We Must Not Treat Muslims as We Treated the Japanese Essay example --

We Must Not fineness Muslims as We Treated the Japanese   The terrorist attacks on 9-11 ask frequently been analogized to fall Harbor. In many an(prenominal) ways, the analogy is apt. Just as that attack launched us into World War II, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have launched us into a new kind of state of war, against terrorism. besides waging this sort of borderless war poses great risks, not only to the soldiers commanded to fight but also to centre of attention American values. In this way, Pearl Harbor raises other unreassuring memories, those of the internment.   wish the recent explosions on the East Coast, the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 12-7, shattered our feeling of national gage. How could this have happened? Ordinary individuals, prominent journalists, and judicature officials soon started pointing the finger at the Japanese in America. Viewing these Orientals as incurably foreign, speaking foreign languages, perpetuating fore ign cultures, practicing foreign religions (Shinto, Buddhism), American union could not distinguish between the Empire of Japan and Americans of Japanese descent. As General DeWitt, in charge of the Western Defense Command, put it, A Japs a Jap. In testimony, he elaborated Rracial affinities are not sever by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on linked States soil, possessed of United States citizenship have become Americanized the racial strains are undiluted. As government reports rushed to the conclusion that Japanese Americans aided and abetted the attack, the wheels of the internment machinery began turning.   On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which a... ...l happen if we make such mistakes straight off? Consider another analogy with the internment. In Hirabayashi, the Court noted that because American society had discriminated against the Japanese legally, politically, and economically, they had been kept from assimilating and integrating into mainstream society. Exactly right. But then, the Court went on the explain-in an entirely rational but still disturbing way-that therefore the Japanese posed a greater national security risk. This presents a horrible Catch-22 Because America has treated you badly, you have reason to be disloyal therefore, America has reason to treat you still more badly, by restricting your civil rights. In our public and private response to the horrors of 9-11, pass on we force another group of Americans into the same impossible situation? I hope that by learning the lessons of 12-7 we will not.