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May I break with tradition this Pearl Harbor Day and impart my condolences to the millions of Japanese people who suffered as a result of their warmongering government picking the stupidest fight in the long history of stupid fights. Governments decide and innocent people suffer. War is a terrible thing.

That FDR knew in advance is just about the worst kept secret in town. If not specifically about the time of the attack then the idea that one was coming.

That FDR knew in advance is just about the worst kept secret in town. If not specifically about the time of the attack then the idea that one was coming.

Oh ralfy, give it a rest...

I knew the US was responsible for Pearl Harbor!

There is no logic in giving critical thinking a rest.

While it may be always logical to indulge in critical thinking, I'm not convinced it's always logical to express the results of your critical thinking in every venue. For example, by spending a little energy in resisting the urge to respond to something I disagree with, I ultimately save a lot of energy engaging in long fruitless arguments, which I find to be the most logical choice. An off-topic thought.

May I break with tradition this Pearl Harbor Day and impart my condolences to the millions of Japanese people who suffered as a result of their warmongering government picking the stupidest fight in the long history of stupid fights. Governments decide and innocent people suffer. War is a terrible thing.

Yeah, Japan's government made sure that its poor people got the worst buttwhuppin' in the history of buttwhippin's!

Ralfy is an "academic"?

And on this particular day in history, Hitler followed suit & declared war on the US for no reason, Despite the number of Nazi sympathizers here...

Stupidest decision in Hitler's long chain of stupid decisions. Stupider than June 22, 1941.

When I mentioned a break with tradition, ralfy, it was a break with my own tradition of how I have usually marked Pearl Harbor Day in the fifteen years I've been here. One of the luxuries of peace is being able to cast a kind thought toward those who were once labeled as enemies, and in mentioning that most people in a population do not start wars, only suffer from them, I don't think I was wrong. It's a shame you disagree, as I did not take you for one who advocated eternal vindictiveness.

PS Unless you've served in some capacity, ralfy, how about you shut your flapping mouth over things you know nothing about but which you happily set yourself up as an authority on?

An academic trying to correct a veteran like Indy, who was actually stationed in Japan, is like a virgin giving sex advice.

And on this particular day in history, Hitler followed suit & declared war on the US for no reason, Despite the number of Nazi sympathizers here...

In the 1930s, the Germans were fascinated by the global leader in codified racism—the United States.

American eugenicists made no secret of their racist objectives, and their views were prevalent enough that F. Scott Fitzgerald featured them in “The Great Gatsby.” (The cloddish Tom Buchanan, having evidently read Lothrop Stoddard’s 1920 tract “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy,” says, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged.”) California’s sterilization program directly inspired the Nazi sterilization law of 1934. There are also sinister, if mostly coincidental, similarities between American and German technologies of death. In 1924, the first execution by gas chamber took place, in Nevada. In a history of the American gas chamber, Scott Christianson states that the fumigating agent Zyklon-B, which was licensed to American Cyanamid by the German company I. G. Farben, was considered as a lethal agent but found to be impractical. Zyklon-B was, however, used to disinfect immigrants as they crossed the border at El Paso—a practice that did not go unnoticed by Gerhard Peters, the chemist who supplied a modified version of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz. Later, American gas chambers were outfitted with a chute down which poison pellets were dropped. Earl Liston, the inventor of the device, explained, “Pulling a lever to kill a man is hard work. Pouring acid down a tube is easier on the nerves, more like watering flowers.” Much the same method was introduced at Auschwitz, to relieve stress on S.S. guards.

When Hitler praised American restrictions on naturalization, he had in mind the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed national quotas and barred most Asian people altogether. For Nazi observers, this was evidence that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality. The Immigration Act, too, played a facilitating role in the Holocaust, because the quotas prevented thousands of Jews, including Anne Frank and her family, from reaching America. In 1938, President Roosevelt called for an international conference on the plight of European refugees; this was held in Évian-les-Bains, France, but no substantive change resulted. The German Foreign Office, in a sardonic reply, found it “astounding” that other countries would decry Germany’s treatment of Jews and then decline to admit them.

Anyone else with me on letting this thread and the one about Putin dry up and die before we are all crushed under the weight of armchair know it all-ism?

I don't think people with military experience have any more or less understanding of the geopolitical implications of foreign policy decisions.

I think the problem isn't know-it-all-ism but a blinkered view of history. Hence, the mistaken belief that the Japanese were generally innocent (i.e., did not support the war), were merely forced by a warmongering government, that the latter was warmongering for no reason at all, etc

Can you show me where anyone here has indicated that outlook? I think you are so determined to tell your self-important opinions and what you think you know, that you seize on anything resembling an excuse, then squeal with delight to have emptied out your thoughts even when nothing justified you giving them. If you think innocent people do not suffer as a result of government's actions (which is what my original post was about) I invite you to rise from your armchair and visit a war-torn country. It might be fatal to your pre-conceived ideas of reality. Been there, done that, it changed me. Try it. It's humbling. In the meantime, just give it a bit of a rest, mate, OK?

May I break with tradition this Pearl Harbor Day and impart my condolences to the millions of Japanese people who suffered as a result of their warmongering government picking the stupidest fight in the long history of stupid fights. Governments decide and innocent people suffer. War is a terrible thing.

On second thought, why am I even still reading your posts and replying? Talk to yourself. (Your style would probably be better appreciated somewhere else, and I hope you find it. You're not a jerk, just mildly annoying in your adolescent certainty you know something.)