1. Twenty Years Later: Why 9/11 Has Not Been a Second Pearl Harbor
- Author:
- Riccardo Alcaro
- Publication Date:
- 09-2021
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, an overwhelming majority of commentators drew a parallel with the surprise blitz by Imperial Japan against the US Pacific fleet in Hawaii’s Bay of Pearl Harbor, on 7 December 1941. The comparison rested on two pillars. The first had its roots in historical analogy and symbolic impact. The Pearl Harbor attack was the closest precedent of an aggression against the United States on its soil. The fact that the United States was caught by surprise, combined with the considerable toll in human lives exacted by the aggressors (more than two thousand people died in Pearl Harbor and almost three thousand on 9/11), lent legitimacy to such comparison. As all US citizens at the time would forever recall what they were doing when news of the Pearl Harbor attack came through, so do all US citizens (and not only) remember what they were busy with when the image of the Twin Towers wrapped in flames appeared on TV screens on that Tuesday back in 2001. The second reasoning underlying the parallel between Pearl Harbor and 9/11 concerned the impact on US domestic politics and, consequently, foreign policy.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Terrorism, History, and 9/11
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Iraq, North America, and United States of America