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Edited on Thu Jan-15-04 10:33 PM by kcwayne
I have always had great appreciation for what FDR did during the Depression. My impression of him has been strongly influenced by parents that grew up in this time period, and grandparents who were wiped out in the Depression. All of them were/are poor and the programs FDR championed were the only threads that kept them from falling into total economic collapse.
FDR provided magnificent stewardship during WWII. I find it incredibly ironic that during the lead up to entry into WWII, the Republican party was the party of isolationists and detested the idea of going to war in Europe. FDR was using numerous means to position the US to come to the aid of Britain, such as the Lend Lease program, and was the hawk of the day, utterly detested by Republicans for his position on engagement of tyranny.
The major things that give me pause on FDR were the events leading up to Pearl Harbor. In particular, the book Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett, which points to numerous pieces of evidence that show that Washington knew the Japanese were mounting an attack on Pearl Harbor, yet chose not to communicate this critical information to Admiral Kimmel or General Short.
The key evidence consists of numerous intercepted messages from the Japanese, that let US intelligence know where the fleet was in the days prior to the attack on Pearl. Taken in conjunction with the known and stated strategy of the US to provoke Japan into making an attack on the US in order to turn public opinion from its 80% support of isolationism, it is no longer credible to assert that the government was caught totally by surprise on December 7, 1941.
This is not the forum to debate whether Stinnett is correct, and his evidence chain is too lengthy to go into here. But I find his work to be compelling to the point that I think it takes the assertion that FDR knew beyond conspiracy theory and into proven fact.
I believe, as does Stinnett (who is a WWII veteran) that participation in WWII was crucial for the US, and was the moral and necessary thing to do. My problem with Pearl Harbor is that men were deliberately sacrificed in order to set the stage for US entry into that war. Probably no one sat down and calculated how many lives would be lost, and the loss of the Arizona with so many on board was a shock to everyone. And in the total conduct of the war, the loss of life at Pearl was small.
But I find the willingness of leaders to play with the lives of citizens as inanimate objects appalling. Those men should have been given an opportunity to be better prepared to defend themselves. I find too many parallels between what FDR did, and modern day disgraces such as our entry into Viet Nam, and the latest misguided entry into Iraq. These parallels lessen my respect for FDR's accomplishments, but in the balance I have to say I am glad he was President, and his positive accomplishments outweigh this negative.
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