An interesting video purporting that every US war has been a false flag.
100 Years of War Lies DEBUNKED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZNXt_u7Cr0
That video, while have some basic merit in overall premise, takes as many liberties with “the facts” as the justifications for war which they seek to debunk. As an example, we all know we were reading Japanese traffic prior to Dec. 7 and we all know FDR desperately wanted in the war but the Japanese transmissions which included the declaration of war were delivered late as were our intercepts of those transmissions.
We of course knew war was coming, we suspected Japanese diplomats were not dealing with us from a sincere desire to avoid the war but nobody anticipated the Japanese would have the audacity to hit Pearl Harbor nor did we believe it could be done successfully.
That said, a lot of wars are predicated on bullshit and there is perhaps no worse example than the Persian Gulf war where Saddam complained about Kuwait laterally drilling across the border. When the UN and the US failed to mediate the dispute (because Kuwait was selling everyone cheap oil - some of it from Iraq) Saddam even asked the US what their position on the issue was a US representative (and I forget her name) stated the US is not interested in Arab to Arab disputes and was only concerned that stability is maintained in the region.
Saddam took that to me he had a green light but had to keep things running smooth. You simply can’t say things like that to somebody like Hussein.
I think there is a lot of scholarship that says that perspective is no longer historical fact.
bc
Two time MOH recipient Major General Smedley Butler took that position and toured the country (prior to radio/TV) to warn the American people of just such a thing.
I was pretty shocked when I found out what was going on. Growing up, you always thought since we fought Iraq, they must be the bad guys. Once I learned all the facts, I literally felt bad for Iraq.
Absolutely correct. According to many sources Roosevelt intentionally lured them into attacking the U.S.
I don’t know what that could possibly be based on. First no Japanese transmission mentioned the attack on Pearl Harbor so nothing we decoded could have given us any indication. We didn’t need anything to tell us war was coming. We had lots of warning including the famous “Japanese sub sunk” incident that happened prior to the attack.
We expected the Japanese to attack Guam, the Philippines, etc. We didn’t fully appreciate the threat of carrier planes, it had only been done once in Italy which is where the Japanese got the inspiration. At the time the harbor was considered too shallow for plane launched torpedoes to be effective and we had no knowledge of the Japanese solution to the problem.
Certainly we knew Pearl Harbor could be threatened, but we anticipated that threat to come in the form of sabotage. I’m not aware of any “evidence” that anyone could now produce that could change the historical perspective. Perhaps you could fill me in.
Painting them into a corner where their options are limited and giving incentive to attack the US vs. knowing that Pearl Harbor would be attacked by carrier planes are two very different things.
Attacking US forces in the Philippines would have been all that would have been necessary to bring us into the war. That is what FDR and most others expected.
Even worse, not that Saddam was any kind of good guy, but we basically ****ed over our only ally in the region who maintained a secular Arab state. Saddam was simply as good as it gets over there. Granted he was getting US support because he was fighting Iran, but we really did sell him out over cheap oil.
Reagan spent years cultivating that relationship with Iraq and Bush 41 ****ed it all up. We could have simply taken the money we gave to countries that actually sponsor terrorist attacks against the US and used it to buy oil from Iraq (which would cost more than oil from Kuwait) and help his economy recover from their decade long war with Iran.
The only thing worse was Bush 43 going in there and completely destabilizing the Iraqi government rather than simply remove Saddam and his senior leadership (now that they were openly hostile to the US and a threat). We could have removed Saddam and key leaders but left the same government in power with a military that could protect the country and tried once again to cultivate a new relationship with Iraq. We certainly didn’t make oil any cheaper with that move.
Books written by historians. But arguing on the Internet is a waste of time, so I guess we have to just disagree.
Even if our premise for the Gulf War was flawed, I have no sympathy for Saddam’s regime. Any dicator that puts people alive into plastic shredders deserves his place in Hell. May he and his sons and all involved roast for all eternity.
I can’t watch videos on my computer, so I can’t view the clip in the first post, but one thing has always bothered me.
I’m not in any way negating the sacrifices made by our troops and other Allied troops on the Western front in World War II, but “WE” did not win World War II in Europe. “WE” helped the Russians win World War II. They sacrificied way more in order to defeat the Nazis, and we in the West helped them do it. I sincerely believe that without the Russians being in the fight, Hitler would have kept launching attacks at Britain until it fell and the US would have had to sacrifice a lot more to win the war. Hitler might have even had time to get the A-Bomb first and attach it to V2 rockets. Those rockets might very well have rained down on US cities.
Absolutely true, they are different. Sometimes, when you bait a hook, you catch a bigger fish than you intended.
FDR issued an ultimatum to Japan to get out of China, or else. When Japan ignored the warning, Roosevelt cut off all US exports to Japan of crude oil, aviation gas, scrap iron and other strategic commodities on which Japanese industry depended. At the time, the US produced over 50% of the world’s oil supply. Japan produced no oil and imported all of its strategic materials and much of its food.
Attacking US forces in the Philippines would have been all that would have been necessary to bring us into the war. That is what FDR and most others expected.
Freedom Betrayed contradicts your assertion. I think you’d find this article by Laurence M. Vance to hold a lot of valuable information concerning the lead up to Pearl Harbor.
I don’t think I can add much more than I have so this’ll probably be my last post on the subject… I hope you enjoy the article.
I knew this was going to be brought up (along with the use of chemical weapons against the kurds)
I didn’t say I felt bad for Saddam Hussein. I said I felt bad for Iraq. The Iraqi people and most of the military/gov’t were not mudering psychopaths.
Similar to Russia in the 1930s, if we simply removed Saddam and his ilk from power, Iraq would have been a pretty decent place (and saved 5500 American lives)
Ha. If not on purpose - total, complete executable incompetence - at the highest level.
Why do you say it showed incompetence? In which way?
He conveniently came to the conclusion following his patron father (a senator I believe) passed away and John A Lejeune was selected as Commandant over him.
Agreed, since we killed them by the metric shit load in the second Gulf War. I don’t think anyone has shed a tear for Saddam or the top tier guys taken out, but the people didn’t need to suffer, not to that degree. If we would have been allowed to take him out the first time around, Iraq would have been a different place, another world in fact. The US needed a strong man for stability purposes, so we left him intact and let the Kurds gets slaughtered while we watched. The second war was sold on pure fantasy, simply because he was selling oil in Euros and not USDs, so we cook up some BS about WMD, then took him out. We were all stunned by the hold/remain in place orders, and was in complete shock that we didn’t go march on Baghdad to remove him. My father said that I or my son would be back in Iraq fighting within 10-20 years. Afraid he was right.
You make the false assumption that Hitler even wanted a war with the west.
As far as Saddam’s shredder; propaganda.
Its all about the PetroDollar and holding our end of the deal with our Saudi partners. Bush 41 with his CIA credentials knew what he was doing all along. In the short term, things don’t make sense. You have to look at the long term picture.
Actually he came to that conclusion after Senator Prescott Bush (the grandfather of George W. and the father of George H.), the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, and DuPont approched him with a proposition to overthrow FDR via a coup d’état.