I'm always amazed at how seemingly reasonable people quickly deny the possibility that we, the American people, could be lied into a war by our "leaders". I'm amazed because our very history is rife with examples where our government has wrongly deceived us into war. Certainly, if they did it once, twice, three times, they would do it again, wouldn't you agree? Then why is it that people have a hard time swallowing what should now seem so obvious?
Lets go back and look at some history, shall we?
"Remember the Maine! To Hell With Spain!"
We can start all way the back on February 15, 1898. On that day, the USS Maine, an American battleship, blew up and sank in the stillness of Havana Harbor, offshore from Cuba. Our government declared a month later that the ship blew up because of an explosive mine in the water. The tragedy was a precipitating cause of the Spanish-American War that began in April, 1898. At the time, it was used as pretext for war by those who were already inclined to go to war with Spain. The government used the rallying cry "Remember the Maine! Death to Spain"
As it turned out, the USS Maine was not blown up from an enemy mine. With the benefit of modern forensic science, the explosion is now widely believed to have been an accident caused by the spontaneous combustion of gunpowder magazines situated too close to heat sources. Modern analytical tools, especially computer simulations, have all but confirmed this. Furthermore, recently revealed government documents suggest that our government was aware that the USS Maine was not actually sunk by an enemy mine. In essence, the American citizens were lied to, and soldiers gave their lives for an expansionist war.
Avenge Pearl Harbor!
In recent years, many controversial texts have uncovered facts revealing that our government likely had knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack prior to December 7, 1941. On their accounts, not only had we broken Japan's codes, but a British double agent had also uncovered the plot to attack Pearl Harbor well before the attacks and warned our government. But even if you don't buy into the "Roosevelt knew" revelation, nobody can dispute that our government did everything possible to lure Japan into war.
Article comments
1 - Mike
In recent years, many controversial texts have uncovered facts revealing that our government likely had knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack prior to December 7, 1941.
Can you provide some examples of these "controversial texts"?
2 - The Bulldog Manifesto
Mike,
Take a look at:
this
and
this
But also, in Churchill's book Grand Alliance, on page 602-603, he eludes to it.
Check this out from here
1. In the summer of 1940 Roosevelt ordered the Pacific to relocate from the West Coast to Hawaii. When its commander, Admiral Richardson, protested that Pearl Harbor offered inadequate protection from air and torpedo attack he was replaced.
2. On October 7 1940 Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an eight-point memo for Roosevelt on how to force Japan into war with U.S., including an American oil embargo against Japan. All of them were eventually accomplished.
3. On 23 June 1941 - one day after Hitler's attack on Russia - Secretary of the Interior and FDR's Advisor Harold Ickes wrote a memo for the President in which he pointed out that "there might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia."
4. On 18 October Ickes noted in his diary: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."
5. The U.S. had cracked key Japanese codes before the attack. FDR received "raw" translations of all key messages. On 24 September 1941 Washington deciphered a message from the Naval Intelligence HQ in Tokyo to Japan's consul-general in Honolulu, requesting grid of exact locations of U.S. Navy ships in the harbor. Commanders in Hawaii were not warned.
6. Sixty years later the U.S. Government still refuses to identify or declassify many pre-attack decrypts on the grounds of "national security"!
7. On November 25 Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary that FDR said an attack was likely within days, and asked "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."
8. On November 25 FDR received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that the Japanese would strike against America at the end of the first week in December. This warning caused the President to do an abrupt about-face on plans for a time-buying modus vivendi with Japan and it resulted in Secretary of State Hull's deliberately provocative ultimatum of 26 November 1941 that guaranteed war.
9. On November 26 Washington ordered both US aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington, out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as possible". This order included stripping Pearl of 50 planes or 40 percent of its already inadequate fighter protection. On the same day Cordell Hull issued his ultimatum demanding full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all China. U.S. Ambassador to Japan called this "The document that touched the button that started the war."
10. On November 29 Hull told United Press reporter Joe Leib that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7. The New York Times reported on December 8 ("Attack Was Expected," p. 13) that the U.S. knew of the attack a week earlier.
11. On December 1 Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, 12th Naval District in San Francisco found the missing Japanese fleet by correlating reports from the four wireless news services and several shipping companies that they were getting signals west of Hawaii.
12. On 5 December FDR wrote to the Australian Prime Minister, "There is always the Japanese to consider. Perhaps the next four or five days will decide the matters."
Particularly indicative is Roosevelt's behavior on the day of the attack itself. Harry Hopkins, who was alone with FDR when he received the news, wrote that the President was unsurprised and expressed "great relief." Later in the afternoon Harry Hopkins wrote that the war cabinet conference "met in not too tense an atmosphere because I think that all of us believed that in the last analysis the enemy was Hitler... and that Japan had given us an opportunity." That same evening FDR said to his cabinet, "We have reason to believe that the Germans have told the Japanese that if Japan declares war, they will too. In other words, a declaration of war by Japan automatically brings..." - at which point he was interrupted, but his expectations were perfectly clear. CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow met Roosevelt at midnight and was surprised at FDR's calm reaction. The following morning Roosevelt stressed to his speechwriter Rosenman that "Hitler was still the first target, but he feared that a great many Americans would insist that we make the war in the Pacific at least equally important with the war against Hitler."
Jonathan Daniels, administrative assistant and press secretary to FDR, later said "the blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be... But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price." Roosevelt confirmed this to Stalin at Tehran on November 30, 1943, by saying that "if the Japanese had not attacked the US he doubted very much if it would have been possible to send any American forces to Europe."
Hitherto eminently establishmentarian historian Jonathan Toland has made it possible for Pearl Harbor "conspiracy theorists" to become more respectable "revisionists" with his Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath [1981]: "Was it possible to imagine a President who remarked, 'This means war,' after reading the [thirteen-part 6 December] message, not instantly summoning to the White House his Army and Navy commanders as well as his Secretaries of War and Navy? ... Stimson, Marshall, Stark and Harry Hopkins had spent most of the night of December 6 at the White House with the President. All were waiting for what they knew was coming: an attack on Pearl Harbor. The comedy of errors on the sixth and seventh appears incredible. It only makes sense if it was a charade, and Roosevelt and the inner circle had known about the attack."
Churchill later wrote that FDR and his top advisors "knew the full and immediate purpose of their enemy": "A Japanese attack upon the U.S. was a vast simplification of their problems and their duty. How can we wonder that they regarded the actual form of the attack, or even its scale, as incomparably less important than the fact that the whole American nation would be united?"