America the Apologetic

Spencer Warren writes:

About an hour ago, the House passed by a 426-0 vote House Resolution 122, sponsored by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Cal), apologizing (yet again) for the wartime internment of Japanese aliens, Japanese-Americans, and certain German and Italian aliens and German- and Italian-American citizens. This was passed under an expedited procedure, called suspension of the rules, for non-controversial legislation. It would have taken only one member’s objection to block this procedure.

Evidently, not a single House member, including the ever-clueless Republican “conservatives,” has read Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment: The Case for “Racial Profiling” in World War II and the War on Terror (2004). This is the first book to examine comprehensively the secret intelligence, held in the National Archives, on which the Roosevelt administration relied in making its internment decision sixty-five years ago. Malkin, whose work presumbably is well-known to the “conservatives,” makes the strong case for President Roosevelt’s resolute action just two months after Pearl Harbor. The 1980s commission that inspired today’s victim and apology cycle declined to review this intelligence.

Once again the “conservatives” and the Stupid Party Republicans—without a single dissent—have lined up behind the hate-America liberals to undermine our nation, turning our past inside out in an Orwellian act. This kind of attack on our history is comparable to the Clinton and Bush apologies for slavery made in Africa, and the Bush attack on Roosevelt for the Yalta agreements*, which he made in Lithuania. It is part of the same misrepresentation of the past—usually to conform to leftist myth—found in the despicable, anti-historical Clint Eastwood films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, which draw a moral equivalence between us and our Nazi-like Japanese enemy.

The myth of the “racist” World War II internments (which embraced whites of European background as well as Japanese) is used today to justify the government’s refusal to employ profiling of airline passengers after 9-11, thus endangering our nation’s security and imposing huge burdens on the vast majority of citizens. Like the two Eastwood movies, this irrational anti-profiling policy illustrates that radical egalitarianism has become a mania.

Finally, note that the Berman resolution was made to coincide with the sixty-fifth anniversary of the internment decision. Let us watch to see if Mr. Berman or any of the “conservative” Republicans will introduce resolutions to commemorate the sixty-fifth anniversary in April of the epic Doolittle Raid, our first bombing attack on Japan at our low point of the war, only four months after Pearl Harbor. Or the sixty-fifth anniversary in June of the Battle of Midway, which was a direct consequence of the Doolittle Raid and was the greatest, most decisive naval victory in our history.

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* How many Roosevelt critics know that at the time of the Yalta conference, in February 1945, the Red Army had already overrun most of Eastern Europe, making it impossible for Roosevelt and Churchill to change the facts on the ground? Or that Roosevelt’s high priority was to maintain the alliance with Stalin and enlist Stalin’s entry into the war against Japan, which at that time (before it was known that the atomic bomb would work) was expected to last into 1946, with a full-scale allied invasion of Japan? Not many, based on a couple of discussions I have had recently with conservatives. What are the chances President Bush knew this at the time he criticized his precedessor and apologized for our nation to a foreign country?

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Charlton G. writes:

I believe it is the Teheran Agreement that has conservatives riled. Its main points as gleaned from the Wikipedia article:

• An agreement was made stating that the Partisans of Yugoslavia should be supported by supplies and equipment and also by commando operations.

• It was agreed that it would be most desirable if Turkey should come into war on the side of the Allies before the end of the year.

• If Turkey found themselves at war, the Soviet Union was to support them.

• Took note on November 30 that Operation Overlord would be launched during May 1944, in conjunction with an operation against southern France.

• It was agreed that the military staff of the Three Powers should from then on keep in close touch with each other.

• Britain and U.S. promised Stalin that they would send troops to Western Europe. It was agreed that they would arrive in spring of 1944.

• At the insistence of Stalin, the borders of post-war Poland were determined along the Oder and Neisse rivers and the Curzon line.

Churchill had wanted to invade southern Europe to keep the Soviets out of eastern and central Europe, which could have been done at that time. Sadly, the decision was to wait until 1944 and to invade across the English channel, by which time, of course, most of eastern and central Europe were overrun by the Bolsheviks.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 13, 2007 01:45 PM | Send