Questioning wars in history


It is not just about Bush
This one is interesting and helps put things in perspective.

The charge that FDR knew of the Japanese intention to attack Pearl Harbor, but used it to ensure American entry into the war against the Axis, surfaced after 1945, when the war was over, FDR was dead, and the decks were cleared for some sleeves-rolled-up recrimination. In 1948 the progressive historian (and prewar isolationist) Charles A. Beard accused FDR of "maneuvering the country into war." Anti-New Deal Republicans such as Robert A. Taft, anxious for a stick with which to whack at FDR, thought FDR's "policy of bluff" drove Japan to its Pearl Harbor attack. The accusation never really took hold, but never wholly faded away. Eccentric historian John Toland (who found much good in Hitler) resurrected the FDR conspiracy story in his book "Infamy" (1982), which unfortunately appeared a year after Gordon Prange's "At Dawn We Slept" definitively buried it

In the rest of the article, Morton Keller touches on the accusations against Truman and Johnson. It certainly seems that history is repeating itself.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - December 11, 2005 at 04:42 AM  Tag


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