Let me remind the reader upfront that I am not here to defend the
Axis Powers, but merely to debunk the black-and-white vision of history that the victorious governments are promoting. All governments are evil to some degree.
lol@7 years later, so Japan didn't start invading Asia long before their attack on Pearl Harbor, ya tell that to the Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese.
Yeah, but
all the cool kids were doing it, including the United States. It doesn't justify the embargo and all the other provocations (see above).
FDR's ongoing impacts on the world would include liberal democracy for all of continental Europe and much of the Asian Pacific.
The claim that East Asia has done better under American influence rather than Japanese is ridiculous - communism has killed countless millions of people in that region since WW2! Decades were wasted on destructive economic policies, and that has had a negative effect on the quality of life and life expectancy of billions more! Japan's more "hands-on" imperialism would have prevented that.
The transition of East Asian countries to "liberal democracy" is an on-going process. It hasn't occurred after their "liberation" by the United States, but if/when their
economic and cultural system have reached a point where it would be beneficial. That hasn't happened yet for the vast majority of the people in that region. Even Singapore,
one of the freest economies in the world, remains
very closed politically. No matter whether Japan on the United States is the regional hegemon, all statist political systems eventually lead to the same pragmatic outcome.
"Liberal democracy" is just another means of social control that has proven itself to be most efficient when ruling sophisticated post-industrialized societies - plebs are allowed to keep a fraction of the fruits of their labor and are brainwashed to think they are free, which produces a greater total profit for the ruling class than a shorter leash would allow. It's not a moral positive in of itself.
Actually paleocon revisiionist arguments regarding FDR prolonging the Great Depression have been thoroughly debunked by those little things we here in the reality based community call facts, [...]
The argument that government interventionism was the primary cause of the "Great Depression" (as well as the current recession) is not limited to
"paleocons" - all economists without a pro-government bias agree on that issue.
[...] there was only a slight recession between 1937 and 1938 4 years into FDR's term, the rest of his term saw huge economic growth of 9-10% every year FDR was in office and unemployment fell every year FDR was in office.
FDR came in at the bottom of the depression, and saw average compound annual GDP growth of
8.5% for the duration of his administration, driven in part by on-going trends in mechanization and population growth that he had nothing to do with. GDP is especially misleading because it includes government spending, which obviously increased under FDR, as did the national debt. Government spending and government employment do not constitute an objective value.
That is what we would refer to as a lie. It was U.S. developed, drilled, refined, and owned oil that was not sold to Japan, no threats were ever made to any nation regarding their trade relations with Japan.
Once again, you are making a collectivist argument. In a market economy, which the United States was and still is to a degree, the government does not develop, drill, refine or anything - individuals do. Certain individuals, regardless of their nationality (including Latin America), wanted to sell oil to Japan. Uncle Sam (along with the British Empire and the Dutch Empire) prevented that - through an act of aggression.
Except that a) Japan was engaged in a aggressive war of conquest and in Asia and B) Israel has never once in their entire history engaged in a aggressive war and have accepted every single peace proposal since 1948 which hasn't called for the destruction of Israel through a demographic shift aka "the right of return".
Japan was engaged in imperialism, which it claimed was welcome by its subject nations. No government's claim to power is ever unanimous - tens of millions of anarchists don't accept the rule of the United States, for example. Japan was a more popular empire than its European and American competitors were. That doesn't make it a "good empire", there is no such thing, but the arguments for American interventionism on moral grounds are without basis.
And in regard to Israel, you're just not thinking critically. Semantics are used to trick you to believe that the creation of Israel wasn't a massive military invasion, but in fact it was. Doubleplusgood.
Um no they must end their aggressive genocidal war in the Asian mainland or we won't sell them any more oil to fuel their war machine. To which they responded with an act of war against Pearl Harbor.
All governments exist through violence. Did Japan have any less business in Indochina than the United States had outside its 13 original colonies, as far as Hawaii or the Philippines?
Jews began being mass murdered in 1939, if Hitlers ambition was not to slaughter all of the Jews then why exactly wasn't the Madagascar Plan ever initiated?
The
Madagascar Plan, as nutty as it may sound now, makes about as much sense as any other mass deportation or "pogrom" of Jews, which happened constantly throughout the European history. Oppression of non-conforming outsiders is a trait common to all civilizations, and it's subjective to say that Germany's treatment of the Jews was substantially worse than the crimes of any overseas colonial power, the chronological circumstances being the only major difference.
That and other "evict the Jews" proposals had wide support, and it seems that the Germans were actually planning to go through with it - until the United States, the British Empire, and France entered the conflict after
Germany's (re)invasion of Poland. It takes a lot of doing to transport millions of civilians that far through enemy-controlled waters, and Germany had other priorities. What would have happened if America had chosen a policy of non-interventionism is anybody's guess, but it's hard to imagine a scenario that wouldn't have led to fewer casualties, Jewish and otherwise.
lol you cited a forum and the citation offered (with no link gee I wonder why?) which tracks back through a google search to
Politics Religion Wake-up America, Jews, Judaism, neo-cons and America which hosts some interesting little neo-Nazi tidbits; such as,
THE HIDDEN NATION OF THE JEWS Understanding Jewish Influence and
JEWS IN THE MEDIA***
What is the relevance of this
ad hominem attack? The source I've referenced (indirectly) to explain Hitler's reasoning was chosen for its ideological similarity to him. There may be perfectly valid reasons why individuals of Jewish heritage were perceived as being disproportionally likely to be involved in communism, just as there are perfectly valid reasons why individuals of Japanese heritage were perceived to be disproportionally likely to be involved in "anti-American activities" during WW2. Neither of the two is justified.
FYI Lenin and Stalin were both Christians.
Lenin
had a fractional Jewish heritage, and he was the very model of a "first generation atheist". Unsubstantiated sensationalist claims aside, there's no evidence that Stalin was anything but a Georgian / Ossetian (who are traditionally Christians), and a "first generation atheist" also. But none of this is relevant to the point I was making.
Hitler believed that there was a dangerous movement within the Jewish community, which has both religious and ethnic aspects. He believed that while there may be some "good Jews", all Jews are presumed guilty
unless proven useful. Hitler believed that the ends justify the means. Once again, none of this is very different from the
Japanese-American internment, except of course the relative populations and economic circumstances.
The U.S. was not in a period of expansion at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, in fact this was a period of U.S. isolationism.
Yes,
a few small islands aside, U.S. did not add much territory prior to it, but that doesn't change the fact that FDR was looking for an excuse to enter WW2. America's interest was for influence, not land.
MAGIC intercepts prove conclusively that Togo rejected Sato's proposal for unconditional surrender provided the imperial house is preserved, quite frankly sir you have no clue what you're talking about.
First of all, nothing is ever "conclusive" when dealing with governments, because the dependent also handles all of the evidence. And your "they won't bend over all the way for us so we had to nuke them" mentality is simply irrational. Americans were free to leave Japan alone any time they wanted, before Pearl Harbor or after.
Have you even heard of the plans for the "honorable death of 100 million"?
Yes, the Japanese saw themselves as fighting a desperate war of self-defense with no way out.
They destroyed the entire Pacific fleet save for a few aircraft carriers.
I've already explained how America provoked that action.
lol the Nipponese Empire was not a little nation [...]
Everything is relative, especially in war. Japan, the only Axis power in the Pacific,
in 1941 had 1/10th the GDP of USA + UK + France + USSR. And that that doesn't include the remainder of China, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and so on.
[...] and they had been engaged in aggressive wars of conquest in mainland Asia and the Pacific for a decade before their attack on Pearl Harbor.
The so-called "
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was no less legitimate than the British, Dutch, French, Soviet, or the American empires they were competing with.
(Stupid post length limit...)
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