This is a bizzare line of thinking to me. You're asking me to accept a role for America even more limp-wristed and namby-pamby than that which the leftists propose for us.
The one GOOD thing about FDR is that he distrusted the Japanese and saw their empire as a threat to our interests, which even Theodore Roosevelt had recognized at the turn of the century.
Again, FDR did not threaten to shoot anybody! We were a threat to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, not Japan proper, and we were a logistical threat not a direct physical one. We were well within our rights to do so. As far as I'm concerned FDR should have demanded they withdraw from Okinawa -- they didn't even have any business being there.
The Pacific is ours. We should've taught the world that lesson earlier than we did, and more often than we have been doing. China will probably have to be instructed as well due to our legacy of half-measures.
That's not true at all. I'm advocating a strong America that does not involve itself in wars that do not concern it. That's hardly leftist, unless you want to call George Washington a leftist.
I think the majority of Americans in 1940-41 were right in believing that a dipute between Japan and European colonial powers and China did not concern us. Japan never threatened us, and I do not see how Japanese empire in East Asia was a threat to our interets: the Japanese were no less willing to trade with us than were the Chineese or the European colonies in SE Asia. By cutting off their oil supplies we were taking sides in a conflict that did not concern us. Perhaps the Japs had no business being in Okinawa, but I and most Americans do not want our military to be the world's policeman.
That being said, I agree that we were within our rights to cut off oil to Japan, even if it was a stupid thing to do. Our cutting off their access oil in no way morally justifies Pearl Harbor. Like Charles Lindbergh, I would be first in line to enlist after Pearl Harbor if I were living in those days.