PSA: Worth Reading
While Henry and Brad DeLong noted some more silly prattling from a brain-dead economist, AB readers and those wanting to maintain their sanity* will prefer The New Decembrists, and new blog from The Epicurean Dealmaker and, presumably, others.
Worth it for TED’s Reformist Manifesto alone.
*I do not necessarily assume that either of these sets fully contains the other.
Hey we need a topic to commemorate Pearl Harbor day. That was the “unjprovoked” attack engineered by Roosevelt to get us into WWII you may recall. And WWII is what set us on course to be the #1 imperial power of the 20th century. Trying to maintain that position is now a major cause of our miseries. So you see it all leads back to Roosevelt who made the USA the monster that it presently is.
I prefer to celebrate Hiroshima and Nagasaki day!!! 🙂
Islam will change
Healthy skepticism is, well….. healthy.
Me too, the rapid end of the war allowed my father-in-law to return from the Pacific and participate in the baby boom, causing the babe who is my wife.
Ah yes, wasn’t it wonderful when the USA ruled the world? So different from now. Well it lasted about half a century or so. Not as good as the Roman Empire of course, not even as good as the British Empire.
Glad to see a programmatic statement from genuine reformists at the New Decembrist.
Is this a good time to link to my old post on the Commonweath Bank of the United States?
Boy Roosevelt was a pure mastermind to have been able to trigger the Meiji Restoration which allowed the industrialization of Japan which ultimately laid the foundation for victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War which in turn allowed Japan to project power throughout East Asia leading to occupation of first Manchuria/Manchukuo and then after the Second Sino-Japanese WAr most of China. Plus FDRs far sighted plan for American Empire included laying down keels for the Carriers and Battleships of the Imperial Fleet which he subsequently lured —-
Oh why go on. Japan had clear imperial ambitions for at least the thirty five years before WWII broke out in the Pacific and in the course of doing so built a powerful Navy that had no practical object except to challenge US domination of the Pacific along with perhaps British control of the South China Sea.. The implied argument that certain counter-measures by the U.S. to check this imperial advance somehow provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor is just special pleading.
War against the US by Japan was essentially sealed by the entry of Japan into the Axis on Sept 27th of 1940, a pact that mostly served to re-ratify earlier agreements between Japan and Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripartite_Pact
The idea that all of these world-historical events were somehow controlled and contrived by Roosevelt from some secret lair is simply nutty. And yes we know about radio intercepts and the like, there were easier ways to get the U.S. into a war with Japan that didn’t require sacrificing most of your battleship fleet. Frankly there is a level of continuing hatred against FDR and all his works that would lead one to believe the D stood for Diabolical.
Many people recognize the necessity for Hiroshima and perhaps the decision to drop the second bomb on the mostly civilian area of Nagasaki as opposed to the adjacent major naval base at Sasebo. map
After all Japan had plenty of civilians but only a relative handful of major port facilities with which to support a post-war occupation. But the cold-blooded decision that it was better to incinerate children so as to preserve docks and wharfage is hardly an excuse for celebration, still less happy faces.
Truman decided to take the shortest path available to him to end the war, a path that essentially threatened to incinerate 100s of thousands or millions of Japanese if the military leadership did not submit to Unconditional Surrender, and I am on the whole happy that both Mrs. STRs father and my uncle Wes (a combat marine in the Pacific) didn’t have to fight house by house through Japan. But that doesn’t mean that good ends make the means celebratory opportunities but instead should make for teaching moments for why countries should run headlong into war. No matter how cool the toys might be, there are people at the other end of that bomb path.