Re: Further costs of war (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 17:12:02 -0700
> From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
> Subject: Re: Further costs of war
> 
> At 1:43 PM -0700 11/23/97, Jim Choate wrote:
> ...
> >Any particular methodology you might care to share on stopping WWII?
> >Being an avid amateur historian concerning WWII I am very much interested in
> >any insight you might have.
> 
> Not entering the war.

Do you have a particular method in mind?

> There's ample evidence that the U.S. provoked the
> Japanese in various ways.

Such as?

> (I'm not saying the Japanese were blameless, or
> lily-white, or"nice," etc., only that most historians agree--and Japanese
> archives support--that the Japanese were motivated to attack Pearl Harbor
> in the hope that a devastating first blow would sink enough ships, etc., to
> cause America to back off in its actions in the ironically named Pacific.)

So how does Tojo and his out of control Kwantung Army figure into this? Do
you feel that Japans Co-prosperity Sphere was a benign goal? How do you
consign your position that we provoked Japan with their behaviour in such
situations as Nanking?

> Had the U.S. concentrated on its own affairs, on just trade, it is unlikely
> that what the Japanese were doing in Malaysia, Manchuria, Korea, Indochina,
> and the Phillipines would have had any major interest for us.

The Phillipines at the time were a US protectorate, is your position that we
should have simply turned them over without a fight? Korea was ceeded to
Japan as a result of the 1903 defeat of Russia, how is this relevant to your
position? Let's assume for a moment that the US hadn't gotten involved. The
Japanese would have eventualy gotten to Australia. Once there what would have
kept them from expanding their co-prosperity sphere eastward in order to
better stabalize their resources. When they knocked on Guam or Midway's door
should we have let them go like the Phillipines? How about the Japanese's
eventual expansion into the Allutians? Should we have simply given Alaska to
them as well? Is your position that once they had the western half of the
pacific rim they would have no pretentions on the eastern half? What do you
base this on?

> As for Europe, this was even less our war than the Pacific war.

Really? How so? Is your position that Germany would have benignly left the
US alone once they had defeated Britian (I am assuming of course the US
hadn't shipped resources such as oil and fuel to them)? Had the US not
gotten into the war the resources available to Germany and Japan were such
they could realisticaly have beaten the Russian. One of the reasons that
Russia had the resources to reinforce the eastern front was their ability to
remove troops from the Chinese border based on Richard Sorge's intelligence.

> In a sense, so _what_ if some army from some nation was rolling over other
> armies?

That depends on where they stop their rolling. Is your position that if we
had refused to support conflicts against Japan and Germany all would have
been well? Are you proposing that Germany would not have advanced with their
atomic research? Completed development on their jet-based New York Bomber?

> Those who wanted to liberate the death camps, or to push Hitler back into
> Gerrmany, or to kick the Emperor's butt could, of course, simply go over
> and volunteer. In a free society, mercenaries are legal.

Volunteer to who?

> The last justifiable war the American states were involved in was,
> arguably, the War of 1812. Every war since then has been unjustified.

Justifiable war? How is the invasion of the US by British troops
significantly different than the invasion by German or Japanese troops?


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