Asymmetrical Information

I doubt that Japan would have stopped at controlling Southeast Asia (and if that includes China, it's a lot to control).

And did that many voters really believe that Saddam had some operational connection to planning 9/11, or did they just believe that there might have been some general cooperation with Al Qaeda? Many Democrats would argue that either is irrational, but I'm not convinced that the second one is. Polls can be worded badly and can be misused.

Yeah, people are dumb. But each person is dumb in a different way, and - correspondingly - each person is smart in a way that's different from other people. Democracy works for the same reason that the net works: although individual bloggers or sites might get things wrong, when you aggregate the input of large numbers of readers and writers, the network produces good information efficiently and more quickly than a lone researcher (or team) would in a library.

The vote in a democracy is the expressed preference of the network after aggregating all the expertise and judgment that is out there. For every voter who is fooled by pandering there is one who is not, and the one who is fooled may change his mind after time. This is the reason why the country is still around, Jane.

Perhaps it works because we (and our politicians) are free to say one thing and do another. Our stupidity comes out in conversation, but what we do works.

Ah, the noble lie. How wonderful it is. I guarantee you Bush believes that he, just like FDR, will be vindicated by history, and any things he said that may one day be judged to be lies or deceptions or whatever will be outweighed by the wonderful, perfect, glorious decisions he made so masculinely. He's pretty much said as much.

Very few bloggers would have been able to mention the Pearl Harbor statistic without mentioning the name of Bluto Blutarsky. You are to be commended.

In the case of WWII, I suspect that it was a matter of convincing the country to support a war that it would have supported had it known all the facts but perhaps wouldn't have supported had it known the facts that he could have told them.

Presidents can't necessarily reveal all that we know to convince people. We do not live in a pure democracy where the people vote on everything. We elect people to make decisions for us with the understanding that they are not necessarily going to be able to consult with on all decisions.

While I am not advocating blind trust, there is a certain amount of faith in our elected officials that we must have for our government to function. We can't second-guess and double-check every decision they make.

Also, polls suck. The torture poll is a great example. When asking people if they believe torture is okay under some circumstances, you are going to get meaningless data unless you strictly define torture. To some, torture means anything that makes someone the least bit uncomfortable. To others, anything less than disfiguring or maiming is "abuse" or "hazing".

Here's a fun fact for you: I was watching a documentary about Pearl Harbor the other day, and according to the nice folks who made it, 60% of Americans thought that Hitler was behind the attacks. This, despite the fact that it was Japanese planes who attacked us, and the Japanese government we declared war on. Why did they think this? I'm going out on a limb here, but it might have had something to do with the fact that FDR made the war in Europe his priority.

You are aware, are you not, that Germany and Japan announced prior to Pearl Harbor that they were cooperating? (The Tripartite Pact of 1940? Ringing any bells here?) And you know that Hitler formally declared war on the US on December 11, 1941, yes?

If Saddam and Osama had publicly announced in 2000 that they were Best Friends Forever, and Saddam had declared war on the US on September 15, 2001, I readily concede that it would be quite a bit more reasonable for people to think that Saddam might have had something to do with that whole 9/11 thing.

What did Democrats tell us about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and terrorism during the Clinton administration?
When did they stop saying that Hussein was supporting terrorists?

I suspect that the poll results actually reflect a "they all want us dead" abstraction, not caring about whether they might disagree who should be in charge afterwards. That attitude seems quite rational.

That's not exactly what the Tripartite pact said; it said that if one country was attacked, the others would come to their aid. There was no reason in 1940 to think that Hitler had helped plan the attack, as indeed he didn't. Hitler didn't actually have to declare war on us until we counterattacked, although since htat was pretty much a foregone conclusion, there was no reason to delay.

You're rather making my argument for me: the Tripartite pact was the reason that FDR was able to goad the American public into fighting Hitler, since overwhelming majorities were opposed to interfering in Europe. And while Hitler had indeed declared war on us, there was no reason to focus on that front; the Japanese were the only ones who had, or indeed were able to, launch an attack on US territory. We didn't go to Europe because it was in our strategic interests; we did it because FDR cared deeply about keeping England from being invaded.

So far I haven't seen any serious evidence that FDR deceived the nation into war.

Ironically I think the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor extended from the same type of miscaluclation that lead to the invasion of Iraq. The Japanese just didn't understand American culture. They thought they could stun us, sieze territory and then make peace. They didn't realize that after Pearl Harbor there would be no peace.

Many people though we could invade Iraq, set up a democratic government and then make peace. They didn't realize that as long as their were infidels in Arabia there would be no peace. All we did was unite Pan-Arabists and Islamists against us.

I agree with Earnest: polls suck!

How often can the average American be expected to answer random questions accurately? Does the pollster give them time to think or does he go with what's blurted out? How do other countries do with pop quizzes? (They don't do much better than us....)

I also believe that as a country, Americans stink at tests. You know that phrase you've heard, "I don't test well" around your friends? Well, you'd never hear that in say, East Asia. Whether or not that spells our doom is up for debate...

I am partial to the related theory which says that FDR was led into provoking the Japanese by Soviet agents and fellow travelers in the State Department because Stalin feared having to fight a second front.

Let's see...government leaders have incentive to keep voters ignorant and pliable, so that the government leaders can continue to have un-earned powers of redistrubiting staggering amounts of wealth. These same government leaders control the education system. Want an economically ignorant electorate? Remove econonmics education. Want an electorate who's eyes glaze over when you start to talk about "X% of Y% blah blah blah", then water down math education.

Seems like a pretty simple cause-and-effect to me.

-Donut

ps. Barely related, but a fun game - when a person starts to point out that FEMA is such a charlie-foxtrot, ask them why they think that government health care would be run any better.

There was no reason in 1940 to think that Hitler had helped plan the attack, as indeed he didn't.

No reason? Really? Anyone who dared to speculate on that subject in December 1941 would be out of his or her mind?

The reason people might reasonably have been of the view that that Germany and Japan were cooperating with respect to Pearl Harbor is because each of those countries were, at that time, publicly supporting the other's aggressive wars. There's just no parallel to Iraq and Al Qaeda here.

You're rather making my argument for me: the Tripartite pact was the reason that FDR was able to goad the American public into fighting Hitler, since overwhelming majorities were opposed to interfering in Europe.

I'm not sure what constitutes "goading" here: when FDR said, in substance, "Hey, look, Germany and Japan have signed a mutual defense pact, and, hey, now Hitler's declared war on us," those were actual facts about the world.

I had similar thoughts when I heard several younger Democratic-voters say that they were afraid that if Bush won, the draft would be re-instituted. This despite that the only people seriously proposing a return to the draft have been the most left-wing Democrats—people like Charlie Rangel and John Conyers—in a bit of rather Machiavellian reasoning. I guess the thinking was that everybody knows the Republicans are warmongers that want to get everyone killed, so naturally they'd be the ones in favor of a draft.

No, Alkali, FDR goaded Japan into war by, among other things, embargoing their oil supplies. This got them to declare war on us, neatly getting us into war with Germany. You didn't think Japan attacked us just for fun, did you?

Jane,

Along the lines of what Alkali is saying, I want to see what was asked before I leap to the conclusion that Americans are idiots. The truth is usually more along the lines of "the American public is far more subtle than the idiots who interpret poll results, especially those who have political agendas".

So a question that is reported as "Hitler is BEHIND the attacks" may actually have been asked as "was Hitler RESPONSIBLE for the attacks". To this a fair number of people might have thought that the environment which made the attacks possible was created by Hitler, and thus he was indirectly partially responsible.

This is not unreasonable in my mind, as I think the chances that the Japanese would have attacked the British without the existence of a European war were less than even. And the Japanese had to have understood that attacking us would mean fighting the Brits as well.

This of course is analagous the the Iraq circumstances where Americans are reported to believe that there is proof that Hussein planned that attacks based on questions that ask no such thing.

The media love to play on American's supposed lack of knowledge, but it often turns out to be their own myth repackaged.

Of course, the Japaneese goaded us into embargoing their oil because they invaded Manchuria and wouldn't leave. And we had all sorts of foreign policy interests in china--- the Open Door agreement, etc... which Japan was violating In other words, just the sort of thing economic sanctions are used for.
The Nips were begging for a fight. FDR goading them into is B.S. If anything, they goaded us into goading them.

Jane,

Was that really that certain an outcome? How could FDR be so sure that Germany would follow up our declaration of war with one of their own? Hitler certainly wasn't obligated to declare war on us according to his treaty with Japan (not that he had any problem with violating treaties in any event). Had Germany done the intelligent thing and not declare war on us, it's very doubtful there would have been congressional support for fighting in Europe. If this was FDR's plan, it seems pretty reckless, at least if he really wasn't interested in fighting in Asia.

I am partial to the related theory which says that FDR was led into provoking the Japanese by Soviet agents and fellow travelers in the State Department because Stalin feared having to fight a second front.

I'm rather more partial to the theory (actually, the documented fact) that the Japanese didn't tell the Germans about Pearl Harbor because the Germans didn't tell the Japanese about Barbarossa. Had they cooperated in early 1941, they probably would have jointly attacked the Soviet Union. That would have been very bad.

Jane, what exactly are you saying?

1. FDR, following existing American policy, stood up against Japanese aggression, knowing that it would likely lead to war and bring America into the fight against the Axis?

2. FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack and didn't do anything about it because he wanted to go to war.

1 is a little dodgy, but understandable. If you believe 2, you've destroyed all the credibility you've built here.

"Really, the amazing thing is that the country is still here despite all our delusions."

Nah. Our wonderful and enormous diverse gene pool of deluded dumb folks makes us survivors. It's our "get 'er done" attitude. All those Chinese cowgirls, Black cowboys, Italian wranglers, Irish saloon keepers, Mexican drovers and Muslim bar girls makes the gestalt work. We invented the wild west and we like it.

Good grief, Jane. We're America. Where've you been?

Kim S. is correct Hitler wasn't obligated to declare war on the U.S. Can't put my hands on it right now, but I've seen a quote by Hitler where he was of the opinion the U.S. was a country of mongrels and couldn't ever produce enough war materials to fight on fight on two fronts. I guess he thought it "safe" to support his ally, Japan, hoping they could stab the USSR in the back just when Barbarossa was stalled in the East.

No, Alkali, FDR goaded Japan into war by, among other things, embargoing their oil supplies. This got them to declare war on us, neatly getting us into war with Germany. You didn't think Japan attacked us just for fun, did you?

Oh my, this is bad. As JCoke said, Japanese aggression against Manchuria, China, and French Indochina conflicted with American policy that had existed for at least 40 years. Should America have adopted an appeasement policy to respond to Japanese conquest and depravity? I'm also not aware that refusal to trade with another nation is a good excuse for war. But I guess it's fine for me to go around shooting any shopkeep who won't sell to me.

Those of you who put great weight on the official German declaration of war on the USA are showing your ignorance of history. US soldiers and sailors were performing combat missions in the Atlantic well before the Germans declared war. But hey, don't take my word for it -- go and google Ensign Leonard Smith or USS Reuben James.

AT: The reasonable formulation for 2) is that FDR knew about Pearl Harbour, realized that war was inevitable, and prepared to fight that war as best he could. Hence, a good portion of the fleet was out on maneuvers(most notably, all the carriers). Nothing more was done because to do more would have tipped them off about the US's intelligence source, and that would have compromised the US war effort more than stopping Pearl would have helped it.

Personally, I consider that theory to be an outside possibility at best, since it assumes a few rather unlikely things, but it's at least not insane, and gives a reasonable rationale for the actions from all involved(as opposed to the "FDR was a bloodthirsty maniac" reasoning behind your formulation of #2).

Alsadius:

I find even your formulation highly unlikely. It sounds too much like the Coventry myth. At the very least, having fighters in the air and soldiers and sailors manning the anti-aircraft defenses would have required about two hours' notice, would have greatly reduced American losses, and likely would not have tipped off the Japanese. They were surprised to find they had completely surprised the Americans.

There are many better things to do with solid warning of an air raid than to stand there and take it. Suppose the Japanese had continued their attacks and destroyed the shore facilities and the air base? We would have had a tough time in the Pacific sailing to action from San Diego.

If Americans are collectively delusional then Canadians are so deluded they've come full circle and are now sane on some higher plane. Or not.

Here in the socialist dominion we have made delusional thinking into a national pastime. Our Prime Minister said this week that Canada will definitely meet her Kyoto targets. The target is 6% below 1990 emissions levels. We are currently 24% above 1990 levels. Even if you are only marginally grounded in reality it is not hard to see that attempting to do this would not only destroy the economy, but likely result in massive social unrest and possibly even cases of starvation, freezing, etc.

We Canadians perist in the delusional belief that our severely dysfunctional socialist health care system is "the best in the world". In fact we have the second most expensive system after America, yet our outcomes hover around those of Portugal.

Canada is also home to a state propaganda outlet (CBC Radio/TV) and to a draconian regulatory body (the CRTC) which for years banned Fox News in this country, fearing that Canadians might be exposed to alternative views. Most frightening of all, the CRTC in the early 1990s investigated ways to strictly control the Internet in Canada the same way it controls broadcasting. They only desisted because it was technically infeasible, not because it was the act of a wannabe totalitrian state.

Americans are rather enlightened in comparison with my countrymen.

This idea that democratic government works because it aggregates individual preferences efficiently is foolishness. In the first place, it can't (see Arrow). And in the second, it doesn't (see FL 2000). Democracy "works" only in relative terms. It stinks less than the other options.

The notion that that hostilities between the United States and Germany did not exist prior to Pearl Harbor is simply ignorant. FDR in 1940 ran on a platform of keeping the U.S. out of war, while in reality he was already waging war. I'm glad he did.

The case for FDR's misleading the american people is that he campaigned on the promise of not getting the country involved in the war in europe and then tried to provoke warring nations into attacking us. FDR did not anticipate Pearl Harbor, he assumed the Japanese attack would come in the Phillipines. He tried to goad Hitler with such provocations as the lend-lease act and the leak of Rainbow 5. If you are interested in more details I recommend "The New Dealers War" by Thomas Fleming.
The case for Bush lying in the run up to the Iraq war seems predicated on him knowing more about the situation in Iraq than the CIA and the intelligence services of England, France, Germany, and Russia.

At the time of Pearl Harbor the German Ambassador in Tokyo had been lobbying the Japanese to attack Stalin in the east. But, because we cut off the Japanese oil supplies they needed Southeast Asia's (Dutch) oil. They thought they'd need to destroy the American fleet to accomplish that.

And, it's not a theory, but a fact that Stalin's agent at the U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White was given the assignment, after Hitler turned on Stalin in June 1941, of doing everything he could to provoke Japan into attacking the U.S. We know this from Venona, and from Soviet archives. As well as that the KGB officer who gave White the assignment has written about it.

Those who think that it was Japanese aggression in China that was responsible for our ultimatum to Japan late in 1941 have the little problem that Japan had been in China for years, and we hadn't delivered anything like the actions and diplomatic messages we did only after Stalin needed relief from his buddy Adolph.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, FDR sent George Marshall and Harry Hopkins to London to urge Churchill to plan for an immediate cross channel invasion in France to 'relieve pressure' on Stalin. You can read Churchill's highly amusing reply in his memoirs.

FDR's own son wrote a book that clearly shows where FDR's sympathies were. First he wanted to defeat Hitler. Second he wanted to make sure that the British Empire would be ended as a world power.

Japan came in after the above.

No, Alkali, FDR goaded Japan into war by, among other things, embargoing their oil supplies.

I'm not sure what that claim has to do with the point you are trying to make, which (so far as I can tell) is this: the fact many people now erroneously believe that Saddam's Iraq had something to do with 9/11 is understandable given that many people erroneously believed Hitler had something to do with Pearl Harbor.

My point is that the situations are nowhere near analogous because there were actually quite good reasons at the time to suppose that Hitler might have had something to do with Pearl Harbor (e.g., the Tripartite Pact and other well-known aspects of the German/Japanese relationship). There was no significant public or private relationship between Saddam's Iraq and Al Qaeda. Indeed, the polls taken just after 9/11 did not suggest that many people thought Iraq was behind it.

Ditto what Patrick said. We'd had marines in China for a long time, and they ran not insignificant interference against the Japanese all through their invasion of China. There was no particular reason to implement the oil embargo when he did.

Yes, we had strategic interests in China. But we had much bigger strategic interests in Europe. The reason FDR was able to get us into a war in the Pacific and not in the Atlantic was that very few people were paying attention to what was going on in Asia. If they had been, they would not have let FDR start an oil embargo over what were pretty trivial strategic and economic interests. There's also pretty good evidence that this was something that at least some significant part of the Roosevelt administration wanted to do.

As I say, I think they did the right thing, though possibly for the wrong reasons. But the story of how we were unjustifiably attacked for, as far as most Americans seem to believe, absolutely no reason at all, is a self-serving fairy tale. The administration had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen, if for no other reason than that we'd been reading Japan's diplomatic codes for a couple of years by then, and they did it anyway, because they wanted to help Britain fight Hitler.

It's not that it was a "good excuse" for a war - it's that the act of cutting off Japan's oil supplies (which overwhelming went to their war machine, not to their consumer market) confronted the military junta ruling Japan with a choice: they could either knuckle under, give up their designs for a "greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere", and accept a Pacific under U.S. hegemony, or they could accelerate their imperial ambitions and attempt to secure their own oil supplies in Indonesia. Of course, option 1 was the "logical" choice, but it wasn't a choice there was any chance Japan would make.

One thing I disagree with is that FDR's Japan policy was only about Germany. True, FDR wanted us into Europe and felt that Hitler was the greater threat, but there were good reasons for provoking Japan apart from any other consiiderations. It was a case of: war is inevitable, lets get it started now before we end up in a worse position. But of course, FDR didn't broadcast the fact that the embargo was tantamount to a declaration of war, but that's how you get things done in a democracy: you don't necessarily lie, you just don't give all the reasons for your actions, nor draw out the inevitable results.

My point is that the situations are nowhere near analogous because there were actually quite good reasons at the time to suppose that Hitler might have had something to do with Pearl Harbor

Building off of that I think an analgous question might have been "Do you believe the Soviet Union was behind Pearl Harbor?"

Yes we had our differences with the USSR, but the USSR was an even greater threat to the Axis powers.

Similiarly, we had our differences with Iraq, but the Ba'ath Party was a much greater threat to the ultimate goals of Al Qeada than the US.

There's also pretty good evidence that this was something that at least some significant part of the Roosevelt administration wanted to do.

That page is interesting but its main body has been edited by only one person.

And I disagree. We didn't decide that Mussolini, who had also signed the pack, was responsible for Pearl Harbour.

You can string out a rationale for anything--say, "Saddam must have been connected to Al Qaeda because the Jihadis are now helping his Sunni insurgency."

Is it reasonable to think that Hitler knew about hte attack? Yes. Was it reasonable to think that he planned it? No. The Japanese had been rattling their sabres at us for quite some time, and they had vast strategic interests that we were blocking. Hitler, on the other hand, had little reason to want us in the war; while he may have believed, erroneously, that it would interrupt Lend-Lease long enough for him to invade Britain, that's not enough to drive a war. If the American people had been paying attention to what was going on in the Pacific, they would have known that.

But the American people, by and large, don't pay much attention to the world. They didn't realize that we'd been harrying the Japanese for more than five years, despite acts from Congress forbidding us to do just that. On the other hand, they had been reading a lot about Lend-Lease. So they put two and four together and concluded that Hitler must have gotten his friend Tojo to strike us in order to keep us from helping Britain. Just as Americans who knew that Saddam Hussein hated America, gave money to terrorists, and plotted to assassinate George Bush concluded, from their very cursory supply of information, that he probably had something to do with 9/11. In both cases, they were aided in this conclusion by the fact that their government rapidly turned from teh source of the actual attack to the "more important" target.

I'm not trying to justify the War in Iraq, or what George Bush did, or what have you. I'm just pointing out that stupidity is a longstanding and bipartisan vice, and that if your favoured political model depends on voters being well-informed, you'd better chuck it now, because it's never gonna happen.

"f your favoured political model depends on voters being well-informed, you'd better chuck it now, because it's never gonna happen."

A remarkably cynical--if not elitist--attitude. You need a good dose of Bill Whittle. Or something.

Leading the nation gradually into war through cash-and-carry, lend-lease, embargoes and other policies, which naturally also would likely provoke the enemy, isn't dishonest. It's called leading.

However, arguing for those policies, or for war, based on assertions that FDR knew were debatable or false, all the while describing them as absolutely certain, that is dishonesty. Bush argued that Saddam gave protection to Zarqawi. That was out-and-out, deliberate lying. Arguing that there was no doubt that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons was untrue, as the point was debatable. That was misleading. I don't recall FDR misstating the certainty with which we knew that Germany had invaded Poland or that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

The truth is that there are lies and then there are lies. Adults should be able to figure out the difference.

You misunderstand me. I am not arguing that because voters are ill-informed, elites are therefore justified in running their lives for them. Quite the contrary. I don't approve of FDR's behaviour in a theoretical way, but only because the practical results have vindicated it. I would have approved if FDR had said "Get the hell out of China or we'll chase you out," but he couldn't and didn't, and so he deceived the American people into a war they disapproved of. Noble lies are rarely noble, but occasionally it's hard to say on principal that they're a bad idea.

My point was, rather, that we do all right even though voters are ill-informed.

I'm just pointing out that stupidity is a longstanding and bipartisan vice, and that if your favoured political model depends on voters being well-informed, you'd better chuck it now, because it's never gonna happen.

Agreed.

The liberation of Iraq from a maniacal, mass-murdering dictator will go down in history as one of the more noble accomplishments of the world's greatest nation.

Silly "progressive" nations like my own are not only physically incapable of such heroic and noble deeds, they are so morally bankrupt that they oppose the removal of madmen likd Saddam at every turn.

Thank God for the USA. Americans who cannot comprehend just how great their nation is should damn well leave. I'll exchange places with you in a thrice.

Oh, FDR did plenty of lying. He engaged in operations in the Atlantic, and then blamed the Germans for firing back in self-defense; he claimed that he had uncovered a secret map that laid out German plans to invade the US which later turned out to have been faked up, probably by British intelligence; and so forth.

Moreover, you forget that everyone, including Bill Clinton, thought that Saddam had a WMD programme. It's clear that the administration was wrong, and that they were overoptimistic about the evidence for a nuclear programme, but to me it's more likely that they believed their own bullshit than that they made up data that would shortly be disproven in order to get the country into a war.

Jane:

If the Pacific was so secondary to Europe, why the major naval expansion of 1939 and 1940?

Japan had occupied Manchuria in 1931 and attacked China proper in 1937, but it only started going after European colonial territories in late 1940 with the occupation of French Indochina. It was becoming demonstrably more aggressive.

Hitler did not have to declare war on the United States under the terms of the Tripartite Pact because Japan attacked us, not the other way around. If any of what you're postulating here were true, why did Hitler declare war?

Smoov -

You are a wacko. I am openly laughing at you. Keep it up.

"How dumb are people?" Remember, the IQ of 100 is the norm. Most of the commenters on this web site are 1-3 standard deviations away from that. We tend to forget just how many people are out there who are clueless on so many topics.

Smoov,

Stats from the CIA for 2005 (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html)

Canada: Infant mortality: 4.75 deaths/1000 live births; life expectancy 80.1
USA : Infant mortality: 6.5 deaths/1000 live births; life expectancy 77.71
Portugal : Infant mortality: 5.05 deaths/1000 live births; life expectancy 77.53

From the WHO for 1992 (http://www.who.int/whr/2005/annexes-en.pdf)

Canada expenditures 9.6% of GDP; $2,222 per capita; USA 14.6% , $5,274 per capita; Portugal 9.3%, $1,092 per capita. ($$ at average exchange rate)

How exactly does this support your assertion that "We Canadians perist in the delusional belief that our severely dysfunctional socialist health care system is "the best in the world". In fact we have the second most expensive system after America, yet our outcomes hover around those of Portugal."? (Second most expensive is Switzerland at $4.219 & 11.2%: Infant mortality 4.39/1000, life 80.39)

Canadian expenditures are similar to those of Portugal, and Canadian outcomes are superior to both the US and Portugal.

Your statements do seem to provide an answer to Jane's question at the head of this thread, however.

Is there any bigger tacit indictment of democracy than the success of FDR's deceit preceeding our entry into WWII?

Jane,

The argument you reference from the documentary appears to originate with one Richard F. Hill. The rigor with which he supported his argument is described below, from the Journal of American History.

"The argument about American public perceptions at the time might have been the basis for a useful article; the total absence of the actual context and the equally total neglect of the relevant published and unpublished German sources make the work a sad reflection on the publisher as well as the author."

Are you sure you want to rest your argument on this?

mj

"Your statements do seem to provide an answer to Jane's question at the head of this thread, however."

Ah yes, the ad hominem. Always the sign of a stellar intellect.

Where do I start, Peter?

This may seem counter-intuitive to you, but longevity is not a very good measure of the efficacy of a health-care system. You could eliminate the health care system in toto and still have a resonably long-lived populace on average (although people unlucky enough to conract otherwise curable illnesses would die needlessly).

Public health (principally clean water and immunization) matters much more than does the health care system when it comes to elminating premature death on a very large scale.

First of all infant mortality is a complex phenomenon which is distorted by the different practices in various countries. The United States has a seemingly high rate because in America many preemies and in utero babies (fetuses) are treated using advanced, aggressive methods which in other countries would not be treated at all, but rather "allowed" to die. These premature birth deaths are not counted as infant mortalilties in most countries--including Canada--whereas they are in the US.

Re: Expenditures. The US spends slightly more on PUBLIC health care than does Canada. The 14.6% figure you cite covers ALL healthcare costs in the US, whereas the Canadian figure covers only publicly-funded costs. Canadians fork over some 25% more in out-of-pocket expenses for "delisted" services and treatments.

I'm not sure where you live. If you lived in Canada you would be well aware of the fact that:

a. There are severely long waiting lists for many essential services and procedures;

b. Large numbers of Canadians are forced to go to the US for treatment while essentially no Americans come to Canada for any medical reason;

c. Canada ranks toward the bottom of the industrialized world when it comes to doctors per capita and availability of advanced diagnostic imaging equipment.

This list could go on and on. The US has approximatley 18 MRI machines per 100,000. Germany has 13, France about the same. Canada--with the only socialist system in the free world--has 3.8 MRI machines per 100,000.

By any sane measure the Canadian health care system is an unmitigated disaster. The Canadian Supreme Court recognized this earlier this year in a decision which essentially ordered the govenrnemt to either start providing acceptable care or get out of the way and allow Swedish and French-style (and US-sttyle) a mixed public/private system.

As it happens I know a number of very senior people in the Canadian medical establishment. Doctors and administrators are desperate over the difficulties they routinely face. Many of them--thousands per year--simply give up and move to the US. Virtually no medical professionals move from the US to Canada.

So unless you have something better to offer than reguritated CIA fact book stats (we all know that the CIA is a paragon of accuracy in all things) then please stick to things you know about.

Toodles.

P.S.

Peter: To clarify, the efficacy of a healthcare system is measured by looking at such statistics as cancer-survival rates.

In one recent study people in the UK faced a whopping 44% higher chance of dying from a range of common cancers than did Americans. The NHS has improved somewhat in recent years, but then again it could hardly have been much worse.

I've lived in the US several times. The care my family received in Boston--for example--was substantially better than what I get in Nova Scotia now in every way that counts.

Let me get this right. FDR used Pearl Harbor to get us into the war with Germany?

The fact that Hitler was killing millions of Jews, gays, and slavs wouldn't have been enough to get Americans to support a war in 1941?

That's pretty interesting.

"The fact that Hitler was killing millions of Jews, gays, and slavs wouldn't have been enough to get Americans to support a war in 1941?"

To be fair, Hitler wasn't killing millions of Jews, gays, and Slavs in 1941. He didn't really get systematic about the genocide thing until 1942. And although the invasion of Russia did cause millions of deaths (both military and civilian), I don't think there had been "millions" of those deaths by the end of 1941; the campaign had been going on only a few months.

And in any event, the true ghastly scale of the killing done by the Nazi machine wasn't widely known in the West until even later, and even then was widely disbelieved by populations whose conventional wisdom was that the "German atrocity stories" of the last war had been overstated.

Smoov.

You stated "We Canadians perist in the delusional belief that our severely dysfunctional socialist health care system is "the best in the world". In fact we have the second most expensive system after America, yet our outcomes hover around those of Portugal." in support of your general contention that "Canadians are so deluded they've come full circle and are now sane on some higher plane. Or not."

My contention was that your supporting facts as stated did not support your premise. I stand by that contention.

If you wish to debate the best potential health system, I would agree with you that evidence seems to show that the French system provides the best model.

I live in Providence, RI, am self employed, and pay about $11,000/ year for family health insurance, plus 2.9% of my income is taxed for Medicare.

PS. Snarky comments about the CIA are reserved to American citizens or loony leftists. I suspect you don't fall into either category.

This Book, besides being the authoritative account of the battle for Guadalcanal, has a fabulous overview of the strategic --really, bureaucratic & political-- viewpoints held by American and British war planners just after Pearl Harbor. Only half of it is available in the free excerpt, so I'll have to summarize the rest:

1. The American political leadership, the Army Air Corps, and much of the Army wanted to pursue a strictly "Europe First" strategy, for various reasons. Also the British position.

2. It was generally understood that the war in the Pacific would be mostly DEFENSIVE --securing sea lanes to Australia and the Philippines-- and could wait until the UK was safe from invasion. A whole set of memos got passed around expressing the sentiment "Highly Desirable but not yet Strictly Necessary" about various things in the Pacific theater.

3. Roosevelt had been entertaining the possibility of pulling troops out of the Pacific, and only gave up on the idea when forced. By three months after Pearl Harbor, the body politic had decided that the Japanese had it coming the most.

So at the very least, Roosevelt antagonized the Japanese and then tried to put off the war they started until after Hitler was deposed.

Jane

Early on in the comments you've made an obvious misstatement. You said Roosevelt wanted to make sure Hitler didn't invade England.

From the time Germany invaded Russia (June 22 1941) there was zero chance that England would be invaded.

So far noone has factored the Japanese themselves into this equation, insofar as Japan made the decision to expand militarily long before Pearl Harbor but had not yet selected a strategic direction.

The Imperial Japanese Army largely favored a "Strike North" strategic apporoach, in which China and Siberia were the physical ojectives. The Imperial Japanese Navy, on the other hand, advocated a "Srike South" approach focusing on Southeast Asia. Perhaps not insignificantly, both the IJA and the IJN were each dominated by longtime rival Samurai families.

The former led with invasions of Manchuria and China. In 1938 and 1939, however, the proponents of "Strike North" were dealt blows from which they would never recover as "border clashes" between the Japanese and the Russians grew into full-scale battles. The critical battle--Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol--in August 1939 was fought on a scale incoceivable to most of us (it's equally obscure to most of us as well) and resulted in a nasty defeat for the Japanese Army, the ascendance of the "Strike South" faction, and the "blooding" of one of the war's greatest commanders--Georgii K. Zhukov.

A southern strike was not, however, without its risks. The British Royal Navy was a formidable enough obstacle, and an attack on it seriously risked drawing in the US Pacific Fleet--itself a serious potential treat. The Japanese resolved to overcome this with a series of coordinated strikes carried out in December 1941. The first, on December 7th 1941, was the attack on Pearl Harbor. The rest began the following day at varying points in Southeast Asia. Later strikes in the South Pacific followed, with a strategic objective tied to the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Japanese strategy against the US was something of a bluff--fitting, since Admiral Yamamoto loved poker. The strike against the Pacific Fleet was intended to preemptively incapacitate it while Southeast Asia (and the British) were being overrun. Japanese expansion into the South Pacific was the follow-up to Pearl Harbor: the creation of a military presence which could serve as a buffer against the Americans and as a diplomatic "poker chip". Yamamoto understood that American industry and character were such that even the complete destruction of the Pacific Fleet only bought Japan time; the Americans would recover, rebound and possibly prevail. So first they had to be stunned. If the Japanese moved quickly enough to consolidate their concquests they would be in a position to both blunt US military counterattacks and negotiate from a position of strength.

The Japanese largely succeeded in the creation of a buffer, but Yamamoto's bluff failed when the US decided that negotiation was not an option and that this fight would be to the finish....

Wasn't it mostly a chapter of accidents? The Japanese attacked the USA when they would probably got off with attacking the Dutch East Indies, without the USA declaring war. Hitler declared war on the USA when, if he had not, the USA might well not have declared war on Germany. Hitler attacked the USSR about 6 or so weeks too late in the year; if he had not gone adventuring in the Balkans to help the Italians, an earlier-in-the-year attack on the USSR might have succeeded. A very different world would have resulted.

Okay, so Jane's theory as I understand it is:

a) Roosevelt wanted war with Germany, but didn't have the support; so
b) He imposed an oil embargo on Japan, knowing that there would be less domestic opposition to hassling the Japanese and that it would lead to war with them, thereby
c) Causing Germany to declare war on the United States.

As I said before, c) is the most questionable part of this line of logic. How could FDR or anyone have known that for sure? And since Jane says that FDR was *not* particularly interested in a Pacific war, wouldn't this have been a particularly risky gamble? There was a very real possibility that we would have gotten the worst possible outcome from FDR's perspective--fighting a war he didn't want, and facing even more opposition from Congress in fighting the war he *did* want (i.e., "we can't support Lend-Lease anymore--we have our own war to fight now").

Here's my alternative, pulled-out-of-my-butt theory that fits Jane's assumptions:

a) Germany invades Russia.
b) Everybody knows Hitler is now pressuring his anti-Comintern ally, Japan, to declare war on the Soviets and open a front on Russia's east;
c) FDR realizes that Russia, fighting with all its might and yet still losing ground (German forces would not be turned around until December 8), could very well collapse if Japan hits them on the other side, so
d) We suddenly notice what Japan has been up to for the last 10 years and become outraged, imposing an oil embargo, hoping to provoke war and distract them from Russia, and
e) If Germany is foolish enough to declare war on us, well, that's just gravy.

Thanks, Patrick Sullivan, for noting that FDR'S second international objective was ending the British Empire. As Navy Secretary during WWI, FDR would have studied world political dynamics. It probably has seemed odd to many young students that a terrorist act in the Balkans would have led to mass causalties at the Somme. The British had constructed a treaty web around the Germans who were trying to be be able to project military power. So, when the Germans backed the Austro-Hungarian Empire in trying to suppress terror, WWI was triggered by diplomatic arrangements made for the sake of preventing any rival to the British Empire. In December of 1939, 2 months after Germany invaded Poland, an emissary of General Beck, former German Chief of Staff, approached Pope Pius XII asking his good ofices in gaining asurance that the Western democracies not take advantage of German vulnerability while he carred out his plot to depose Hitler. British Foreign Secretary Halifax replied through the Pope that the British could not do this (p. 238 Hitler's Pope). I told a British friend about this to which he replied that 'the German generals were just concerned that the German Army would be destroyed.' For this we continued WWII?

But the story of how we were unjustifiably attacked for, as far as most Americans seem to believe, absolutely no reason at all, is a self-serving fairy tale.

Ouch. It's painful watching you wade into the fever swamp with the Justin Raimondos of the world, Megan.

Let's see: because we embargoed Japan's oil, oil that was by and large going to a war machine so vicious it passes description (hello, Nanking), they were justified in attacking us? Destroying our ships? Killing our men, women and children?

Right. Sure. Jane Galt joins the Blame America First brigade. Double ouch.

I thought you were a smart, logical, reasonable woman, Megan. Guess I was wrong.

An interesting mental exercise is to speculate how things would have gone down if on December 8th, 1941, Adolf Hitler had made a public speech denouncing the Japanese Empire for their attack on Pearl Harbor and urging the US to rise up and wipe out the "racially inferior" attackers. FDR's task in convincing the American public that the bulk of US forces had to be devoted against Nazi Germany might have become nearly impossible.

RMc, what part of this from Megan is so hard to understand:

' I'm not trying to justify the War in Iraq, or what George Bush did, or what have you. Nor am I trying to excuse the Japanese, who were running a particularly foul Colonial empire that made the Dutch and the Belgians look like Mother Teresa.'

Megan is trying to excuse the Japanese, by saying Pearl Harbor was justified because FDR was a big liar, etc. Her position is a huge slap in the face to the men who died there 64 years ago. Geez, Megan...did you learn your history from Pearl Harbor, the movie?

"Justified" is the wrong word, particularly given that Japan's activities were more than adequate to provoke the sanctions that the US imposed on them. "Predictable" would be a far better term, in that it doesn't defend Japan's actions or make the US response any less righteous. If some foreign power had directed similar sanctions at the US in the late 1930's and made demands that we were unwilling to meet, we probably would have attacked them just as ferociously as the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor, though we might have been a bit more up front about it. It probably would have been a "justified" attack (assuming that the history of the actions of the US were otherwise similar to the actual history), but there is no doubt that the attack would have taken place even if a hypothetical "objective" view of the situation would not have found it to be justified.

Wasn't it mostly a chapter of accidents? The Japanese attacked the USA when they would probably got off with attacking the Dutch East Indies, without the USA declaring war.

Ironically, the Japanese correctly saw that they needed control over the Dutch East Indies in order to secure a reliable oil supply for their war machine. However, when they attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, they went after boats and planes, and took a handful of structures in collateral damage...and somehow completely ignored the giant, exposed fuel farm just a few hundred feet beyond.

Had that gone up in flames, the Pacific Fleet would have been essentially immobilized for weeks, perhaps months, giving Japan necessary time to strengthen its position in the Dutch East Indies (or at least stockpile a few oil shipments therefrom).

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a repetition of their attacks on Port Arthur for their previous wars with Russia (before it became the Soviet Union). Those attacks worked before, they had reason to believe that they would work again. If the whole US Pacific fleet were at anchor in Pearl, and had been destroyed, the Japanese would have had several years to consolidate their holdings in the "Southern Resource Area" (aka SE Asia). It was only due to poor luck of the Japanese that the carriers were absent. It was poor planing that they skipped the 3rd wave of attacks (that would have destroyed the oil tank farms).

Megan is trying to excuse the Japanese, by saying Pearl Harbor was justified because FDR was a big liar, etc. Her position is a huge slap in the face to the men who died there 64 years ago. Geez, Megan...did you learn your history from Pearl Harbor, the movie?

Someone should send her Tora! Tora! Tora! for Christmas.

'Megan is trying to excuse the Japanese....'

No, she is not. Grow up.

Michael,

It probably has seemed odd to many young students that a terrorist act in the Balkans would have led to mass causalties at the Somme.

Only those students who had miserable incompetents as teachers.

'Megan is trying to excuse the Japanese....'

No, she is not. Grow up.

Yes, she is. Shut up. You've embarrased yourself enough on this thread as it is.

Someone should send her Tora! Tora! Tora! for Christmas.

Heh.

Yes, she is. Shut up. You've embarrased yourself enough on this thread as it is.

Oh, come now. Megan, if anything, seems to recognize that True Heroes are the political equivalent of De Leon's Fountain of Youth: sure, it would be just dandy to find one but the odds aren't looking too good. In the real world, some politicos behave better than others in a time of need (just as some waters are sweeter than others), but the myth itself is unatainable.

Your perspective, meanwhile, sees black and white rather than nuance, hence you prefer the myth to the reality. Sometimes that's a useful attribute, but here, it's just making you look foolish. Especially since it is painfully obvious to your interlocutors that you have essentially misconstrued all that Megan wrote because part of it didn't agree with your preconceptions (which are not a synonym for 'facts,' incidentally).

That you would then turn around and accuse someone else of embarrassing himself is icing on the cake; if anything, the display of pompous indignation is coming off like a verbal Punch-n-Judy show.

Your perspective, meanwhile, sees black and white rather than nuance, hence you prefer the myth to the reality.

Ah, yes, nuance, that favourite quality of President Kerry. (How'd that election go for him, by the way?)

The idea that America brought Pearl Harbor on itself -- apparently because we were a bunch of meanies -- is rank revisionism of the worst kind. On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was deliberately attacked -- without warning or provocation -- by a vicious empire. To rewrite this story to fit your "preconceptions" (why, we can't say anything bad about the Japanese! That would be, like, racist or something!) pretty much disqualifies you as a serious person.

And that, sadly, is what Megan has done.

RMc, you're completely missing the point: I think Roosevelt did the right thing. I think he should have opposed the foul Japanese empire in the East, and the foul German empire in the West. My point is only that at the time, the American people did not agree with me, and so FDR got us into war by stealth. The Japanese did not attack us without provocation, but the provocation was 100% justified by their actions.

The Japanese did not attack us without provocation, but the provocation was 100% justified by their actions.

No. We did not "provoke" the Japanese, period. They attacked us, remember? You make it sound like Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in the fall of 1941, like they had a right to hit us. And that's just plain wrong. Sorry.

I would like to thank RMc for answering the question posed in the title of Jane's post.

Ah, so the new Galt Manor promulgation is that FDR decided to confront the Japanese instead of appeasing them, but that he would have been fine with appeasement except that he chose confrontation to lie the USA into war with Germany, all of which depended on Hitler acting stupidly and irrationally in a particular way.

Rube Goldberg, call your office.

There are a number of things wrong with the original post, not the least of which is the proposition: "the Japanese ... were running a particularly foul Colonial empire that made the Dutch and the Belgians look like Mother Teresa."

Read some history: the Belgians ran their empire with a brutal ferocity that may even have surpassed the Japanese. Between 1885 and 1908, somewhere between five million and 15 million Congolese were killed as the result of King Leopold's actions to enforce lucrative rubber quotas. (Do a search on Force Publique and Congo if you want to find out some more details.) Conrad's Heart of Darkness is of course based around the events of that era.

The rest of the entry displays a similar lack of historical awareness, such that drawing any parallel between the events of 1941 and the US invasion of Iraq in this manner is empty.

"The fact that Hitler was killing millions of Jews, gays, and slavs wouldn't have been enough to get Americans to support a war in 1941?"

Hutus killed Tutsis in 1994, 8000 per day for 100 consecutive days. President Clinton, the UN and the rest of the civilized word knew about it and did nothing. The slaughter could have been ended with 5000 Marines.

So what does that tell you? Beyond the obvious gutlessness of Clinton.

FWIW, I agree with Jane's assessment. During the 1930s and up to 7 Dec 41, the US Congress was very isolationist. That is the reason behind the "Lend-Lease' program where Great Britian got 50 (or so) US Navy destroyers and assorted other war material in return for leases for US military bases on some soil under the nominal control of the King. The ex-base in Argentia, Newfoundland is the only one that comes to mind.

There is no serious disagreement to the idea that FDR wanted the USA to be involved in the war against Hitler in some way, but the country wasn't ready. The oil embargo against the Japanese was a measured step to try to provoke the Japanese.

There has been a lot written about who knew what vis-a-vis the attack on Pearl Harbor but nothing even close to conclusive that FDR expected that type of attack.

No. We did not "provoke" the Japanese, period. They attacked us, remember?

Yes -- they attacked AFTER a whole lot of footsie-games had been going on. The point raised in the post was, THESE FOOTSIE-GAMES HAD BEEN GOING ON. Anyone arguing, in effect, that Pearl Harbor came out of a clear blue sky is the one "rewriting history," or at the very least, badly misconstruing the argument.

You don't have to agree with the conclusions or all of the premises to acknowledge that much. You do, however, have to be capable of doing more with a structured argument than engaging in keyword driven, knee-jerk reflex followed by a Jonathan Edwards-esque spiel given the morning after he slept on a bed of nails.

You make it sound like Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened in the fall of 1941, like they had a right to hit us. And that's just plain wrong. Sorry.

Do you even listen to yourself talk? "Well, 'A' seems to be arguing 'X,' which if you delete 'X' and replace with 'Y' sounds a lot like faulty premise 'Z', so 'A' is clearly bonkers..."

My "verbal Punch and Judy" crack may have been generous. This is more like trying to swat the fly that recently found the amphetamine stash (that was hidden in a can which was stored in a cupboard that stood in the house that Jack built.)

Your comments don't make it clear when and for how long Americans assumed Hitler was behind the attacks at Pearl Harbor. It was not an unreasonable conclusion to jump to, considering that German U-Boats had already attacked U.S. naval vessels, and just five weeks before had sunk the destroyer U.S.S. Ruben James. 115 U.S. seamen were killed. This was fresh on the public's mind. Blaming the Germans for the next naval attack seems fairly natural.

So if for a few days after Pearl Harbor, 60 percent of Americans thought Hitler was behind the attack, that doesn't necessarily mean they were stupid. If they had held the same opinion six months later, that's a different story.

The fact that Hitler was killing millions of Jews, gays, and slavs wouldn't have been enough to get Americans to support a war in 1941?

I don't believe most Americans, including the American government, knew about this in 1941. Had they known they might not have been stirred to act, though.

Why isn't an oil embargo provocative? Suppose OPEC refused to sell to the US, sending our economy into a tailspin? The question isn't whether Roosevelt took action that was a precipitating factor in the attack on Pearl Harbor, it is whether his action was justified. Most would agree it was. And most would agree, even looking back, that the former did not preordain the latter.

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