Oddbean

These idiotic conspiracies are fxxking dumb. Are there advance signs for such big events? Always. But there’s a reason there is an expression “hindsight is 20/20”. There’s another issue here. Both luck & incompetence are constant forces in the real world. Take just a few months ago. Trump doesn’t turn his head or the shooter is slightly more competent and he’s dead. Fast forward 50 years and you can see some conspiracy about how the shooter *intentionally* missed. There’s *zero* evidence that’s the case. And yet, Trump lives.

*America* did not want to enter the war. If that’s what *America* wanted we have already entered the war as nothing was stopping us. When people make this statement they mean *FDR* wanted to enter the war. This is correct or at least that he wanted to know whether we were all in or all out. And there’s zero question he did at least appreciate the fact the question was definitively answered with Pearl Harbor. There was some hay made around the fact that a good amount of the naval fleet wasn’t in Pearl Harbor at the time. Okay. But do we honestly think the Japanese wouldn’t take full advantage of what was left if they were competent? If so, why weren’t the above ground fuel reserves not hit? Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, told them to hit it and said something to the effect of, “whatever you do, make sure to hit the fuel depot.” But they’d didn’t. But it was there! That would have set us back 2-3 years. So you’re telling me FDR had the foresight to send some part of the naval fleet into the pacific but not to figure out how to protect the fuel reserves? Or was this some sort of double false flag? Of course not. That’d be stupid.