Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

Robert Stinnett and "Day of Deceit"

By Gordon Francis Corbett

Please read "Day of Deceit," liberal historian Robert Stinnett's book about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  

Mr. Stinnett admires President Roosevelt's decision to help the British defeat Hitler's Germany.

When Mr. Stinnett decided to add one more volume to the mountain of Pearl Harbor books already existing, he asked the Department of Defense for documents.  He also filed Freedom of Information requests.  He did this during the Clinton Administration, when FOIA policies were relatively lenient.

DOD eventually sent him a great many documents.  One was a memorandum by a U. S. Navy Commander Arthur McCollum, dated 7 October 1940.  In it, Commander McCollum suggested that we do eight separate things that, together, might make the Japanese attack us.

McCollum did not say that if the Japanese were to attack us, Germany's membership in the Axis Pact would make Hitler declare war on us.  Neither did he say that the Japanese attack and the German declaration would defeat the Committee to Defend America First, whose anti-interventionist views the American people supported overwhelmingly.  Regardless, we can infer both ideas from the then-current diplomatic and political context.

In any case, we know what the Japanese did after Roosevelt implemented all eight of McCollum's suggestions. 

Until our Department of Defense disclosed the McCollum Memorandum, liberal historians--men holding sympathies like Mr. Stinnett's--had argued that President Roosevelt had not known that the Japanese were going to attack.  Conservative historians had argued the opposite.  Both sides had supported their respective opinions with mountains of circumstantial evidence.  

Mr. Stinnett knew that Commander McCollum's memorandum was the debate's "smoking gun."  It lent Roosevelt's eight actions background and purpose.  Besides, Mr. Stinnett discovered other things showing that Roosevelt knew that the Japanese would soon attack, and put them in his book.

Henceforth, the Pearl Harbor debate moves to the arena of ethics.  Did we have a moral duty, through taxation, conscription, and war, to rescue Hitler's victims?  Or, was our moral duty limited to self-defense?  One's answer depends on one's standard.  

The interventionist standard stems from a sovereignty of humanity.  It says that all men own all rights in common, and that to defend those rights, men must rescue brother men from despots' robbery and murder.  As human need comes to transcend, obviate, and gradually erase national boundaries, men eventually will create "One World."

The anti-interventionist standard stems from a sovereignty of individuals.  It says that only individuals own rights, and it stretches a golden taxpayer's thread from every one of each American citizen's rights to each paid public guardian.  Emanating from every citizen's rights to every guardian, and limited by the Constitution, these threads protect every American and constitute the sovereignty of their nation.   

They also protect that nation from the entreaties of foreigners seeking our aid in their quarrels.  A foreigner living inside America does emanate taxpayer's threads, but they do not cross our border.  A foreigner living outside America emanates threads too, but they reach only his guardians outside.  Neither man's threads let him ask Americans to rescue his countrymen.  

Many Americans support the interventionist position.  Many Americans support the anti-interventionist position. 

Which do you favor?

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest /  White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN