"All Wars Are Based On Lies"; Renowned WWII Historian Faces Official Narrative Assault

   As we are once again approaching a time of wars, it is worth remembering how wars are manufactured. In time of stress, the great depression in the 1930s, the great bubble today, the easiest solution is always to vilify outsiders for internal problems. It doesn't mean outsiders themselves are blameless. The NAZI and other fascists in Italy or the military government in Japan before the second world war, or the Chinese today. But they are not the cause of the economic problems which popular opprobrium must be deflected away from.  

   In Japan, the new Prime minister has been specifically elected to deal with the "problem" of exploding foreign residents, read Chinese, in the country. This is the mild version of the militarist government measures in 1936 but nevertheless once again a huge step towards a conflict with China, although China has nothing to do with the current decline of Japan since 1990, except for being more competitive than Japan, just as Japan was more competitive than the West before. Can this really be the reason for a casus beli? The answer from history is a clear: Yes. We just don't know any better than going to war when society is under economic stress. Let this fact sink in as you read bellow about the past. And what may once again happen sooner than later. (The longer video can be accessed by following the link to Zero hedge.)

"All Wars Are Based On Lies"; Renowned WWII Historian Faces Official Narrative Assault

Mainstream historian Jim Holland and Libertarian Institute editor Keith Knight clashed over one of history’s most sacred narratives — the justification for America’s entry into World War II. Moderated by Mario Nawfal, the discussion cut through decades of conventional wisdom to ask uncomfortable questions like whether Roosevelt’s administration provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor or whether Winston Churchill ought to be lionized as a great hero.

Did the war, which killed over 70 million people, actually preserve “the west” and could the death have been avoided by diplomatic means? Take a look at the highlights below, but we encourage listening to the full debate so you can decide whether the “good war” was truly good.

“Provoked Into War”: Knight’s Case Against The Pearl Harbor Narrative

“The attack on Hawaii… was intentionally provoked,” argued Knight, “so Roosevelt could engage in diversionary foreign policy after his New Deal led to the double-dip recession of 1937.”

He cited Navy Captain Arthur McCollum’s October 7, 1940 memo outlining “eight ways the United States can provoke Japan,” ending with the line: “If by this means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better.”

“Roosevelt supported the policy of provoking the Axis powers,” Knight continued, pointing to a New York Times article from January 2, 1972, “War Entry Plans Laid to Roosevelt,” describing Roosevelt and Churchill’s 1941 meeting. Churchill admitted Roosevelt “would wage war, but not declare it… everything was to be done to force an incident.”

Knight added: “On November 25, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary, ‘The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.’”

“War with Japan was not inevitable,” he said, “but an intentional policy pursued by the Roosevelt administration.”

Citing Robert McNamara’s The Fog of War, Knight quoted: “Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional.” McNamara recalled, “In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo.”

Knight concluded, “The unconditional surrender of Japan destroyed America’s bulwark against Mao’s China and opened power vacuums in Korea and Vietnam—leading to millions of deaths and communist victories in both.”

Pearl Harbor, he said, “was not the price of peace—it was the product of provocation.”

Conscription: Is It Moral?

To the Libertarian Knight, compulsory military service is outright immoral. “Conscription is an indicator that the people you’re claiming to represent don’t actually think something is worth fighting for.”

Holland pushed back, arguing that, during WWII, while popular opposition to war was strong, “there is a balance to strike.” “If you give too much fuel to this bully [Hitler], he’s only going to get stronger,” he said. “There’s a point where the political metric is that you’ve got to come and stand up to this.”

“Conscription comes in for the first time ever in peacetime in March 1939. Chamberlain, who is the prime minister—not Churchill—is really nervous about suggesting conscription, and there is not a public outcry at all.” Instead, Holland said, “There is an acceptance amongst the British public that this is something that needs to happen.”

“The United States goes from very, very strongly isolationist to more and more in favor of massive rearming in the summer of 1940,” Holland noted. “When conscription comes in… there’s barely a flutter of eyelids.”

While acknowledging Knight’s moral ideal, Holland insisted that liberty itself was on the line. “The whole point about the Second World War,” he said, “is that democratic nations are standing up against authoritarianism and the taking away of personal freedoms. That’s the whole point of Nazism… the state runs everything… personal freedoms are taken away.”