PARTY
POOPER
The
publication of Robert Stinnett's Day
of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor,
which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that FDR knew
about the attack well ahead of time, has spoiled the orgy
of warmongering and Roosevelt-worship planned for the
occasion. The would-be celebrants are so mad they could
spit – and it is quite natural that the left-liberal
Salon.com should give vent to their venomous bile:
But, alas, the venom of such an enfeebled snake proves
to be very weak stuff, and that tells us something about
the nature of the beast. . .
IN
COLD PRINT
Judith
Greer's hackish
attack on Stinnett is so embarrassing that one can
only wonder if its publication – practically simultaneous
with Salon's
being thrown off the stock exchange – had a direct
connection to its ignominious delisting. Incredibly, it
appears that Greer not only failed to read the book, but
also didn't even bother opening it. She airily dismisses
Stinnett's uncovering of "129 intercept reports that indicate
that the Japanese didn't maintain radio silence during
the approach to Hawaii. (None of them are reproduced in
the book.)" Put
on your reading glasses, Ms. Greer, and check out
pages 46, 49-51, and 57, just for starters: the contents
and significance of these intercepts are summarized and
discussed throughout the book, but especially on pages
210-15, in chapter 13, and their contents are itemized
and further summarized in the afterword to the paperback
edition.
STONED
AGAIN?
But
Greer didn't have to read Day of Deceit: she already
knew what she thought of it. Yet she really ought not
to have depended so heavily on the ignorance of her audience,
some of whom might actually pick up the book: for one
has only to peruse it for a few minutes to see that Greer
is clearly deluded. The cause of her delusions may or
may not be drug abuse, alcoholism, or mental retardation,
but all three seem possible when we read:
"Stinnett
then blandly states that these intercepts came from a
three-week period from Nov. 15 to Dec. 6. In other words,
all of them could have been obtained before the fleet
ever left Japanese waters, and before radio silence was
imposed. I don't know how Stinnett could believe that
his readers wouldn't notice this critical detail, but
then, most of the book displays little respect for our
intelligence."
LOOK
WHO'S TALKING
The
Japanese fleet was given the command to begin hostilities
on November 20, 1941, and from that point on we are supposed
to believe that they kept radio silence: but recently
declassified documents, obtained by Stinnet under the
Freedom of Information Act, as well as the personal testimony
of American cryptographers and others who were there and
were interviewed by Stinnett, prove that they did not
keep radio silence. How these intercepts could have been
obtained before the fleet even set sail is a mystery
known only to Ms. Greer, who had better lay off the crack
pipe if she knows what's good for her. I don't know how
she believes that her readers wouldn't notice this "critical
detail" in her argument, but then, Salon and its
writers display little respect for the intelligence of
their (presumed) audience. What is galling, though, is
her crack about the novelist Gore Vidal – whom she calls
a "populist horsefly" (doesn't she mean gadfly?). Vidal
committed the grave sin of dramatizing Stinnett's revelations
in The
Golden Age, his latest bestseller. He praises
Stinnett, she writes, "I can only assume without having
read" Day of Deceit. There's only one possible
riposte to such brazen effrontery: look who's talking!
THE
ARGUMENT FROM AUTHORITY
Like
so much of the liberal-left catechism these days, Greer's
shoddy "defense" of poor old persecuted FDR consists mostly
of an argument from authority. Why, so-and-so says
that this book is full of sh*t, and we are supposed to
be impressed. The idea is to intimidate the reader into
believing what the author wants him to believe without
having to actually confront the subject matter. "As with
other such conspiracy books," Greer disdainfully declaims,
"Day of Deceit received reviews in responsible
academic journals like Intelligence and National
Security that demolished it, citing its nonexistent
documentation, misdirection, ignorance, misstatements,
wormy insinuations and outright falsehoods." We are not
treated to a single syllable of these alleged demolitions,
but it is strange that, in the age of the Internet, Greer
thinks she can get away with this kind of thing.
THE
REVIEWS ARE IN
For
the reality is that Stinnett's book, while not universally
hailed, was praised
by major reviewers: the respected Kirkus Reviews
said that "Stinnett has left no stone unturned in this
account, which should rewrite the historical record of
WWII." Booklist, another major source consulted
by librarians and bookstores, wrote: "Although Stinnett's
accusatory light doesn't definitively fall on FDR, it
illuminates fishy aspects of the case. . . . Whether the
result of simple dereliction or sinister dereliction of
duty, Pearl Harbor holds fewer secrets because of Stinnett's
research." The
HistoryNet opined that "Stinnett's book is a triumph
of historical scholarship and a valuable contribution
to the record of World War II." John Toland, Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of Infamy, says: "Step by
step, Stinnett goes through the prelude to war, using
new documents to reveal the terrible secrets that have
never before been disclosed to the public. It is disturbing
that eleven presidents, including those I admired, kept
the truth from the public until Stinnett's Freedom of
Information Act requests finally persuaded the Navy to
release the evidence."
BENEATH
CONTEMPT
I
could go on, but I won't belabor the obvious point: Greer's
contempt for her readers is virtually limitless. After
all, why would such dolts bother to check her facts, when
they can take her word for it? Somehow, I don't think
Salon's fact-checkers would have caught this –
even if they hadn't all been laid off. This completely
dishonest portrayal of the Stinnett book's critical reception
is, however, but a prelude to her real argument, which
I must admit I was shocked to read in the pages of a supposedly
liberal periodical. Continuing her argument from authority,
Greer grandly informs us that
"The
consensus among intelligence scholars was 'pretty much
absolute,' CIA senior historian Donald Steury told me
in an e-mail. Stinnett 'concocted this theory pretty much
from whole cloth. Those who have been able to check his
alleged sources also are unanimous in their condemnation
of his methodology. Basically, the author has made up
his sources; when he does not make up the source, he lies
about what the source says.'"
SPOOKS
DON'T LIE?
Dr.
Donald Steury (in
this picture, seated on the far left) is on the CIA
History Staff: he manages
the CIA's Historical Intelligence Collection, located
in the CIA Library. Forgive me if I don't take the CIA's
word for it that there is nothing to Stinnett's book and
that we should all just move along, but is it really the
position of today's liberals that we should just accept
the "official" pronouncements of government agencies at
face value? After all, we aren't talking about the Peace
Corps here. So this is what it has come to: the Left is
now reduced to – citing the CIA in order to
smear and discredit those dangerous iconoclasts who would
do irreparable damage to the plaster saints of American
liberalism. The CIA would never lie – unless,
of course, it was for our own good – now would
they?
The
Pearl Harbor debacle was a "sneak attack," and we know
that because our government tells us so: this is the unassailable
dogma of the Pearl Harbor anti-revisionists, who blithely
wave off a growing mountain of evidence with a curt reference
to "conspiracy theories." Greer and her ilk are hot to
blame Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the two commanders
in charge at Pearl Harbor, but there's two big problems
with that. The first is that both were exonerated
by an act of Congress, and the second is that, as
Stinnett shows, on November 27 and 28, 1941, Kimmel and
Short were ordered by President Roosevelt to remain in
a defensive posture for "the United States desires that
Japan commit the first overt act."
HEAVING
RIGHT-WING BOSOMS
But
Greer isn't going to let a few inconvenient facts get
in her way. Her strategy is to depict the exoneration
of Kimmel and Short as a Republican conspiracy, and dismiss
Stinnett by labeling him a liar whose book "was eagerly
clasped to heaving right-wing bosoms from sea to shining
sea." Yet Stinnett is hardly some right-wing ideologue.
In his book, he states that he understands why Roosevelt
thought he had to deceive the nation, even as he exposes
the deception, an excuse no rightist would make. Rather
than following some ideological lodestar, Stinnett started
out on this line of research as the result of writing
a routine newspaper story for the Oakland Tribune
– that bastion of rightist radicalism! – where he worked
as a reporter. At a
conference sponsored by the Independent Institute,
Stinnett, in answer to a question, said:
"Did
I expect to find this? No. I started my quest on this
project – I had read a book called At
Dawn We Slept by Gordon Prange. It's a very fine
book about the attack. And in that book, he had mentioned,
just sort of a throw-away line, that the Navy was intercepting
Japanese Naval messages in Pearl Harbor. Well, that was
the first I had read about that. This was in 1982. And
I thought, well, that would be very (inaudible) to check
it out. I was on the Oakland Tribune staff at the time.
Told our editor, Bob Maynard, that I thought this might
be worth while for our December 7, 1982 Pearl Harbor story.
All newspapers do that. And he said, fine, go."
PRETENSE
AND PREJUDICE
Ah
yes, the
late Robert Maynard, publisher of the Oakland Tribune
and a leading light of Northern California's distinctly
left-of-center journalism – some heaving right-wing bosom!
Lazy writers, who appeal to what they imagine to be the
prejudices of their audience, merely assume that their
readers are as clueless and lethargic as they are themselves:
but is this really a safe assumption? If I were the editors
of Salon, I would drop the pretenses, stop asking
myself why my business is going under, and start looking
at the virtually unedited dreck that is getting past them.
GREER
ON COCKBURN
What
really worries Greer, however, are not all those heaving
right-wing bosoms, but that people like Gore Vidal and
Alexander Cockburn give credence to Stinnett's thesis.
She seems particularly miffed at Cockburn, whom she berates
for a
column he wrote for the New York Press giving
credence to Stinnett's charges. She complains that he
doesn't even mention Stinnett, but of course he did in
his much
stronger and I thought more definitive column for Antiwar.com
on the subject. She attacks him for daring to mention
a report in Naval History, which shows that Roosevelt
ordered the Red Cross to make special preparations in
the days before Pearl Harbor, and secretly sent in extra
medical personnel and supplies. Oh, but of course this
is not at all suspicious to our every-so-trusting
fan of the CIA's monopoly on historical truth:
"These
facts, like so many of those cited as proof of FDR's vile
plot, can be explained quite readily without resort to
the idea of a conspiracy. FDR had pledged to keep America
out of foreign wars. At the same time, he was aware that
our diplomatic efforts with the Japanese were only likely
to buy us time, not permanently prevent war. No responsible
leader could neglect the responsibility to be ready for
any eventuality, but FDR also wouldn't have wanted the
press to become aware of the necessary preparations. That
would have been a political disaster and might have derailed
his effort to quietly enhance our capabilities before
war broke out."
KEEPING
THE FAITH
So,
according to Greer, Roosevelt believed that a Japanese
attack was inevitable: in that case, however, why send
in extra nurses and bandages, rather than beef up the
island's defenses – unless, of course, the President was
anticipating a slaughter? Aside from that rather obvious
point, there remains the issue of why Kimmel and Short
were not only kept out of the intelligence loop but also
undercut at every turn. As Stinnett and others have shown,
military resources were bled out of the Pacific and routed
to the Atlantic, the theater of operations that really
interested the President. Prior to the Pearl Harbor attack,
the US Navy was cleared out of the northern Pacific on
orders from the very top – and all but the oldest vessels
in the Pacific fleet were sent west, toward Midway and
Wake islands, at the very last moment. Naturally, this
is not at all cause for Greer to doubt the dewy
innocence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but then again
what would shake her faith? Perhaps only an admission
of FDR's guilt by the CIA "senior historian."
HERETICS
In
the meantime, "there is little hope of reasoning with
people like" Stinnett – and, I guess, me – but the real
problem is folks like Cockburn and Vidal, who are supposed
to be lefties. Yes, but they won't pay lip service to
the Pearl Harbor "sneak attack" mythos or genuflect before
the divine FDR, and so they, too, must be discredited,
even smeared as "dishonest." Greer opines:
"Cockburn
and Vidal are certainly intelligent enough to recognize
the holes in a poorly supported thesis if they choose
to educate themselves about it. But they seem to want
to believe it anyway – and, worse, to actively promote
it. Many other ordinary people I talked to about the theory
also seemed to implicitly believe it, most of the time
without having read a single book outlining the accusations."
DEGENERATION
How
does Miss Know-it-all know what Cockburn, or Vidal,
have read? And note the authoritarian tone of her pretentious
proclamation: the two of them will have to be "re-educated,"
they must cast out their rightist demons and stop cavorting
with those horrible Roosevelt-haters. Poor Ms. Greer:
she really does have no idea why "ordinary people"
(as opposed to herself) would "implicitly" believe the
crux of Stinnett's thesis. Why would any "ordinary person"
believe that their government would provoke an attack
on their own military base, and condemn American soldiers
to death, all the while covering up the whole thing for
going on 60 years? Gee, I don't know: perhaps they've
heard of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and, if not that,
the Nixon tapes – left out in plain sight, like many of
the documents that prove Stinnett's case. Perhaps they
are subversive enough to distrust not only this government,
but government per se – and this, really, is the
root cause of Ms. Greer's stubborn blindness. While it
is clear to practically everyone else that governments
– our own not excluded – are quite capable of lies, staged
provocations, murder, and much worse, this skepticism
of "official history" and disbelief in the face of the
court historians' bland assurances is something that has
been bred out of American liberals.
THERE
WAS A TIME
All
but a precious few, that is – and we have one of them!
We wish there were more Alexander Cockburns – leftists
who nonetheless do not feel compelled to defend barbarity
and mendacity for partisan political reasons. If, however,
Ms. Greer's apologia for FDR's crimes is any indication
of the left-liberal mindset these days, then it's no wonder
that the Vidals and Cockburns are in such short supply.
There was a time when liberalism did not mean prostration
before the conventional wisdom and the mindless echoing
of "official" sources: sadly, that time has long since
passed.
Please
Support Antiwar.com
|
