Officials compared ignored warnings to Pearl Harbor to deflect accountability.

Evidence

The administration also enlisted exonerative comparison to fend off criticism of its failure to follow up on specific warnings that al Qaeda was planning a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. In addition, instructors at some flying schools warned the FBI that suspect Arabs enrolled in flying schools—later identified as the September 11 suicide pilots—were pressing for instruction on flying jumbo airliners. When asked whether the terrorist attack could have been averted, Rumsfeld replied with exonerative comparison that the United States could not predict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Beschloss, 2011). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2343

Categorization

• XREF: Against my kept gems on decisive battles only validating already-probable outcomes — Pearl Harbor invoked as inevitability echoes that theme of hindsight and the inevitability fallacy.