On December 8, 1941, in a speech to the people of the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
As most people in the U.S. learn in school, the nation fought a victorious war against Japan, “pacified” it (in part through the world’s first and only use of nuclear weaponry), and directed its transformation into a peaceful and successful democracy.
Following 9/11, President George W. Bush framed the invasion of Iraq in the rhetoric of Pearl Harbor and its aftermath, arguing that once again American force could bring peace and democracy to an aggressive nation.
John W. Dower, in an unheeded message to the U.S. government in the February/March issue of the Boston Review in 2003, warned that Iraq was not Japan, and that an attack on and occupation of Iraq was not the route to democracy in that country. He pointed out that “What made the occupation of Japan a success was two years or so of genuine reformist idealism before U.S. policy became consumed by the Cold War…,” which he contrasts sharply with the prevailing conservative philosophy.
It is appropriate for Americans to continue mourning the loss of lives at Pearl Harbor, and the years of violence and death that Pearl Harbor unleashed. At the same time, it is important to gain a better understanding of the events that led to Pearl Harbor, the events that led to 9/11, and the events that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
John W. Dower’s latest book, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq, offers considerable food for thought on these issues. In this book, Dower warns Americans again about “how pressures and fixations multiply in the cauldron of enmity and war; how reason, emotion, and delusion commingle; how blood debts can become blood lusts, and moral passion can bleed into the practice of wanton terror.”
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology