Ghosts of 9/11 & December 7 haunt animal advocacy
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:
Then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that
December 7, 1941 was “A date which shall forever live in infamy,”
because on that morning a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor
brought the U.S. into World War II.
Unfortunately, as Americans belatedly responded to
totalitarian empire builders, who had already been invading their
neighbors since 1937, some Americans took advantage of the crisis to
behave much like the enemy, aided and augmented by some branches of
the U.S. government itself.
Nothing of note was done to overt Nazi sympathizers, including some
prominent industrialists, but U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were
interned in remote work camps, ostensibly for their own protection.
Conscientious objectors fared little better, including many
of the most prominent ethical vegetarians of their generation.
The excesses on the domestic front during World War II, and
more recent U.S. government abuse of dissidents during the so-called
McCarthy Era and the Vietnam War, resurfaced in public debate
shortly before December 7, 2005.