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Today's Poll: Did FDR want to go to war with Japan?

By Howard B. Owens
Ed Gentner

I don't believe FDR wanted to go to war with Japan so much as the Japenese saw their main rivals for dominance over China, Indo-China, Hong Kong and Malaya were focused on the ongoing war in European and saw the opportunity to dominate the Pacific side of Asia and took it.

What the Japanese did not see was the ability of the U.S. to fight two wars on opposite sides of the globe or the enthusiastic prosecution of that war by the American people. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Pacific fleet and the quick invasion of the Philipines, Guam, Saipan, and the other Pacific territories only stirred up a very angry response from what was thought to be a dormant giant that was otherwise be pre-occupied with the events unfolding in Europe.

Dec 6, 2011, 12:59pm Permalink
Ed Gentner

It's an intereting article if for no other reason it illustrates the continued efforts of some conspiracy minded Republicans to denigrate FDR and elevate Hertbert Hoover to the level of the senior Republican statesman who was privey to the day-to-day activities of FDR's foriegn policy operation. The sanctions put in place by the U.S. were in response to the Japenese invasions and barbaric treatment of those people in China, Maylaya, Indo-China by the Japanese not as a ploy to draw the them into attacking American territorial possesions thereby creating a cause for war.

If you follow the logic of the article you could infer that the U.S. support of Israel or the santions put in place against Iran or Iraq were a conspiracy hatched by the neo-cons to bait Osama Bin Laden into a spectacular act such as 9/11 to draw the U.S. into the "war on terror" which resulted in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan for the benefit of Halliburton war profiteers. The truth is simply that both sides for their own reasons acted on assumptions that proved disasterous, resulting in the unintended consequences of a full scale war that saw with the first two nuclear attacks and the dawn of a new post-colonial Asia.

Dec 6, 2011, 7:41pm Permalink

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