When I was a wee lad, I suddenly became interested in World War II. I dropped dinosaurs like a hot potato and spent much of my time reading gigantic World War II books from the library. Back then, I could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Battle of Midway. I could tell you the names of all the Japanese carriers that were sunk, how they were sunk, and in what order. I was floating in the water right there with Ensign George Gay (the sole surviving airman from a failed American torpedo bomber attack, who ended up floating in the middle of the Japanese fleet and watching the battle unfold over the next few hours).

A couple of days ago, NPR’s All Things Considered did a piece on the investigation of Pearl Harbor and the associated political fallout. Before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military had cracked the Japanese diplomatic code, “Purple”. There were tantalizing hints that the Japanese were planning to attack on Dec. 7th… but no smoking gun.

Then as now, the codebreakers failed to “connect the dots”.
Then as now, the opposition party tried to make a political issue of this immediately.
Then as now, the president’s party squelched Congressional dissent, citing “National Security”. (In 1944, the Republicans threatened to launch a major investigation and make the Pearl Harbor intelligence failure an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. But the government sent Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey a letter asking him not to do this, as it would reveal to the Japanese that “Purple” had been broken. Dewey agreed, lost the election, and the Republicans were furious when they found out after the war ended.)

When I heard this report on the radio, I was mortified. How could I have completely forgotten about all this? Oh, I hadn’t known all the details (I was more into dive bombers and tanks and carriers back then), but I had known that Pearl Harbor was a major political scandal. But somehow, I had forgotten about that and assumed that politics during World War II stopped cold — that back in the Good Old Days, when people Knew Their Duty to God and Country, the nation moved in harmonious lockstep to victory over the Axis powers. Well, not even remotely. Congress has always been Congress. And the opposition has always wrangled over domestic issues regardless of the wartime situation.

Anyway, this has clarified a lot of things for me.

In Other News: M’ris asks, “In all of this Pledge of Allegiance uproar, nobody seems to have come up with a good reason why God should be in there in the first place. Anybody? I’d like to know.” Well, naturally. the National Review has something to say on the matter. According to NR, the Republicans (but not those scurrilous unpatriotic Democrats) have whipped out their divining rods and determined that the act of adding “under God” to the pledge in 1954 was “clearly consistent with the text and intent of the Constitution.” Oh, you wanted a good reason? Well never mind then.