Antiwar.com Blog

While reading Justin Raimondo’s excellent biography of Murray N. Rothbard, I came across a great bit he had about the ultimate victory of liberty – and I don’t mean it in the “you can’t stop the expansion of our government” sense that our great leader employs in his embedded war speeches. In fact it was quite the opposite situation.

In 1955, while confronting the suicidal call of an ex-communist named Willi Schlamm to instigate a nuclear war with the Soviets and Chinese, Rothbard employed a question that Raimondo says he commonly asked in his columns in a magazine called Faith and Freedom:

“Why do the pro-war conservatives, supposedly dedicated to the superiority of capitalism over Communism, by thirsting for an immediate showdown, implicitly grant that time is on the side of the Communist system?”

This is a great question (or a variation of one) for those who promote endless war for the purpose of spreading that which is presumed to be inherent in all men, and a great reminder for those of us who love liberty that in the end, the leviathan which threatens us is as doomed as the slave system it was created to “defend against.”

When I first heard the accusation that FDR had deliberately allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor, on this day in 1941, I thought it impossible. That would be like saying we did it to ourselves. But it turned out that I was wrong. All that it meant was that some individuals did it to others. In this case, Roosevelt and his closest advisors, along with some cooperative officers in the US military, worked to provoke the attack and make sure that Admiral Kimmel and General Short remained in the dark. For certain, as every year around this time, we will have to put up with a bunch of crap about how “military hobbyists and crusty Roosevelt-haters are propounding far-flung theories about presidential treachery,” while in fact the man who proved the case is no Roosevelt-hater, but the furthest thing from it. His name is Robert Stinnett, he’s a veteran of the pacific war and biographer of his fellow veteran George H.W. Bush. Though he proves beyond doubt the case for Roosevelt’s treachery in his book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, Stinnett remarkably justifies this action as necessary to get us into the war in Europe.

For just one piece of his smoking gun evidence, take a look at the McCollum memo, which lays out the eight point plan to provoke Japan into attacking first, which was implemented step by step by Roosevelt. See #9 A-H.

US involvement in the so-called “good war,” which laid the foundations of American Empire and has served as the founding myth of the inherent right of the US government to travel around murdering people for their own good was, in fact, begun by the most despicable act of treason against the American people – an act worthy of Adolf Hitler himself.

To listen to my interviews of Mr. Stinnett, click here and here. Get the book here.

Update: Wednesday afternoon I received an email from Patrick D. Weadon, curator of the National Cryptologic Museum, disputing Mr. Stinnett’s claims, and have received a response from Mr. Stinnett to his objections:

Patrick D. Weadon:

Mr. Horton:

Please be advised that Mr. Stinett’s [sic] book is based on faulty evidence. The book claims that the Allies broke the top Japanese naval code(JN25) prior to December 7th 1941. This is nonsense. Small parts of JN25 were cracked in the early 40s but JN25-B ( the upgraded code which was used by the Japanese Navy in days and months leading up to Pearl Harbor) was not cracked until the spring of 1942. If Stinett’s theory is correct it would mean that the United States had forewarning of Japanese naval operations prior to Pearl Harbor but failed to act on the information until June of 1942. This is absurd. In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Army and Navy conquered over a tenth of the earth’s surface. The Allies took it on the chin in places like Wake Island, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong. To think that we sat on the information for months and did nothing with it is crazy.

Stinett is right that the information was being collected prior to Pearl, but he is wrong to assert that it was being read. Some years later the JN25 intercepts were deciphered after the fact. They provided strong evidence, that had it been known at the time may have led to our being prepared for the attack.

I am not alone in pointing out just how wrong Stinett [sic] is in his assertions. Many prominent historians such as David Kahn, Stephen Budiansky, and the late Gordon Prange all agreed that the U.S. myopic focus on Japanese diplomatic traffic, along with the inability to read JN25-B and a general underestimation of Japanese capabilities were the main elements that led to the debacle at Pearl Harbor.

Patrick D. Weadon
Curator
National Cryptologic Museum

Robert Stinnett responds:

Mr. Horton:

Mr. Weadon is relying on 1950 information for his observations. I am surprised he regards the US Navy’s brilliant cryptographic reports of 1941 as “faulty evidence.” Apparently he had not read my book or even consulted the US navy crypto records.

The person putting forth the faulty evidence is Mr. Weadon himself. He quotes the JN-25-B Hoax. Neither the Japanese Navy nor the US Navy used such a code designator in the pre Pearl Harbor period of 1939 to December 1941. Japan’s Naval Operation code was known as Code Book D. Random Number Table Seven in fall of 1941; the USN used the designator “Five Number Code.” The JN-25-B designator originated sometime in early 1943.

The proper question is: When did the US Navy solve Code Book D, Table Seven? The answer is provided by Lieutenant John Lietwiler, commanding officer of Station CAST on Corregidor. Leitwiler, head of 65 naval radio cryptographers on Corregidor reported to Washington that his staff was “current in intercepting, decoding and translating” Japan’s operations code as of November 16, 1941, Manila time. On the same day (November 15 EST) in Washington, DC, General George Marshall chief of Staff of the US Army, called Washington bureau chiefs of major newspapers and magazines to his office, swore them to secrecy and revealed the US had broken the Japanese codes and expected the danger period would be the first week in December 1941.

Mr. Weadon sources are not to be trusted. David Kahn in reviewing my book, Day of Deceit for the New York Review of Books, rewrote the Hawaiian Communication Summary of November 25, 1941, which reported the Commander Carriers of the Japanese fleet was in extensive radio communications with the Japanese admirals leading the submarine attack on Hawaii and invasion forces of Wake and Guam. Mr. Kahn was attempting to cover up reports by Pulitzer Prize winner, John Toland, that the Twelfth Naval District in San Francisco also intercepted the “extensive communications’ with radio direction finders. These reports placed the Commander Carriers, north of Hawaii. Naval intelligence officers who were stationed in San Francisco in 1941, call Mr. Kahn’s report a “journalistic crime.” I have refuted Mr. Kahn’s violation of journalistic ethics in the NYROB and also the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Weadon should get into the 21st century and drop the 1950 nonsense.

Best regards,
Robert Stinnett

Anthony Gregory sends along the Independent Institute’s Pearl Harbor resources page.

Stinnett’s piece for Antiwar.com

It seems I was right when I thought that the story put out by the military to account for the death of ten Marines and the wounding of eleven more was fishy. Still, the new account doesn’t seem all that forthcoming, either. CNN reports:

An insurgent homemade bomb that killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 others last week in Iraq was triggered as troops were leaving a promotion ceremony, Marine Corps officials said Tuesday.

Military officials originally said the Marines died December 1 while on foot patrol near the restive city of Falluja in western Iraq.

Misreporting up the chain of command led to the incorrect reporting of the location to the media, Marine officials said

Officials determined the blast went off at an abandoned flour factory used by the Marines as an outpost. It’s believed one of the Marines stepped on a pressure plate, setting off the explosion, officials said. (Marines identified)

Two of the Marines killed — from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force — had been promoted at the ceremony. The area around the abandoned factory had been swept for explosives before the company commander’s arrival.

The bomb was believed to have been made up of at least four artillery shells.

I still don’t understand why a promotion ceremony was held in an abandoned flour factory, even if it was used as an “outpost”, whatever that means. Maybe eventually the whole story will come out, Tillman-style.

You’ve got to wonder how insurgents got into the flour factory and booby trapped it with four wired together artillery shells while it was in service as an outpost. An inside job?

UPDATE: OK, people are emailing links to this video and asking things like:

But if this new story is true, then why did the insurgents quickly release a video showing themselves detonating a roadside bomb?

Who is telling the truth? Why tape a different event and release it? They seem to like to tape their exploits, so why not tape the factory and release that?

All I can see in that video are 8 soldiers (Marines if this is the video of the 10 killed.) Assuming there are 2 in the humvee, that could account for 10 casualties. But, there were supposed to be 21! Where are the other eleven?

Could this acrostic in a Pakistani textbook be the work of a certain internationally recognized Surrealist poet?

Oh my, some “repulsive characters” from a “coven of fringe libertarians” are “crucifying” Conrad Black. Well, if voicing a little schadenfreude as one of the biggest statists of our time is harassed by the state amounts to crucifixion, then call me Pilate. As an act of penance, I’ll sign the first “Free Lord Black” petition anyone sends my way.

Now: when should I expect that more-libertarian-than-thou article on Black’s legal victims?

Upset by Pentagon propaganda in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens crawls to his porcelain throne at Slate and upchucks on his own reflection:

I remember reading, decades ago, of a moment when Richard Nixon had made some desperate speech from his bunker and had then arranged for telegrams of support to be sent to the White House. And I wondered — did he eagerly tear them open and turn moistly to his aides, saying, “See: You can always count on the horse sense of the American people”? Was he, in other words, utterly and happily insulated and yet alarmingly insane?

I’m sure Andrew Sullivan will call it courageous, and I do hope that it ruined Arthur Chrenkoff’s day, but this guy knows the score:

Chris Hitchens has finally found something so atrocious he can’t stand by it in this war. Ready for it? He is upset that the U.S. is lying to the Iraqis. It was ok, I suppose, when they were only lying to their own citizens about this war, but now that they are planting bullsh*t in the Iraqi media rather than feeding it to Judy Miller, now that’s a crime.