Quote Originally Posted by logroller View Post
You were making sense...until you brought up Pearl Harbor. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because we'd imposed an oil embargo, not because of slavery or secession. Interpreting what I said as people shouldn't have interests/ issues so there'd be no war-- thats asinine. If that was my point I'd just post a music video of Imagine. I was trying to explain there are fundamental reasons for war, not that there shouldn't be. Boiled down-- it's territory & resources. So unless you're prepared to say slaves are just a resource, no different than any other labor, then cut me some slack and quit maligning what I wrote in an attempt to detract from what is, and was, plain for all the world to see as the divisive issue of the American civil war.

I think you are somewhat confused about a number of war issues. You are right that fundamental reasons for war are often control of territory and control of resources (there are some others, like imminent danger of attack). But then you cite issues that were NOT about either territory or resources.

Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor because we had imposed an oil embargo!! How would that help their need for oil? We weren't likely to sell them oil again because they had punished us! Their idea, apparently based on a grossly mistaken idea of the American character, was that if they sunk all our warships, we would leave them to own the Pacific and every country in it (Australia, Philippines, all the European colonies, China, etc.) and all the oil they could conquer locally, from the Dutch colonies they did take, and so on. There were two problems with this. 1) they didn't get our carriers, which were out to sea December 7, 1941. Big, big problem, as the carriers ended up winning the war in the Pacific for us. 2) American policy was moving toward not allowing regional hegemons to develop ANYwhere (we had formally not allowed any regional hegemons in our hemisphere except us since about 1880-- like France trying to take over Mexico, which they did try.) The dramatic evidence of how bad for us it was to let a regional hegemon grow up in Asia --- this concept was termed "the Yellow Peril" --- mobilized the United States into war immediately.

Then you are saying slavery was a resource and therefore a cause of war.....but the North didn't want the South's slaves!

The North wanted the United States to be as big as it used to be, before the Confederacy left. It is true that the South seceded in order to protect the resource of slavery on which their economy was based -- and when they lost that, they were poor for generations, as we all know -- but secession isn't a war. Secession is just secession. Lots of secessions are peaceful, such as when the Soviet Union broke up. It's only a war if armed troops firing weapons cross a border, burning and killing. And that was what the North did, not the South. The North invaded Virginia because they wanted territory. As soon as McClellan's army crossed the Potomac, slavery ceased to be the issue anywhere. Nobody white had another thought about slavery until Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation three years later.

Interesting point about Japan, though. Are you saying Japan was justified in strafing Pearl Harbor because we refused to sell them oil for their Rape of Nanking and such in Manchuria? Right now we are refusing to sell or buy or do banking with a LOT of stuff Iran has --- so would you think they would be entitled to bomb New York to force us to stop putting sanctions on them against their nuclear bomb program?

There are a number of strong actions states can take that are not war: sanctions are one, secession is another. If those are always to be treated as war, I don't know, it doesn't leave much scope for actions short of war.