911 and Pearl Harbor

Two Dark Days Pearl Harbor changed the lives of Americans; decades later 9/11 affected a new generation of Americans. Comparing Pearl Harbor and 9/11, written by Fred L. Borch points out inaccuracies of the comparisons that numerous individuals have made between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. The author gives a unique perspective that has partial inaccuracies under the topics; whether or not 9/11 was an intelligence failure, was American unprepared, and military responsibilities. The author uses various facts and statics to support his cause, some creditable, some not.

December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 are two of the darkest days in American History essay writer dubai. The attack on Pearl Harbor began at 7:55 a. m. when 353 Japanese aircrafts dropped bombs on the U. S pacific fleets (Borch 846). With 2, 403 dead, 1,178 wounded, and eight battle ships sunk or damaged and 165 aircraft destroyed, the Japanese had succeeded on their attack. With their success the Japanese only lost a few ships and aircraft, and only 185 were killed or wounded. On December 16, 1941 the joint congressional committee declared that Admural E. Kimmel and Lieutenant general Walter c. hort failed to prepare Americans at Pearl Harbor for the attack of the Japanese. On September 11, 2001 most of us were sitting in class while 19 members of Al Quida boarded four commercial airlines, intending to take over and crash all four planes into traditional American landscapes. The first plane to crash, crashed into the north tower of the world trade center. Shortly after a second plane crashed into the south tower of the world trade center. An hour later a third plane struck the pentagon, destroying a portion of the building (Borch 847). The fourth plane crashed into a ruel area of southeast Pittsburgh (Borch 847).

By 12:00 p. m. there were 2,823 killed in Manhattan and 189 in Washington, D. C. Days after the attack the U. s government identified Osama bin laden and his Al Queda as responsible for the attacks. All 19 Al queda high jackers had entered the United States legally. They had student and tourist visas’. They tried to blend into American life; they took flying training at civilian pilot schools (Borch 847). This helped them pilot the planes after they killed commercial pilots. As we continue to blame bin laden for the attacks, he has never claimed responsibility for it, but has released video tapes praising the 9/11 high jackers.

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He has also threatened more attacks against America. The author raises the question “was intelligence failure the reason for these attacks. He states that they knew a war with Japan was highly likely. This fact was backed up by a message received saying “this dispatch is to be considered a warning, negotiation with Japan…. have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected with the next few days. ” Also after taking command Kimmel and Short were informed that if an attack occurred it would most likely be an air bombing attack.

Borch states that if the Japanese diplomatic messages would have been decrypted, it would have shown there was going to be an attack occurring on December 7, 1941. He also says there was a lack of strategic intelligence. There was a 75 minute tactical warning, when the sinking of Ward, at the mouth of the harbor. Borch said could have made a difference, if Kimmel and Short would have acted upon that warning. Also at 7:02 a. m. radar detected a large number of aircraft approaching Oahu. Both of these warnings were missed.

He says that Kimmel and his staff were still arguing about the significance of the wards attack, when the first bombs were dropped on Oahu. As for 9/11 they could have seen it coming because of the previous attacks of the world trade center in 1993, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, in 2000, and other events. The federal Bureau of investigation and others knew there was going to be an attack on an U. S target. But says no information had been collected that could directly point to the Al Queda attacking the world trade center. Both events were said to have no information that existed that a terrorist attack was about to happen.

The closest thing that could have helped was the message sent to Pearl Harbor, which was not decrypted. And although there was no imminent proof of both attacks, Kimmel and Short had more information available to them than those of 9/11. With 9/11 no one knew the terrorist themselves learned how to pilot a commercial aircraft there was no tactical warning of the Al Queda attacking. When the first plane crashed into the world trade center, many thought it was an accident. No one knew that terrorist had taken over American and United Airline flights until their suicide mission was too far along to stop (Borch 851).

To me there are some difficulties with some of the evidence the author uses, mainly because he uses his opinions. For instance when he says that no one had any evidence about 9/11, false! The 9/11 commission report is the official report of the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks. One of the things the commission reported states is that they had evidence that several of the 9/11 hijackers passed through Iran, and indicates that officials in Iran did not place entry stamps in their passports. This and other evidence told there was going to be an attack on the United States.

So we did have the intelligence to prevent it, we just didn’t have to funding or resources. Borch says that we couldn’t have collected more information about the attacks and we didn’t have that much information in the first place. But with my prior knowledge and after reading his opinion, it raises the question on how much did they really know? I mean just a few days after the attack they already had suspects! This brings my attention to how secretive the government really is. Granted, they can’t release a lot of information in the fact that half America would go into panic.

But as for 9/11 being intelligence failure I would have to disagree. True we didn’t know what day it would happen or how. But with the evidence we did have and the conspiracies, we could have better prepared for it. On the other hand we has Americans have a certain way we do things, and the American way is we can’t do anything till something happens. This brings up the authors next topic which is “was American unprepared? ” Borch states that if Kimmel and Short could have prepared their troops better for this kind of attack.

And in turn, might have prevented the attack from happening. Now the unpreparedness regarding 9/11 concerns only what could have been done to prevent a terrorist attack. The unpreparedness of Pearl Harbor existed because of Kimmel and Short. Some reasons would be they were not conducting long-range reconnaissance with the ships and aircrafts, had not integrated their command and control structures, failed to take passive defensive measures, and last has not instilled in their commands a sense of urgency or realization that war was upon them (Borch 855).

Kimmel had forgotten to order the placement of torpedo netting around the ships and short rejected the use of barrage balloons over the harbor. They say both these measures would have decreased the damage caused by the Japanese. What we could have done to prevent 9/11 was to increase security at U. s airports, place “sky marshals” on all airline flights, train pilots and aircrews to resist rather than cooperate with high jackers and last infiltrate terrorist cells (Botch 856). Borch makes a very bold argument here.

I do agree with him and in what they could have done to prevented these events from happening. But as I said before we are Americans’ and our way is we can’t do anything till something happens. Now, Borch says that attack on Pearl Harbor was because of Kimmel and Short had not taken adequate measures to prevent the attack. Just the fact that they were not ready because “had not taken prudent defensive measures either to repel an attack or to mitigate its effects on their commands” (Borch 858). Personal responsibility is said to be the failure at Pearl Harbor, 9/11 was said to be systemic.

Rather a lack of preparedness of September 11, 2001 by the commercial airline security. They did not take the adequate steps to prevent a terrorist attack. Again the author actually has a very bold and logical argument on this topic. He uses logically reasoning in what Pearl Harbor and 9/11 could have done to better prepared, and in turn might have prevented, the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the world trade center. Military responsibility may have been a factor in these two events. With Pearl Harbor Kimmel and Short were to blame.

Though they couldn’t have prevented the attack, their failure to prepare an adequate defense makes them-at least partly responsible for what happened (Borch 858). As for 9/11 the men and woman running the FFA and the airlines knew that commercial aircraft were vulnerable to domestic hijacking (Borch 857). They could have expanded security. But that would have cost a lot of money. And as I said before, Americans knew we needed the increased security, but weren’t willing to spend that kind of money. Some thought if they increased security, business would go down.

As mentioned before we could have done some things that might have prevented an terrorist attack, but as for 9/11 it was an highly unfortunate event for American, that was conducted carefully and quite brightly by 9 Al Queda. The article as a whole was interesting to read. I don’t agree with everything he mentions because of the fact that it is his opinion, not facts. He gives a few bold statements, as I mentioned before. Borch could have improved this article by organizing it better and make it easier to follow. Instead of jumping from 9/11 to Pearl Harbor over and over, he could have found a better way to do that.

Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are both unfortunate events that is a big a part of our history. As my generation experienced 9/11 and our great grandparents and maybe grandparents experienced Pearl Harbor, there are questions that will forever go unanswered. A lot of questions I now have arose after reading this article. Will American learn from their mistakes? Will we think about the blood of innocent lives that was shed in a terrorist attack that may could have been prevented, but we as American’s were too greedy to spend money on increased security.

Basically I believe the whole topic of this is that we has American’s have the intelligence but don’t have the funding or resources. And we don’t want to do anything till something happens. But the question is how many more times are we going to have to sit back and watch our fellow Americans bury their sons and daughters, and watch as what was once a famous landscape come falling to the ground 100 ft. in front of us, before we do something logical and not do something that is not out of our budget.

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