I’ve seen several headlines like

I’ve seen several headlines like this one: “Pearl Harbor sub may show U.S. fired first.” I wondered what on earth the point was…is someone seriously trying to claim that the U.S. started the Second World War (at least in the Pacific)? It turns out that is precisely the agenda, at least in some quarters (The U.S. Navy has long said that it hit an enemy sub just before the attack began). If you follow the links above, you find this: “Nearly 61 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, researchers say they have found evidence that the U.S. military fired the first shot against Japan with the discovery of a sunken Japanese submarine.” And this: “A [Japanese] government historian said Thursday that the finding of a Japanese midget submarine sunk just before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor was evidence that the United States, not Japan, started the war between the two nations.” So the midget sub was probably carrying a couple of diplomats on a peace mission, and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in self-defense. By the same logic, if a Polish soldier fired at a Nazi tank rolling over the border, Poland started the war in the European theater. And if the U.S. should someday shoot down an incoming missile with an ABM weapon, we will have commenced World War III. This could be considered funny, I guess–it’s hard to tell in what spirit the wire services are reporting it. But I take it as another indication that anti-Americanism is an insanity that knows no bounds. The “evidence” of the sunken sub will probably show up in Noam Chomsky’s next book.

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