Dear readers, let me take you back to the early forties of the last century when I was about two-year old. That was the time when mighty Japan made a mighty miscalculation. At least half the United States was strongly isolationist, and happened to be very very reluctant to join the War.
The Japanese did one thing that could have united the American people, and powered the will of the whole American nation to go to war. So deep was the division in America in the months before Pearl Harbour that renewal of the one-year draft law was enacted in Congress by a majority of only one vote. Just a single vote!
Americans had gone into a ‘peace shell’ after the First World War, and the Great Depression.
Japan would have been able to go for Netherlands Indies, while leaving the United States untouched. What made the Japanese leadership approve the suicidal plan to attack Pearl Harbour and bring the United States into the War?
Probably the grandiose mood of the power-drunk leaders in which no conquest seemed impossible. Japan had mobilized a military will of terrible force. She had become a prisoner of her oversize ambitions.
The night Adolf Hitler woke up to learn that Germany’s Pacific ally Japan had attacked Pearl Harbour from the air, he was seized by rage;
“Idiots—I have been busy sending flowers to Roosevelt so that America could stay out of the war. And these woodenheaded fools have changed the whole scenario in just one terrible hour!” Hitler lamented in the presence of Martin Bormann.
One terrible hour—one terrible mistake is what has often turned history upside down.
General Pervez Musharraf is a military mind. He should know better than I or my likes do, that wars are not won by the firepower of hubris. He might not have been born at the time Japanese bombers had rained death and destruction on Pearl Harbour. But he was destined to grow up into a General and a President himself. He must surely know what price Japanese paid for earning the unique distinction of becoming the first ever power on the earth to attack Americans on American soil.
If I were Pervez Musharraf I wouldn’t hesitate to raise a white flag and declare:
“Folks I am no angel, but neither a villain. We all make mistakes. I have made mine. They have made theirs. Why should Pakistan pay the price of our mistakes? Why should a war be waged in which there are going to be no winners? Let us find a common cause, raise its hand and declare it THE VICTOR. None of us will end up on the losing side.”
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