Re: [Marxism] Pearl Harbor, etc.

["bob" <bobo926@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis,

Perhaps you were confused by the webpage you cited. I would suggest that you
instead read Mr. Stinnett's book. The book is not mainly about codebreaking
as you suggest.

The main thesis of Stinnett's book is that Roosevelt (and the sector of the
ruling class he represented) wanted the US to get into WWII, while the
people of the US opposed the war by a huge margin (roughly 90% to 10%), so
he asked the navy for a plan to force the Japanese into a war. The plan was
produced more than a year before Pearl Harbor in Oct. 1940.

It involved acts of war (as previously defined by international law) like an
economic blockade, cutting off Japan's oil supply to encourage them to
attack European Asian colonial supplies, the provocation of sending US
warships into the Sea of Japan (similar to a Russian fleet showing up off
the coast of New York City), and removing the US fleet from the coast of the
continent and sending it to unprotected waters 3,000 miles away so that the
Japanese would have an easy target. (But the most important ships, the
aircraft carriers were removed from Pearl Harbor to protect them.) The
admiral in charge of the fleet resigned because he refused to implement
plans that would put sailors in such grave danger of being killed. Roosevelt
replaced him with someone with less of a sense of morality who would do his
bidding.

Contrary to what you wrote, Roosevelt did not allow the US navy to be
destroyed. He allowed it to be attacked. There's a difference. The air craft
carriers
were not allowed to be attacked (they were moved out to sea), only smaller,
more easily replaced support ships
were sacrificed. An attack provided the justification for war, a rallying
cry 'Remember Pearl Harbor', and the ability to change the views of the vast
majority of American workers who then volunteered to die for their country
while the Communist Party agreed to dissolve and avoid instigating strikes.
On the other hand, the fleet was not destroyed and so the US was able to
successfully wage war against both Japan and Germany simultaneously,
refusing to negotiate at any point and demanding and getting an
unconditional surrender from each which placed the US in an unchallenged
economic position for the next 5 decades.

One would assume that a Marxist analysis would include history. I believe
that the history of the events surrounding WWII and particularly Pearl
Harbor as well as 911 are just as
important as the history of the Vietnam War or the assassination of King.
Are
we to simply say that WWII was a 'good war' (as Studs Terkel made famous and
many CP members and sympathizers would agree) because we were allied with
the Soviet Union? Or does it make any sense to read the wartime
correspondence between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill to try to understand
what was going on especially regarding Stalin's perception that
his allies were delaying the opening of a second front in order to
purposefully weaken
the Soviet Union by having it carry the main brunt of the war (27 million
Soviet deaths at the hands of the Germans, more than 50 times as many as the
US suffered)? Is it worthwhile to read the history of the attempts by the
Jewish resistance groups in Poland to try to get the Americans and British
to intervene to try to stop the holocaust and how the
US ruling class, including its top Jewish representatives dismissed their
pleas (as described in Jan Karski's memoirs)? Or is it better to accept the
American ruling class point of view that the US bravely fought the Nazis to
protect the Jews?

There's a rather long history of the US ruling class using fabrications to
try to enlist working class support for its wars. Is that not part of
politics? Or do we acknowledge those actions in some wars and not in others?
'Remember the Maine' was a distortion but 'remember Pearl Harbor' wasn't?

You wrote "After Archduke  Ferdinand was assassinated, Lenin became
preoccupied with the betrayal of  socialist parliamentarians not uncovering
Serb plots." But did he deny that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a
Serbian? And do we today have any American Socialist Parliamentarians who
can
betray us and who should similarly occupy our time and energy?

Instead, we're actually faced with a working class that has been
propagandized into
believing a whole host of falsehoods which contribute to their political
outlook. The consciousness of the working class would seem to be something
worthwhile to deal with. Does a continued belief in America the fair and the
brave or America the protector of the weak or America only acting to defend
her people have anything to do with the political consciousness of the
American workers? Do we look for ways to crack through those belief systems?
Doesn't the development of an anti-imperialist consciousness depend on our
success in doing so?

Or to relate it to the Vietnam era. Did the publication of the  Pentagon
Papers or the publicity around My Lai help in any way in ending the war or
help to explain the nature of US imperialism in its aftermath? Do
the facts around the King Assassination help in any way for people to
understand race and class in the US? Or do we simply dismiss all such talk
out of hand because it's difficult to prove? Did his support for black
workers organizing into unions and going on strike have anything to do with
his being assassinated? Did his speeches against the Vietnam War and linking
the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-War movement make him dangerous in the
eyes of the bourgeoisie?

Perhaps we should avoid the  rather false dichotomy used repeatedly by the
defenders of the bourgeoisie between historical analysis and conspiracy
theory. It's very similar to the way that they use the word 'terrorist' in
place of 'revolutionary' or 'freedom fighter'. It's rather clear that to
them, people who don't believe that the Maine was attacked and therefore
justified the US war against Spain, are conspiracy theorists. And likewise,
those who don't believe the official story of the King assassination.
Perhaps there's a 'tipping point' after which the accusations of 'conspiracy
theory' no longer apply. Perhaps it comes when a certain percentage of
historians, or the public, or the media, or even Marxists eventually come to
accept one version of history vs. the other. In the time prior to the
'tipping point' those who challenge the official line can be castigated and
whatever they say can simply be declared 'off limits'.

When Marxists talk of the machinations and planning of various sectors of
the ruling class, they are usually accused by the right of being 'conspiracy
theorists.'

A 'conspiracy theorist' is often just a derogatory phrase used against
someone who connects the dots. If that particular series of connections is
somehow unacceptable, then label the person a conspiracy theorist.

I'm sure that there are some of my co-workers in my union who would accuse
me of being a conspiracy theorist when I've talked about the Social Security
Report being a crock (accepted by the Democrats too) because its based on
completely false parameters for economic growth, immigration and other
numbers used in the formula used to supposedly predict the system's future
failure. Now if a person accepts that using a figure of 1.8% for annual GDP
growth (as the social security report does) is wrong given that the
historical average is about 2/3 higher at 3%, the discussion can go in two
ways: 1) a mistake was made or 2) the lower figure was purposefully used by
the ruling class in order to justify the overall attack on the Social
Security system. If one chooses explanation #2, one can easily be attacked
for being a 'conspiracy theorist'. Does that mean that we don't say that?

But, it appears to have taken almost a century for any sort of
acknowledgement that 'Remember the Maine' was phony and that therefore, the
Spanish American War was an imperialist attack by the US against Spain
rather than a defensive war for the US. So maybe for Pearl Harbor we'll have
to wait another 3 or 4 decades, and for 911 maybe a century. And then the
words will change. Until then, I guess using 'conspiracy theorist' will be
seen as a legitimate mode of argument.


bob



----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 9:48 AM
Subject: [Marxism] Pearl Harbor, etc.


> bob wrote:
> > Given your tone, it seems I've touched a raw nerve.
> >
> > Rather than either Zinn or Jared Israel, try reading Day Of Deceit: The
> > Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert Stinnett. He produces xerox
> > copies of the incriminating memos from/to Roosevelt. It took him decades
> > to get the documents released.
>
> Stinnett is mainly about code-breaking, not "incriminating memos". For
> those who are interested in a debate between Stinnett and one of his
> critics, go to http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=445. I
> do want to warn you, however, that it revolves around the same kind of
> arcana that you find in 9/11 conspiracy mongering. What is missing from
> this sort of discussion is politics.


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