Pyle would be shocked by the turds we have running the show now.
I ask the Free Traitors™ who will make our “stuff” that is expandable in time of war after we de industrialize the USA? So wars are never going to be fought again like that? Really? Don’t count on it.
Ernie Pyle was killed by enemy fire on April 18, 1945, while covering the invasion of Okinawa.
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War is not a “waste”. What is a waste is tyranny, the lust for power and control over others, the fanatical hatred of other races and religions than yours, and unbridled greed.
Thus it can be distilled into a simple thing: deploring war instead of the people that cause it is like blaming guns, instead of the criminals who misuse them.
If you just try to take away guns, you end up just disarming those who want to protect themselves from criminals, who can always get guns.
And if you try to “outlaw” war, as did the idealists in the modern iterations of the Geneva convention, you just force those people who defend themselves against tyrants and fanatics, to carry out war without calling it war.
I cannot accept the premise that WAR is a WASTE.
WAR has a purpose. It’s to set right the tyrants who try to destroy, manipulate, control and kill.
Without WAR .. what kind of world would we really be living in today ..????????
The takeaway is that FDR, while fully aware that the US was unprepared for war, was determined to get the US prepared for war, and to prevent the fall of Britain which, immediately after the Fall of France (May, 1940) and long afterward, seemed inevitable. The post-Dunkirk British Army was stripped of almost all its heavy equipment, and was short of small arms as well. And beyond that, German U-boats were grinding down the Royal Navy and merchant marine, threatening starvation in Britain.
- 1941: Fighting the Shadow War:
- A Divided America in a World at War
- Marc Wortman (2016)The isolationists were a very powerful influence in America. I had known that FDR blacklisted Charles Lindberg from service during the war, but had not known how very influential Lindberg had been in opposition to FDR’s policies. FDR’s policies, in fact, were impeachable offenses about as outrageous as Obama’s. His policies risked war with Germany when Germany was the dominant military power, and when Americans at large were no more enthusiastic about going to war than the British had been when they cheered - and they did cheer - Neville Chamberlain’s announcement of “Peace in our time.”
Upon Hitler’s June, 1941 invasion of the USSR, not just Hitler but everyone else but the Soviets thought that Hitler would dominate the USSR within a couple of months. This would mean Hitler’s access to oil in the Caucus, and to Ukraine’s wheat production. But FDR’s right hand man Harry Hopkins - the man actually lived in the White House - was sent to Britain, and from there he asked FDR if he should go to Russia to find out what was what. Stalin convinced Hopkins of the fact that the USSR was far tougher than anyone else was giving it credit for and, with American aid, would be able to fight for years. FDR went to where a shipment of P-40s and B-17s was about to embark for British use against Rommel, and ordered the planes to be uncrated, assembled, and flown northwest to Russia.
But the thing that struck me the most was the way the FDR Administration fell off the tightrope it was walking to help the British escort its convoys, check Japanese ambitions in the Pacific, and stay out of actual fighting until it had more military equipment - especially destroyers - to work with. The US had leverage over Japan in Japan’s need for imports of scrap steel and of aviantion gasoline. Japan had leverage over the US primarily in the fact that the US did not have enough military assets in the Pacific because of its commitment to the Atlantic. FDR wanted to pressure Japan, but not to precipitate Japanese military action. Foggy Bottom exceeded FDR’s orders, overplayed the US hand in the process, and put so much pressure on Japan that they acted. Acted in the knowledge that they were taking a long-shot gamble. The US ambassador to Japan knew full well that that would be the result - and that the Japanese would follow through to the bitter end, fanatically.
FDR wanted war with Germany - but not too soon. He did NOT want war with Japan at the same time, and was dismayed that painful military defeats in the Pacific were inevitable for some time, before a US military buildup could allow offensive operations in the Pacific while still aiding Britain and the USSR. The Axis pact between Japan and Germany (and Italy) was aimed at the US electorate, to make clear that we would face a two-front war if we attacked Germany or Japan. That was more slanted toward the Germans than the Japanese, in the sense that Japan feared a US embargo, not a US attack. Hitler was not obligated by treaty to declare war on the US, since the Japanese themselves attacked, not the US. But Hitler had bitterly resented US aid to Britain, especially US escorting of ships to Britain. And Hitler was not one to have war declared on him, which he would have considered inevitable.
And of course, the immediate result was the sinking of (unacknowledged at the time) 300 ships in US coastal waters by German U-Boats - for the loss, also unacknowledged by the administration, of zero U-boats.