Replies

(in some circles to this day it is part of Conservative dogma that FDR desired and knew about Pearl Harbor in adavance)

He may or may not have desired explicitly the attack on Pearl Harbour, but it is reasonably on record that Franklin D. Roosevelt did want to see the United States, in one or another way, get involved more directly in what was becoming World War II. The Japanese in fact were provoked to attack the United States by Roosevelt's very questionable blockading of Japanese shipping in the Pacific Ocean. You can get a very striking account of that and, come to think of it, the entire nasty truth about the Roosevelt era in The Roosevelt Myth by John T. Flynn (long considered a leading if sometimes forgotten light of the Old Right).

Which reminds me: Comparing 11 September to Pearl Harbour is something along the line of comparing a watermelon to an apple. Even Imperial Japan thought only to attack an American military installation - and on an archipelago in the Pacific which wasn't even admitted as a state yet! Say what you will about Pearl Harbour, but the Japanese didn't even think about hijacking a few Pan American flying clippers in order to take out some commercial office buildings at the beginning of the working day.

He may or may not have desired explicitly the attack on Pearl Harbour, but it is reasonably on record that Franklin D. Roosevelt did want to see the United States, in one or another way, get involved more directly in what was becoming World War II.

Considering that he was elected by claiming that he would NOT involve America in the war unless America was attacked, the attack on Pearl Harbor proved rather "fortuitous".

Considering that Bush had already planned an incursion into Afghanistan several months ago the tragic attack on civilians on September 11, 2001 would also, from this cynical perspective, appear "fortuitous.

I think the underlying concern regarding a poll in which opinion swings in a such a broad arc speaks volumes about the American public. Public education and media propaganda has succeded in creating a nation where principal is abandoned and hysteria holds sway. The sad part is that our government is so quick to jump on hysteria and ride it to oblivion.