Look. I fully appreciate the moral significance of sacrificing yourself for someone else. After all, our Lord said, “greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13 KJV) But, I don’t appreciate having some generic “you better thank me for what I did for you” nonsense shoved down my throat. I happen to think that WWII was a waste of American lives. I think that we should have let the Germans and Russians war themselves into bankruptcy. I am of the opinion that fewer Jews would have died if we hadn’t pushed our way across the Rhine. Now, remind me again of what I’m thanking you for? Or am I supposed to just shut up and worship the state and it’s big stick.

There is one way to never get respect, and that’s to get up in somebody’s face and demand they give it to you. I have no idea what SermonSpice is, but I’m sure it’s just another religious organization that’s in love with the state’s war machine.

I guess I’ve been on an anti-war kick lately. I’ll try and post something different next.

It is not in every case easy or pleasant to ask men of the nation to leave their homes and women of the nation to give their men to the service of the nation. But the men and women of America have never held back even when it has meant personal sacrifice on their part if that is sacrifice for the common good.

The greatest attack that has ever been launched against freedom of the individual is nearer the Americas than ever before. To meet that attack we must prepare beforehand — for preparing later may and probably would be too late.

There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our own land, we shall go to destruction.

–F.D.R, Smokey Mtn. Nat’l Park Dedication Speech

The tactic of labeling every nation that doesn’t play ball with the administration as an enemy of freedom is a time-honored tradition. George Bush used the same tact:

On September 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war, but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.

–George W. Bush, Joint Session of Congress

Oddly enough, Bush referenced Pearl Harbour in his speech. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s without doubt that FDR had foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbour because he specifically goaded the Japanese into attacking by following Arthur McCollum’s eight-action plan. This plan was meant to force Japan into a first strike against the U.S., since that would allow the U.S. to enter the war with popular support. Japan had allied itself to Germany and Italy, so that any attack by it would allow the U.S. to attack all of the countries included in the “axis powers” (or “axis of evil” in Bush-speak). Here’s some pertinent quotes to support this:

“The Roosevelt strategy of maneuvering the Japanese into striking the first blow at America was unknown to us,” [Admiral Husband] Kimmel wrote in his book, Admiral Kimmel’s Story, published in 1954. His first suspicions that someone in high office in Washington had consciously pursued a policy that led straight to Pearl Harbor “did not occur to him until after December 7, 1941.”

Richardson’s removal on February 1, 1941, strengthened the position of McCollum. Only five months earlier, in mid-September 1940, Germany and her Axis partner, Italy, had signed a mutual-assistance alliance with Japan. The Tripartite Pact committed the three partners to assist each other in the event of an attack on any one of them. McCollum saw the alliance as a golden opportunity. If Japan could be provoked into committing an overt act of war against the United States, then the Pact’s mutual assistance provisions would kick in. It was a back-door approach: Germany and Italy would come to Japan’s aid and thus directly involve the United States in the European war.

The number one problem for the United States, according to McCollum, was mobilizing public support for a declaration of war against the Axis powers. He saw little chance that Congress would send American troops to Europe. Over the objections of the majority of the populace, who still felt that European alarmists were creating much ado about nothing, he called for the Administration to create what he called “more ado”: “It is not believed,” wrote McCollum, “that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado.”

His solution to the political stalemate: use the eight proposed actions to provoke Japan into committing an overt act of war against the United States, thus triggering military responses from the two other signers of the Tripartite Pact. An allusion to McCollum’s eight actions was recorded by Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long. He wrote that on October 7, 1940, he learned of a series of steps involving the US Navy and that one included concentrating the fleet at Honolulu to be ready for any eventuality. “It looks to me as if little by little we will face a situation which will bring us into conflict with Japan,” Long wrote in his diary.

–Stinnett, Day of Deceit

The point I’m trying to make is that a simple ideology that says “they are bad guys and we’re good guys” or “they hate our freedom” is just way too clean and tidy to be real. I mean, seriously, who “hates freedom” except government? Isn’t it far more believable that the reason we are attacked by terrorists is not because they “hate our freedom”, but because they hate the things our government does to their life? After all, the west has been meddling in the middle-east for over a century. Just read The First World War and see how England invaded middle-eastern countries left and right for no apparent reason.

What’s more believable in all of these situations is that, in order for governments to maintain their legitimacy with their own people they must find convenient enemies. In the 40′s it was the Japanese. Today it’s the middle-east. What we are spoon-fed by the media is 75% propaganda to deliver a constant theme that we all come to believe in. Something like: “The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was unprovoked.” The reality behind the headlines is almost always way more complicated and orchestrated than that. You have to look behind the curtain.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m not anti-war, and I’m definitely not a pacifist. What I’m opposed to is standing armies and governments being the only ones allowed to legally use force. It’s dangerous and it leads to just the type of things we see over and over. Namely, politicians using military action for political purposes, not defense.

Someone once described Roe vs. Wade as the “Pearl Harbor” of the evangelical pro-life conscience. Pearl Harbor is an apt metaphor. Before that date of infamy, foreign policy isolationism seemed to be a legitimate American option. The “America First” committees and some of the most influential figures in the United States Congress argued that Hitler’s war was none of our concern. We should tend to ourselves, and we could deal with whomever won in Europe and the Pacific when all the dust had settled.

After Pearl Harbor, the shortsightedness, and indeed utopianism, of isolationism was seen for what it was.

–-Russell D. Moore, Blog

Before I move on to analysis, I’d like to correct, for the millionth time, the misuse of this word: isolationism. North Korea is isolationist. Laos is isolationist. Pre-WWII America was non-interventionist. Trade and dialogue with other countries was robust. The only thing America didn’t engage in was military intervention into foreign wars. Isolationism is a politically pejorative term meant to taint the argument toward the speaker’s position before they’ve even made their argument. It’s poisoning the well. Moving on…

Given his above comments, I can only surmise that Dr. Moore is moving into territory here where he hasn’t done much research. The Pearl Harbour period that he describes leaves out crucial context that invalidates his later conclusion that “after Pearl Harbor, the shortsightedness, and indeed utopianism, of isolationism was seen for what it was.” I’m guessing here that by “seen for what it was” he means that the collective American mind began to think that staying out of foreign wars wouldn’t assure them of peace. This leads to two questions. First, why did the American population move toward non-interventionism in the first place? And, secondly, was Pearl Harbour a legitimate proof of the failure of non-interventionism? Let’s explore these.

It is a fact that before Pearl Harbour, polls were showing as high as 80% of the American people were opposed to entering WWII. The reason for this opposition to involvement in the war goes back to WWI. In the words of John Denson, “World War I and World War II were really one war with a twenty year recess and it was the harsh and unfair Versailles Treaty which allowed Hitler to come to power which then led directly to renewal of the war in 1939 in Poland when the League of Nations failed to revise the treaty, which it had the specific authority to do.”

The same players were involved on the European front, and the reasons for the war stemmed mostly from post-WWI treaty abuse against Germany. After losing 117,000 troops in a completely unnecessary war(WWI), the U.S. population was sick to death of European affairs. Much was written after WWI by thinkers such as Harry Elmer Barnes, Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken criticizing Woodrow Wilson’s decision to get us into the war after running his campaign on a peace platform. They further exposed Wilson’s agenda of trying to use the war to create his long sought-after League of Nations and spread “progressivism” to the world.

This was the social milieu to which F.D.R. was trying to attach his war in the late 30′s. It smacked too much of Wilsonian bumbling for the American public to accept. They saw nothing good coming from involvement in another European war. It wasn’t isolationism that drove such overwhelming opposition to entering WWII, it was pragmatism. It would be as if Reagan had tried to invade Vietnam upon taking office. When such painful war memories are still only 2 decades removed, you can hardly blame a wise fellow for wanting to stand this one out.

The other facet of analyzing Dr. Moore’s comments are to research whether or not it was non-interventionism itself that proved ineffectual at maintaining peace. I’ve gone over this before, but it bears constant repeating. We now know that F.D.R. goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbour. The oil embargo against Japan. His moving of almost the entire western fleet to Hawaii in the weeks before the attack. His clearing of the shipping lanes that would be used by the Japanese as a corridor to Hawaii. The fact that it’s now known that U.S. intelligence had cracked the Japanese communications code weeks before the communique from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington declaring the attack was coming. And on, and on. If the government of a non-interventionist minded populace takes it upon itself to secretly maneuver their country into a war, it can hardly be the fault of that policy.

Dr. Moore remarks that “the ‘America First’ committees and some of the most influential figures in the United States Congress argued that Hitler’s war was none of our concern. We should tend to ourselves, and we could deal with whomever won in Europe and the Pacific when all the dust had settled.” Again, he is interpreting historical events in the light of later knowledge. It’s hard to look back now and imagine allowing Hitler to continue with his war crimes against the Jews. But, at the time, none of that was known. The U.S. didn’t enter the European front to stop Hitlerian genocide. They entered the war to help England maintain their superpower status in Europe against a rising Germany and Russia. At the time, a policy of staying out of the conflict and “deal[ing] with whomever won” was an absolutely correct policy. It was widely held at the time that a new war between Russia and Germany would result in the two countries grinding it out for years until they both had, had enough and came to the table. Interference would only extend the war to other parts of Europe and result in needless loss of life.

If America had stayed out of WWII, I don’t know that any different outcome would have come. By the time our troops crossed the Rhine, most of the remaining Jews in concentration camps had been executed or death marched. Yes, we ended up saving some, but we will never know what other options may have opened up in a protracted war with Russia. We already know of a few famous cases of underground Jewish escape routes being managed by such figures as Schindler and Irena Sendler. With a smaller war footprint on the European map and without the urgency which the Germans felt in the last days leading up to the invasion of Berlin, perhaps a more extensive escape network would have formed and fewer Jews would have died. We will never know. But, we do know that it wasn’t America’s role to be a saviour in Europe. That’s an anachronism. And it isn’t clear that our involvement in WWII did anything other than get more people killed across the globe and at home.

I will continue to be a fan of Dr. Moore, and a huge fan of Touchstone, but I would recommend that Dr. Moore find a different historical analogy than Pearl Harbour in the future.