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posted by takyon on Thursday December 08 2016, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the gears-of-war dept.

David Swanson, author of "War is a Lie", writes via CounterPunch:

The facts [of the Pearl Harbor story] do not support the mythology. The United States government did not need to make Japan a junior partner in imperialism, did not need to fuel an arms race, did not need to support Nazism and fascism (as some of the biggest U.S. corporations did right through the war), did not need to provoke Japan, did not need to join the war in Asia or Europe, and was not surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor. For support of each of these statements, keep reading.

[...] Churchill's fervent hope for years before the U.S. entry into the war was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in the targeting of submarines as it had been doing. On December 7, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew up a declaration of war on both Japan and Germany, but decided it wouldn't work and went with Japan alone. Germany quickly declared war on the United States, possibly in hopes that Japan would declare war on the Soviet Union.

Getting into the war was not a new idea in the Roosevelt White House. FDR had tried lying to the U.S. public about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. The map was of the quality of Karl Rove's "proof" that Iraq was buying uranium in Niger.

And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and--just 11 days before the "unexpected" attack, and five days before FDR expected it--he had secretly ordered the creation (by Henry Field) of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.

[...] On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as "the Marshall Plan". In fact we don't remember it at all. "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan", Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.

[...] Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R-MT), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II [...] found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference [of August 1941]. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been "cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade". Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the catchy slogan "Kill Japs! Kill Japs!") had given instructions to him and others to "shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea".

The article is very detailed and shows repeatedly the duplicity of those who have claimed that the strike on Pearl Harbor was a "surprise".


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by BenJeremy on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:37PM

    by BenJeremy (6392) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:37PM (#438858)

    You are ignoring one important point: As far as the US was concerned, both militarily and politically, Pearl Harbor was NOT a practical target of attack.

    The US military underestimated the ability of the Japanese (and their willingness to gamble) to commit to such a long range, ambitious attack. On the political side, it was thought the Japanese would move on US territories or allies closer to their own islands; the thought was they'd invade, rather than purely raid a strategic target. Invasion of Hawaii would have involved a lot more buildup and capture of islands to operate from.

    In short, the attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't considered a possibility for very good (even if ultimately wrong) reasons.

    The reason it worked was because it was an audacious, bold move that ran counter to all conventional wisdom. For many reasons, it could have fallen apart... had the US fleet elements been out on maneuver, for example, or the Japanese fleet been spotted and plotted with enough intell (more than one stray report or two) - perhaps things might have turned out differently. Even on a war footing, the idea of an attack on a remote base was unthinkable before Pearl Harbor.

    The insanity of the tactic was the very reason they retaliated with the air raid over Tokyo - using bomber not designed to be launched from Carriers on a one-way mission, sputtering along on fumes before they even finished crossing the China Sea to land on the mainland. The US answered tit-for-tat because the maneuver was so over-the-top, that it demanded a response in kind.

    Tactics changed as a result of both of those raids. The Aircraft Carrier was brought to the forefront as the game changer it was. Naval artillery was no longer the deciding factor in battles between fleets. Before 1941, naval commanders still thought ships would slug it out (witness Germany's and Britain's lack of carriers). As a naval weapon, aircraft were more of an oddity before the 1940s, more of an extension of a ship's crows nest, rather than a means to deliver destruction to a dreadnaught.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:49PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:49PM (#438864)

    It was a bold move, and it may be an indication of the Japanese military's tactical brilliance far outshining their strategic/political competence.

    I know there was plenty of second guessing, dissent at the time about the best deployment of the fleet. The question of: "was this particular option taken deliberately as part of a larger political plan?" is probably impossible to answer... I am virtually certain that such plans were formulated and discussed - whether they were ever brought to the President's attention, and whether or not he was acting out one of those plans, there's probably not enough evidence remaining to ever answer that question.

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