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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 5:28 PM
Subject: [CTRL] The Myth Of Pearl
Harbor-Memorial Day Propaganda Blitz
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
THE MYTH OF PEARL HARBOR
Memorial Day propaganda blitz
With the
release of Pearl Harbor, a cinematic reenactment of the popular
myth
handed down to us by Roosevelt's hagiographers, the Memorial Day
weekend will
culminate in an orgy of lying war propaganda. The movie,
starring somebody
named Ben Affleck (so I'm not into
popular culture, what can I tell you?),
steadfastly ignores
recently unearthed evidence that FDR and his cronies knew
when and
where the Japanese would strike and reiterates the bald-faced lie of
the
alleged "sneak attack" by the Japanese. You can hear the wheels and cogs
of the propaganda machine begin to turn and whir, because it isn't just
Pearl
Harbor – get ready for a weeks-long marathon of World War II
memorabilia. As
Eric
Deggans put it in the St. Petersburg Times last week, "A
virtual flood
of TV and film projects focused on incidents from the World
War II era is set
for release in weeks to come." In the movie theaters
it's Pearl Harbor, the
$135 million blockbuster opening May 25.
This past weekend featured no less
than three special television movies
focused on the events surrounding World
War II (Conspiracy, a tale
of genocidal Nazis run amok, Submerged, a story of
a wartime
submarine rescue, and a new rendition of the Diary of Anne Frank).
At the video store it's Tora! Tora! Tora!, coming
out in DVD and special VHS
editions, and the list goes on. Gee, do you
think they're trying to tell us
something?
VAUNTING AND FEAR
The intended
moral of it all was summed up in Newsweek by James Wire, an 82
year-old Pearl Harbor survivor, who thinks the Pearl Harbor movie
is "'great'
because it's a warning: 'Americans have become complacent.
They think it
can't happen now. But it can." A state of advanced paranoia
is the natural
condition of every Empire: it is the price we pay for our
imperial
preeminence, "a curious and characteristic emotional weakness of
Empire," as
Garet Garrett put it, which amounts to "a complex of vaunting
and fear."
PERPETUAL TERROR
In short, we must live in a
state of perpetual terror, or else the War Party
(Hollywood division)
isn't doing its job. "Terrorism" lurks in every airport,
a ghostly specter
haunting the conscience of the nation. At any moment,
foreign Furies could
unleash their terrible vengeance: a cyber-attack, a
"rogue nation" missile
attack, yet another Pearl Harbor-style "sneak" attack
that we had every
reason to anticipate but somehow didn't. Fear must be our
permanent state,
it must infuse the very air we breathe, and to that end
Hollywood is more
than complicit.
"GET ME RE-WRITE!"
A recent
news story on the making of Pearl Harbor notes that "if Lt. Col.
Jimmy Doolittle comes across as particularly heroic in the new war epic
Pearl
Harbor, the credit goes as much to the behind-the-scenes
influence of the
Pentagon as to the vision of Hollywood filmmakers." These
days, when someone
in some big producer's office barks "get me rewrite!"
he's likely to be put
through to the Pentagon: "In exchange for providing
Hollywood with military
advice," reports the Associated Press, "personnel
and awesome equipment for
movies and TV shows, the Pentagon gets an
advance look at scripts and has a
chance to negotiate changes."
Conservatives want to get rid of the National
Endowment for the Arts, but this is the kind of government-sponsored
and
controlled "art" that they are no doubt willing to countenance –
precisely
because it has much more effect on the national psyche than the
artsy-fartsy
nude photography of the late Robert Mapplethorpe.
PLAYING BY THE RULES
Will the Pentagon open up a whole new
department devoted to "advising"
Hollywood on how best to whip up the
American public into a frothy-mouthed
war frenzy? Don't be naïve: they've already
done it. It's called the Film
Liaison Office, and it's headed up by Philip
Strub, whose title is "Special
Assistant for Audiovisual": aside from
that, every branch of the military has
a special Los Angeles office that
does little but give its "input" into
Tinseltown. As John Lovett, a
consultant on military matters to filmmakers,
puts it: "If you want to use
the military's toys, you've got to play by their
rules. That's how it's
done." But what are their rules, exactly?
DOOLITTLE'S
TRANSFORMATION
It seems that Lt. Col. Doolittle, the character played
by Alec
Baldwin,
wasn't heroic enough for the Pentagon's taste: but that was
easily fixed.
Jack Green, of
the Naval Historical Center, who was on location for eight
weeks of
filming – standing guard, as it were, for the Pentagon – demanded
changes
in the script, and got them. Instead of being portrayed as "a
boorish,
oafish type of fellow" (there you go, Alec – typecast again!),
Doolittle says he "persuaded" the film's director, Michael Bay, to
give
Doolittle/Baldwin a more sympathetic portrayal. "Doolittle was
rewritten and
made a little bit more of the real hero he was," says Green
triumphantly. In
this marriage of art and militarism, there is a clear
division of labor: the
Pentagon comes up with the "toys" and rewrites the
script as necessary, while
Hollywood provides the actors, the glitz, the
special effects – and, oh yes,
reaps the enormous profits.
SEAL OF APPROVAL
We are routinely told that the Pentagon's
collaboration with Hollywood costs
the US taxpayer nothing, since movie
producers "reimburse" the government:
but the price of having access to
the facilities and equipment of the US
military is really incalculable –
and no doubt worth far more than any movie
producer could afford. This
week, the
US Navy will turn over the biggest ship
in its Pacific fleet, the
nuclear-powered USS John C.
Stennis, to Disney for
the all-out, over-the-top premiere of
Pearl Harbor. According to Reuters,
"Disney reportedly is spending
$5 million to hold the special event for 2,000
invited guests including
Navy brass, Washington politicians and Hollywood
studio executives." Of
course, not all producers are so favored: the makers
of Apocalypse
Now, naturally, had no cooperation from the US government,
whose imprimatur is reserved for productions that have the official seal
of
approval.
CREATING HISTORY
Director Michael Bay
explicitly ruled out in advance any treatment of the
"conspiracy theories"
that have been swirling around the attack on Pearl
Harbor for 60 years.
"We're not going to get into any of that," said Bay, and
his public
relations team is adamant that this is "a love story," not a
retelling of
history, with the Japanese attack serving only as backdrop to
some
tiresome love triangle. It's a love story, all right, for what it
underscores is the story of Hollywood's love affair with Power, its
slavish
devotion to the lies and cover-ups of officialdom, its whorish
desire to let
itself be used. For what is happening here, with Pearl
Harbor, and the flood
of imitators, is not so much re-writing history
as creating it out of whole
cloth.
A VIOLENT DECEPTION
In copy that could have been written by the movie's producers, Evan Thomas,
writing in
Newsweek, burbles that Pearl Harbor seeks to portray
America's
loss of innocence, a Sunday morning in paradise ripped apart by
violent
deception. Americans are fascinated by the grandeur and heroism of
World War
II in part because modern life seems relatively tame and safe
today." It was
a "violent deception," all right, when FDR deliberately and
knowingly kept
the information he had on his desk from the Pearl Harbor
commanders, Admiral
Husband Kimmel and General Walter
Short (who were court-martialed for
"dereliction of duty" but have
since been exonerated
by act of Congress).
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Newsweek, which devoted a lot of pages to the glossy lies being
put over by
this movie, not only tries to lay the blame at Kimmel's
doorstep, in spite of
the official exoneration, but also approves of the
producers' decision to
steer clear of "conspiracy theories," i.e. the
truth. Thomas pontificates:
"The movie wisely ignores long-held
conspiracy theories that President
Roosevelt provoked or allowed the
Japanese attack to justify going to war.
Determined to help Britain fight
back against the totalitarian Axis powers,
Roosevelt was eager to bestir
an isolationist public. Some historians have
tried to show that Roosevelt
knew from broken Japanese codes and other clues
that an attack was
imminent, yet did nothing. But it is 'inconceivable,'
writes historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin, 'that Roosevelt, who loved the Navy
with a passion,
would have intentionally sacrificed the heart of his fleet,
much less the
lives of 3,500 American sailors and soldiers, without lifting a
finger to
reduce the risk.'"
WILL NO ONE RID OF US THIS WOMAN?
Will God, in His mercy, please spare us the omnipresent Doris
Kearns Goodwin?
Whenever the official, sanitized, liberal
internationalist version of history
needs to be reinforced, there is the
spreading rictus-grin of Goodwin,
happily extolling the preternatural
wisdom of our rulers, and unconditionally
praising the divine beneficence
of the all-powerful American state. But how
does Goodwin explain FDR's
comments to his own advisors regarding the series
of US provocations
leading up to Pearl Harbor, the "pop-up" maneuvers of the
US Navy within
or near Japanese territorial waters? According to war
secretary Henry L.
Stimson's war diary, FDR said: "I just want them to keep
popping up here
and there and keep the Japs guessing. I don't mind losing one
or two
cruisers, but do not take a chance on losing five or six." Apparently
FDR's passion for the Navy was rivaled only by his passion for getting us
into the war.
LIARS ON THE DEFENSIVE
This diary entry
is cited by Robert B. Stinnett in his blockbuster book, Day
of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (just out in
paperback),
which blows the lid off the Pearl Harbor myth, and it is, in
large part,
against Stinnett's book that Thomas's Waspy disdain for
"conspiracy theories"
is directed (though of course he would never give
credit where credit is due,
and mention the book: that would amount to a
plug). Yet the apologists for
the official "sneak attack" scenario have
been pushed back to their last line
of defense by Stinnett's powerful
book, and are now reduced to admitting
that, yes, we had
intercepted messages that indicated Japan's warlike intent,
but,
somehow, they didn't get through to the proper authorities in time, or
so
Thomas absurdly expects us to believe: "In Washington," he avers,
"as
the movie shows with scenes of a fictional code-breaker, the War
Department was able to read Japan's diplomatic cable traffic. On the eve
of
the attack on Pearl Harbor, Washington knew that Japan was readying to
break
off peace negotiations. But a warning telegram from Gen. George C.
Marshall,
Army chief of staff, was delayed by bad luck and red tape and
delivered to
Kimmel five hours after the attack had begun."
THE TRUTH IS OUT
"Bad luck" my eye! The story of how General George C.
Marshall took so long
to transmit the official information – instead
of picking up the scrambler
phone and getting on the line with Kimmel and
Short, he sent his war warning
via Western Union! – is one of the
more outrageous threads in this
labyrinthine story of deception, but
naturally Thomas doesn't deign to go
into any of that. He furthermore
ignores the rest of the evidence presented
in Stinnett's book, and the
thousands of pages of documents released through
the Freedom of
Information Act, which show that between November 5 and
December 2, 1941,
the Japanese commanders – who did not know we had broken
their code –
filled the airwaves with quite explicit messages indicating the
date,
time, and place of the Pearl Harbor attack. As Stinnett puts it in the
Afterword to the paperback edition of his book:
"Based on these
transmissions, President Roosevelt and General George C.
Marshall
predicted war with Japan would begin the first week of December. We
would
know even more about what FDR and his chief advisors thought, but the
Japanese radio messages remain incomplete, still cloaked in American
censorship. . . . Nevertheless, the major secrets of Pearl Harbor are at
last
out in the open. After years of denial, the truth is clear: we knew."
A MOVIE THAT WON'T GET MADE
The Pentagon, Evan Thomas,
and Doris Kearns Goodwin are certainly not
interested in the truth about
Pearl Harbor, and it's only natural that they
should jump back in horror
at the mere suggestion that we were set up for war
by our own rulers. But
why, with the truth already out there, is Hollywood
going along with this
elaborate charade? After all, on artistic grounds
alone, Day of
Deceit runs rings around the "official" (lying) version. I
mean, here
you have all the elements of drama: deception, power, commitment,
betrayal, all acted out against the backdrop of looming war – a war the
President knew was coming, down to the day and the hour. Lights! Camera!
Action!
ANDREW SULLIVAN, CRAVEN EUNUCH?
Gee,
how is it that I just know such a movie will never be made? Of
course,
they could make a movie version of <A
HREF="http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j051
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