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By Root 726 0

here and there and keep the Japs guessing. I don’t mind losing one or two cruisers, but do not take a chance on losing five or six.”3 Keep in mind, two lost cruisers equal the deaths of 1,800 men—roughly the number of men killed at Pearl Harbor. Moreover, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson’s diary reveals the intent to provoke an attack when the United States issued an ultimatum to Japan twelve days prior to Pearl Harbor, demanding that she remove all troops from China and Indochina, and break the tripartite treaty with Germany and Italy. As Stimson himself said, “We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move—overt move.”

Further, the U.S. government began marshalling its resources in preparation for a full-scale war, including the purchase of “$3.5 billion worth of military supplies from automobile plants alone.”4 When questioned about the institution of the draft, FDR responded that “[your boys] are going into training to form a force so strong that, by its very existence, it will keep the threat of war from our shores.” As history would later prove, this was a complete and utter lie.

Eventually, FDR’s strategy paid off. The United States continued to monitor Japanese communications, but consciously chose not to prevent the attack. One such message indicated that the Japanese consul in Hawaii was sending information to Tokyo about U.S. naval ships at Pearl Harbor. Another, received just three days before the attack, contained the message “war with the U.S.” and suspiciously disappeared in Washington shortly thereafter.

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And when the attack did eventually come, all remained quiet and orderly in the White House. As Eleanor Roosevelt would later recount,

In spite of his anxiety Franklin was in a way more serene [after the attack] than he had appeared in a long time. I think it was steadying to know finally that the die was cast. . . . [It] was far from the shock it proved to the country in general. We had been expecting something of the sort for a long time.5

What was the ghastly result of Roosevelt’s provocation and failure to prevent the attack? At Pearl Harbor, 2,403 Americans died, and 405,399 Americans were eventually killed throughout the course of World War II.6 As Bettina Bien Greaves, a senior scholar at the Mises Institute, has said, “The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor made war inevitable. But the attack was not Roosevelt’s reason for going to war. It was his excuse.”

War Is the Health of the State

Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.

—RAHM EMANUEL, THEN CHIEF OF STAFF TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

As outrageous as FDR’s warmongering was, it raises larger questions about the state’s inescapable motives in declaring war against another. Why is it that FDR was so eager to enter World War II? Was it because he recognized the evil of Fascism, and sought to liberate millions of oppressed individuals around the world, as our history books teach us? When governments enter into wars, is this ever their true intent? Or is there something in the very nature of war that has irresistibly tempted every government since the beginning of organized society?

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The truth is that the ultimate crisis—war—is a dear friend of the state. In fact, the government uses war as the ultimate means to expand its own power, size, and scope. It does so in a multitude of ways, to which we will return below: Tax and budget increases, security laws and regulations, nationalization of industry, censorship of speech and expression, suspension of due process, warrantless searches and seizures, and blanket arrests of war resisters.7 This list goes on and on. Every one of these measures grossly swells the size and scope of government, thereby stripping us of the freedom to live as we please. The “opportunity,” as Rahm Emanuel states above, to grow, to expand, and to garner power is too alluring and too easy a feat for the state and its politicians to pass up. Mr.