Washington Times: First Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Was Different
Jennifer Harper wrote an excellent piece for The Washington Times that compares the commemoration of Pearl Harbor to that of the attack on the World Trade Center from the perspective of the media reports on the events' first anniversaries. Harper begins:
Nobody was ready for "healing" on December 7, 1942, and "closure" was the last thing anybody wanted.America, on the first anniversary of that other date that lives in infamy — often the benchmark by which September 11 is judged — wanted blood and vengeance, without apology.
No flowers, no teddy bears, and no exploration of the national angst. No presidential admonitions to think of Shinto as a religion of peace, no appeals to understand the frustrations that drove the misunderstood Nazis to rape Poland and bomb London.
There are a number of difficulties with comparing these two sneak attacks: they occured at different times in our history, in vastly different places, and they killed different types of people. Yet, the article makes a number of good points, and much of the research that Harper did has not been published elsewhere.