Japan was justified attacking Pearl Harbor
By Randy Edwards

I'm an American, born in New England, a disabled veteran, and can trace my ancestors back to the time that Americans were British colonists. Some of those same ancestors fought in the American revolution, and so I guess my "credentials" for being a US citizen are probably as good as any other American.

That's why it surprised me so much when I came to a realization the other day: Japan was justified attacking Pearl Harbor.

Now, before you take away my social security card, let me explain myself. If you follow the logic of this out, I think you'll agree with me. Remember, logic -- not knee-jerk nationalism -- is the key.

Let me give you some background. When I was growing up, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a "sneak attack." That sneak attack epitomized everything that was cowardly and un-American. John Wayne would never launch a sneak attack -- he would instead walk right up to you, look you in the eye, and then hit you squarely in the jaw. That was the American way of doing things. And that was the way I was brought up. No one "bushwhacked" or "sucker-punched" someone to start a fight. No, my mother would have whipped my butt if I had ever done such a thing. Though my mother taught me not to fight, she also taught me that if you fought, you did it fairly.

My father also taught me not to fight. But he stressed that you never start a fight. And he made it crystal clear that if someone else started a fight with me that I had better damn well finish the fight (read: win). Those were the morals that I was taught growing up. Those weren't Christian turn-the-other-cheek morals like Jesus advocated, but they were the classic morals that millions of American kids in the 50s, 60s, and 70s grew up with.

But I wander. Let's get back to why the Japanese were justified in attacking Pearl Harbor.

In reality the Japanese attack was no real surprise. After all, Admiral Nimitz predicted the attack years in advance. And the Japanese knew that sneak attacks worked -- they had launched a similar sneak attack against the Russian navy in 1905 that succeeded brilliantly.

If you remember back to the 1930s Japan was feeling squeezed. Put yourself into the Japanese mindset for a few moments. The Japanese were a highly organized, modern industrial society in 1930. But they had no natural resources to speak of. Their East Asian neighbors were dominated by foreign powers. The Dutch in now-Indonesia, the French in Indochina, the British in Malaysia, Singapore and other places. The Americans had colonies in Guam and the Philippines and were intent on dominating the Chinese markets and resources that the Japanese needed. Yes, if you were a Japanese citizen in 1930 you'd definitely feel constrained and a bit threatened.

Japan invaded China in the 1930s in order to seize resources and markets that Japan needed. Most wars are in reality fought for economic reasons. The Japanese justified this invasion in many ways, with one key argument being that the Japanese were preventing China from being dominated by foreign, non-Asian (read: European or American) powers. The rest of the world, of course, just saw the Japanese invasion as another imperial war of conquest. The world complained, but no one responded militarily to Japan's aggression.

One semi-significant response was by the US. At one point the US government decided to cut off shipments of scrap iron and other raw materials to Japan. This one act caused the Japanese much concern. As a country with no significant material resources -- and remember, the US was then exporting raw materials like oil and iron -- the Japanese were horrified. Japan could easily, reasonably see a scenario where its war in China and the entire Japanese economy could be brought to a halt if it could not import the raw materials it needed. In any reasonable calculation, this was a threat to the Japanese nation. We can argue that the Japanese brought all this on themselves with their invasion of China, but the fact remains that Japan had a serious, real national security concern.

Now, let's take a detour for a bit.

A basic fundamental of international law and the Treaty of San Francisco (the treaty which founded the United Nations) is that one country should not attack another. Aggressive war is against international law, period.

Responding to a military attack -- defensive war -- is, of course, a perfectly legal action under the U.N. Charter and international law. But there is a difference between responding to an attack and initiating an attack.

Some people claim that if you have troops on your border ready to attack you are justified in responding. For example, many countries approved of Israel's "sneak attack" (or pre-emptive attack) on 5 Arab countries which started the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. You could take either side in this argument -- that Israel was justified or that Israel was not justified -- and could make some valid points.

But let's look at the Iraqi situation. Today, George Bush is threatening to attack Iraq. That's bad. My own feeling is that we should not attack Iraq. Bush has said he does not want to give Iraq warning about when an attack will take place. To me, I'd call that a "sneak attack." George Bush calls it a pre-emptive attack.

It doesn't matter whether we think we're justified in attacking Iraq or not. The US does not have the approval of the United Nations and so any such attack is simply not legal according to the United Nations Charter. Perhaps you can claim that Iraq is violating U.N. Resolutions like Bush is claiming, but the U.N. Security Council feels no attack is warranted. Perhaps you can claim that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but in the big scheme of things, that doesn't matter -- it is not cause for a pre-emptive, sneak attack. After all, the USSR, Pakistan, India, Israel, and other countries have developed WMD and the US did not attack them. To me, that's just a poor excuse to launch a war. But again, the Iraq situation is just an example, one tree in a forest. What's more important is to see the forest -- the big picture.

On June 1, 2002 George Bush made a speech to the graduating class at the US Military Academy at West Point. There Bush introduced what is now known as the "Bush Doctrine." In short, the Bush Doctrine stated that from now on the US will launch pre-emptive, sneak attacks. That doctrine is now official US government policy. Bush's speech talked about not waiting for a threat to fully materialize and to attack whenever the US feels threatened. I ask, if a threat doesn't fully materialize, how do we know it's an actual threat?!

Either way, the U.N. Charter that the US agreed to (and largely wrote) is clear: a "threat" is not an excuse to wage war. Aggressive wars are not legal, they're a violation of international law.

Think of the enormity of this policy change. Bush broke hundreds of years of international law and US policy/morality. The British Empire never declared they had the right to invade anyone they wanted (they would always come up with some excuse). In its most revolutionary zeal, the USSR never claimed such a right. Even Nazi Germany knew it was wrong to invade other countries without cause (the Nazis staged an elaborate hoax to "justify" their invasion of Poland, for example). Yet George Bush claims such a right for the U.S.

Sadly, our corporate mass media has had precious little to say about the Bush Doctrine. I've read very little about it in mainstream newspapers or magazines, and what I have read is not an examination of the Bush Doctrine as policy, but is instead the Bush Doctrine wrapped up with the War on Terrorism. The War on Terrorism and the Bush Doctrine must be separated and examined independently.

What Bush has adopted as US policy is that it is now okay for countries to respond to a threat -- even an imaginary threat that hasn't fully materialized. This doctrine effectively destroys international law dating back to 1648. But imagine what this will do to our world.

Let's say that India and Pakistan are close to war again; under the Bush Doctrine one country can nuke the other and claim that the resulting massacre was legal because it was responding to a "threat."

Imagine if Iran develops a nuclear weapon; Iran could launch the weapon pre-emptively against Israel (or vice versa) and claim that it was responding to a "threat" -- a simple application of the Bush Doctrine.

The scenarios one can imagine are horrifying. There is a reason why hundreds of years of international law has held that nations can not launch pre-emptive, sneak attacks in response to "threats." There's a reason why the wise men that wrote the United Nations Charter agreed that only defensive war is the only legitimate form of warfare.

But I again wander. Let's get back to why Japan was justified in attacking Pearl Harbor.

Using the "logic"[sic] of the Bush Doctrine, Japan did the only the only thing that was reasonable. The US embargo of raw materials posed a clear threat to the Japanese nation and economy. Japan decided to rid East Asia of the non-Asian imperial powers and to remove the economic and national security "threat" from Japan.

So the Japanese decided to strike at the most dangerous threat to it, the only imperial power that was not currently engaged in a war, the United States. A sneak attack -- or George Bush's more politically correct term, a pre-emptive strike -- against the US would quickly knock out the US Navy and cause the US to seek peace, and it would free Japan to then attack the other already-weak European imperial powers and to secure abundant resources for Japan's economy.

Under international law that had existed for centuries, Japan's attack was illegal. Using this centuries-old legal basis and the new U.N. Charter, Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes after World War II was over.

But now under George Bush's new government policy, the Bush Doctrine, we need to rewrite our history books. Under the Bush Doctrine Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor is justified -- it is merely a case of Japan responding to a real, valid threat to the Japanese nation.

Of course, I don't really believe that. I believe Japan's attack was a brutal, aggressive, illegal war. But again, that is not what George Bush believes.

Using Bush's logic and the Bush Doctrine as the new basis of our (im)morality and international legal system means that Japan's Pearl Harbor attack was entirely justified.

Now I know why in the 2000 election, more Americans across the country voted for Al Gore rather than George Bush...but I ramble.

The America that my fathers fought for didn't launch sneak attacks. Okay, on occasion they did, but they certainly didn't brag about it and did not create a "sneak attack policy" and enshrine it as a "doctrine." To me, that is simply sickening. How do you feel? Similarly? If so, then what are we going to do about this travesty?

Footnote: For info regarding the international legal issues, see http://www.crimesofwar.org/expert/bush-intro.html.