[Marxism] Socialist Policy in World War Two

[Shane Mage]

On Jul 2, 2009, at 2:51 AM, G K Milner wrote:
> ... Had the US aircraft carriers not been
> out of port on the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, and
> therefore not spared destruction, it is easily conceivable that the  
> Japanese
> navy, with its aircraft carriers, could have defeated the rest of  
> the US
> Pacific Fleet at Midway, and the Allied fleet at the Coral Sea...

This is a false counterfactual.  The goal of US policy throughout  
1941, as Stimson declared in his diary, was to force the Japanese to  
strike first. The fleet at Pearl Harbor was a staked-goat offered to  
tempt the tiger.  That the important military assets had been placed  
out of the tiger's reach was key to the whole strategy.

A more interesting counterfactual would be to imagine that Yamamoto  
had been heeded and Roosevelt forced to make war over the Indonesian  
oil fields against a country that had not attacked or even menaced the  
USA.


Shane Mage

> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos