Yesterday was his birthday wasn't it? When I listen to some you'd think he belonged up there on Mt. Rushmore. To me he seems to be an enigma. He clearly was a larger than life type of politican, and he was President for a long time during a very important period of history. But I read this about him from somebody who is not a fan. I've also read that he knew about the Pearl Harbor attack and ignored the information. Some say he lured the Japanese into attacking us. Just thought I'd throw this out, Phantom might be getting tired of talking Civil War!!
I have a real problem with crap like this being spewed about a person who is dead and can't defend himself. This is why I am suspect of the conservative end of the spectrum (equally so with the liberal end). To imply that he knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor when anyone who could refute such trash is no longer alive is not only irresponsible. It's cruel and heartless.
I will be VERY interested to get JO'Co's take on this. We have all heard these conspiracies before but never in this detail. If you asked me who the most influential presidents in history were I would say Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan.
And then there were the thousands of Japanese Americans who were "interned" by his administration. Where were the liberals? Where was the ACLU? Where were all those that cry about the Patriot Act?
FDR never could have survived the 24/7 gotcha media that we have today. The whining and crying over Bush "packing" the Supreme Court and he's got what 2 guys on? How many did FDR get, I can't remember but it was a lot more than 2.
I just wonder how in the hell he ever got away with the decision to make the first large scale commitment of US ground forces in the war to be in NORTH AFRICA???! That ain't Japan, is it? Granted, they went there to fight the Germans, but they didn't bomb Pearl Harbor, did they? wtf? :wink: I can't imagine why on earth any rational US family would send their sons to war to fight in North Africa? Yet millions did.....Thank God for them. To put things in perspective, we lost more men on Day 1 - D-Day - of the Normandy invasion than we have in the entirety of our time in Iraq. They didn't bomb Pearl Harbor.....would any reasonable person today suggest that the battleground in Europe was NOT part of the broader world conflict? What has happened to us? This is the work of the "loyal" oppositon.....sad, sad state of affairs.
Don't worry Sid we'll have the Red Sox/Yankee's to kick around pretty soon so all of this will go away!!
Sid, I have heard those charges against FDR before as well.....it's an old debate and one that the conspiracy theorists love. I don't buy it.....not unlike the noise in the system prior to 9/11, conflicting data and nothing specific enough to be actionable. We visited Pearl Harbor this past summer and by one account, allied intelligence had the Imperial Japanese Fleet in 5 different locations at the same time with thousands of nautical miles separating them.....! it is true however that Congress and the public were not in favor of meddling in the war "over there" and indeed FDR was called to task by the opposition for perceived - probably real - violations of the Neutrality Act by virtue of his shipments of war materials to the UK and protection of Atlantic convoys, but thank God, he had the strength of his convictions and continued the policies.
LOL! Don't worry, Terry. I don't lose sleep over things like this. One of my aims in life is to never let politics interfere with friendships. There are too many things in life more important than our country's history.......like baseball and Notre Dame football. :lol:
re: FDR bombed Pearl Harbor This is old nonsense that was debunked decades ago. If a president wants to start a world war, there's millions of ways to do it without sinking the Pacific Fleet. FDR was a sailor at heart, an avid yachtsman and a former Secretary of the Navy. If he had been criminally inclined... he would have bombed the Army... FDR's biggest political problems didn't come from the Republican Party. He had them whipped. His problems came from the isolationists in both parties... The best criticisms of FDR concern the end of his career, not the beginning or middle. Near the end of his life, when he was dying of cancer, its pretty obvious that Stalin was able to take advantage of him at the Yalta Conference as the far-lefties in his own administration moved him in that direction. There's plenty of reasons for that, but none of them involve his personal character. FDR was a hero to a lot of people, including Ronald Reagan. I grew up in a house that had only two pictures on the wall: Pope Pius XII and Saint Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Saying anything bad about either one of them meant certain death...
Well it's just a theory that's been out there, never really has gained much traction though. But with regards to end of his career. Most of it seems to center around him giving eastern Europe to the Russians at Yalta. Some say he was to sick to represent the American interests. I have read that it wasn't the case at all, that he was faced with the fact that by then the Russian Army was 3 times the size of the Allied Armies, and that back home there would not likely have been a lot of support to continue the war and it's casualties beyond the defeat of Hitler. Also that at that point the A-Bomb was not a certainty and he was still faced with the possibility of invading Japan and didn't really have the forces that would be necessary to fight Stalin and invade Japan.
I'm very skeptical about FDR's pre event knowledge of Pearl. However, I have two sibs that actually believe that the WTC didn't come down because it was hit by planes. They actually believe in planted charges and a conspiracy.They also believe that George Bush is the devil incarnate. It's obvious that they are part of the large group of people out there that have completely lost touch with reality.The pathetic pare is, if you don't believe what they do it's because YOU are brainwashed! I'm just sorry I haven't gotten the opportuntiy to ask them why the evil ones who rigged the last two presidential elections didn't fix any of the close senatorial elections last Nov.