Pearl Harbor On My Mind, So Is The Ukraine

 No idea why Pearl Harbor came to mind this morning. The fellow who gives me rides to church thinks there was a conspiracy behind December 7.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. Keeping secrets is very, very hard; someone likes to talk too much; evidence can always be found by a prosecutor.

I do think FDR wanted Hitler disposed of. However, we did not declare war on Germany; Germany declared war on us. I also seriously doubt that a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy wanted to harm the Navy, or that FDR wanted to move the Navy from battleships to aircraft carriers. That transition was the result of Pearl Harbor. There was no reason to think Hitler would declare war on America - he did have his hands full with the USSR, and Japan was not helping him with the USSR. 

The Japanese were arrogant in estimating America's response to Pearl Harbor.

The Americans were arrogant in estimating Japan's abilities.

There is your conspiracy - racist arrogance.

All this came to mind while reading Sergey Radchenko' s Notebooks The wages of Putin’s war from Engelberg's Ideas

One of the reasons for calling the war in Ukraine ‘existential’ is that it helps governments rally public support for increased military spending. In all cases, this entails making some difficult decisions about spending on guns or butter. Whatever we make of the threat posed by Putin, such redistribution of funding in our troubled world may well serve the purpose of deterring aggression, not necessarily by Russia, and so ultimately avert a truly existential war.

On the eve of World War Two, America wanted its comforts, so the Germans and the Japanese thought we would do nothing. Isolationism cost us our war dead.

Trump is an idiot, thinking that Putin will just pack up and leave Ukraine alone on his say-so. He likes chaos, and is incapable of bearing the cost of a more aggressive world. 

The pro-Palestinian Democrats who do not vote for Harris over Gaza will have to bear the costs of Trump giving Netanyahu a completely free hand. No, Trump has no solution to the Middle East's problems, and he has not the backbone to keep Netanyahu from starting a wider war. 

Trump will become our Neville Chamberlain, only in a louder, more obnoxious way.

What came from Pearl Harbor was a rough peace. Trump will destroy that peace.

sch 10/12