By now, the evidence overwhelmingly establishes that President Franklin Roosevelt wanted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to take place. He desperately wanted to intervene in the war against Nazi Germany, but he faced a virtually insurmountable obstacle — the American people, most of whom firmly opposed U.S. entry into a second world war.
Of course, this was during a time when presidents were still abiding by the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of a congressional declaration of war before a president could wage war against another nation-state. FDR knew that he had virtually no chance whatsoever of securing such a declaration from Congress.
FDR knew that his only chance for getting the U.S. embroiled in World War II was to provoke Germany or Japan into attacking the United States. In that case, he would be able to exclaim, “We’ve been attacked! We’re innocent! We were just minding our own business! We have no choice but to defend ourselves! Now, give me my declaration of war.”
That’s what FDR’s oil embargo on Japan was intended to do — to provoke Japan into attacking the United States. By preventing Japan from securing enough oil to fuel its war machine in China, FDR aimed to have Japan attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet so that Japan would have a free hand in securing oil in the Dutch East Indies without U.S. interference.
When Japan attacked military ships at Pearl Harbor, FDR got what he wanted … and more. Not only did he get his declaration of war against both Japan and Germany, he also got an aroused populace that immediately dropped its opposition to entry into World War II, rallied ’round the flag, and became enthusiastic supporters of the war.
It would be difficult to say that U.S. officials wanted the 9/11 attacks to happen, given that there is no evidence to support it. But there is also no doubt that U.S. officials persisted in a course of action that they knew was likely to produce a massive terrorist attack on American soil.
At the same time, high U.S. officials, especially those within the national-security branch of the federal government, were surely aware of the fact that in the event of such an attack, the American people would respond in much the same way that Americans responded after Pearl Harbor — by rallying ’round the flag and enthusiastically supporting whatever actions the federal government would take.
How could U.S. officials have been aware of a likely upcoming major terrorist attack on American soil? They had multiple warnings that such an attack was coming if the U.S. continued its foreign policy of death and destruction in the Middle East, especially with respect to Iraq.
Let’s not forget, after all, the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. That attack, in principle, was no different from the 9/11 attacks eight years later. When Ramzi Yousef was captured and convicted of terrorism in U.S. District Court, at his sentencing hearing he angrily accused the U.S. government of being a butcher and a terrorist itself.
The fact is that Yousef was right when he pointed that out. Economic sanctions are no different from a terrorist attack. Both actions target innocent people as a way to attain a political goal. The problem is that Americans can easily see the evil in what Yousef did but are unable to see the evil in what the U.S. government was doing — an evil that motivated Yousef to commit his evil act.
Two months before the 1993 WTC attack was Mir Aimal Kansi’s terrorist attack on CIA employees outside CIA headquarters in Virginia, which killed two CIA employees and wounded three others. He was captured, convicted of capital murder in a Virginia state court, and then executed. Before dying, he made it clear that he was retaliating for U.S. foreign policy toward Muslims, particularly in the Middle East.
Less than a year before the 9/11 attacks was the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and wounded 37 others. Again, that terrorist attack was motivated by U.S. deadly and destructive interventionism in Yemen.
About 18 months before 9/11, the noted writer Chalmers Johnson, who had worked as a consultant for the CIA, warned in his excellent book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire that U.S. foreign policy could produce a major terrorist attack inside the United States. He wasn’t the only one. Here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, we published at least one op-ed saying essentially the same thing. After all, how could anyone not see the dangers of terrorist retaliation when U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright, asked whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children attributed to the sanctions were “worth it,” answered that “the price is worth it”?
Despite those pre-9/11 terrorist strikes, despite the terrorists’ own publicly expressed motives for committing those terrorist attacks, and despite warnings from commentators about the likely consequence of continuing the U.S. government’s policy of deadly and destructive interventionism in the Middle East, U.S. officials knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally continued down the same interventionist road.
Thus, while it would be difficult to say that U.S. officials were hoping for a major terrorist attack, as FDR clearly was hoping for a major military attack on the U.S., there is no doubt that U.S. officials continued on a course of action that they knew was likely to result in a major terrorist attack. U.S. officials also had to know that if another Pearl Harbor-like attack were to occur, the American people would enthusiastically rally ’round the flag and support whatever foreign actions U.S. officials wanted to take in response to such an attack and whatever domestic actions they wanted to take to keep Americans “safe” from more retaliatory terrorist attacks.
