What about Jeffersonâs war against the Barbary Pirates?
PRIOR to Jeffersonâs inauguration in 1801, CONGRESS passed naval legislation that provided for six frigates that âshall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.â In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to âprotect our commerce & chastise their insolence â by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.â In 1801, Tripoli declared war on the U.S. and Jefferson sent a small force to the area to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression, but insisted that he was âUNAUTHORIZED by the Constitution, WITHOUT THE SANCTION OF CONGRESS [emphasis mine], to go beyond the line of defense.â
And we already tried non-intervention by ignoring Japan prior to WW-II. It turned out to be another form of appeasement, which, by now it should be clear, doesnât work.
To this point, I would direct you to a recent article by the well-known Catholic and policital commentator, Pat Buchanan, entitled âDid FDR provoke Pearl Harbor?â It reads:
"On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan. A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor. Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, âWe have only one job to do now, and that is to defeat Japan.â
But to friends, âthe Chiefâ sent another message: âYou and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bit.â
Today, 70 years after Pearl Harbor, a remarkable secret history, written from 1943 to 1963, has come to light. It is Hooverâs explanation of what happened before, during and after the world war that may prove yet the death knell of the West. Edited by historian George Nash, âFreedom Betrayed: Herbert Hooverâs History of the Second World War and Its Aftermathâ is a searing indictment of FDR and the men around him as politicians who lied prodigiously about their desire to keep America out of war, even as they took one deliberate step after another to take us into war. Yet the book is no polemic. The 50-page run-up to the war in the Pacific uses memoirs and documents from all sides to prove Hooverâs indictment. And perhaps the best way to show the power of this book is the way Hoover does it â chronologically, painstakingly, week by week.
Consider Japanâs situation in the summer of 1941. Bogged down in a four year war in China she could neither win nor end, having moved into French Indochina, Japan saw herself as near the end of her tether.
Inside the government was a powerful faction led by Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye that desperately did not want a war with the United States.
The âpro-Anglo-Saxonâ camp included the navy, whose officers had fought alongside the U.S. and Royal navies in World War I, while the war party was centered on the army, Gen. Hideki Tojo and Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, a bitter anti-American.
On July 18, 1941, Konoye ousted Matsuoka, replacing him with the âpro-Anglo-Saxonâ Adm. Teijiro Toyoda.
The U.S. response: On July 25, we froze all Japanese assets in the United States, ending all exports and imports, and denying Japan the oil upon which the nation and empire depended.
Stunned, Konoye still pursued his peace policy by winning secret support from the navy and army to meet FDR on the U.S. side of the Pacific to hear and respond to U.S. demands.
U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew implored Washington not to ignore Konoyeâs offer, that the prince had convinced him an agreement could be reached on Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and South and Central China. Out of fear of Maoâs armies and Stalinâs Russia, Tokyo wanted to hold a buffer in North China.
On Aug. 28, Japanâs ambassador in Washington presented FDR a personal letter from Konoye imploring him to meet.
Tokyo begged us to keep Konoyeâs offer secret, as the revelation of a Japanese prime ministerâs offering to cross the Pacific to talk to an American president could imperil his government.
On Sept. 3, the Konoye letter was leaked to the Herald-Tribune.
On Sept. 6, Konoye met again at a three-hour dinner with Grew to tell him Japan now agreed with the four principles the Americans were demanding as the basis for peace. No response.
On Sept. 29, Grew sent what Hoover describes as a âprayerâ to the president not to let this chance for peace pass by.
On Sept. 30, Grew wrote Washington, âKonoyeâs warship is ready waiting to take him to Honolulu, Alaska or anyplace designated by the president.â
No response. On Oct. 16, Konoyeâs cabinet fell.
In November, the U.S. intercepted two new offers from Tokyo: a Plan A for an end to the China war and occupation of Indochina and, if that were rejected, a Plan B, a modus vivendi where neither side would make any new move. When presented, these, too, were rejected out of hand.
At a Nov. 25 meeting of FDRâs war council, Secretary of War Henry Stimsonâs notes speak of the prevailing consensus: âThe question was how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into ⌠firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.â
âWe can wipe the Japanese off the map in three months,â wrote Navy Secretary Frank Knox.
As Grew had predicted, Japan, a âhara-kiri nation,â proved more likely to fling herself into national suicide for honor than to allow herself to be humiliated.
Out of the war that arose from the refusal to meet Prince Konoye came scores of thousands of U.S. dead, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the fall of China to Mao Zedong, U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the rise of a new arrogant China that shows little respect for the great superpower of yesterday."
I wonder how many people here would think the same way if China destroyed their neighborâs house with a remote drone to killa political enemy and killed their wife and kids at the same time. I guess some here would say, âAt least they got the bad guy, I can get a new wife and makes some new kids.â