Day of Infamy ~ Part 5: Moving Forward, Looking Back

Throughout the first century and a half of this nation’s history, Americans from East to West believed that the United States should not be involved in the quarrels of the rest of the world.  Regarding alliances such as the one FDR maintained with Churchill, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Elbridge Gerry in 1799, “I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, [or] entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance.”  George Washington expressed similar sentiments in his 1796 Farewell Address:

…a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.  Sympathy for a favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification.  It leads also to concession to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.

Consider the true narrative of Pearl Harbor through the lens Washington provides.  FDR clearly had a “passionate attachment” for Great Britain in general and Winston Churchill in particular; while the U.S. may have possessed some interests in common with Britain, the U.S. was not touched by the war until FDR united with Churchill.  Additionally, FDR’s “concession…of privileges” to Britain through the Lend-Lease Act was a primary factor in the frustration of Japan, and therefore certainly led to the injury of this nation. 

It is necessary to point out that our Founding Fathers were not advocating strict isolationism—they did not believe the United States could or should operate in a vacuum.  Their ideology is best referred to as “noninterventionism,” and was succinctly explained by Jefferson in the same letter: “I am for free commerce with all nations; political connection with none.”  World War II was not the first time the United States deviated from this noninterventionist path: Jefferson himself waged war against the Barbary Pirates in the Middle East, and the United States was victorious over Britain in the War of 1812, but resolution of both of these conflicts was necessary to avert direct threats against the United States.  Between 1812 and 1917, when the U.S. entered WWI, there was a long period during which the United States retreated to the shadows of the world stage.  In the 1930s, the burden of the Great Depression joined forces with the horrific memory of World War I to push American policy and public opinion back toward noninterventionism; this is why Churchill and FDR found it so difficult to pull the nation out of its shell and into World War II.

From the 2014 release, Fury

Following WWII, noninterventionist advocates hoped the U.S. would follow the same path as it had after WWI, but they were disappointed.  From the late 1940s until 1991, world affairs were dominated by the Cold War—characterized not by global “hot war” as in WWI and WWII, but by a giant stalemate during which the United States and the U.S.S.R. each raced to keep its own nuclear capabilities superior to the other, and by almost perpetual regional wars where forces of democracy and communism faced off around the world.

During and since the Cold War the U.S. embraced the reputation it gained during World War II for being a global police force, completely contrary to noninterventionist ideals.  U.S. attempts to limit Soviet influence, combined with obligations to a multitude of allies, resulted in U.S. involvement in the Korean War in 1950-53, the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat (after which the U.S. handed power to Saddam Hussein), the Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967, the Vietnam War that racked the 1970s, Operation Cyclone (the program that armed and financed the anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan) from 1979 to 1989, the Gulf War to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990-91, and involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo in the late 1990s.  Whether or not each of these interventions was justified is a separate discussion; the problem lies in the fact that in each case the president followed FDR’s lead and acted without a constitutional, Congressional declaration of war.  In response to FDR’s passionate “Day of Infamy” appeal, Congress formally declared war on Japan, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania in succession, but there has not been a formal declaration of war by the U.S. Congress since WWII.

The Syrian Civil War

By the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States possessed military and economic interests in every region of the globe.  In March of 1992, the New York Times reported on a 46-page Pentagon circulation that outlined U.S. foreign policy strategy and goals for the future: “The Defense Department asserts that America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia, or the former Soviet Union.”  Today the United States remains entangled in the “War on Terror” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Iraq, and there is debate within the U.S. as to whether this nation should increase its involvement in the Syrian civil war, the Russian conflict in Ukraine, and the growing tension with Iran.  Every time an armed conflict arises overseas, the United States has an insatiable desire to attempt to quench the fire; the problem lies in the fact that when the U.S. gets involved, it throws fuel on the fire and the blaze burns higher, wider, longer, and hotter.  Such a globalized perspective would never have been perpetuated were it not for the precedent set by FDR’s audacity.  Since 1991, the U.S. has been involved in so many international conflicts that our Founding Fathers would likely roll over in their graves if such things were possible.  Multinational coalitions and multilateral defense treaties such as NATO, the United Nations, the Manila Pact, and the Rio Treaty, along with numerous other treaties and alliances, mandate that the United States be involved in some capacity in virtually every armed conflict that occurs. 

America used to stand tall as a shining city on a hill, with the flame of liberty burning high atop the Statue of Liberty; now the torch is turned against our Asian, European, and Middle Eastern neighbors, lighting fires of crisis and controversy around the world.  The impact is clear: a deadlocked federal government, broken social security and healthcare systems, a struggling economy, a $17 Trillion national debt, and a deeply divided nation.  Faulty international policy is not singlehandedly responsible, but as far as Pearl Harbor is concerned, we can name FDR as a key culprit: he took on devious methods to achieve questionable ends, and thereby gave a definitive push to the rolling ball of international politics that has since increased in size and momentum proportionate to U.S. interventionism.  December 7, 1941 was an infamous day indeed.

The author does not claim the rights to any of the images in this post.