# Think Tank > History >  What is the Libertarian view of WW2, was it a "just" war?

## Murray N Rothbard

This is a topic I almost never see brought up among libertarians. It's usually the Civil War or WWI, Vietnam, Iraq. Why is that?

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## Ronin Truth

Pearl Harbor was an inside job.

*"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt*

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## acptulsa

> This is a topic I almost never see brought up among libertarians. It's usually the Civil War or WWI, Vietnam, Iraq. Why is that?


Yes.  It was a "just war", to the extent that's possible.

We were being imperialist in the Pacific between the wars.  So were the Japanese.  Each used the other as an excuse for the imperialism.  It could have been avoided, just as the mess in Europe could have been avoided by not abusing Germany so much via the Treaty of Versailles.  And the atomic attack was probably unnecessary.  We could have settled for something less than unconditional surrender.  Nothing is perfect, least of all us.

And saying Pearl Harbor was an inside job is just stupid.  Just stupid.  Did Washington deliberately mislead our own troops into enhancing their own vulnerability, or were we just arrogant and silly?  In one sense, it doesn't matter--an inside job is where a group kills its own, but at Pearl the Japanese killed Americans.  Americans did not kill Americans and blame it on Japanese.  Japanese killed Americans.  Either you acknowledge their tardy declaration of war or you don't.  Neither scenario makes it a false flag and/or an inside job.

For decades WWII has received a lot of discussion, much of it centered on the notion that we could have saved millions of political and religious prisoners from the ovens if we had stuck our big noses in earlier.  If libertarians and other peaceable people don't talk about it so much, it's because we're busy trying to demonstrate that we can and often do cause more harm by intervening than by refusing to intervene.  

But if you want to talk about it, fine.  Political corruption sure did us a lot of harm in that one, didn't it?  What if Packard had gotten the fat bag of cash to develop an engine for fighter aircraft instead of General Motors?  Given the great modifications they did to the Rolls-Royce Merlin, just imagine what they could have done with a clean sheet of paper!  Sure would have been a better engine than that crappy Allison.  And how about the Army refusing to buy the design which became the Soviet T-34 tank because they were determined to be satisfied with the Gen. Grant!  How many American lives would have been saved if the Army and Congress hadn't been so horribly corrupt in the 1930s?  And isn't it interesting how the missile developers got so much influence afterward that they were able to rewrite history to the point that battleships came to be considered worthless, in spite of the _Bismarck_ and the _Kirishima_ and the _Yamashiro_ and shore bombardment everywhere from Omaha Beach to Iwo Jima and the fact that not one convoy escorted by a dreadnought got attacked by a U-Boat?

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## William Tell

The Just War theory isn't just about the reason for involvement, it includes methods, proportionality etc.

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## robert68

If it was, then most countries in the world are justified in attacking/bombing the US as it did Japan.

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## Ronin Truth

> Yes. It was a "just war", to the extent that's possible.
> 
> We were being imperialist in the Pacific between the wars. So were the Japanese. Each used the other as an excuse for the imperialism. It could have been avoided, just as the mess in Europe could have been avoided by not abusing Germany so much via the Treaty of Versailles. And the atomic attack was probably unnecessary. We could have settled for something less than unconditional surrender. Nothing is perfect, least of all us.
> 
> And saying Pearl Harbor was an inside job is just stupid. Just stupid. Did Washington deliberately mislead our own troops into enhancing their own vulnerability, or were we just arrogant and silly? In one sense, it doesn't matter--an inside job is where a group kills its own, but at Pearl the Japanese killed Americans. Americans did not kill Americans and blame it on Japanese. Japanese killed Americans. Either you acknowledge their tardy declaration of war or you don't. Neither scenario makes it a false flag and/or an inside job.
> 
> For decades WWII has received a lot of discussion, much of it centered on the notion that we could have saved millions of political and religious prisoners from the ovens if we had stuck our big noses in earlier. If libertarians and other peaceable people don't talk about it so much, it's because we're busy trying to demonstrate that we can and often do cause more harm by intervening than by refusing to intervene. 
> 
> But if you want to talk about it, fine. Political corruption sure did us a lot of harm in that one, didn't it? What if Packard had gotten the fat bag of cash to develop an engine for fighter aircraft instead of General Motors? Given the great modifications they did to the Rolls-Royce Merlin, just imagine what they could have done with a clean sheet of paper! Sure would have been a better engine than that crappy Allison. And how about the Army refusing to buy the design which became the Soviet T-34 tank because they were determined to be satisfied with the Gen. Grant! How many American lives would have been saved if the Army and Congress hadn't been so horribly corrupt in the 1930s? And isn't it interesting how the missile developers got so much influence afterward that they were able to rewrite history to the point that battleships came to be considered worthless, in spite of the _Bismarck_ and the _Kirishima_ and the _Yamashiro_ and shore bombardment everywhere from Omaha Beach to Iwo Jima and the fact that not one convoy escorted by a dreadnought got attacked by a U-Boat?


The country was very strongly isolationist, FDR needed a way to bail out both Churchill and Stalin. Japan obliged, and provided the way. 

You figure it out.

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## presence

Just wars are fought domestically and defensively by voluntarily funded volunteer citizen militias who choose to task themselves with the protection of life and property in their local community. 

Anything else is imperialism.

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## FindLiberty

> ...provided the way.   You figure it out.


...figured.  Gov kills!   Millions.

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## Ronin Truth

> ...figured. Gov kills! Millions.


+Rep!

Thanks for the +Rep!

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## danda

No.   It was not "Just".   All wars are bankers' wars.

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## Ronin Truth

*Pearl Harbor: The REAL History
http://www.rense.com/general10/consp.htm
*

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## jllundqu

> If it was, then most countries in the world are justified in attacking/bombing the US as it did Japan.

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## jllundqu

> *Pearl Harbor: The REAL History
> http://www.rense.com/general10/consp.htm
> *


Because I get my news from this guy:

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## younglibertarian

It was justified because they attacked us, however no one considers the reasons why.

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## Ronin Truth

> It was justified because they attacked us, however no one considers the reasons why.


As an older libertarian you may start to see and understand it differently.

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## Murray N Rothbard

> Pearl Harbor was an inside job.
> 
> *"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt*


Very well... "it was an inside job" then (whatever that even means). Does that really matter? Would US involvement in WW2 have been somehow justified otherwise?

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## Ronin Truth

> Very well... "it was an inside job" then (whatever that even means). Does that really matter? Would US involvement in WW2 have been somehow justified otherwise?


I see no way how, even without an overwhelmingly isolationist national attitude, inclination and mood.


*War is a Racket (pdf)*

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## Ronin Truth

And BTW FWIW, this libertarian agrees with Churchill concerning the US and WWI:




> *"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War [I]. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government - and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives." -- Winston Churchill, 1936 interview 
> 
> *

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## robert68

> It was justified because they attacked us, however no one considers the reasons why.


Ships and plains on an outpost of empire aren't us.

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## Ronin Truth

> Ships and plains on an outpost of empire aren't us.


Well the obsolete battleships of the Pacific Fleet and crews, etc. could reasonably be argued to be us. 

It sure turned off the US isolationism attitude (as designed).

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## r3volution 3.0

> Did Washington deliberately mislead our own  troops into enhancing their own vulnerability, or were we just arrogant  and silly?


The former

The Roosevelt administration devised a strategy (outlined in the McCollum memo)  to provoke Japan into attacking the US, which was subsequently carried  out and had its desired effect. They then overruled top Navy brass in  insisting that the Pacific Fleet be moved from its secure base in San  Diego to the much more vulnerable base at Pearl Harbor. Finally, a  special office of the executive branch responsible directly to Roosevelt  had broken the Japanese naval codes (not only the diplomatic codes)  long before the attack on Pearl Harbor, knew that the attack was  incoming, and intentionally failed to transmit that information to fleet  command. Roosevelt wanted his war and needed a casus belli. 

See: "Day of Deceit," by Robert Stinnett




> Very well... "it was an inside job" then (whatever that  even means). Does that really matter? Would US involvement in WW2 have  been somehow justified otherwise?


There was no point in  liberating Europe from the national socialists only to hand it over to  the bolsheviks; and there was no point _at all_ in fighting for  regime change in Japan. As it turned out, US involvement did more harm  than good. If the war aims had been different, though, it might have  been justifiable; e.g. if they had accepted a moderate peace with Japan  before the bombing, without occupation or regime change, and if after  reaching Berlin they had kept marching East to Moscow.

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## acptulsa

> And isn't it interesting how the missile developers got so much influence afterward that they were able to rewrite history to the point that battleships came to be considered worthless, in spite of the _Bismarck_ and the _Kirishima_ and the _Yamashiro_ and shore bombardment everywhere from Omaha Beach to Iwo Jima and the fact that not one convoy escorted by a dreadnought got attacked by a U-Boat?





> Well the obsolete battleships of the Pacific Fleet...


It's hilarious that you ostensibly set out to smash the propaganda--to the point of saying that it was an "inside job" when the Empire of Japan was very obviously about as "outside" a group as we could find at the time--then wind up parroting the prevailing propaganda.

The allies would likely not have won that war without battleships.  Or are you arguing that battleships are obsolete _now,_ when every weapon used during that war is obsolete?

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## Ronin Truth

> It's hilarious that you ostensibly set out to smash the propaganda--to the point of saying that it was an "inside job" when the Empire of Japan was very obviously about as "outside" a group as we could find at the time--then wind up parroting the prevailing propaganda.
> 
> The allies would likely not have won that war without battleships. Or are you arguing that battleships are obsolete _now,_ when every weapon used during that war is obsolete?


Nope obsolete both then and now. (How many do we currently have on active duty?) That's why they could be sacrificed. The US air craft carriers, (very conveniently out at sea, when Pearl Harbor "just accidently happened" ) really won the naval war in the Pacific.

Histry majer? Gubmnt skuuld?

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## acptulsa

So, the fact that none are in service now, after an extensive campaign by the missile makers to discredit them and 76 years, is proof of something?

I don't suppose you'd care to stop being smarmy and insulting long enough to prove the superiority of your own education by explaining how Britain could have survived long enough to benefit from our assistance without their battlewagons...?

You know, they did prove their ability to provide pinpoint destruction of targets near the shore as recently as 1991.  Not bad for something you infer was obsolete to the point of uselessness fifty years prior to that.

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## Ronin Truth

> Monday, 07 December 2015 
> 
> *Pearl Harbor: Hawaii Was Surprised; FDR Was Not 
> *
> Written by James Perloff 
> 
> On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, shattering the peace of a beautiful Hawaiian morning and leaving much of the fleet broken and burning. The destruction and death that the Japanese military visited upon Pearl Harbor that day  18 naval vessels (including eight battleships) sunk or heavily damaged, 188 planes destroyed, over 2,000 servicemen killed  were exacerbated by the fact that American commanders in Hawaii were caught by surprise. But that was not the case in Washington.
> 
> Comprehensive research has shown not only that Washington knew in advance of the attack, but that it deliberately withheld its foreknowledge from our commanders in Hawaii in the hope that the "surprise" attack would catapult the U.S. into World War II. Oliver Lyttleton, British Minister of Production, stated in 1944: "Japan was provoked into attacking America at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history to say that America was forced into the war."
> ...



http://www.thenewamerican.com/compon...ed-fdr-was-not

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## acptulsa

Ask a simple question, get 20,000 words cut and pasted on a completely different subject.

A very modern approach.  Your own ejukashun was obviously ahead of its time.

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## Ronin Truth

> Ask a simple question, get 20,000 words cut and pasted on a completely different subject.
> 
> A very modern approach. Your own ejukashun was obviously ahead of its time.


To me, the question was still 'inside job'?

Believe what you wish. <mox nix!>

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## acptulsa

> To me, the question was still 'inside job'?
> 
> Believe what you wish. <mox nix!>


And you still haven't explained how Tojo and Yamamoto came to be Washington insiders.

But since I can actually read the thread title, and know what the real topic is, I decided not to encourage you.

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## Ronin Truth

> And you still haven't explained how Tojo and Yamamoto came to be Washington insiders.
> 
> *Nor will I. They were really just goaded and suckered in by FDR's nefarious machinations.
> 
> *But since I can actually read the thread title, and know what the real topic is, I decided not to encourage you.
> 
> *I never figured my thread opinions and participation required your prior approval or permission.
> 
> *


//

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## acptulsa

Just as I don't figure there's much hope of teaching you what 'inside job' means.  Or that the job of goading the Japanese began under McKinley about 1898.

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## Ronin Truth

> Just as I don't figure there's much hope of teaching you what 'inside job' means. Or that the job of goading the Japanese began under McKinley about 1898.


Teach your granny to suck eggs!


http://www.dictionary.com/browse/inside-job?s=t

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## Murray N Rothbard

> *There was no point* in  liberating Europe from the national socialists only to hand it over to  the bolsheviks; and there was no point _at all_ in fighting for  regime change in Japan. As it turned out, *US involvement did more harm  than good*. If the war aims had been different, though, it might have  been justifiable; e.g. if they had accepted a moderate peace with Japan  before the bombing, without occupation or regime change, and if after  reaching Berlin they had kept marching East to Moscow.


I think you've taken more the Historian than the Libertarian perspective. And that's fine. I do think it would be easy to argue that the war was justifiable on your grounds, however. And I'm actually interested in a more hardline libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) explanation of WW2, using the definition of just war that Rothbard used, below:

*A "just War":**
- Just: "when a people try to ward off threat of impending* coercion or domination by another people, or to overthrow an already existing domination."

*_(*Where "impending" threat = clear and present, ie has already crossed the threshold that constitutes it as a violation of your rights. 
       And where "impending" does NOT mean: pre-emptive, a strike on potential future threats not yet developed.)_*

 - Unjust: "when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to maintain an already existing coercive rule over them."*

Based on the above, US involvement in WW2 was arguably unjust for a whole multitude of reasons. They are hard to sort out though and not many people are familiar with them since the pro-US historical account has been drilled into everyone when we were kids. I am interested in putting aside all that propaganda and seeing the main arguments against WW2. Also interested in what parts of it and what country's participation in it may have been justified under the libertarian criteria.

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## acptulsa

> Based on the above, US involvement in WW2 was arguably unjust for a whole multitude of reasons. They are hard to sort out though and not many people are familiar with them since the pro-US historical account has been drilled into everyone when we were kids. I am interested in putting aside all that propaganda and seeing the main arguments against WW2. Also interested in what parts of it and what country's participation in it may have been justified under the libertarian criteria.


The lovely thing about debating this in relation to that war is that the U.S. as a whole was in no immediate danger, but France was and is an awfully good friend of ours, and we owed them.  Is Just War Theory not able to adjust and account for that?

But then there's the Pacific.  It isn't just about bombing Pearl Harbor.  At about the same time, the Japanese took over Guam.  Now, I admit Guam was just a territory, not a state, and its population was not big.  But does that mean it was not part of this nation, and that the nation had no right to defend it?

No, I say Guam alone was justification for our participation.  Regardless of what one thinks about us being our allies' keepers, or the role the imperialistic intentions of both nations in the Pacific played in the whole thing.

Japan invaded Guam on 10 December 1941.  You can argue, I suppose, that after freeing our citizens on that island we should have called it a day.  But we had not only a right, but a duty to liberate them.

Many years ago, I met a girls' choir from the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Upon learning they were from the Virgin Islands, I said, 'Welcome to America.'  In unison, just as though they had been practicing, they all exclaimed, 'That IS America!'  I quickly welcomed them to the mainland, to which they responded, 'That's better!'

I never forgot that, and I do not make the mistake of arrogantly forgetting that there are territories, and they are full of Americans.

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## r3volution 3.0

Rothbard, 

The only justification for war is to protect property rights.

Yet waging war inevitably requires the violation of property rights.

Thus, we have to perform a cost benefit analysis where we weigh the property rights protected against those violated.

In doing this, we must ignore the nationality of the beneficiaries/victims, since libertarianism demand equal respect for all people's property rights.

So, a just war could be defined as: a war which results in more property rights being protected than are violated.

But these things are non-quantifiable, so it's ultimately a matter of subjective judgement. 

By way of analogy:
-Would it be just to ban firearms in the US to prevent 50 people from being murdered? I think not.
-Would it have been just to ban firearms in 1917 Russia if it would have prevented the bolshevik revolution and its 30 million deaths? I think so. 

In the same way, when I look at WWII, I see US intervention resulting in more rights violations than it prevented.

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## acptulsa

> In the same way, when I look at WWII, I see US intervention resulting in more rights violations than it prevented.


I disagree with that, too.

But I think it a shame Americans didn't look at it that way, because if that had been the view, the atomic bombs would have not been used.  And, as you say ignoring nationalities, if those bombs had not been dropped, I don't think the score would even have been close.

But then, I tend to skew the score against the aggressors.  If Britain and the U.S. were guilty of taking the territories contested by aggression, well, it was done long before, and Germany, Italy and Japan had not been the property owners prior to that.

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## r3volution 3.0

> I disagree with that, too.
> 
> But I think it a shame Americans didn't look at it that way, because if that had been the view, the atomic bombs would have not been used.  And, as you say ignoring nationalities, if those bombs had not been dropped, I don't think the score would even have been close.
> 
> But then, I tend to skew the score against the aggressors.  If Britain and the U.S. were guilty of taking the territories contested by aggression, well, it was done long before, and Germany, Italy and Japan had not been the property owners prior to that.


To say that the United States' war effort wasn't justified is not to say that their opponents' were.

All could have been (and largely were, IMO) unjustified.

P.S. As for those rights violations, I'm not talking about who controls what territory. That's irrelevant from a libertarian POV. I'm talking the destruction caused by combat as well as the post-war political consequences (like bolshevik domination of Eastern Europe, the destruction of the Japanese monarchy, and decolonization).

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## acptulsa

> To say that the United States' war effort wasn't justified is not to say that their opponents' were.


Oh.  We're just using fancy language to say the $#@!ing thing shouldn't have happened.

Agreed.  The $#@!ing thing shouldn't have happened.

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## r3volution 3.0

> Oh.  We're just using fancy language to say the $#@!ing thing shouldn't have happened.
> 
> Agreed.  The $#@!ing thing shouldn't have happened.


I think we're talking past each other because we're thinking of justification in different ways.

You seem to be thinking of it in terms of traditional international law.

I'm trying to sketch out an alternative, pure libertarian framework, based in individual rights rather than the rights of states.

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## Ronin Truth

I just kinda wonder what Jesus would call a 'just war'.

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## KrokHead

WWII seems to be the only exception from the rule: Wars are bad, mmmmkay.

Germany wins (though not as easily as imagined) without US intervention, killing tens of millions.

However, Nazi apologists/scumbags all say that the 'professional' Wehrmacht and SS had no choice but to kill off Jews and Civilians due to supply problems, and no one will take take on their 'undesriables' from mass emigration.

-----

The US Civil War had a good cause too, I'm sure though the Confederacy would have economically collapsed before 1900 anyway.

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## Ronin Truth

> WWII seems to be the only exception from the rule: Wars are bad, mmmmkay.
> 
> Germany wins (though not as easily as imagined) without US intervention, killing tens of millions.
> 
> However, Nazi apologists/scumbags all say that the 'professional' Wehrmacht and SS had no choice but to kill off Jews and Civilians due to supply problems, and no one will take take on their 'undesriables' from mass emigration.
> 
> -----
> 
> The US Civil War had a good cause too, I'm sure though the Confederacy would have economically collapsed before 1900 anyway.


*War is a Racket (pdf)*

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