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Another Malkin critic, Eric Muller, judges that Ms Malkin has painted herself into a corner:

With this morning’s concession that the concern along the West Coast was Japanese spot raids and not a Japanese assault, she blows up the case for distinguishing between the Japanese threat to the West Coast and the German threat to the East Coast. And along with it, she blows up her claim that military necessity caused the government to take action against American citizens of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast while imposing no restrictions of any sort on American citizens of German ancestry on the East Coast (except insofar as they were dependents of German enemy aliens).

Well, he does skate over the fact that Ms Malkin pointed out that the Germans were harmless because they didn’t have any aircraft carriers, whereas the Japanese had a few free to pester the West Coast. Because, of course, 9 aircraft carriers that managed to sink 6 ships between them on the West Coast are no doubt a much, much greater danger than the 1,170 U-boats that sank 327 ships off the East Coast.

Does she realize that her argument is completely hopeless? Perhaps someone else can explain this to her, because I don’t think I can make it any easier for her.

Unfortunately, Ms Malkin is proving to be a masochist, so we’ll have to go ahead with the spankings. The spankings, the spankings! Va bene. She writes:

Mr. Vox has got his facts wrong. There is no question that in early 1942 our military leaders believed the risk of a Japanese attack on the West Coast was substantial. Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, stated in his autobiography that hit-and-run raids on the West Coast were “not only possible, but probable in the first months of the war, and it was quite impossible to be sure that the raiders would not receive important help from individuals of Japanese origin.” That is enough to knock down Mr. Vox’s argument, but if you are still not convinced, click below.

No, it isn’t enough to knock it down. It isn’t even close. She is either slow or disingenuous, and I’m beginning to suspect the former. First, notice how she’s already retreated from her earlier justifications of “invasion” and the potential “crippling” of the war effort. Now it’s spot raids. Remember, this debate is not over whether the Japanese could fire a torpedo at someone’s yacht at the San Francisco Bay Club, but over whether the Executive Order overriding the Constitution and depriving 112,000 people of their rights was justified by military necessity.

She’s also relying on the post-facto CYA opinion of a civilian appointee – how many troops do we need in Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld? No need for armor, Mr. Cohen? – and blowing off that of a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who arguably knows more about amphibious invasions past and present than any man alive. Could the Japanese annoy us? Sure. Was the nation’s survival at stake? Never. Keep in mind that even at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese sunk only 6 out of 88 ships.

As I noted in my book and in an earlier blog entry, the concern among our military leaders about a Japanese attack on the West Coast was palpable even after Executive Order 9066 was signed in February 1942: After the daring Halsey-Doolittle raid in Tokyo in April, “[e]ight Japanese carriers had returned from their operations around southeastern Asia and the Japanese could release at least three of the eight for a retaliatory attack on the west coast without jeopardizing successes already achieved,” Army historian Stetson Conn recounted. Secretary of War Stimson “called in General Marshall and had a few earnest words with him about the danger of a Jap attack on the West Cst.” Stimson confessed that he was “very much impressed with the danger that the Japanese, having terribly lost face by this recent attack on them … , will make a counterattack on us with carriers.” General DeWitt’s superiors warned him to be on guard against a carrier attack at any time after May 10 and was informed that two more antiaircraft regiments were being sent to bolster the Los Angeles and San Francisco defenses.

Three whole carriers – that means depending on the carriers, they had between 91 and 255 planes, many of which were fighters, at their disposal. Not exactly the Battle of Britain. Malkin knows so little about military history that she doesn’t even realize that the Halsey-Doolittle raid was solely for psychological effect. It did zero damage to the Japanese war effort, and any retaliatory raid would have been for the same reasons and achieved the same miniscule effect. Two whole AA regiments? I wonder if Malkin knows that’s next to nothing. Somehow, I doubt it.

Preceding the pivotal Battle of Midway, which the U.S. was alerted to thanks to another extraordinary communications intelligence operation that partially cracked JN-25, the Japanese navy’s operational code, the West Coast again prepared for the worst. Gen. Marshall informed General DeWitt that a Japanese attack with a chemical weapon might be expected; in mid-May, 350,000 gas masks (the entire available supply), protective clothing, and decontamination supplies were hastily shipped to the west coast. MID concurred with the Navy that a strong Japanese attack on American territory was in the offing before the end of the month, but it forecast that the “first priority” target of the attack would be “hit and run raids on West Coast cities of the continental United States supported by heavy naval forces.” Army intelligence held that such action was entirely within Japanese capabilities, considering the weakness of American naval power, and urged the concentration on the Pacific coast of all available continental air power to meet the threat.

If “hit and run raids” were “the worst” and the “first priority”, then why does Malkin mention invasions and crippled war efforts? Again, she demonstrates her ignorance of military matters is nearly complete. The whole point of these efforts was about not letting the public become any more alarmed than they already were, which Malkin apparently is too blind to see.

The perception among our military leaders of risks to the West Coast in early 1942 is so well documented that I am surprised one of my critics would choose this line of attack. Did Mr. Vox even bother to read my book before slamming it? There was no analogous concern, by the way, about a major German or Italian attack on the East Coast. Neither Germany nor Italy had any aircraft carriers, whereas Japan’s surface fleet was the best in the world. I will agree with Mr. Vox about one thing. The risk of a full-blown invasion of the U.S. mainland was low. This was known at the time. As I made clear in my book, the principal concern was spot raids on the West Coast (such as the one that occurred at Pearl Harbor), not a major invasion.

I’ll bet she was surprised, considering that she does not appear to have given the matter a moment’s thought, preferring to rely instead on bureaucratic self-justifications. The best surface fleet in the world? Better than the Royal Navy, which was not only more than twice as large but had more of the aircraft carriers with which Ms Malkin is so obsessed. Low risk? Try nonexistent. While there was an awareness of the minor risk of petty raids among the military leaders, there were absolutely no concerns with regards to invasion or serious, much less “crippling”, damages to the war effort.

Furthermore, not only is she sidestepping the production issues that I’ve raised, she’s admitting that the ENTIRE PREMISE OF HER BOOK IS ABSURD! Does she truly believe that spot raids which could not possibly have slowed the war effort justify locking up over a hundred thousand people? If that’s true, then I suppose 9/11 and the threat of suitcase nukes justifies the preemptive execution of Arab-Americans. And 327 ships sunk off the East Coast are to be ignored, since carrier-launched aircraft weren’t used, but 6 sunk on the West Coast are cause for throwing out the Constitution? Not just pathetic, but bizarre stuff.

Since Ms Malkin clearly likes to try to play referee as well and declare herself the winner, she might benefit from hearing a more neutral opinion at malkin@comcast.net.

One of the most deeply disturbing things about Ms Malkin’s perpetration of a revisionist fraud is the way in which so many TV and radio hosts were unable to penetrate the fog of her flimsy case to see that it was based on an absurdity. Ms Malkin has inadvertantly done the nation a good service in revealing the astonishing level of military, historical and even geographical ignorance on the part of the national and local media.

I didn’t bother writing about Malkin’s book at first because it was so obviously ridiculous that I assumed the first person to ask her questions about it would explode her case like one of Terry Pratchett’s swamp dragons. But I realized that people were actually taking her case seriously when I appeared on the Northern Alliance Radio Show – yo Midwest – a week before her and one of the guys halfheartedly defended her case for invasion vis-a-vis Overlord because of the length of the California coast. (The problem is that the French coast is 2.4 times longer than the entire American West Coast, and all of it is a LOT closer.)

The Matthews-Malkin episode on Hardball was bizarre, because had Matthews not been so rude and focused on unfairly attacking her over something she didn’t say, he could have politely destroyed her over what she did write. But when you’re busy carrying water for John Kerry, I suppose it’s hard to pay attention to other, lesser matters.

I have nothing against Michelle Malkin, except for the fact that she has no freaking clue what she’s talking about. Well, I also regard her defense of internment as treason against the human race, and her claims of innocence in answer to charges of advocating the internment of Arab-Americans to be more than a little disingenuous. (Yes, I know she said she wasn’t advocating it, but then what’s the point of the book? And the cover? Sometimes, Virginia, people say things that aren’t true.)

So, on to the Internet sources which you can access yourself. Imperial Japanese Navy. Yamamoto’s invasion OOB. US naval production. Anzio. Anzio map that gives a pretty clear picture of the situation. Anzio ships. Overlord logistics – very useful. On the air umbrella issue. WWII armaments production. The economic data is compiled from a variety of sources and calculated independently.

If you’d like to check out a very different attack on Malkin’s case for internment, Eric Muller was the first to start picking it apart.

As for the mini-interview with the former member of the Joint Chiefs that concluded the column, well, I happen to know a few of them. And naturally, I rang up my favorite one, just as the Vox Popolisti assumed.

UPDATE: As there appear to be some recalcitrant “hindsight” theorists who don’t appear to be able to either reason their way out of a paper bag or bother to look at the links provided here, this should help spell things out. “In April [1942], the British accepted an American plan for a buildup of U.S. forces in the United Kingdom in preparation for a future return to the Continent. This plan, Operation BOLERO, included construction of airfields from which to launch the bombing offensive, a small contingent of ground troops, and a force of 750,000 to participate in a cross-Channel attack in early 1943. SOS, ETOUSA would participate in the BOLERO planning process and be the U.S. agent to carry out the plans for the reception and accommodation of U.S. forces. By early May, detailed planning was underway.”

So, the hindsight theory rests on the incredible notion that in the time between February 19, 142 and sometime prior to April 1942, US military strategists discovered the concept of logistics and found that 750,000 men would be required for a continental invasion. It also relies on the false premise that US planners did not know Japan’s transport capability, as a glance at the 1941 edition of Janes Fighting Ships should suffice to disprove. Ms Malkin can even buy a copy of the 1942 edition here for £30.

RM writes:

What would be interesting to review would be the various results of the war games played by the Naval War College in the 1920’s and 30’s which were used to develop Plan Orange (the contingency plans for war with Japan). Were the Naval planners of the that period projecting that the Japanese could invade the west coast of the USA?

As it turns out, there was a plan that concerned an invasion of the US West Coast by a foreign power – but by Great Britain in War Plan Red. War Plan Orange did not anticipate an invasion by Japan.

The U.S. military really did develop a “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan–Red” in the 1920s and ’30s, and it really did include provisions for an invasion of Canada by the United States.

The document was declassified in 1974, so this isn’t really a new story, but there has been some hoopla about it lately. Concerns in some quarters notwithstanding, the whole thing was just a theoretical exercise in military planning. The brass would have made better use of their resources planning for a war with Germany, but that wasn’t politically expedient. They reasoned that planning for unlikely wars was better than no planning at all. War Plan Red was never intended to be put into action except in the event of a war with the United Kingdom, an eventuality that everyone would agree was highly unlikely after about 1900.

In the color codes used at that time, “Red” referred not to Canada (that was “Crimson”), but to the United Kingdom. The proposed invasion of Canada wasn’t an end in itself; it was just the easiest way to hurt the U.K. The plan called for quickly seizing the key port of Halifax to prevent British resupply; cutting communication between eastern and western Canada by capturing Winnipeg; securing bridgeheads near Buffalo, Detroit, and Sault Ste. Marie; and attacking Quebec overland from New England. If everything went according to plan, the U.S. military hoped to take the Great Lakes region and St. Lawrence valley before moving on the prairies and British Columbia. Later when U.S. naval forces were built up, they might be able to take Bermuda and Britain’s Caribbean possessions on the road toward victory.

But there would be a price to pay for any such war. Planners essentially wrote off the Philippines, Guam, and Samoa if the British tried to take them early in the war. Planners also anticipated a possible invasion of the U.S. Pacific coast by an allied force from Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.

Now, given that War Plan Orange did not anticipate an invasion of the West Coast by Japan, why would War Plan Red have anticipated one by the Commonwealth? The answer, as always, comes down to logistics. The Royal Navy had the ships to deliver a large force to US shores while the Japanese did not. You’ll note that both Orange and Red anticipated the loss of the Philippines; its actual fall could have come as no surprise. As I mentioned previously, the decision to defend the Philippines was primarily political and the Navy wisely opposed it from the start.

Needless to say, this should demonstrate the vast divergence that often exists between what the public believes and what the planners know. A good lesson for our times.

Dear Ms Malkin,

As you may or may not be aware, WorldNetDaily today published a column of mine which I believe conclusively proves that there was never any military necessity for Executive Order 9066 on the grounds of invasion, raids or sabotage, intelligence memos notwithstanding. The purpose of this email is to respectfully request from you a column publicly admitting that there was not, in fact, any military necessity for the internment and that your conclusions in “In Defense of Internment” were mistaken.

The likelihood of a Japanese invasion was never taken seriously by the military strategists of the time, as the logistics required for the 1944 Anzio and Overlord invasions should make very clear to you. As for the sabotage argument, that too is ludicrous, as the following figures indisputably demonstrate.

Shipping Tonnage Produced, 1942 to 1945

—————-1942———-1943————1944———-1945

USA—–6,252,300—15,153,000—14,580,000—8,804,900

Japan——511,100—-1,023,000——1,929,200—–626,300

delta——-1223%——–1481%————757%——-1406%

Because you appear to be unfamiliar with both military history and logistics, I note that the bulk of the shipping production for every belligerent power was not warships, but merchant shipping, 72.92 percent to be precise. And considering your interesting opinion that aircraft carriers are the only basis upon which threats to the two American coasts should be assessed, please be advised that Japan was only able to build nine carriers over the course of the war, some of which were never launched, while the US launched 120, many of which were surplus to requirements.

Aircraft produced, 1942 to 1945

———–1942——-1943——-1944——-1945

USA—-47,800—–85,900—–96,300—–46,000

Japan—8,900—–16,700—–28,200—–11,100

delta—–537%——-514%——-342%——-414%

I note here that even if every West Coast aircraft production facility had been destroyed in 1942 by “attack, invasion, spot raids, sabotage, and surveillance”, the USA would have still had essentially the same advantage over Japan that year that it did in 1945, when the war was all but over, 403 percent compared to 414 percent.

In the event that you find yourself inclined to argue that a significant percentage of American production was required for the European war in 1942, I recommend that you first examine the production statistics for Great Britain, the Soviet Union and Germany, then read Winston Churchill’s excellent six-volume History of the Second World War. You will find that the Allied leaders were well aware of the implications of their significant advantage in industrial capacity even before America’s entry into the war.

As I hope you are now able to understand, even if Japan’s military leaders had been so foolish as to risk the entire Imperial Japanese Navy on what would have necessarily been a suicide mission for the 42,000 troops that represented the IJN’s maximum transport capacity in 1942, no amount of fifth column activity, including spying, raiding and sabotage, could have significantly affected the American war effort, let alone crippled it.

If you find yourself unable to understand or accept the overwhelming evidence against your assertion of the military necessity for internment, I strongly recommend that you speak to an admiral or Marine general well-versed in amphibious assaults and WWII-era military history.

Sincerely,

Vox Day

Universal Press Syndicate

http://voxday.blogspot.com

Imagine, if you can, that The Lord of the Rings were written by Helen Fielding, and Ms Fielding was a very, very gay man.

Went all the way to the Gap of Rohan only to find there is no Gap in Rohan. Not even a Banana Republic. False advertising! – Arwen Undomiel

Everything going from bad to worse. Stop-off in Bree resulted in pick-up of disaffected and unshaven human who is obviously pervy hobbit-fancier, not that anyone listens to me. Insisted we all share bed in his room instead of going back to own perfectly nice quarters, then hung about all night most likely hoping for mad hobbit foursome under the sheets. Didn’t happen, but did have to spend all night hanging on to Pippin’s belt to prevent him from climbing right over Sam and onto Frodo. Does Pippin have death wish, or what? – Meriadoc Brandybuck

Have crossed orcs with goblin men in caverns below Isengard. V. tedious experience as orcs and goblin men most reluctant to breed, even with dinner and flowers. Next time will try something easier, such as breeding goblins and cheerleaders to create super-perky army that can travel by day and will not complain about pink uniforms. – Saruman

I rather like that Deion has returned to the NFL. He has nothing to prove, having earned his Super Bowl rings and established himself as one of the greatest cornerbacks of all time. But seeing the picture of him standing and laughing with Ray Lewis makes me think that this is a guy who doesn’t really care if he’s a nickel back or a starter, doesn’t really care if he earns a dime this year, that more than anything it’s just a case of a guy who loves the game and the camaraderie and wants to experience it one more time before he has to hang it up for good.

Or maybe I’m projecting. I spend most of my soccer days coaching now, but I can’t tell you how good it feels when I get a call from one of my friends, telling me that there’s a game in two weeks and they could use a wing who can get up and down the right side. I treasure every moment when I’m on that field, because I know there won’t be many more times that I’ll be playing at that level.

Deion’s comeback isn’t like the ill-fated returns of Michael Jordan (the last one) or Magic Johnson. It isn’t like the ugly, embarrassing refusals to gracefully step aside when the moment is right, as was the case with Johnny Unitas and Emmitt Smith. Deion is a unique talent, but for all his theatrics, he’s always been a team player on the field, willing to subordinate his massive ego for the good of the team. I think it’s interesting that despite how many people loathed from the start, I’ve never heard any of his teammates say a bad word about him.

Okay, perhaps Andre Rison, but then, when has Andre Rison had a good word to say about anyone?

When George Bush spoke of dark ideologies, thoughts of Microsoft crept insensibly to mind. What’s interesting is that the evil empire appears to be permitting its dominance to erode. Consider the following statistics from one webmaster’s site, where it looks as if the most of the migration from IE5 is going to Mozilla and Opera.

Even more interesting, perhaps, is the 25 percent growth in Linux usage in the past year. Sure, at 3 percent it’s still trivial, but that’s already surpassed Apple’s 2.5 percent. Once it passes 5 percent and begins to command the attention of the mainstream and the software developers, we could see some more serious migration towards it. Let’s hope so, anyhow.

As all but the most determinedly foolish have given up trying to argue invasion or a crippled war effort, we’ve finally reached the semantical view of hindsight defense. This is really an attempt to surrender while hanging onto some shred of self-regard at the price of dignity, and so I mock it accordingly. Since someone was hung up on the production curves as opposed to the wartime totals, I’ll simply provide the details for 1942.

Ship production 1942

USA: 6,252,300 tons

JAP: 514,100 tons

This means that even if the IJN chose to risk its entire Navy and been successful in destroying fifty percent of the production facilities on the West Coast, they would have only decreased the Japanese production disadvantage from 12.2 to 1 to 10.1 to one. Furthermore, the US more than doubled its ship production to 15,153,000 in 1943, further increasing its advantage to 15.2 to 1. But what about aircraft?

Aircraft production 1942

USA: 47,800 planes

JAP: 8,900 planes

Oh, but even if our ships weren’t needed in the Atlantic since the Kriegsmarine built almost no surface vessels after 1940, most of our planes were desperately needed over there, right? Again, no.

Aircraft production 1942

GBR: 23,600

SOV: 26,000

GER: 14,200

None of this should be any surprise to anyone who understands the first thing about GDP and industrial capacity. The advantages in population and GDP per capita were such that a reasonable modern analogy would be the USA and Argentina. The fact that the obvious implications of these advantages may be beyond you does not mean that it is appropriate to assume that they were beyond the President and his military advisors.

1938 Population and GDP per capita:

USA: 130 million, 6,154

JAP: 77 million, 2,195

I note, finally, that still no one has a) explained how this theoretical invasion might have taken place, b) explained how any amount of sabotage or production facility destruction would have slowed, much less crippled, the war effort, c) cited evidence that the Japanese had any plans, even contingency plans, for attacking the US mainland. I do not wish to hear any more bizarre and hazy arguments based on dead novelists and 1970s sci-fi television shows; if you have something specific and relevant, then please post it for consideration. Otherwise, please keep it to yourself. You have been warned.

From Debka:

Two security-related incidents Saturday temporarily shut several Los Angeles international airport terminals and prevented planes taking off. Roads to and from airport blocked. No details given out. Rumor of small bomb that exploded in a terminal and injured 7 passengers not officially confirmed.

Remember, a similar diversionary tactic was employed to help the two Chechen terrorists board the two Russian planes that were bombed. I wouldn’t be surprised if we learn that there was a plan to go after some airliners at LAX, although if there was an attempt and it was stopped, we may never hear another word about this incident.

Debka also had some interesting, if somber analysis about the fragmentation of al-Qaeda, and how this may lead to a more dangerous situation.

In “Al Qaeda Today, Centralized Strategic Decisions, Decentralized Operations”, examination of the terrorist network’s operational deployment revealed that its supreme leadership was losing direct control over target selection or the modalities of attacks decided by local branches, beyond general directives. The brutal school siege in Beslan, North Osettia, this week, was on example of a regional operation run by semi-autonomous regional or local affiliates over which the overall leadership has little control.

The school siege was masterminded by the Saudi wing of al Qaeda in Chechnya. Al Qaeda cells based in Iran are prone to manipulation by Tehran for political and military ends that are foreign to the movement’s objectives. Al Qaeda is also found in league with Iran and the Lebanese Hizballah in attempting to grab footholds in South Lebanon and Gaza Strip….

The first cracks are marring the once rock-smooth relations of unity and obedience binding the fundamentalist terror network’s various operational branches to the directives handed down by the top leaders.

This fragmentation of al Qaeda into ungovernable entities allied with outside forces, embedded in civilian populations and targeting other civilians, seriously hampers the efforts of counter-terror force to catch – let alone prevail over – all its widely-diffused fighting elements – certainly not by conventional military means.

Isn’t it interesting, how individuals from those two strategic centers I mentioned in the column on Clausewitz two months ago keep popping up. Iran and Saudi Arabia. Another lesson from the Russian school horror that the West should have learned from the seventies terror strikes is that capturing and holding terrorists is always a mistake. Many of the most brutal attacks are made in order to free previously captured terrorists.