Misallocated Infamy

Misallocated Infamy

by Srdja Trifkovic
December 7th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

For the past 67 years America has commemorated over 2,400 sailors, soldiers and airmen who were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Every such anniversary reminds us that all history is to some extent contemporary history: Almost seven decades after the event, the myth of FDR's goodness and greatness—revived for current political purposes during and after this year's election campaign—makes it less "appropriate" than ever to ask if he knew about the attack; and, more importantly, whether he willed it. This date "will live in infamy," for a few more decades at least, until it succumbs to this country's collective amnesia. We may be running out of time for its infamy to be allocated more equitably.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was eager to enter the war in Europe. He wanted this strongly following the fall of France (June 1940)—when he came to believe that without American intervention the Nazis would conquer the Old Continent—and desperately after Germany attacked the Soviet Union a year later. In this desire he was supported by the old East Coast elite which was traditionally Anglophile, by the increasingly influential Jewish lobby, and—after June 22, 1941—by Moscow's sympathizers within his entourage and in the country at large.

CSMK sent me this reminder and it is spot on target on how things are playing out now, once again, in the Republic.

WP