Posted on 12/21/2007 6:43:53 PM PST by OCCASparky
A quote from Ron Paul's speech at Politics and Eggs breakfast airing on C-Span now (actual comments aired appx 9:25 pm EST):
"A president has a responsibility to, uh, you know, retaliate against an attack. I don't think there's been a good example of a need to do that throughout our whole history."
Many would argue that America’s primary Pacific colony has always been Hawaii.
But not the only possible one; indeed, it was far from the desired one (that was a negotiated Japanese withdrawal from Indochina) and certainly not the anticipated one. It seems natural only in retrospect.
What shocked the West about the Japanese foreign policy of the time was not the expansionist activity - that had been in the cards since the Russo-Japanese War. What shocked the West was the remarkable brutality. This was not simply a matter of European-style colonization and subordination of native governments, it was outright military invasion and massacre of anyone opposing. One might claim a moral equivalency but in practice they were quite different affairs, as the citizens of Nanking might attest - the survivors, anyway. (Curiously, I knew personally one of the participants on the Japanese side, who corroborated some of the horrifying details. Precisely why that got out of control would be an interesting study - according to my acquaintance even some of the Japanese soldiers tried to stop it. A topic for another time, perhaps).
And hence the sanctions. As a step short of war sanctions to this day have been given a credibility that actual performance seldom justifies. In this case they proved a casus belli. A cautionary tale for the Peace Studies crowd. But I do take issue with the characterization of the embargo as a provocation. That it was not; instead it was a measured, rational, and entirely hopeless approach to put pressure on the Japanese short of shooting.
The real difficulty with Pearl Harbor as a solution to that resource challenge was, as Yamamoto pointed, that it only worked if it succeeded so completely there was no reply. Whether the Japanese could have remediated the situation through diplomacy instead we will never know. But that was the intention.
I suggest you try that argument on the Koreans. You might not get the answer you’re expecting. As for the rest, the Dutch, French, and the rest were not murdering the natives wholesale, and the Japanese were. Shall we examine the only real American colony of the time, the Philippines? You do realize why the Filipinos ended up fighting on the side of their (cough!) oppressors, don’t you? Ask a few of them who were there.
The continued American economic domination of the globe since 1941 bely this arguement. WWII was extremely lucrative to the US, which managed to destroy or allow the destruction of every single conceivable competitor to American global economic domination - Germany, Japan, China, Russia, and the British and French Empires.
You are correct that this was not something America wanted to do if by America you mean her people. 80%+ of them were opposed to war and were deeply isolationist and even more opposed to the attendant social engineering of America which took place as part of the war and its aftermath. However, it was something America wanted to do if by America you mean her ruling elite - the East Coast WASP establishment of patrician Democrats and internationalist Republicans. These people were extremely eager for the opportunities the war presented, and were itching to overturn the existing financial order of things whereby New York answered to London. Their success remains to this day in the global domination of the Dollar and Wall Street in terms of ordering the world's economic structure and sending the benefits of it flowing primarily to America and into their pockets.
The natives of the Asian colonies fought on both sides of the war, just like the French and Ukranians and Croats in Europe. We like to remember the ones who fought with us, and project their feelings onto the entire population. Needless to say, such feelings were in a decided minority until MacArthur returned with sufficient force to put the Japanese to flight, just like membership in the French Resistance was quite limited until June of 1944, while collaboration with the Nazis was extremely popular up until then.
Most people just want to stay out of harms way in time of war, and will willingly cooperate with the current rulers to do whatever is needed to preserve the flow of blood throught their body. That is human nature. The fighters and revolutionaries are typically a group of 1% who are willing to risk it all for ideals and change. This is readily seen during our own War of Independence. While most Americans supported the concept of Independence, only a few tens of thousands out of a population of several million were willing to take up arms to secure it. Had history gone the other way at Saratoga and Yorktown, we’d be remembering those wonderful times when our ancestors willingly helped out the British occupations of New York and Philadelphia and the South so as to defeat those crazed anarchist revolutionaries from Boston who almost succeeded in severing us from the Mother Country.
In point of fact the Japanese were running wild and it was frightening even their nominal allies. They had lost no major battles (until Midway) and scarcely a single engagement to any Western armed force including all of the colonizing powers - for three and a half decades. This wasn't just a gradual expansion, it was an explosion, and the fact that there was very little "co" in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was obvious to everyone concerned by 1937.
I know you weren't meaning to offend, but the truth is that the Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, Burmese, Indians, and Filipinos (and forgive me please for not mentioning everyone) - all former or current colonies - resisted vigorously and heroically. This isn't simply an artifact of memory or the fact that the United States won, it's the truth, and it is reflected in the histories of all of those countries. We were, in many places, only a bit player.
I don’t think his supporters are even stupid enough to post that remark being made for all to see, but I could be wrong.
Iraq is clearly an oil war. Has nothing to do with the war on terror. Oil will be the reason for the war on Iran if it comes. And we will be paying 5 dollars a gallon for gas. Because there is no oil shortage.
Here it is. Now spin.
About 5:00 minutes in, responding to question from audience. Verbatim as it's posted on the top of this thread.
That little essay floats around every so often. The problem is that it is poorly written, historically inaccurate and, in general, a waste of time.
I posted it in hopes of corrections being made and pinged it to some of FR’s history experts and authors. Any corrections would be welcomed by me.
If you’ll pardon the specialized medical lingo, crazier than a s***house rat.
The declaration of war was not unanimous.
Germany declared war on us
The acknowledgment (declaration) of war with Germany was not the next day
Belgium did not surrender in a day.
The Germans did not bomb Brussels the next day.
The Russia did not lose 24,000,000 dead in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow.
Two million Iranians did not die in the Iran – Iraq War.
The Japanese did not invade China in 1928.
The inflation adjusted cost of WWII is not $12 trillion.
9/11 did not cost New York $160,000,000,000.
Waterloo was 1815, not 1850.
The United States did not have more than 4,000 KIA on D-Day.
This is a skimming of the historical “facts” that this guy wants taught in our schools. He is further off in his perspective and analysis.
Other than that he is a pretty fart smeller. Repost
HERE IS THE VIDEO.
http://kilosparksitup.blogspot.com/2007/12/ron-paul-insane.html
Very well stated.
“Your silly comments make it sound as though Japan just came up out of the blue and without provocation attacked an unsuspecting US. Nothing could be further from reality.”
Wow. It’s been some time seen I’ve seen a true blue Japanese apologist.
First of all, the context was the discussion of nuclear first strike. (I noticed the OP failed to mention that bit of info, and what led up to the snippet of the quote he posted) Paul doesn't make it super clear, but he's talking about the option of the president (alone, without congress declaring war) retaliating if we're threatened.
Here's the fuller quote:
"I did make the statement that we should have no first strike, as a matter of fact no first strike, nuclear or conventional weapons, because it doesn't make any sense. A president has the responsibility to retaliate against an attack.* the president retaliating without congress declaring war.I don't think there's been a good example of a need to do that* throughout our whole history. But it's especially true in the early years that if Congress was way off and they had to come by horse and buggy that they had the responsibility, the moral and the legal responsibility, to thwart an attack on the United States. That's the position I would hold. But that's quite different from starting a war.
So I would say no nuclear-first strikes. It should be done with a declaration of war and not with the Congress reneging on their responsibility by transfering this power to the president, which Congress did..."
At least that's what I think he meant. I'm sure if he was asked to clarify, he wouldn't say that there has never been a need to go to war. Because he has already stated in other interviews that WW2 was justified and necessary.
As ElRon made clear, he was not simply talking about nuclear first strike. He was speaking of any first strike.
Secondly, your formatting of the quote is interesting. He did not pause between "A president has the responsibility to retaliate against an attack" and "I don't think there's been a good example of a need to do that throughout our whole history." Why did you put a paragraph here? That was one statement.
"A president has the responsibility to retaliate against an attack [and] I don't think there's been a good example of a need to do that throughout our whole history."
Brackets mine of course. The "I don't think there's been a good example of a need to do that throughout our whole history" is a parenthetical statement to what he just finished. But good spin. Took a little longer than usual. If you could point me to where Sir Ron has agreed that WW2 was necessary, that'd be great for me.
I cannot fathom how he could explain what he means when he says we should not have either conventional or nuclear first-strike weaponry.
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