From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LIFE DURING WARTIME
'Beware the Fury
Of an Aroused
Democracy'
Lessons from World War II.
We yearn for national unity. We are less than a year away from an election that split us 50-50. On Sept. 10, we were evenly split on what to do with the bulging surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund, on whether to raise or lower taxes and how to do it, on the need for a missile defense, and on much else.
On Dec. 6, 1941, we were also badly divided, although over a much more momentous issue than Social Security or taxes. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the next morning drew us together as nothing else ever could have. That feeling of unity was best expressed in the phrase heard millions of times during World War II--"We are all in this together."
The attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center 60 years later has had the same marvelous effect. Every American can feel it. The pride we experience in being Americans has come about not through hubris, or conquest, or achievements in space or communications or medicine, but because we are who we are.
"What kind of people do they think we are?" Winston Churchill asked immediately after Pearl Harbor. This time, as 60 years go, we want to show them. But this is a new kind of war. It will not be fought in great battles, pitting millions of young men against each other. It will not be concluded with an unconditional surrender.
The continental United States was not a battleground after Pearl Harbor. Sixty years later, we are all targets. That makes us more like the British, Germans, Japanese, Italians, Russians, Chinese and others were in World War II.
One of the first things you learn in the Army is that, when you and your fellow soldiers are within range of enemy artillery, rifle fire, or bombs, don't bunch up. A sweeping offensive against the terrorist isn't going to happen, as they are so scattered, so well hidden, do not rely on their manufacturing plant to supply them with the tools of war (instead they take those tools from us), have little to nothing to lose (as in Afghanistan) and in most cases not territory or government to defend.
With regard to Osama bin Laden, recall that the Soviet Union, with its own territory bordering on Afghanistan, could not conquer him or the Taliban. And in the 19th century, the world's greatest military power, Britain, could not prevail in Afghanistan.
So we must go over, in largest part, to the defensive. That means, first of all, don't bunch up. No one had ever before Sept. 11 thought of a jumbo jet as a weapon, but now it is, more deadly than any other weapon available to terrorists save only the atomic bomb, bacteria and poison gas. No one before Sept. 11 ever thought of lower Manhattan, or skyscrapers in every other big city, as temping targets, but they are. And not just to hijacked jumbo jets or to atomic bombs smuggled into New York's East River in the boiler of a tramp steamer, but to bacteria or poison gas spread throughout the building in the air ducts, or as was done in Japan through the subways.
In this age of electronic revolution, however, it is no longer necessary to pack so many people and office into such small space as lower Manhattan. They can be scattered in neighboring regions and states, where they can work just as efficiently and in far more security. As things are now, the more sophisticated we get, the more advanced our vehicles, buildings and communication become, the more vulnerable we get. Terrorism is the weapon of the weak, but by using modern forms of jujitsu the terrorists can turn our power against us.
The modern terrorists have at their disposal what amounts to a nearly unstoppable weapon, in some ways the ultimate weapon. It is the man willing to give up his life for his cause. In World War II, the U.S. Navy took its most severe losses not at Pearl Harbor or on the Atlantic, but in the Philippines and Okinawa. What sank more American ships and killed more sailors than any other weapon was the kamikaze. There was no machine then, and no computer now, that can respond as fast or as accurately as the human eye and brain. Kamikaze pilots are relatively easy to train, damn near impossible to stop.
We must improve and extend our surveillance. To begin, we must understand what happened on Sept. 11. After Pearl Harbor there were congressional investigations to attempt to find out what happened and why our intelligence was caught so badly off-guard. How on earth could American intelligence, at a time of greatly increased tensions between Japan and the United States, lose the Japanese fleet? Scapegoats were found, improvements in intelligence were made.
Today, the question that demands an answer is: How on earth could more than a dozen armed hijackers get onto four commercial jet airplanes simultaneously? Further, how could a conspiracy that had to involve terrorist cells scattered across the country, the continent, the world, proceed without being discovered?
This is a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy. It will be long, requiring sacrifice and pain. We will endure losses. But we will prevail, because in the year 2001 and those to follow, as in the years 1941 through to 1945, we are all of us the children of democracy. And no form of government has ever been as efficient or effective in waging war as a democracy.
On the day World War II began in Europe, then-Col. Dwight Eisenhower wrote his brother Milton, "Hitler should beware the fury of an aroused democracy." So should today's terrorists. And on Nov. 28, 1947, at the dawn of the Cold War, Eisenhower wrote to Walter B. Smith, "It is a grievous error to forget for one second the might and power of this great republic." That is still true, even though today's terrorists did forget. We won't.
Mr. Ambrose is author, most recently, of "Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew B-24s Over Germany" (Simon & Schuster, 2001).
