Posted on 03/31/2014 11:04:32 AM PDT by gwgn02
At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin this weekend highlighted a video of Rand Paul speaking in 2012 about sanctions on Iran. In it, Paul disparages the notion of use of force, and for some reason claims the United States was partly to blame for World War II!
“There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some of their anger.”
Rubin spoke with David David Adesnik of the American Enterprise Institute about Paul’s remarks:
After viewing the video, he tells Right Turn, “Blaming the U.S. for Pearl Harbor is a long-standing isolationist habit that reflects tremendous historical illiteracy. Sen. Paul is very poorly informed if he thinks U.S. sanctions ‘probably caused Japan to react angrily.’” He explains, “The U.S. cut off oil supplies to Japan in August 1941, long after Japan had launched its atrocity-laden war against China in 1937. The evidence is conclusive that Japan was determined to dominate all of East Asia. Believing that the U.S. would not stand by passively if it overran Thailand, Singapore, Malaya and the East Indies, Japan launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.”
(Excerpt) Read more at therightscoop.com ...
The British had engaged in limited war in China less than 100 years before because China had: (1) confiscated close to a billion pounds in today's money of British citizens' property; (2) illegally held British citizens hostage and forced them to sign agreements entitling the Chinese government to summarily execute them without trial if they violated Chinese laws; (3) after the British blockaded the Pearl River in response, the Chinese attacked British warships after those ships attempted to intercept a (non-Chinese) blockade runner.
A British force of less than 15,000 effectives then beat a 200,000 strong Chinese force and China signed a peace treaty giving the British access.
The British reacted to acts of war, fought a limited war, and did not keep conquered territory except for the tiny bits of land that they negotiated by treaty.
By contrast, Japan invaded China after a Japanese army lieutenant - disguised as a Chinese radical - set off a bomb on a Japanese-owned railway in China.
The Japanese then occupied Manchuria, claimed it as a Japanese territory, and set about murdering civilians by the tens of thousands, forcing women into prostitution, and looting any civilian property they could get their hands on.
Translation: you cannot refute any of the documented facts I laid out, so best to just issue a blanket rejection.
Will it save face for you? Probably not - but it at least saves the effort of thought.
Some of that is intentional.
Rand's talk in the video about not attacking Iran is too populist for them to take on directly so they had to claim that he was arguing against sanctions on Iran, citing that sanctions got us war in WWII.
It was definitely dishonest. Maybe they believe that he secretly was against them,and he foiled them by supporting them. .
I don't have skin in the Rand game either, he's not my ideal candidate.
Our preparation, all around, was lacking.
But the fight lasted five months - our positions were not overrun in one day.
Remember also that Pearl Harbor compromised the Philippine plan of defense.
But not even considering it as a possibility was a huge failure of American imagination. Probably largely attributable to racist notions of Oriental inferiority.
I would chalk it up to bureaucratism, not racism.
I think the thought process was: "No one would attack Hawaii first."
Not: "Attacking Hawaii would make sense if our enemy were our equals, not our inferiors."
I'm not saying there was no general atmosphere of racism, just that this was more a failure of imagination than anything else.
Also, the Japanese themselves knew they were really stretching their capabilities: no one expected to come home.
Our government got us into WWI and WWII, deliberately. It was criminal that the U.S. allied with the Commies. But the Roosevelt administration was stuffed with Commies.
Being “patriotic” does not mean accepting the government’s lies.
It is nonsense to assume the stalemate would have continued indefinitely. Both sides were exhausted. If we hadn’t intruded a peace would have had to been made.
Quote: “Almost exactly the same guy, and this thread goes to show it.”
Post X on thread agreeing with others posting X on thread. Someone disagrees with X or points out that X might be less than 100% accurate. Cite to X as proof that X is true to refute disagreement.
Before this goes any further, in what capacity do you serve or have ever served in the DoD?
Notice that the Left (and like here, the Right amazingly), will go after the one who gets closest to this key issue that all the MSM, all the Left, and even much of the Right ignores.
BTW, I don't think politicians will be the ultimate answer since they're the problem. To curtail the Beast, I think it's going to take a focused Article V Convention of States like the one being proposed, or state nullification - maybe more.
I agree that the Opium Wars are not as fully examples of evil western aggression as widely believed.
In my remarks to which you replied, I was, however, not referring to China as such. I was referring to the Philippines, East Indies, Malaysia, Indochina, etc. All of which had (mostly) been conquered by European (or American) countries within the previous 50 to 100 years.
I also think you are glossing over the unequal treaties the Chinese were forced to sign with western powers when they were unable to defend themselves.
I have no particular desire to pretty up the appalling Japanese record in WWII. I was pointing out that if one looks simply at imperial expansion as such, the Japanese were doing much as the white nations had done in the previous century, except that they were attacking white people instead of the native states.
If it’s okay for France to conquer IndoChina, it’s difficult for me to see why it’s inherently unacceptable for the Japanese to take it away from the French.
The original conquest of these areas by the colonial powers also included a lot of mostly unrecorded atrocities.
Oh, I agree.
Here's the problem: neither side was able to strike a killing blow, and neither side was willing to compromise enough on their war aims to come to real terms.
If the US had not intervened, the Germans would have retired comfortably to their lines beyond the Marne for the winter and, come spring, either the Allies or the Germans would have tried again.
It could have gone on for two or three more years.
I was there when the price of oolong in Shanghai was 2,000 yuan/lb.
Nonsense. They were all kaput.
Europe punished Germany after WWI and was unprepared for Hitler's rise to power ("Peace in our time!"). FDR punished Japan with sanctions and was unprepared for Pearl Harbor.
Much like Team Soetoro wants to punish Russia but is making no preparations for how Russia might respond, militarily or otherwise.
Well, that's one way of looking at it.
Another is that the Japanese landed on 12 December, and on 24 December MacArthur implicitly admitted defeat in the Battle of Philippines by ordering retreat to Bataan, giving up the rest of the islands to the Japanese.
The American and Filipino defense of Bataan was heroic, but never had even the slightest chance of being anything other than a last stand defeat.
Arguably it delayed the Japanese plans and allowed some time for the counterattack to get started at Guadalcanal and elsewhere.
That the defense of Bataan lasted as long as it did was due at least as much to the Japanese pulling their frontline troops out for use elsewhere as it did to the American resistance. The second and third rate troops replacing them took a lot longer to accomplish the inevitable. But the Americans were penned and were no threat to Japan's plans. In fact, I'd argue that it would have made more military sense for the Japanese to just block the exits from Bataan and wait for starvation to do its job. Why lose men attacking when the end is going to be the same either way?
The only way Bataan could have turned out differently would have been for a US naval force to get command of the seas in the area. But that was far beyond the capabilities of the Navy at the time.
Again, as with the British presence in China, French Indochina was not a story of the French simply invading the country, putting people to the sword, and establishing a dictatorial rule.
The Vietnamese, Khmer and Chamese peoples were all fighting back and forth to establish hegemony over the Mekond Delta.
French missionaries came to spread the Christian faith peacefully.
The Vietnamese kingdom that eventually took over the Delta had a good relationship with the missionaries and when there was a coup by the anti-Christian Tay Son, the Vietnamese throne asked the missionaries if the French could help them defeat their enemies.
The French intervened, and as a result got trade treaties and military outposts. When the Nguyen succeeded in pacifying the country with French help, they then turned on the French and tried to expel them.
The Khmer also asked the French to make them a French protectorate to defend them from the Vietnamese.
After two short battles with little loss of life, the Nguyen ceded territory to the new French protectorate and French Indochina was born.
The French had a constructive relationship with the peoples of the Mekong Delta for 250 years before one angry king tried to steal their stuff and expel them, and he paid a price.
Very different from what Japan did.
That the Japanese attack on Pearl was a response to our economic embargo on oil shipments is hardly controversial.
It is controversial, inasmuch as it is a lie.
Nobody who has even glanced at the history of the period would agree with you.
Yet they each had more than 2 million men under arms at the armistice.
Funny that.
The United States of America put sanctions in placed because the Japanese were committing the most atrocious acts of rape, murder, and torture against the Chinese people. At what point were those the fault of the United States. I just lost my respect for this guy. Check that: I think the guys is a raving lunatic.
You need to distinguish between what Rand Paul said, and what the headline-writer said he said.
I would suggest that without American supplies, moral support and manpower the German offensive of 1918 would have taken Paris and arguably ended the war. It was a pretty near thing anyway.
neither side was willing to compromise enough on their war aims to come to real terms.
I don't think it's quite that simple. I don't think either side by 17 or 18 was thinking about the classic "war aims" of territory, colonies, etc. as a main reason to keep fighting.
Each side had already thrown so much life and treasure into the cauldron that even considering anything other than full-blown military victory was considered treason to those who had already given their lives. WWI just wasn't one of the limited wars of the 18th century or even the Napoleonic period that could be stopped anytime and differences adjusted at a peace conference.
Total wars take on a life of their own, which is a very good reason not to get into one. Much easier to start a war than to end one.
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