Every American, regardless of race, gender, social status, or ethnicity, remembers exactly what they were doing on the beautiful Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001 Masterminded by Sheikh Mohammed of the multinational Islamic organization Al Qaeda and resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans, this devastating event remains the largest terrorist attack in world history. The United States promptly launched the “War on Terror” and, in subsequent years, both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US motivations for the war in Afghanistan were genuine, but they invaded Iraq under more twisted terms: they had learned that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, but this ultimately proved false. Only one other foreign attack on American soil led to U.S. involvement in a major war: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. There are many parallels and coincidences between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor that could suggest that the United States government had many strong motivations to manipulate both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks to achieve specific outcomes. The attack on Pearl Harbor led to US involvement in World War II, a justified war, while the 9/11 attacks led to the questionable invasion of Iraq. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original EssayDecember 7, 1941 is a date widely recognized by the American people, just like September 11, 2001. The former is the day the Japanese military launched a surprise military attack on the Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii . It is no coincidence that all but one member of Congress chose to join World War II just one day after the attack. The mere principle of a surprise attack of this magnitude was enough to push U.S. officials, as well as ordinary people, into war with Japan. The tensions between the United States and Japan in the weeks leading up to the event were surprising because the United States was attempting to stop Japan's expansionist ideology. The allied nation even imposed an embargo on several Japanese goods, namely the export of aircraft, oil and scrap metal. They imposed these embargoes in hopes of returning Japan to its isolationist roots, but the result was the opposite: Japan saw war with the United States as inevitable. The Japanese chose Pearl Harbor as their target because it was completely unblocked from the Pacific Ocean. The military base was the main base of the US Pacific Fleet, so it was perfect. According to archive technician Zachary Dabbs, Hawaii is also over 4,000 miles from the Asian archipelago, so the US military deemed it an unlikely target for bombing, which is why it proved so devastating and effective (Lopez). Due to the great distance, most of the battleships were all in the harbor; they were very easy targets. With modern warfare, these revolutionary attacks are predictable, but not on this scale and not with complete surprise. The death toll from this undefended attack is astonishing: 2,403 Navy, Marines, Army and civilians died that morning. That number alone is eerily similar to the lives lost in the September 11 attacks: 2,996 Americans died. Not only did nearly the same number of people die, but the official start date of the global “war on terrorism” is September 11, 2001. The attacks immediately launched the United States into a larger waradministrative and diplomatic, but still a war. Furthermore, just two years later, the United States invaded Iraq based on rumors that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. However, there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein actually possessed these weapons. Even though 9/11 was not the direct cause of the Iraq War, its presence was still known to the soldiers. Iraq veteran Jeff Millard admitted to an interviewer: “9/11 became the reason we did everything. If we did a group march, it was for 9/11. If we were having a parade, that parade was due to 9/11. [We] went to Iraq because of 9/11, because that's where the enemy was,” which highlights the impact of the terrorist attack on every soldier involved in the ensuing war. The attitude was much the same during World War II, when “Remember Pearl Harbor” became a kind of nationwide patriotic mantra to boost the morale of not only soldiers, but also their families back home. The last sentence of Millard's quote is not entirely factually accurate, because the vast majority of terrorists involved in 9/11 were, in fact, of Afghan origin. Just as nearly every American soldier in World War II drew motivation from the Hawaii disaster, 9/11 was a thought on every Iraqi soldier's mind. In the years after 1941 and 2001, life for all Muslims in America and around the world deteriorated dramatically. In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066; Twelve internment camps were established across the western United States. Japanese Americans, legal and illegal, were essentially shipped there and the living conditions were horrible. The order did not specify that only Japanese citizens would be targeted, but over the course of the war 120,000 Japanese-Americans were arrested due to a “necessary military precaution,” which turned out to be unnecessary and unimportant. Japanese citizens were promised money as compensation in the years following the war, but it ultimately took nearly 50 years to pay off the debt. Just like the internment camps, the lives of Muslims also worsened significantly after the respective terrorist attacks. For the United States, no Muslim or Muslim descendant would ever be considered “safe” again. Thus, on January 11, 2002, the United States opened a military prison in Cuba, Guantanamo Bay. Those who are the building's biggest fans recognize that although the execution of this idea is miserable, the initial idea was actually noble. The country wanted to completely eradicate terrorism from its borders. The internment camps and Guantanamo Bay are strikingly similar in both their use and detention of innocent people. At Guantanamo Bay, Andrei Scheinkman states that “of the approximately 780 people who have been held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 731 have been transferred and 40 remain. Furthermore, nine detainees died while in custody,” which is an absolutely unethical conclusion to reach. Any number of innocent lives wasted should be enough to justify canceling any project, but that didn't happen in this case (NY Times). There have also been numerous suicide attempts in the prison, due to how horrible the conditions and futures of the prisoners are. It didn't take a full year for the Japanese internment camps to open their doors after Pearl Harbor, and it only took about three months for the government to authorize and operate Guantanamo Bay. Both buildings were intended to preserve the nation and protect the inhabitants, 2009.