Quote:
Originally Posted by August
Again you're looking at this through the advantage of hindsight where any bet, regardless of odds is a sure one. What i'm saying is that no conflict can be certain until it's over.
There is just too much that can go wrong and has gone wrong in other conflicts for any thinking man to believe victory is ever assured until the last bullet has been fired.
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On the contrary, the prudent leader wins before the conflict has ever been fought. Sun-Tzu said as much in
The Art of War, and his maxims hold true even today. War, or at least offensive war, is more the result of inadequate thinking than anything else. It's what happens when you screw up and give the enemy a fighting chance or a reason to fight, either through misplacement of tactical or strategic assets, or through political misguidance.
There is absolutely no reason why the US could not have secured its interests in the Pacific through purely diplomatic means. The sharper minds in the Japanese Army and Navy knew this before the war ever started. Even Hirohito himself saw the inevitable consequences of attacking America. This is where we diverge from the realm of military thinking into the realm of politics. FDR engineered a war with Japan, plain and simple. He left them with no other recourse by asking for completely unacceptable terms (in Japnese foreign policy and trade agreements) and then raising the bar when the Japanese accepted. It had nothing to do with military thinking, but it had everything to do with the political will of one power-hungry anglophilic jackass. It's lie military wisdom in complete reverse; engineer a conflict where there is no need for one.
I totally agree with tater. The cost in lives to achieve a questionable end was completely unacceptable, particularly when we espouse the ideals of freedom and self-determination as being superior to collectivism. If we really believed in the superiority of our own ideology, we'd be happy to let it stand on it's own, and for the most part, it has. But that's not what FDR wanted. He wanted to build a socialist state. He had an agenda to pursue and he was willing to waste lives to achieve it. Just look at what he did! What he tried! He was an awful, awful person, period. He is the reason that it took so many hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve victory over an enemy that was never at war with us. He is the reason that we spent decades and billions upon billions of dollars fighting the same communism that he purportedly detested all the way up until, what, Dec. 1941?
I could go on and on about the reasons why Roosevelt was a lousy leader, and why the PTO was totally uneccesary, but I trust the point is made. If not, I've got three or four books on the subject, and I'll be happy to subit references for review.