From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 15:00:33 MDT
--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
> Mike writes
>
> > I suppose the attack on Pearl Harbor was
> > nothing but a 'minor misunderstanding' and the months long Japanese
> > occupation of a couple of Alaskan Islands, the attempted invasion
> of
> > Midway Island, to be used as a staging area for an invasion of
> Hawaii
> > (according to Yamomoto's own plan) was 'not an invasion' only
> because
> > a) we are somehow wrong to own Alaska, and b) we had the misfortune
> to
> > have successfully turned back the Midway invasion force.
>
> There is no doubt that the Japanese militarists wanted as
> big an empire as they thought they could get away with.
>
> > Furthermore, his characterization of Roosevelt as 'provoking' Japan
> is
> > rather ludicrous. I suppose that our economic sanctions against
> China
> > after Tianenmen Square was a 'provocation' by his definition.
>
> Dan does have a point, here, so that this is *not* ludicrous.
> Roosevelt and his pals should have known how much they were
> provoking Japan if they didn't. Japan was running out of oil
> with the US's embargo, and it didn't take (or it shouldn't
> have taken) a Clauswitz to figure that out.
>
> But I don't think that Roosevelt believed that a Japanese
> attack was imminent.
I on the other hand don't mind at all accepting the notion that
Roosevelt manipulated the situation in order to give the US a greater
moral mandate to wage war on Japan. If I see a guy beating his wife,
girlfriend or kid in public, I sure as hell am gonna go over there and
pester him myself to draw his attention away from the wife/girlfriend
or kid and provoke him into assaulting me, at which time I will
completely stomp his ass into oblivion. Does this make me evil and the
guy innocent, as Dan was implying Roosevelt was with regards to Japan?
>
> > The US
> > imposed economic sanctions against Japan specifically because it
> was
> > committing a holocaust in China in its attempt to establish it's
> > "Coprosperity Sphere". I suppose events like The Rape of Nangking,
> the
> > Rape of Intramuros, among others, are non-events on Dan's mental
> radar.
>
> Oh come now. The US never has and never should react to
> atrocities like it was the world's policeman or something.
> The Nanking holocaust was a good pretext for action against
> the US's enemy. (Saddam Hussein can tell you about that.)
> The US should always act in its own best interests. I think
> that the US was indeed acting in its own best interests at
> the time, though, if the US really wanted piece, they should
> not have cut Japan off completely.
The US was pursing this very Quakerish sort of pacifist isolationism of
'too proud to fight' and all that sort of baloney. It was going to take
a lot more than the deaths of a lot of people that most Americans at
the time didn't think of as 'just like us' to raise their moral hackles
enough to accept the responsibility to do what needed to be done.
>
> Why the name calling? Isn't that supposed to be against the
> rules here? There are extremely well-informed people from
> all parts of the political spectrum.
There is a limit to tolerance. I notice that if I, for instance, tried
to deny the existence of the holocaust (which I would never really do),
the death camps, the ovens, the gas chambers, etc. I would be
personally attacked, drawn, quartered, and crucified on this list. It
has been done on this list before. Just because Japan was populated by
non-white people and didn't have a demon like Hitler running things
(nope, just hundreds of thousands of little Hitlers), they seem to
always get a lot more politically correct preference and the US is made
out as the bad guy for 'provoking' Japan, partly because we nuked 'em
in the end, but also because they are not white, and in the political
calculations of many, whites are always more wrong than anybody else
right from the get go.
The same thing is being done today by the exact same people with
regards to the US war on terrorism. They are playing the same 'too
proud to fight' card that their forefathers played during WWI and WWII
in promoting their pacifistic isolationism.
I refuse to accept or tolerate such behavior. It is utter moral
cowardice and ethical bankruptcy.
>
> No lies here, Mike. No bullshit, either. There is a sincere
> difference of opinion. I do appreciate the motives of people
> like you and Brian to do what you can for the country you
> believe in, but most people on this list (alas) don't have
> countries that they believe in.
I have a constitution I believe in, not a country. The US of 1941
reflected the values of that constitution a hell of a lot better in
some respects than the US of today. It's better in some respects today
than it was then, but I think there has been a net degradation.
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