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Originally Posted by swordrapier Okay so you described it better than I did. |
That wasn't my goal at all. Just wanted to go into more depth about what you said. Sorry.
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Originally Posted by Locke some consider the attack was pre-emptive,
have a read of this |
Whether the USA would have initiated hostilities or not is debatable, but there is no doubt that it was essentially pre-emptive. They took out the USA's retaliatory force first because they knew that if they went straight for the Philipines and other conquests in the South Pacific, they'd have seen that potent naval fighting force moving in to try and counter their every move. Had the USA's carriers not survived Pearl Harbor, it would have taken much longer for the USA to win that war.
Japanese hostilities in China and elsewhere had the American government bordering on the brink of declaring war, but the Isolationists would have had a heyday with that. "Why are we getting ourselves involved in everybody else's wars? What's it got to do with us??" I'm sure we'd have heard a lot of that. That said, a declaration of war against Japan would have been FAR easier to sell to the American people than Germany.