Why is "Pearl Harbor" viewed as such a dirty, treacherous deed?

[Bonobo]

A terrible day for our military and our country, yes. But they did attack a military target of enormous value, and they did it boldly and bravely. Were they supposed to warn us?

[H2O Man]

1. Clown n/t

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Yes.

They did not declare war before attacking.

[Atman]

3. They did warn us

We had bugs in the Japanese prime ministers office and knew the attack was coming, according to a historian's recent book about the subject. We supposedly couldn't let on that we knew because it would reveal the extent of our spying operations on the Japanese. 9/11 was more of "another Pearl Harbor" than most people realize.

.

[bryant69]

5. Ah yes. The book written to slander FDR by his Conservative enemies

I've heard of that book.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[JVS]

7. Us spying on them does not equal them warning us

but yeah, we did kind of know what was up

[Cooley Hurd]

9. Links?

?

[Atman]

13. It's a book...I don't have links

Maybe Bryant does, or another alert DU poster. The book came out about about four years ago, I believe. I don't know the title or who wrote it.

.

[shadowknows69]

4. Umm. War just sucks.

that is all.

[atreides1]

6. Because

I think mainly because the Japanese were supposed to be in negotiations with the US regarding the embargo that was placed on Japan because of it's attack on China.

[TheCowsCameHome]

8. Oh, please...........

[Az]

10. The Civilized killing of other people requires that they inform us

that they are going to start killing us before they actually start doing it. As if that made it somehow civilized.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. What an extremely apropos username. -nt

[Az]

12. hehe

I was just thinking things along the same lines myself.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

17. This one thread O'Reilly and Rush won't be able to blather about

Hey Bonobo...

[Lowell]

14. Troll n/t

[NavyDavy]

15. preemptive strike....need i say more

[BoneDaddy]

16. Regardless

of the politics, machinations and discussions of foreknowledge, it was a treacherous deed because it happened to us and the soldiers on the ground had NO forewarning. They were sitting ducks essentially and the casualties to our troops and our ships and planes were devastating.

It was treacherous cause it happened to us, from their point of view it was a brilliant and successful attack. Just a matter of perspective.

[GreenZoneLT]

27. They tried to warn us

The Japanese embassy in Washington received instructions at 9 a.m. DC time to deliver their final rejection of Washington's ultimatum at 1 p.m., just before the attack. This would have been the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The boneheads gave the decoding job to a guy who could barely type (for reasons of protocol and seniority, iirc), and they didn't get to Secretary of State Cordell Hull's office until 2:30 p.m. Washington time, just after he learned of the attack.

The U.S. had already READ the Japanese message because we had their diplomatic codes broken, but a series of bureaucratic snafus kept that information from getting to the commanders in the Pacific in time.

The U.S. government figured they might attack, they just didn't know where. We expected it in the Philippines. We had pretty much made it impossible for them NOT to attack; we expected to kick their asses pretty easily. They had to attack as soon as possible, if they were going to, as they only had 18 months supply of oil left in mid-1941. Their other choices were to submit completely, pull out of Indochina and stop their aggressive war in China, to end our oil and strategic-materials boycott.

Basically, they'd have to throw their entire national foreign policy strategy in the dumper and meekly allow us to dominate the Pacific and East Asia. And these were militaristic nationalists running Japan; stupid of us to think they'd consider it.

Very few Americans knew any of this at the time; the part about them running out of oil didn't come out until John Toland wrote a WWII history from the Japanese perspective in the '60s.

The continued indignation about Pearl Harbor is just American ignorance and chauvinism. It was a legit military surprise attack against a military target. LOTS of wars (most, actually) have begun without a formal declaration of war; it's not a war crime.

I think actual Japanese atrocities in the Philippines, China and elsewhere are conflated in American minds with Pearl Harbor. The Japanese militarists WERE extremely awful people, but Pearl Harbor isn't particularly bad compared to the other stuff they did.

[Jed Dilligan]

40. I'll buy it.

What surprises me is they let you access this site!

[uberllama42]

18. According to Howard Zinn

we knew the attack was coming because we provoked it. Supposedly there are a series of memos which shot back and forth between the Navy brass in 1940-1 asking how to provoke the Japanese, what their response would be, and how we could minimize the damage while still spinning the attack to justify a declaration of war. Why did we want war with Japan? I think George Carlin, though not the most professional of historical commentators, described it very well- they were moving in on our action and starting to bomb the fuck out of our share of the brown people.

My biggest misgiving about the conspiracy theory is that FDR would allow such a thing to happen. I don't think he was 'better' than that, keeping in mind that this is the man who signed the order to intern the Japanese. Roosevelt was a navy man and understood how important our Navy would be in the war, so I'm not sure he would be willing to make that kind of a sacrifice. Although we certainly rebuilt our fleet in short order and promptly started fighting in both oceans.

[MadHound]

31. If you look closely, it wasn't that much of a sacrifice.

Yes, we lost many battleships, planes and lives, but those are all relatively easy to replace. The big target, the aircraft carriers, had been ordered out to open sea, and thus weren't destroyed. If they had been, well, we would have been up a certain creek without a paddle. Japan could have easily come back with a land attack and easily taken the Hawaian islands, forcing the US back to the West Coast ports. As it was, our aircraft carrier groups provided enough of a defensive threat to allow us to hang onto Hawaii.

[uberllama42]

32. I think that's the most compelling evidence for the conspiracy theory

The fact that our major battleships were not there. I've had discussions about the whole incident with people here (at my college), and most people are not open to the possibility that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen or that World War II in general was wrong. I care about this stuff pretty deeply, so I complain incessantly about our culture, politics, and history. Let me tell you, it doesn't make me popular.

[AngryAmish]

47. The Arizona wasn't a major battleship?

WWII was the coming out party for the aircraft carrier. Before then giant battleships ruled the sea because aircraft was not sophisticated enough. No sane person would trade the damage of Pearl Harbor for any price.

[bowens43]

19. Because attacking and killing people is a bad thing?

[neebob]

20. Um, because the government needed an excuse to get into the war

and made out like they were surprised?

[still_one]

21. An unprovoked attack IS a DIRTY, TREACHEROUS DEED. There is no courage in that

Just as there was no courage in us attacking Iraq

[TahitiNut]

44. "unprovoked"? Some might say the US embargo on oil and steel was a casus belli.

Declaring an embargo and enforcing it both diplomatically and with Pacific naval forces is often overlooked as a precipitating factor. If OPEC were to embargo oil to the US, you can bet your sweet ass the US would regard it as an act of war.

[AngryAmish]

48. Why was there an embargo?

See Nanking, Rape of.

[lectrobyte]

22. By Bush-logic, they were completely justified since our weapons of

mass destruction (B-17s) were moving to bases in Hawaii and the Philippines.

[uberllama42]

33. Read Chomsky

He proves solidly in Failed States that if Iran wanted to execute a preemptive strike on the US, under the Bush Doctrine they would be completely justified in doing so. Such is the danger to which Bush has exposed us, that he has given the crazy racist president of Iran the moral high ground.

[lectrobyte]

38. For some reason, I find Chomsky's books tough to read, but I never

miss his talks on TV or podcasts. I think I was probably paraphrasing that bit from his recent West Point appearance. Setting a precedent for pre-emptive war is very dangerous, I agree.

[dogday]

23. If I remember the story correctly, Japan pretended to

be friends with the US, going as far as to give us friendship medals shortly before the invasion... I believe we sent them back to them in a big way....

[uberllama42]

35. Why trust the Japanese when they claim to be our friends?

Why should we give any more credence to them than we would to the Nazis, or, with our historical perspective, to our own government at the time?

[TahitiNut]

49. "pretended"?? Japan was a US Ally in WW1! They fought German occupation in Asia.

The Japanese lost many lives in fighting the Imperial ambitions of Germany in Asia. One should review the war reparations resulting from Versailles and how the British and French took the lion's share of the "spoils" and attempted to ignore Japan's contribution in blood and gold. It's no accident that Japan went into Indochina and the Malay peninsula, targeting French and British colonial holdings in Asia.

The first forty years of the 20th Century were still totally embedded in "Imperial thinking" ... the competing interests of Empires. The British Empire. French colonialism. Japan's aspiration to become an Asian Empire - the Japanese Empire, with an Emperor and all. The Dutch Empire. The German Empire. It was ALL about imperialism and cannot be viewed without comprehending that imperialism was "the way it was."

[gollygee]

24. Because it was a pre-emptive strike .. . ?

have you been reading DU at ALL? We aren't into that kind of thing.

Troll.

[sam sarrha]

25. they tried to warn us but we parked the diplomat's ass in the hall all day and

maybe he was a mole and wanted to stop it and we didnt want to stop it.. we had all the codes their military used, we had to know it was comming.. just like 911

[Az]

26. The key issue is the Japanese did not declare war until 10 hours after the attack

That is simply not how war was fought back then. You declared war and then you attacked. Its a bit like sucker punching someone. Yeah tactically its smart. But socially its unacceptable.

[warrens]

45. That's the issue

It worked for them, but it was a low blow.

[Canuckistanian]

28. It was the equivalent of a sucker punch

The allies were expecting the Japanese to attack either Hong Kong or the Phillipines first.

But there wasn't any urgency to the preparations. Japan was maintaining diplomatic relations with the allied countries right up until the attack.

[EST]

29. In the early 1960s, I was studying Russian, with a eye toward

a career in foreign relations.
My Russian instructor, a Mr. Bellay, had a number of interesting stories from his own experiences at Middlebury college and work as a translator.

His stories about the Pearl attacks and the confusion, misinformation and lackadaisical performance around the knowledge of an impending violence were, in retrospect, remarkably parallel to the */Rice fiasco re: 9-11.

He was also a fount of information concerning the lack of Slavic language experts and the total lack of idiomatic language and customs experience or training in the US government.

One of the stories was about the cold war and the lack (purposeful?) of cultural expertise that led to such danger and one-upmanship between the USSR (CCCP) and the US. During peace talks and proposals of an alliance, Kruschev clasped his hands excitedly over his head and shook hands with himself, in a manner suggestive of that of an aging, victorious boxer.

This gesture infuriated the American diplomats and incurious politicians, as they interpreted it as Nikita proclaiming himself victor over the US, when it actually was a particularly Slavic gesture meaning peaceful agreement, specifically, "hands across the sea."

Even a small bit of cultural understanding could have led to a completely different history. The arrogance and self-satisfied, cocksure aggressiveness of our own leaders kept them from another bit of information that is laughable in its idiocy.
When people in this country hate a stage performance and wish to rudely express their indignation, they yell "booo," make rude gestures and other indicators of dissatisfaction. Russians whistle, louder and longer the worse their derision.

So, if you go to a concert in Russia and the performance is terrific, it does not serve to clap hands, stomp feet and whistle--your ass might land in the street.

Arrogance and ignorance is a too common thread throughout our political history.

[cosmik debris]

30. Shock and Awe

is only for the good guys! For others it is infamy.

[LynnTheDem]

34. It's just an early example of the bush Doctrine.

Americans who support bush & his attack on Iraq should be celebrating Pearl Harbor.

[msongs]

36. because it starred Ben Affleck? nt

[hedgehog]

37. For all the conspiracy theorists out there,

just what were Roosevelt's options? Suppose he knew that the Japanese were intending to attack? How could he have stopped the attack? Any attack in and of itself would have been sufficient pretext for going to war. There was no need to allow the Japanese destroy so much material and kill so many troops. In fact, the true extent of the losses at Pearl Harbor were concealed for years lest it add to the panic on the West Coast. If anything, Roosevelt would have wanted to preserve those ships for the war on Germany. We knew something was coming, but the individual commanders on the ground prepared for the wrong kind of attack.

[uberllama42]

51. We played with fire and we got burned

The Roosevelt Administration didn't intend to cause a catastrophic attack on the seat of our Pacific fleet, but I'm convinced they were willing to make a significant sacrifice at Pearly Harbor. We had already been mobilized economically for two years, so we were able to restore our fleet relatively quickly. We already had plenty of ships in the Atlantic under the flags of the British Navy, so the Arizona was somehow seen as an acceptable sacrifice.

[slackmaster]

39. Because the fucking Japanese were fucking fuckheads

We were not at war with them.

[Jed Dilligan]

41. Fucking Fuckheads

has a nice ring. I think I'll start a punk rock band.

[slackmaster]

43. I also like "the 'Tards"

Be they bas-, fuck-, re-, etc.

[architect359]

42. Well, that depends on your point of view doesn't it?

Were you doing the bombing or were you the one being bombed? OK, I'm being snarky, sorry.

Maybe I'm being horribly naive but I think this is more akin to a break down in the carrying out of protocol. I understand that the Japanese did have intentions to formally declare war / severe ties with us - as a formality mind you, because as we know now the attack fleet was already well underway across the Pacific. The declaration would have been merely a formality so that history wouldn't have judged this as an "un-honorable" act. Well, that didn't happen. Was it LIHOP? MIHOP? Who knows. I don't know.

Anyway, the rest is history. This is a bit OT but I can't help seeing that like all rationalizations for war, there almost seems, in most cases, an underestimation of what the opponent will do / endure and what the outcome will be. Again, from a lay person's limited and perhaps flawed knowledge, the Japanese thought we would be easy to intimidate. You know, "shock and awe" us, into leaving the Pacific or for that matter, Asia.

In any case, they took a huge gamble and lost. Unfortunately, in the Pacific theater, millions would also have to pay the price for that losing hand.

[Blue_Roses]

46. WTF?

This isn't a day we honor Japan, it's a day of remembrance and honor for the soldiers we lost that day. It doesn't matter if the attack was "bold and brave" because in pre-emptive strikes, nobody wins--as we have already seen.

[Bigmack]

50. Bushido...

(no relationship to Dumbya) - the Way of the Warrior - says that surprise attack is OK, and that if you get caught with your pants down, it's your own stupid fault.

Sure, the Japanese violated our rules of "civilized" warfare, but they didn't violate their own rules.

If our War Department had had any knowledge of the Japanese culture and Bushido, they'd have been prepared for the attack, and world history would be different.

This country shows an amazing lack of any sort of insight into other cultures, and keeps stepping on it's own dick because of that ignorance.

Our military had a "war warning" prior to 7 Dec, and failed to take the necessary steps.

The Japanese bear the onus of an unprovoked attack, the same as Al Qaeda does.
But the US military/intelligence apparatus bears the onus of the failure to protect this country.... Pearl Harbor and Twin Towers.

[Moderator]

52. locking.....

This is flamebait.