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Additional Information. Project MUSE Mission Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. How Pearl Harbor touched lives in ways that will never be forgotten. Think of the parallels. Both attacks came with faint forewarnings but no straightforward, single provocation. Both killed thousands of Americans, on scales chillingly similar: roughly 2, Americans died on that infamous day in , roughly 2, Americans out of 3, victims in all on that equally terrible day in And both days led to long wars.
The Pearl Harbor attack was the closest precedent of an aggression against the United States on its soil. As all US citizens at the time would forever recall what they were doing when news of the Pearl Harbor attack came through, so do all US citizens and not only remember what they were busy with when the image of the Twin Towers wrapped in flames appeared on TV screens on that Tuesday back in Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II first against Japan and then Germany and Italy, eventually leading it to victory against the Axis powers and more fundamentally to a radical change in its approach to international affairs.
The war effort against the fascist powers and the necessity to shape post-war reconstruction in a manner that would protect US security and welfare created the conditions for the public to support the call by elites — from both parties — for the United States to engage in world affairs more deeply and extensively than had been the case before December From that moment on, the United States would embrace the role of hegemonic power in the West and guarantor of an international order based on its interests but also its values, political system and model of economic development.
The memory of Pearl Harbor changed to reflect these new geopolitical realities. President Kennedy's speech commemorating the 20th anniversary reminded Americans that they would always remember where they were on Dec.
But he also assured his audience that "we face entirely different challenges on this Pearl Harbor Day. Polls suggest that the majority of Americans support the withdrawal of U. But the heartbreaking scenes of Afghan people climbing onto U. The Allies had won. Nation-building projects in West Germany and Japan had proved wildly successful. Victory had come at the cost of American lives, but no one seriously questioned the value of that great sacrifice.
It was easier for Americans to commemorate Pearl Harbor Day in because it seemed like the past. They felt that the United States had been on the right side of history then and that it was now engaged in an equally important global venture to protect democracy from Soviet aggression. America's longest war had turned into a frozen conflict long ago. The withdrawal was probably the only feasible conclusion for the Western powers at this stage.
The Pearl Harbor analogy created unrealistic expectations about the kind of war that the United States was about to fight and the sort of victory that it might achieve.
There was no political will under either Republican or Democratic administrations to fight a total war in Afghanistan. Indeed, a conventional conflict was not a viable option for fighting terrorist organizations, which did not rely on state infrastructure or popular will to mobilize their campaigns. Americans like to think our wealthiest fellow citizens are "just like us," but it's never been the reality. Collective, decisive action on multiple fronts is the only way Spokane will successfully confront homelessness.
The stories we will tell about the War on Terror will not be as straightforward, or as celebratory, as those we have told about World War II.
There is no apparent victory. Nation-building failed in Afghanistan. There is no obvious new global mission for Americans to rally around.
But until we begin to reckon with the difficult history of the War on Terror, it will be impossible not to see the tragic scenes at Kabul airport as the continued unfolding of that nightmare day 20 years ago.
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