The attacks of 9/11 have often been compared with the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Investigative reporter James Bamford, for example, has written about President Bush's behavior "in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor."1 CBS News reported that the president himself, before going to bed on 9/11, wrote in his diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."2

This comparison has often been made for the sake of arguing that the American response to 9/11 should be similar to the American response to Pearl Harbor. Just after the president's address to the nation on September 11, 2001, Henry Kissinger posted an online article in which he said: "The government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended -- with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it."3 An editorial in Time magazine that appeared right after the attacks urged: "For once, let's have no fatuous rhetoric about 'healing.' . . . A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage. What's needed is a unified, unifying Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury."4

Some of the comparisons have pointed out that the attacks of 9/11 did indeed evoke a response, calling for the use of US military power, similar to that produced by Pearl Harbor. Quoting a prediction made in 2000 by soon-to-be top officials in the Bush administration that the changes they desired would be difficult unless "a new Pearl Harbor" occurred,5 Australian journalist John Pilger wrote: "The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the 'new Pearl Harbor.'"6 A member of the US Army's Institute for Strategic Studies reported that after 9/11, "Public support for military action is at levels that parallel the public reaction after the attack at Pearl Harbor."7

NOTES

1 James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 633.

2 Washington Post, January 27, 2002.

3 Henry Kissinger, "Destroy the Network," Washington Post, September 11, 2001 (washingtonpost.com), quoted in Thierry Meyssan, 9/11: The Big Lie (London: Carnot, 2002), 65.

4 Lance Morrow, "The Case for Rage and Retribution," Time, September 11, 2001.

5 The Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (www.newamericancentury.org), 51.

6 John Pilger, New Statesman, December 12, 2002.

7 Leonard Wong, Institute of Strategic Studies, Defeating Terrorism: Strategic Issues Analysis, "Maintaining Public Support for Military Operations" (http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/public.pdf), quoted in 9/11: The Big Lie, 127.

In September 2000, PNAC produced a 76-page report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." The report, similar to the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance report, called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, perform global constabulary roles, and the control of space and cyberspace. It claimed that the 1990s were a decade of defense neglect and that the US must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership as the world's superpower. The report also recognized that: "the process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor." The events of September 11, 2001 presented exactly the catastrophe that the authors of Rebuilding America's Defenses theorized were needed to accelerate a global dominance agenda. The resulting permanent war on terror has led to massive government defense spending, the invasions of two countries, and the threatening of three others, and the rapid acceleration of the neo-conservative plans for military control of the world. [emphasis added]

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored, a media research organization. A more in-depth review of the global dominance group's agenda and a list of the 200 advocates see: http://www.projectcensored.org/download ... _Group.pdf

CBS News reported that the president himself, before going to bed on 9/11, wrote in his diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."