Japan started a war provoked by the United States. America could have avoided war with Japan but chose to enforce an embargo that could only have resulted in war.

China is a historic rival of Japan. Japan saw an opportunity to expand.

You attack your neighbors you become a belligerent. Japan was the belligerent. If one group of people are attacked when they're massacring another group of people they are well beyond acting in self-defense.

Once you start attacking people, period, you are beyond mere self-defense. That goes for states as well, especially imperialistic rivals who are allied with another nation like Nazi Germany who was attacking allies as close as Britain and France.

If this started happening right now the same thing would happen. Very little has changed.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 6 2014 10:56am

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour simply was self-defense. America threatened their livelihood with the oil embargo. Does not matter what else Japan was doing in the world, and while Japan may have been an ally of German, they were not threatening American allies in the Pacific (Japan still wanted good relations with Britain, whom had been their ally less not more than a decade prior). America is to blame for Japan fighting a war with more than just China, plain and simple. If Japan had targeted American carriers instead of the more prestigious battleships, America would have lost the war in the pacific and would have to be blamed today for what happened.

Their invasion of China wasn't just morally abhorrent in the way it was carried out, it compromised American interests in the East Pacific and the United States responded as any sovereign state should.

You're making the case that imperial intentions by Japan are legitimate whereas imperial intentions on behalf of the United States aren't. This is what isolationists do in the United States.

Japan should have recognized that invading a nation friendly with the US would be viewed poorly, and that the United States has no obligation to continue trading with a belligerent nation.

Japan would be a superpower today if not for poor decisions made by the Japanese leadership.

Japan had geographical imperial justification, America doesn't
Regardless, all I care is a spade being called a spade.

Japan made one decision that was not bad at the time that changed the course of the war and that was targeting battleships over carriers. Japan knew they didn't have the resources or men to win an outright war, and it would have taken luck to win it.

No I'm not, not in the slightest. Click on the link, bump up that reading comprehension to a second grade level, and try it again.

The survey asked for job approval ratings on both officeholders and respondents gave Beshaer a stout job approval while Paul received a middling one. The same survey then asked a separate question about whether or not Paul should run for president. No one's conflating anything, nor are they equating them. The reputable firm surveyed Kentuckians about the job approval of their officeholders and their responses left nothing to the imagination. It's very easy to see that Paul's standing is average in the state*, especially when you can conveniently compare him to someone whose standing is incredibly high.

There really shouldn't be any cause for confusion. While the second link is to a different article that's primarily about something else, only it contains Paul's score to the job approval question.

* - It's only really an issue worth discussing because Rand Paul is an even-money prospect, at this stage, to win reelection to the Senate. The dope who doesn't understand elections doesn't seem to realize that, but this is one of (many) indicators which illustrates that fact.

This post was edited by Pollster on Apr 8 2014 03:30pm

You totally are. Look, I understand your point, but job approval standings =/= whether an incumbent will get votes from those same people and you're presenting them in that context.

Why did they have justification? Did they draft a law saying that they could murder their neighbors or something?

Except no, I'm clearly not, and I clearly haven't. It's really not that difficult provided you have the capacity to click a link and read the content.

I've only accurately referenced his job approval to show that he is not a "popular incumbent," as erroneously claimed by another poster. No one, anywhere, claimed that his job approval is determinative of the amount of support he'd receive in a reelection. It is simply one metric that measures his popularity, and it was used to demonstrate that the claim in question was false. No one said that his vote share would meet his job approval, and no one said that it wouldn't.

It was also used to demonstrate that, in actuality, he truly is at best an even-money reelection prospect. For example:



It is a function of his quality as a candidate. His approval is middling and he is not in a strong position to be reelected, unlike Obama who he was compared to earlier in the thread.

This post was edited by Pollster on Apr 8 2014 05:37pm

Of course I have the capacity. I don't have the inclination. You're not worth much time.