Pearl Harbor and September Attacks Essay Example for Free

Pearl Harbor and September Attacks Essay The Pearl Harbor and the September 11 attack are two events that changed the United States to a great deal. December 7th 1941 and September 11th 2001 are two dark days that will never be forgotten in the history of the United States. They are the two major attacks against the United States that have occurred in history. Although the intentions of the enemy in both cases were to tear the United States apart, the responses by the administration have resulted into the opposite. Although many innocent lives were lost in both attacks, it is important to note that the attacks left the people of America more united and more prepared for future attacks. However, the most important issue that has come into the picture as a result of the two attacks is the effectiveness of the United States intelligence. Immediately after the infamous 9/11 attack, many commentators linked the attack to the Pearl Harbor attack. There have been arguments that there are similarities in intelligence failures when the two attacks are compared. Commentators have claimed that just as the United States was not prepared for the Pearl Harbor attack in the Second World War, it failed to defend itself against attack by terrorists leading to the infamous September 11 attack (Griffin, 2004). It is not a surprise that the two events are similar in many ways. They were both surprise attacks which had far reaching national and international implications in relation to the United States intelligence community. This is despite the fact that the happening of the two events took place over half a century apart. However, the actors in the surprise attack, the motives, sequence of events and the consequences of the two attacks are different. In both attacks, the United States intelligent community has been accused of ignoring signs prior to the attack that could have been essential in protecting the Americans against the attacks. Despite there being visible warning signs, the intelligence has maintained that the two events were unanticipated. There is no doubt that before the Pearl Harbor attack, the relationship between Japan and the United States had gone sour. President Roosevelt’s administration had placed embargos against Japan and had supported China against the Japanese. The economic sanctions had affected the Japanese economy and they had no option but to destroy the American fleets. The Japanese intention was to seize American lands in the Far East which would force Roosevelt’s administration to negotiate a settlement. Although the American administration recognized the magnitude of the crisis with the Asian power, they did not anticipate any danger of attack until it was too late. The intelligence made a wrong assumption that the Japanese did not have military ability or economic power to attack the United States. Unfortunately, the Japanese proved them wrong by attacking Pearl Harbor and shattered the United States plans in the pacific (Borch, 2003). In the September 11 attack, the warning signs were even clearer. There were various studies that had concluded that the war against terrorism by the United States towards the end of the 20th century made it clear that it was certain the United States would have a major terrorist attack. In the 1990s, the United States was involved in war against terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and retaliation was not unexpected. The 1995 and 1996 attacks in Riyadh and Dhahran respectively and the august 1998 attacks on American embassies in East Africa by the al Qaeda were clear signs that the continental America would certainly suffer terrorists attack. The American response to the attack by bombing suspected al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and Sudan should have also been carried out with necessary caution. Moreover, the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had declared his commitment to launching an attack against the Americans in 1998 while Bush’s administration had published the political agendas of Taliban in Afghanistan, its alliance with al Qaeda and their terror campaign against the United States in 1999 (Tobias Foxman, 2003). When the intelligence pertaining to the attacks is considered, technological advancement comes into the picture. In both incidences of attack, the technology used by the enemy surprised the United States intelligence community. The enemies in both attacks maximized the use of technology against the Americans to the surprise of the intelligence. The technological surprise in this case is the manner in which the enemy used a hardware that made it difficult or impossible for quick counter attack by the efficient United States military. In this case, the United States intelligent community was beaten in their own game. In the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese efficiently demonstrated the full abilities of aerial attacks by integrating new aviation in their military attack. They were able to contract the torpedo that could operate in the shallow waters very efficiently. Although aviation technology was not a secret in the Second World War, the Americans were surprised by the ability of the Japanese to incorporate the technology so efficiently and perfect their military powers. This made it impossible for the US’s intelligence to estimate the magnitude of the threat by the Japanese because they were unaware of their technological abilities (Borch, 2003). Similarly, although the use of passenger plane for suicidal missions was not a new phenomenon, the September 11 terrorist attack also achieved technological surprise. It is interesting to note how the al Qaeda utilized modern technology and globalization of the world to plan and execute their attack. They were able to easily launch their attack without the use of conventional hardware and expertise that could have been used for intercontinental attack. The al Qaeda had operatives in all parts of the world including the United States with well established communication networks to the surprise of the US intelligence. They used the internet, satellite telephones and international money transfer in the United States and other parts of the world without attracting any attention (Griffin, 2004). There is no doubt therefore, technology played an important role in the Pearl Harbor and September 11 attack. However, there are two surprising aspects of technology use in the two attacks. First, the technology used in the Pearl Harbor as well as the September 11 attack was not new or a secret. The technology was actually well known if not used by the United States security systems prior to the attack. Secondly, the United States had been the greatest beneficiary of technological advancement in the 20th century and had the leading experts in the development and harnessing technological development. However, they were unaware of the desperation of their enemies which prompted creativity. Thus they underestimated the capability and determinations of the enemy to circumvent their technological superiority and launch a technological surprise (Hulnick, 2004). It is also surprising to note how the enemy exploited the structural vulnerability of the United States defense and intelligence to launch their attack. The confusion between the US Army and the US Navy created by the war warning to the military in Hawaii from Washington prior to Pearl Harbor attack exposed the vulnerability of the United States military intelligence giving the enemy a room for surprise attack. The army concentrated on guarding the aircrafts and ammunitions against possibility of sabotage while the navy thought that the alert had prompted vigilance in air patrols by the army. While the army was guarding the aircrafts and ammunitions, they thought that the naval intelligence was monitoring the Japanese fleets. The army did not realize that the US Navy had lost track of the enemy leading to the surprise attack. The structural vulnerability was evident when the army and the navy operating on Oahu did to clear the air on the responsibility of each group. Even if both the Naval and Army officials cooperated to guard the island, there were no efficient structures to disseminate the intelligence information collected to the respective commanders. Although there is no evidence of the Japanese knowledge on the structural weaknesses of the United States military, there is no doubt that the structural and organizational vulnerability is an important lesson from the Pearl Harbor attack (Borch, 2003). Though at a different level, the organization weaknesses in the United States intelligent service and security systems prior to the September 11 attack may have increased the vulnerability of the United States, the military had a unified command outside the United States such as in the gulf war, but that was not the case in the continental America. The department of defense and the CIA concentrated on external threat while the FBI focused on crimes within the United States. The terrorists could have realized the structural weakness in the intelligence service. Moreover, security in the international airports all over the United States was under the responsibility of the airport management and airline companies who hired private security firms. In other words, other than concentrating on the structural and organizational solutions to the current problems, the United States intelligence concentrated on technological solutions which possibly resulted into the two attacks (Hufschmid, 2002). There is no doubt that the September 11 terrorist attack and the Pearl Harbor attack had numerous effects on the United States intelligence and society. More importantly, the two events changed the United States interests in the world affairs. The isolationism policies of the United States were abandoned after the Pearl Harbor attacks while the Bush administration took punitive measures against terrorists. Although after every attack, there was an improvement in the United States intelligence, it is important to put in proper mechanisms that would not result into a repeat of yesteryears mistakes. The US intelligence should be aware of the desperation of their enemies irrespective of their economic and military abilities. This will enable the integration of the intelligent community in the United States into an effective organizational structure that aid collaboration. This will go a long way in eliminating the mentality of technological solutions to the security threats facing the continental America and the world.

The Pro Life Fetal Rights Movement :: Government Laws Fetus Papers

The Pro Life Fetal Rights Movement Problems with format Pro-life rhetoric is reshaping history to make room for a new class of citizens. The members of this new identity group are called "fetuses," and their legal protection is crucial to the heritage of and future of America. Lauren Berlant, in her essay, "America, 'Fat,' the Fetus"; describes the pro-life motivation to present fetuses as a class of citizens, and thereby add "a new group of "persons" to "the people"" (Berlant, 98). To do so, pro-lifers exploit the current convergence of public and private spheres. In the intimate public sphere, citizens are defined not by a common civic duty, but instead, by a shared morality. In this crisis of citizenship, with no one quite sure of where s/he stands in relation to the norm, and everyone forced into an identity politics, the fetus represents the ideal citizen - utterly vulnerable and in need of government protection. Pro-life arguments describing fetuses as the ultimately silenced, victimized minority capitalize on the shifting meanings of citizenship to find a place for the fetus within it. By mixing the language of minority politics (asserting distinct identities of classes of people who are victimized by society) and Reaganite ideology (affirming the politicization of the private sphere overseen by the government (Berlant, 3), the pro-lifers constructed the fetus as an image of perfect vulnerability: "the unprotected person, the citizen without a country or a future, the fetus unjustly imprisoned in its mother's hostile gulag" (Berlant, 97). The fetus's vulnerability and minority status speaks to the plight of the newly distinguished class of normative citizens (usually white, straight, middle-class men). "The culture of national fetality also newly touches the previously privileged  ¨C because unmarked  ¨C unexceptional citizen ¡Ã‚ ­ His new exposure to mass-mediated identity politics makes him experience himself as suddenly embodied and therefore vulnerable. An entire culture can come to identify with, and as, a fetus" (Berlant, 86). Feeling suddenly embodied and vulnerable, only recently exposed to identity politics, the formerly unmarked, nondescript citizens can now, too, relate to the minority-identity that the fetus has come to represent. At the same that the fetus is achieving minority status, the pro-life ideology is also placing its fate into the tale of our nation, making protection of the fetus crucial to the country's future. "Since we "are" what we have always "done," we violate our true selves if we act in ways that are different" (Condit, 44).

Anti War Activism in the World of Cyberspace & Beyond Essay

The group this study examines is an anti war group, called IVAW or Iraq Veterans Against the War (http://www. ivaw. org) initially organized by veterans of the Iraq War in 2004, one year after the start of the war in Iraq, and have expanded their mission to opposing the conflict in Afghanistan. This is clearly a group with potential, with a defined core demographic, but one which is, while sophisticated in the tools it is using, failing in its fundamental mission and goals, not to mention not maximizing the considerable power of the tools it has at its disposal. Yet despite these failings, the group is extremely holistic and uses many proven tactics, albeit unsuccessfully or not maximally utilized or executed, either lifted directly or fused into a new medium, used across many historical struggles – ones for civil rights, gender equity, art as protest, AIDS activism, and even class struggle, although in the latter issue, the group is still struggling to find its way to define its strategy effectively as all social activist groups do in America on this issue. But the fact remains, you won’t find many graduates of Harvard stationed in Kabul. And in a country reeling from high unemployment it is a perfect time to hit the establishment on exactly this issue. Overall Organizational Structure National Overview The current organization is a mostly virtual 501(c) 3 (non lobbying) non profit, with a national office located in New York City, and a website. There are four full time employees, 1,700 members, who are listed online, and 61 chapters in 48 states. Figure 1: IVAW Chapters Nationally Regional Organization The regional chapters are staffed by volunteer state/field organizers to coordinate state wide campaigns of all sorts (described below). The group has volunteer speakers (mostly vets) and a board. Core Demographics & Membership The core demographic are vets, both old and young, and their families. The socioeconomic level is primarily blue collar working class and those from America’s heartland, who signed up to serve because they had no sense of American foreign policy, or enlisted in the National Guard to get a college or advanced education in the first place, without realizing that they would be called upon to serve in actual combat and for repeated tours of duty which is unprecedented in American history. To the extent that the organization provides educational outreach, they are exceptional in their holistic approach. Where the group fails is how they do not effectively use the tools at their disposal to mobilize their membership. And that failure is contributing both to their low member count and to their ability to mobilize a mass protest to both wars. Fundraising The group raises funds through membership dues, volunteer fundraising efforts and selling merchandise. What is interesting and highly unique if not commendable about the merchandising it sells, however, is that much of it is produced by members, so the group is actively contributing both through their membership dues AND through their personal experiences to support the organization financially. It is a unique, therapeutic, and self sustaining model and one that creates greater unity for members. It is also a tactic, along with alternative outlets for TV production borrowed from the AIDS movement and The Quilt, which used the same tactics, albeit not always online, although the gay community, in particular, was one of the FIRST niches as a community, to use the internet and art as a way of building community, particularly in response to AIDS and social exclusion, not to mention build a social protest movement over 20 years ago. Tactics Employed & Why Website As Information & Organizing Tool The group uses various tactics including predominant reliance on its website as an information source and organizing tool. Despite the cyber advantage, their tactics mirror many of those used in classic anti war organizing efforts, from Vietnam onwards, with a few other movements mixed in (such as ACT UP). It’s just mostly anti Vietnam war protest gone cyber. However the website also includes valuable information that includes sections for those who would not necessarily know how to find it, or have the education to even know where to look. As a result, it is a valuable information tool for its members alone, not to mention free to anyone who stumbles across the website. Information includes: Supporting War Resisters Publishing the activities and ongoing stories of those who are actively refusing to participate in the policy of stop-loss, or the policy of forcing soldiers to serve repeated tours of duty against their will. Further the group is following each case and actively encouraging its membership to support each active resister by contacting the army base in question to support the resister to the army brass. Providing Information on IRR (Resisting Individual Ready Reserve Recall) Intimidation Tactics The group provides information about DoD’s increasingly aggressive tactics to force people who are no longer required to report for National Guard Duty, how to avoid being penalized or how to get legal guidance and representation online. Resources for Active Duty Service people, National Guard and Reserves The group provides information to active duty service members about what rights they have, posted on their website. Press Aggregator/Social Media Tool The group is actively promoting its message throughout both the traditional media and the blogosphere. The articles it generates are also posted on its website as links to the other sites and these articles serve as both information for readers and as links in a social community as part of an online activist strategy. Active Projects In addition to being a passive information source, the group is actively documenting the experiences of vets both as a healing tool and as an education and outreach effort. These include: Combat Paper: A sort of AIDS Quilt project for veterans, who literally beat their uniforms into paper and make these into art projects, transforming psychological scars and wounds into art as a healing process. Warrior Writer’s Project: A collection of essays that are the culmination of creative workshops (3 already have been held) where vets talk about their experiences in a healing environment and then write these experiences down. One book has already been compiled from such writing. At the second and third exhibits, readings from the first book were combined with photographs from the war. More exhibits are planned and so is a second book. Truth In Recruiting: Small groups are organized where vets talk about the lies the military perpetuates in recruiting and what to expect of active service. Veteran Gulf Reconstruction Project: The group is trying to raise money online to help rebuild the destroyed gulf communities they believe the money going to fight the wars is being diverted from rebuilding and further, vets living in the region. Coalitions: The group is building coalitions online with other natural allies. Listed groups on the website include: Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families For Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Bring Them Home Now! Campaign, National Youth and Student Peace Coalition and United for Peace and Justice. The Blog & Social Media: The group has its own blog on its website and its members are clearly using social media networks as well (including posting video on You Tube and Vimeo for example). Field Events/Individual Speak Outs/Educational Events: The group holds events around the country, organized by the state organizers and often filmed and posted on the website. These range from policy discussions to individual vets’ who’ve served, who talk about their experiences in the field and why they are opposed to the wars. The Winter Soldier Project: By far, the most effective and powerful tool but underutilized for some unknown reason, is a project they have initiated called the Winter Soldier Project. It consists of short films, distributed almost everywhere on the internet, from the actual website of the group, to Vimeo to You Tube. One particularly powerful documentary is linked here. Why these have not gone viral is beyond comprehension, particularly given their powerful testimony, gripping video, and every day people reacting to what they hear in hardly militant circumstances, hardly the â€Å"hippy radical militant† anti war protester stereotype. The Role of the Group as an â€Å"Activist† Organization The activities of the group are clearly activist, as described in the activities above with a clearly defined agenda: to stop the wars and reinvest the money in America to build a more just and peaceful country and world. That is the fundamental definition of an activist organization, and one that uses traditional tools of an anti-war group at that, updated for the cyber age. The fact that they are so conscious and holistic in their approach to both stopping the wars and linking this to social inequity, civil rights and other societal injustices is even further evidence of their rightful appellation as an activist group. A Holistic Approach to Resistance The group is clearly using tried and true tactics as many online organizing groups before it. Unfortunately, in part, probably due to lack of funding, a mostly volunteer organization and a battered population of members, many of whom are on disability themselves, the group is severely limited in the kind of money it can raise and the ability of its members due to complicated disabilities that doctors still don’t know how to treat. Strategic and Tactical Failures Part of the group’s failure is the failure to identify the right demographics or utilize â€Å"cross niche† strategies for viral and social marketing for the powerful information they have to share and have already collected. Clearly they understand that linking to other veterans’ and student organizations is important, and clearly from the videos they produce, they are attracting a multicultural audience across middle America for their presentations, and not turning them off with militant tactics (such as Larry Kramer used or those used during the white student campus protests during Vietnam). That said, the latter two campaigns were highly effective, and achieved their goals, as much as they engendered violent reaction. One issue that is directly responsible for the group’s failure to capture more attention, is that they fall short, just as many before them, including the Obama campaign, of connecting in the way different demographic groups use the technology they have access to – in other words understanding that with the proliferation of G3 cell phones capable of accessing the internet for example, lower class people have access to the internet, but activists who want to reach them, in this case precisely the demographic this group wants to reach, but don’t know how to do so. A theory expanded upon by Lavato when he writes: â€Å"The next step of activism is for grassroots groups to connect online and offline organizing like Obama did, but targeting working-class people†¦. And the first step is for us to learn how our communities use their media and to engage them on their own terms. † This certainly answers the question for example, with a national unemployment rate as high as it is, and again falling predominantly on this demographic, why aren’t these videos, much less membership going through the roof? Even Larry Kramer was able to organize the sick and dying into an effective national organization WITHOUT THE INTERNET. That said, his tactics were very different. Perhaps that might explain why anti war efforts now including this group are so ineffective. Because the population Larry Kramer was fighting for was far more ostracized if not stigmatized than mostly straight young kids fighting for their country. How come these soldiers and vets are so ineffective seven years into two wars when Kramer effectively changed the way the government dealt with a devastating epidemic it otherwise would have ignored in far less time with far less effective tools? The answer lies in that IVAW have all the right instincts, and all the right tools, but they are fundamentally failing to implement them in the right ways. And that comes from a disconnect in strategy and class that is always present in every social movement that is driven from top down, rather than the grassroots. Which seems to be the problem here too. Strategic and Logistical Overhaul The group needs to start targeting states where there are large populations of military bases, and thus vets, and states with horrific social services (i. e. Medicaid), combined with high unemployment rates, like Texas, North Carolina, California, Colorado, etc. as shown on the map below. Figure 2: Map of 3 Month Decline in Economic Activity February – April 2010 The group needs to plot strategy demographically and economically if they are really going to make a difference, just like a political campaign. Cyberspace is a very nice place, but you have to ground it to have an effect. Feet on the ground and votes in ballot boxes are ultimately the most effective weapon in any organizational change â€Å"we can believe in,† to paraphrase a recent presidential candidate who used such techniques far more effectively. Conclusion The group is using tactics borrowed from successful grassroots and cyber online activist organizations such as Move On, (which may be the source of one of its failings) and of course political organizations of all kinds, offline and on including the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, MoveOn, ACT UP to even those used in the early days of anti-Vietnam protests. Why they haven’t connected to OTHER niche groups outside of the traditional ones they are already connected to is rather shocking, particularly given their sophistication in other areas. It also explains why they aren’t meeting their mission. Particularly as Obama has just pushed through the largest military budget in history. America is spending more for war under a Democratic administration, than even Bush, who expanded DoD’s budget to an all time high. The time is ripe for a group like this, with all the tools it has at its disposal, to explode, based on historical precedent and current widespread economic domestic suffering. It is a tragic case of a great idea, with all the right tools and dedicated people, who just don’t know how to execute their strategy and connect it to a larger, mainstream (or cross niche audiences) who will connect with the right message to help them achieve the ends they desire. An end to all wars and a reinvestment of America’s considerable resources in causes that are both domestic and associated with socioeconomic justice in America. Bibliography Cappuccio, S. N. (2006). Mothers of Soldiers and the Iraq War: Justification through Breakfast Shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC. Women and Language, 29(1), 3+. Retrieved May 11, 2010 Cox, M. S. (2006). â€Å"Keep Our Black Warriors out of the Draft†: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement at Southern University, 1968-1973. Educational Foundations, 20(1-2), 123+. Retrieved May 11, 2010 Hayes, C. (2008). MoveOn Ten Years Later. TheHollywoodliberal. com. Retrieved May 12, 2010 Juhasz, A. (1995). AIDS Tv: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Retrieved May 11, 2010 Lovato, R. (2008, November/December). Upload Real Change. Colorlines, 11, 16+. Retrieved May 11, 2010 Poitier, B. (2007). Activist Larry Kramer Is Not Nice. Harvard. edu. gazette. com. Retrieved May 12, 2010 Seiler L. & Hamburg D. (2010). Obama’s first year: leading an empire in decline. Greenchange. org. Retrieved May 12, 2010 Wyatt-Morley, C. (1997). AIDS Memoir: Journal of an HIV-Positive Mother. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Retrieved May 11, 2010 Zuniga, R. (2002). The Work of Artists in a Databased Society: Net. Art as Online Activism. Afterimage, Vol. 29. Retrieved May 11, 2010

Is Marxism Still Relevant Today Essay - 2189 Words

The Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) had brought about significant changes in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation and technology and subsequently established an era of unprecedented economic growth in capitalist economies. It was within this era that Karl Marx had observed the deprivation and inequality experienced by men of the proletariat, the working class, who had laboured excessively for hours under inhumane conditions to earn a minimum wage while the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, reaped the benefits. For Marx it was this fundamental inequality within the social and economic hierarchy that had enabled capitalist societies to function. While Marx’s theories, in many instances have been falsified and predictions†¦show more content†¦Considering that as of 2010, 45.4% of the Australian labour force comprised of women it would seem that Marx’s socialist perspective is less so equal or relevant in contemporary society. Marxism is often cited as being irrelevant within contemporary society due to the fact that Marx had critiqued an almost incomparable society. McDonald Brownlee (2001) argue that contemporary society exists in a post-modern era where westernised societies enjoy the benefits of higher living standards, where the rights of employees are elicited within the Australian Constitution and the rights of humans are dictated within Geneva conventions. An era where employees are entitled to government pensions, allowances, superannuation, and employees accrue sick and annual leave (McDonald Brownlee, 2001). Furthermore employees are able to seek union representation and are legally entitled to industrial action. McDonald and Brownlee (2001) assert that Fair Work Australia, established as an institution responsible for fixating minimum wage and resolving work related disputes, perpetuates the notion that Australia is in transition to become an egalitarian society with minimal class disparity . 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