Morrow wrote this---but what is the source for this? If it is for real--and Rush is reading from it right now--it would be very heartening. History does repeat itself and in hindsight Morrow's quotes in this article would be very instructive. But did Morrow really get all these quotes from all these people in time to write this right before FDR declared war? Just my 2 cents.

I can't believe Rush is taking this article seriouly. He thinks it's real!

I agree, and so noted on another thread on this subject. Could Rush possibly think Murrow actually wrote this article? The article is satire, of course; maybe Rush is simply engaged in satire himself in pretending to take it seriously. If so, his attempt at satire is escaping me.

This was a parody, bud, which apparently fooled you. Roosevelt's sellout at Yalta is a separate issue. Even if you accept that Rooselvelt would have been OK with Communist occpation of Eastern Europe (which I don't), at least Britain, France, Italy, and half of Germany stayed free as a result of WW2 (along with Japan and Korea being brought over to Western culture and values), which wouldn't have occurred if we hadn't entered the war.

Are you saying we shouldn't have fought WW2?

You might think he is dense and stupid but he isn' that dumb. How could Rush have missed the heading ? (I guess he fooled you. )

What If?
Rethinking 1941 with Edward R. Murrow.

By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
September 27, 2001 9:00 a.m.

What Should We Do?
By Edward R. Murrow
Washington, D.C.
December 8, 1941

Yes.

But to stay on topic I think it intellectually dishonest of Conservatives to compare what happened on Sept. 11 with Pearl Harbor. It has been a staple of Conservative intellectual diet that FDR knew a pending Japanese attack on American forces to draw us into a war.

Furthermore, FDR first venture into the Western Theatre was to invade French Africa, to ensure a quick victory for the midterm special elections that offered the last gasp for old righ, anti-war Republicans to save us from the war to make the world safe for Communism.

I don't know where you're getting your history from, but here's my take:

- Maybe FDR had intel that a Japanese attack was coming somewhere. Maybe the intel said it was coming to Pearl Harbor sometime. Maybe the intel thought it wouldn't occur until after the first of the year. Intel has been known to be wrong, and if FDR "knew," I feel that he believed the intel was not reliable. We'll never know. Comprende?

- FDR and the allies went after North Africa for at least three reasons:

1. No other area in the European theater had potential for early victory.

2. You argue it was about the mid-term elections. I argue it was about keeping up morale on the homefront, demoralizing the Germans, and really hurting them by inflicting major casualties. I must remind you that the fate of the world was at stake. As much as we despise FDR for the New Deal (justifiably), you have to believe that winning the war was more important than mid-term elections, which were probably in the bag for the Dems anyway.

3. Finally, it was about better access to Europe for invasion (would you have preferred an unprepared version of D-Day instead)?

I'd love to hear the argument that if Germany had the bomb and we hadn't developed it (why would we if we weren't in the war?), how we would have been spared capitulating to Hitler and delivering all of our Jewish-American citizens to him to stoke the furnaces. Or we're supposed to believe that Japan and Germany would not have invaded us?

Fifty years from now, there will be people who will talk about what's happening now in the same way that we talk about FDR and Pearl Harbor. Here's a sample of that sort of thing written a few days ago. I don't agree with it, but there will always be people who will argue that our government knew about or even deliberately engineered such things or that those who attacked acted in self-defense, whether we are talking about Fort Sumter, the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, or Tonkin Gulf.

Are the conspiracy theorists right? Sometimes. Incidents have been engineered in history. But I'd argue that whatever our government knew, one can't transfer blame to Bush or to FDR for attacks on the US. The Japanese forces, the terrorists weren't ordered to attack by anyone. People will keep on blaming American leaders, though. Whether or not conspirators ever sleep, conspiracy theorists never do.

That FDR sought an early victory in North Africa to share up public opinion, though, isn't something that should be seen in an invidious light, since that is what all leaders of democracies try to do in wartime.

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