Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 03:29:44PM -0500, Sil Greene wrote:
> 
> .:I feel pretty confident the Roosevelt administration would have blocked 
> what
> .:was known about Japan two and half years after Pearl Harbor. 
> 
> Y'know, I feel pretty confident that FDR's administration wasn't making 
> anything up to justify their getting involved in the war, and really 
> didn't act in any way that gave the population a reason to demand an 
> inquiry.

Maybe you should read more about the subject, then. It's pretty well
known to historians that there was a great deal of maneuvering involved
in the run-up to the war against Japan. One conclusion has it that the
Japanese were forced to attack the US out of self-interest; we stopped
selling them oil, and they have none of their own. (Hence the invasions
of southeast asia and china, for their energy resources).

Others claim that Roosevelt knew about the impending attack on Pearl
Harbor from decoded Japanese radio transmissions, but that's more hazy
and the case was pretty weak the last I read about it. It seems that
there's more evidence to support the claim that Roosevelt essentially
baited the Japanese into striking Hawaii by placing the Pacific Fleet in
Pearl Harbor:

 http://www.worldandi.com/public/2000/october/kaplan.html

That said, the US was, as it has been in most cases throughout history,
extremely isolationist in the early days of the war in Europe and Asia,
and FDR had to work very hard to get around our official neutrality, via
programs such as Lend-Lease (materiel to the UK), a policy of firing
back on German subs when they tried to sink our ships, etc. 

 http://www.fff.org/freedom/0792d.asp

There was an official inquiry into the Pearl Harbor attack, as you
might expect, led by a group of admirals, and it was kept secret for
several years. In fact, you can read it on the ibiblio site:

 http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/index.html

For that matter, the Democrats lost 58 seats in the 1942 election,
as it turns out.

I'm sure we'd all be happier if the world was simple and easy to
understand, but it's not, and that goes a long way towards making any
simplistic slogan or summary of "how the world is" look extremely stupid.

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