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Comment by iammisc | Hacker News Reader

And the US policy towards Germany and Japan was one of utter indifference until the Japanese and Germans explicitly declared war on our country.

Moreover, unlike Afghanistan, the Germans and Japanese (especially the Japanese) displayed an actual ability to attack American interests not just isolated incidents.

The truth is that with 9/11, there was no government entity to be defeated. The best we could have hoped for was to beef up our own security, and then ignore the countries in question. Maybe go after Bin Laden like we did -- stealthily and in the night.

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US policy towards Japan was hardly one of indifference. In the years leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack the US establishment was well aware that a conflict was likely. That's why they took steps to contain Japan and limit their access to natural resources.

It was "as much indifference as we can muster while staying on good terms with allies who's colonies they are either threatening or rolling right over"

The US was fighting an undeclared naval war against Germany in the North Atlantic before any formal declaration of war.

The US from a position a real weakness handled a strong Germany and Japan and rebuilt those countries. Which goes to the point about Leadership. There is a long list of terrible decisions post 9/11. No comparision between FDR/Truman/Ike and the buffoon class of Bush/Obama/Trump.

> No comparision between FDR/Truman/Ike and the buffoon class of Bush/Obama/Trump.

As much as I would love to rag on Bush, Obama, and Trump, you have to realize that FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower had an extremely homogeneous, nationalistic, patriotic people to lead, whereas bush, obama, and trump all were handed an extremely divided country where nationalism and patriotism were bad words, with perhaps the exception of Bush who got post-9/11 unity for a bit.

On top of that, the conquered nations were not failed states. The US had a vested interest in protecting western Europe from the soviets, and given the historical and philosophical similarities and background of western Europe to the US, this was rather doable.

Even the US policy towards Japan was rather shrewd.

It's unlikely to see Afghanistan become anymore than what it is regardless of foreign intervention. They don't have the same recent history. It's similar to a Somalia than a Vietnam.

The national unity that FDR brought forth was no accident. FDR created the Office of Censorship and spent billions of dollars on pro-US propaganda, the likes of which Bush/Obama/Trump never wanted to repeat.

FDR was damn near a dictator, a popular one but a near dictator nonetheless. With one executive order, FDR made gold illegal while the USA was still on the gold standard. FDR almost succeeded in stacking the Supreme Courts (and even then, his 12+ years of tenure allowed him to make the courts almost entirely his choice). FDR grew so powerful that we literally got an Amendment to the Constitution to make sure 4-terms as President can never happen again.

Today, there's so many libertarians who just go up in arms about the idea of making Cryptocoins illegal.

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