Posted on 12/07/2023 10:16:59 AM PST by Enlightened1
The rape of Nanking was so bad that the freaking German Nazi Attache was appalled and gave some aid to the Chinese. We are talking literally stabbing babies with bayonets. Two Japanese officers had a contest to see who could behead the most Chinese in one day. Hamas has nothing on the old Imperial Japanese Army.
Well that proves it. Of course the US leadership made its decisions based on the book written by a court-martialed Army officer many years earlier.
It is also pretty well known that an attack was expected but on the Philippines or Dutch East Indies. Indeed when the Japanese fleet left for the attack they were sent with the options to attack either of these places in addition to the Russians or Pearl Harbor. They didn't get conformation of their own attack until they were at sea although they did train extensively for Pearl Harbor.
Coincidense? 😂😆😊 Maybe not, huh?
Yes - and our publicized “Fleet Problem” exercises surely helped the Japanese design their successful “surprise” attack.
This sounds like something coming from the neo-nazis on some weird web pages. they have even managed to twist it around so they could blame it on the Jews!
In re: “It is my non scholarly impression that the official u.s. foreign policy up to wwii was strict neutrality”
In the U.S. sense that view was always elastic, with it primarily meaning “unless U.S. interests” were attacked, or at risk, and U.S. interests meant more than just the territory of the United States.
Keep in mind the U.S. had already been to war in North Africa, with Mexico, with Spain, and had kicked Spain out of the Philippines, occupied Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, established the Philippines as a U.S. colony, built and occupied the Panama Canal, and had issued the “Monroe Doctrine” concerning all of Latin America.
There does not seem to be really strict” sense of “neutrality” in all that territorial expansion.
In re: “After wwii the u.s. relinquished the policy of neutrality as failed”.
It seems that it was not a “strict” neutrality policy before WWII, and therefore it was not an abandonment of that non-existent policy that followed WWII.
“That’s why I say the Spanish-American War was the start.”
Yes it was the start of “American interests” being `expanded beyond the shores of the 48/50 states.
Bunch of bullshit.
We “provoked” them by freezing assets, not letting them use OUR canal, and cutting off oil and scrap steel exports to them?
The Japs had just finished the rape of Nanking that even shocked the Nazi diplomats in town.
“and on November 26th — just 11 days before the Japanese attack — delivering an ultimatum that demanded, as prerequisites to resumed trade, that Japan withdraw all troops from China and Indochina, and in effect abrogate her Tripartite Treaty with Germany and Italy.”
So? We Indochina was French and British and we and the Brits were in China. So what if we told them if you wanna trade with us, you have to withdraw?
Those poor Japanese militarists... they only wanted to conquer Asia and keep trading with us. And the mean old USA cut off them off from US raw materials.
Is the argument we had a responsibility to keep supplying them?
This is crap.
On November 25th, approximately one hour after the Japanese attack force left port for Hawaii, the U.S. Navy issued an order forbidding U.S. and Allied shipping to travel via the North Pacific. All transpacific shipping was rerouted through the South Pacific. This order was even applied to Russian ships docked on the American west coast. The purpose is easy to fathom. If any commercial ship accidentally stumbled on the Japanese task force, it might alert Pearl Harbor.
So the US Navy, diverted commercial traffic, to make sure they didn’t discover the Jap fleet and alert Pearl Harbor? 100% Bullcrapo.
Marshall had only to pick up his desk phone to reach Pearl Harbor on the transpacific line.
My mom was a telephone operator back then. You didn’t just “pick up the phone on your desk”. You called an operator who started to BUILD a connection. As in calling the next operator who plugs you in to the next. First across America, then across to Hawaii? And then in Hawaii, on Sunday morning, good luck finding the recipient or duty officer. Once you have built the connection (and hopefully not dropped in along the way) and your party is available on the other end, you can talk.
Telegram was often faster in those days with the proper routing. Also telegram was more accurate. Voice connections were not always clear, especially outside the USA.
To this day Mexicans answer the phone “bueno?” (good?)
That is because when the phone rang the first thing the operator needed to know is if they had a good connection.
This article has a few useful things, but it’s mostly slander and hindsight.
Sounds like you’re taking the exactly wrong message from that scene. The guy who got punched was the low life.
“But we weren’t about to pressure the Euros into give up their colonies.”
And even less than that. The Japanese would have been happy with German colonial possessions in the Pacific. They were administered as part of German New Guinea and they included the German Solomon Islands (Buka, Bougainville and several smaller islands), the Carolines, Palau, the Marianas (except for Guam), the Marshall Islands and Nauru.
The Japanese expected to be cut in after Versailles as they were allies in WWI. And they had quite a history fighting Russia and the Soviets.
After British fairey swordfish biplane torpedo bombers sunk the Italian fleet at Taranto Italy in November 1940, the WORLD knew it. The Japanese based their Pearl Harbor attack on it.
Why defend Roosevelt??
The New American article. "We fought the wrong people," he said, which is what InfoWars has been trying to expose for decades and it's I'm saying too.
The punishment will go on and on and on until a majority of living souls comes to terms with the times we live in subjected to the covert tactics of secret societies.
Stop fighting each other and start exposing your deceptive leaders.
Peace on earth, good will toward men.
I read a book in which Senator McCarthy wrote a scathing criticism of George C. Marshall in (America's Retreat From Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall) which I found historically to be pretty spot on as I saw it, but as McCarthy explicitly states on the first page of the book:
"...Among the questions raised by that speech were these: What were McCarthy's motives? Why did McCarthy single out the Secretary of Defense and spend so much time preparing such a searching documentation of his history? Those questions recalled the advice given me by some of my friends before I gave the history of George Marshall. "Don't do it, McCarthy," they said. "Marshall has been built into such a great hero in the eyes of the people that you will destroy yourself politically if you lay hands on the laurels of this great man." My answer to those well-meaning friends was that the reason the world is in such a tragic state today is that too many politicians have been doing only that which they consider politically wise—only that which is safe for their own political fortunes..."
And the people warning Senator McCarthy were right-the Left leveraged Marshall's service during WWII to the hilt to shut down any criticism of his actions both during and after the war towards both China and the Soviet Union.)
(McCarthy was suspicious of Marshall due to his polices as the Secretary of State during the time we "lost China" between the critical years 1947 to 1949. And this was where my personal uneasiness and then open criticism of Marshall stems from. Before I heard of his actions, I had viewed Marshall though somewhat the same historical prism millions of Americans have)
But I found the circumstances of Marshall's march to the top to be at odds with a meritocracy-based approach. It fully appears to be to be a political appointment.
I include this passage from the book, which discusses his progress up the command chain. It is long, but I include it because it highlights the issues that makes my hackles rise.
One of the criticisms of the June 14 speech (speech by Senator McCarthy in the Senate that took several hours) was that it was inadequate because of the omission of any references to Marshall's history prior to the winter of 1941 and 1942. I think this criticism is perhaps well taken For that reason, I shall here attempt to cover briefly the pertinent aspects of Marshall's earlier history.
He was graduated from Virginia Military Institute and soon thereafter entered the army as a second lieutenant. He served creditably in World War I, finally at the end of that war reaching a position on General Pershing's staff which brought him the friendship of that great soldier.
The postwar years are more pertinent because, having reverted to his permanent rank as Captain, Marshall underwent the usual disappointments and the boredom of our peacetime army. In his case, the disappointments were perhaps more grievous than with most of his fellow officers.
In the American Mercury for March 1951, Walter Trohan published a sketch of General Marshall's career under the title "The Tragedy of George Marshall." The article is a study of Marshall's army life prior to accession to the office of Chief of Staff. Trohan deals with what must have been the gravest disappointment that befell Marshall. This happened in 1933. According to Trohan, Marshall, growing impatient over slow promotion, besought the intercession of General Pershing with General Douglas MacArthur, who was Chief of Staff. As Trohan puts it:
“MacArthur was ready to oblige, but insisted that the promotion go through regular channels Pershing agreed, confident Marshall could clear the hurdles Friendly examination of the Marshall record showed what his superiors regarded as insufficient time with troops MacArthur proposed to remedy this, giving him command of the Eighth Regiment at Fort Screven, Ga., one of the finest regiments in the army.
Marshall was moved up from lieutenant colonel to colonel, but his way to a general's stars appeared to be blocked forever when the Inspector General reported that under one year of Marshall's command the Eighth Regiment had dropped from one of the best regiments in the army to one of the worst.
MacArthur regretfully informed Pershing that the report made promotion impossible To this day Marshall is uneasy in the presence of MacArthur.”
A footnote to that version appears in the quasi-biography written by Mrs George C Marshall in 1946 and published under the title “Together”. After Colonel Marshall had been removed from command at Fort Screven, he left for Fort Moultrie in South Carolina. The residence of the Commanding Officer of that post was a large, rambling structure, replete with 42 French doors opening on two verandas. Mrs Marshall, as she reports it, had barely provided 325 yards of curtains for the French doors when orders came transferring her husband to Chicago as senior instructor of the Illinois National Guard. Mrs Marshall describes what ensued in these words on page 18 of “Together”:
"He [Colonel Marshall] wrote to General MacArthur, then Chief of Staff, that he was making the first request for special consideration that he had ever made while in the Army After four years as an instructor at Fort Benning, he felt it would be fatal to his future if he was taken away from troops and placed on detached service instructing again He asked that he might remain with his regiment.
We left for Chicago within a week The family, my daughter and two sons, waited in Baltimore until we could find a place to live. Those first months in Chicago I shall never forget George had a gray, drawn look which I had never seen before and have seldom seen since."
This was in 1933.
Six years later, Marshall, who had been relieved of the command of a regiment by Douglas MacArthur, would be placed by Roosevelt in command of the entire United States Army.
What happened to change the unsuccessful regimental commander into the first choice of the President for the highest army post still remains somewhat shrouded in mystery.
Did Marshall rise during those six years on sheer merit? Was his military worth so demonstrated that he became the inevitable choice for the Chief of Staff upon the retirement of Malin Craig?
Or were there political considerations that turned failure into success?
Nope, the US Navy didn't accept it. The leadership was loaded with battleship admirals and their congressional supporters that were convinced that the battleship was the queen of battle.
Not many stars in the American fleet imagined that six aircraft carriers could sail halfway across the Pacific and wreak the damage they did. The Japanese were better students of history as they did study Taranto to formulate their plan. Even then, they thought they might loose half of their fleet carriers in the attack.
Even after Kimmel's dismissal, Admiral Pye, another battleship admiral was placed in charge of the Pacific fleet. He was soon relieved as being too timid on the offense with his big gun ships out of the picture. During that time, the carriers did some hit and run raids on Jap outposts but were in no way as effective as they became later in WWII.
The US only had carriers available as capital ships to take the war to the Japanese in early 1942 and the carrier doctrine was developed out of that necessity, not a conviction of their offensive value by the US Navy. Nimitz finally put them to use as an offensive weapon in June 1942 during the Battle of Midway. Then the US Navy begin to realized their value.
That is no defense of Roosevelt, that is history as it unfolded.
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