Can you imagine if FDR decided not to bother avenging Pearl Harbor?

[graham4anything]

Can you imagine if FDR decided not to bother avenging Pearl Harbor?

or if Lincoln let the traitors do what they wanted and didn't bother to fight in the Civil War?

Or if the people who fought the revolutionary war decided, what the hell, let England keep it.

A pound of foolishness would have prevented an ounce of cure I guess.

Thankfully, they did what was needed to keep the little republic that in 2013, the republicans like Rand Paul want to take away what they gave us.

Now if we can only have a bullet free streets in America life would be great.
Looking forward for the day when even law enforcement no longer needs bullets.

[Scuba]

1. Where's this going? And is "republican" a typo?

[whatchamacallit]

2. Freudian me thinks

[Romulox]

3. "Avenging?" Are we superheroes in this scenario, or Old Testament patriarchs?

I don't think "avenging" is the correct term.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

4. Only the looniest of loons would be against retaliation after the Pearl Harbor attack. nt

[Cooley Hurd]

12. One Congresswoman was against it... and she was no loon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanette_Rankin#Second_Congressional_term

Rankin was elected to Congress again in 1940, defeating incumbent Republican representative Jacob Thorkelson, an outspoken anti-Semite. She was appointmented to the Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on Insular Affairs. World War II was raging in Europe, and another debate on U.S. involvement had broken out.

Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against entering the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Hisses could be heard from the gallery when Rankin cast the vote and several colleagues asked her to change it to make the war declaration unanimous, but she refused. "As a woman I can't go to war," she said, "and I refuse to send anyone else." After the vote an angry mob followed her, and she was forced to hide in a telephone booth and call congressional police to rescue her.

[theKed]

5. What is this

in relation too?

Maybe I should be the one to raise the CS specter of "They Knew Pearl Harbor Would Happen" and relate it to W's people being complicit in the WTC attacks. Aaaaaaaand....go!

[graham4anything]

7. REAL PEOPLE DIED ON 9-11. And America went Bankrupt because of it

Don't like Bush?
Don't vote for Jeb or anyone but the democratic nominee(who probably will be Hillary) in 2016.

it really is that simple.

This isn't a college debate.

Ask all the people who were directly affected by the death or loss of business of 9-11.

And if people would have voted for Gore instead of their inane protest,
none of it would have happeened.

But of course, it is easier to opine like a grade school park yard debate, then realize that the only thing that a stupid protest does is elect Jeb Bush in 2016.

Which is constitionally allowed, but why anyone wants to hand the ball from President Obama to Jeb Bush is beyond me, especially when they blame W for 9-11

[theKed]

9. Dude. Take a breath

Okay?

Good?

Now, what the fuck was that?

[graham4anything]

11. Didn't the people who voted for Ralph Nader think about what they were doing?

Don't like Bush?
Don't vote for Jeb or anyone but the democratic nominee(who probably will be Hillary) in 2016.

it really is that simple.

This isn't a college debate.

Ask all the people who were directly affected by the death or loss of business of 9-11.

And if people would have voted for Gore instead of their inane protest,
none of it would have happeened.

But of course, it is easier to opine like a grade school park yard debate, then realize that the only thing that a stupid protest does is elect Jeb Bush in 2016.

Which is constitionally allowed, but why anyone wants to hand the ball from President Obama to Jeb Bush is beyond me, especially when they blame W for 9-11

[theKed]

15. What are you going off at, here?

I'm lost and confused.

[morningfog]

21. This is incoherent rambling. Ooga Booga 911 Ooga Nader! Blaargh!

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

26. .

[white_wolf]

39. This guy's posts are usually nonsensical rants.

You need an experienced interpreter to understand them.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Or, John Wilkes Booth deciding not to avenge Appomattox?

Or, Franz Joseph not avenging Sarajevo?

[NightWatcher]

8. Who has the picture of the bunny with a pancake on its head?

[Brother Buzz]

13. The bunny is gone, all that remains is the fine chapeau

[jsr]

23. The most important question in this thread is

Can he eat this 72-oz. steak

[Brother Buzz]

25. He's a she, and we had to retire the Three Second Rule

That chunk of meat would never, ever, even hit the ground.

[Nye Bevan]

10. If the Revolutionary War had never been fought, the US would still have become independent,

eventually.

It would look somewhat different, obviously. Probably more like Canada.

[olddots]

14. answer

yes and no but then that John Lennon song gets in my head =Imagine

[morningfog]

16. What the fuck are you talking about?

Seriously, what the fuck.

[whatchamacallit]

18. Picture an insane octopus

hurling clams and starfish from every arm.

[apocalypsehow]

42. I'm rather at a loss to understand myself.

[AngryAmish]

17. FDR would never have let the Germans get away with that

[leftyohiolib]

19. if the us hadnt thrown a blockade around japan we might not have had a pearl harbor

[pampango]

20. We did not blockade Japan. We stopped trading with them because they were using our steel and oil

for their conquest of China. We told them we would resume our trade with them if they withdrew their military forces from China. Of course they rejected that option and attacked instead.

We did not "throw a blockade around japan" in the sense that we tried to prevent them from trading with any other country. We just stopped our trade with them which was our right to do.

[Bonobo]

30. Well that's not true.

It was an embargo. Basically an act of war.

http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/wwiipaccauses_2.htm

Moving Towards War with the US

The American oil embargo caused a crisis in Japan. Reliant on the US for 80% of its oil, the Japanese were forced to decide between withdrawaling from China, negotiating an end to the conflict, or going to war to obtain the needed resources elsewhere. In an attempt to resolve the situation, Konoe asked US President Franklin Roosevelt for a summit meeting to discuss the issues. Roosevelt replied that Japan needed to leave China before such a meeting could be held.

[pampango]

34. So the US refusing to sell our own oil to Japan was "basically an act of war".

The US had no obligation to sell oil to Japan if we did not want to. Every country has the right to sell its products to whomever it wants. Japan certainly faced a crisis without American oil. Perhaps they should have thought of that before they invaded China. Did they think we would sell them oil forever regardless of what they used it for.

FDR hoped that refusing to sell our oil to them might make them stop the war in China and withdraw their troops. Would it have been more principled for FDR to continue to sell our oil to Japan knowing that it was being used to power the Japanese army in China? I think it was fantastic of FDR to try to use our leverage over Japan due its dependence on our oil to motivate it to stop its war with China. It did not work because the Japanese leadership was determined to follow the path of war that it had started years before.

[Bonobo]

36. Even FDR acknowledged it was tantamount to an act of war.

In 1937, after a clash at Marco Polo Bridge near Peking, Japan invaded and, after four years of fighting, including the horrific Rape of Nanking, Japan controlled the coastal cities, but not the interior. When France capitulated in June 1940, Japan moved into northern French Indochina. And though the United States had no interest there, we imposed an embargo on steel and scrap metal. After Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941, Japan moved into southern Indochina. FDR ordered all Japanese assets frozen. But FDR did not want to cut off oil. As he told his Cabinet on July 18, an embargo meant war, for that would force oil-starved Japan to seize the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Japan_attack_the_US_in_1941

[pampango]

47. Japan would not have invaded the Dutch East Indies for the oil if not for our embargo?

Japan had already invaded and conquered Manchuria in 1931, invaded China in 1937 and invaded French IndoChina in 1940. As your wikianswers link provided, they did this because they "wanted to control all these territories so that they could use the raw materials in them for their own industries."

What makes you think that the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies would not have been on their target list? As is suggested at the link, oil was the most important raw material in the war. I suspect Japan would have gone after that, too.

If Hitler had been dependent on American oil in 1941, I would have had not qualms about denying him that resource either. Germany, like Japan, had invaded and conquered neighbors. Denying either Germany or Japan of our oil may indeed have been 'tantamount' to war, but those countries were the ones who had actually started the wars. For them to say "How dare you refuse to sell us your oil?" would seem a bit hypocritical on their part.

[madinmaryland]

22. Well, I can imagine if he had decided to avenge Pearl Harbor by attacking

Indonesia.

[El Supremo]

27. Dutch East Indies, historically challenged one.

But the Nips were attacking it too.

[madinmaryland]

29. Dude! You have been reading Harry Turtledove again? Nipponese??

Yeah. You should know about countries changing their names as often as some DUer's changing their avatar!!

[El Supremo]

33. I did that for your Anglophiled benefit.

[Fumesucker]

24. Mrs Peel, we're needed

[Bonobo]

28. I had an interesting thought the other day for a sci-fi novel...

Pearl Harbor, a brave attack by a small island against a foe that cut off their supply of oil, an act of war...
A brilliant and glorious attack against a military base in their backyard...
Hearkening back to the old days of war, it was purely against professional soldiers, unlike the cowardly attacks against civilians that would later define the war...

Crippling the US fleet, the Japanese force them to negotiate. The US and other Western Powers leave Asia and the Vietnam War is prevented, saving the lives of the 2 MILLION Vietnamese that would later die at the hands of the US.

[arely staircase]

38. i'm sure it will fly off the shelves in korea, china

and vietnam. you do realize that the vietnamese and the viet minh (later viet cong) particularly were allies of the us during that war right? their very existence was a patriotic reaction to japanese imperialism, right?

[Bonobo]

41. Yes and what was Japanese imperialism a patriotic reaction to?

Imperialism by:

England
France
US
Italy
Netherlands
etc.

Take it back to where you need to, Commodore Perry and later the Unfair Treaties and exploitation of China.
Seeing China dismembered by the West made a powerful effect on Japan and they vowed not to let it happen to them.
They wanted the East to resist the West. They failed but tried and many countries that experienced their imperialism hailed them as protectors at first, such as the Phillipines.

[arely staircase]

44. you answer your own question

they decided to become imperialists. a sort of western-type nation state power in the east.

[Bonobo]

45. Yup, that was what they thought they needed to do to be on an equal footing with the West.

It still doesn't change the fact that it was the US that went on to kill 2 million Vietnamese.

[Egalitarian Thug]

31. "A pound of foolishness".

Sums up this post perfectly.

[cherokeeprogressive]

32. "bullet free streets in America..." Absolutely DELUSIONAL. Is there a word BEYOND delusion?

If there were, I'd have used it here...

In a world where there were only TWO guns, ONE of them would sooner or later wind up in America. After all, America is STILL the land of milk and money (that would be a play on "milk and honey" in case you didn't get it).

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If you ever intend to see an America with "bullet free streets", you had better plan on building a HUGE FUCKING WALL on both the northern AND southern borders.

[graham4anything]

46. There could be a zillion guns. But I am working toward a bullet free America.

Nobody wants your gun.
Keep it
display it
play with it

guns are great toys long as they have no bullets

and then if there is a bullet in the street, well, like teenage drinking, zero tolerance.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

and all the people with guns, to think they are so reliant on their gun.
After all, they seem to be saying, without their gun they just couldn't live.

Reminds me of cigarettes. Some said, wthout their cigarette they just cuoldn't make it through the day.

Without that extra glass of wine, without that extra glass of soda, without that extra bet.

Free yourself of the fear of not having a gun by your side.
After all, there is NO boogie man hiding under the bed.

But there are alot of bad people in the world like Timid McCoward and Zimmy and the terrorists aligned with OBL looking to kill alot of innocent people.

Only law enforcement should have the bullets and the large thingys.

but you can have all the guns you wish, after the bullets are not in the street.

[ThomThom]

37. "Can you imagine if FDR decided not to bother avenging Pearl Harbor?"

We would have gotten to fascism sooner?

[white_wolf]

40. Avengers Assemble!

[cthulu2016]

43. The Onion just keeps getting better

[LWolf]

48. Suppose they gave a war and noone came?

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
― Albert Einstein

“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”
― Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995