https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/12/lew-rockwell/what-you-should-know-about-pearl-harbor/

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

December 20, 2025

In his speech to Congress on December 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt called the preceding day, December 7, “a date that will live in infamy.” In the same speech, he called the Japanese attack “dastardly.” Roosevelt’s actions in provoking the Japanese attack should live in infamy and were themselves evil and dastardly. Roosevelt knowingly sacrificed the lives of American sailors in order to get us into war. He set up the Pacific Fleet as a sitting duck and then provoked the Japanese into attacking by freezing their assets and cutting off their oil supply.

Buy New $10.00 (as of 07:42 UTC - Details) Even if this is true, though, why should we care about this today? The Pearl Harbor attack took place eighty-four years ago. What does it have to do with us now? But in fact, it is vitally relevant. The great Murray Rothbard explains: “Some readers might ask: why? What’s the point? Isn’t this just a raking up of old coals? Aren’t we merely pursuing an antiquarian interest when we examine in such detail what happened over a quarter-century ago? The answer is that this subject, far from being antiquarian, is crucial to the understanding of where we are now and how we got that way. For America’s entry into World War II was the crucial act in expanding the United States from a republic into an Empire, and in spreading that Empire throughout the world, replacing the sagging British Empire in the process. Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system of conscription. It was the crucial act in creating a Mixed Economy run by Big Government, a system of State-Monopoly-Capitalism run by the central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism. It was the crucial act in elevating Presidential power, particularly in foreign affairs, to the role of single most despotic person in the history of the world. And, finally, World War II is the last war-myth left, the myth that the Old Left clings to in pure desperation: the myth that here, at least, was a good war, here was a war in which America was in the right. World War II is the war thrown into our faces by the war-making Establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II.”

I said that Roosevelt set up the Pacific Fleet as a sitting duck. This sounds extreme, but it is solidly based on evidence. The Admiral who had been in command of the Pacific Fleet, James O. Richardson, was cashiered by Roosevelt for telling him that the fleet could not withstand a Japanese attack. Here is what a biography of him says: “From January 6, 1940, until his detachment from CinCUS on February 1, 1941, Richardson had steadfastly told all who would listen or read his messages that the Navy could not stand up to a war mode in one ocean, much less in two. After Richardson realized that the April 1940 docking of the fleet at Pearl Harbor was becoming permanent, a steady stream of conversation and messages went from his office to Washington, DC. Remaining at Pearl Harbor, to him, was an enticement to force the Japanese hand. To FDR, at least outwardly, it simply told Japan that the United States was not only determined to hold what it owned but was willing to move westward if necessary. Richardson had an Oriental mind-set, having served a dozen assignments in the Pacific. He studied what Japan did to Russia in early years of the twentieth century, and he knew well what was happening at the moment as the Land of the Rising Sun expanded its horizon. He had only informal intelligence lines, but he knew just from his associations that the Japanese were capable of capturing all the lands they desired in the Pacific Rim. However, his pleadings for awareness and action were ignored.”

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