From: orwell@erich.triumf.ca (BALDEN, RON)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: Libertarianism...
Date: 11 Jan 1993 19:11 PST
Organization: TRIUMF: Tri-University Meson Facility
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: erich.triumf.ca
Summary: The History you think you know is largely wrong
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article ARCHER@utkvm1.utk.edu (T. Archer), commenting on
Phill Hallam-Baker:
> 
>>
>>The US entry into WWII was as a result of Japaneese designs on Asia which
>>conflicted with US colonial ambitions in the region. 
> 
>That's not how I recall my history classes.  I recall an unprov[oked]ed 
>attack on a US territory by the Japanses Imperial Navy.
> 

A note for T. Archer and others: then your history classes served their
intended purpose, as a form of ideological indoctrination.
See the very interesting book by Frances Fitzgerald, "America Revised: 
School History Textbooks in the Twentieth Century" (Vintage, 1980; the
book is essentially a reprint of articles previously published in the
New Yorker magazine) which explores how the presentation of history in U.S.
school textbooks has changed to response to various ideological
pressures.  In particular, it seems that no realistic discussion of the actual
structure of economic power in the U.S. has appeared in a 
widely-distributed U.S. school textbook since about 1942, when the
business lobby groups (National Assocation of Manufacturers,
Advertising Federation, etc.)  mounted an effective campaign against
the last (and maybe first) such book.  

The Japanese went to war because the U.S. threatened to cut off (by
military action from its bases in the Phillipines) all Japan's oil
supplies from the Dutch East Indies.  This U.S. threat was formulated by
Dean Acheson, then a high official of the U.S. State Department, and, of
course, later Truman's Secretary of State.  The Japanese conceded 
entirely the U.S. claim to dominion over all of North and South America,
but they considered the Orient *their* natural domain of exploitation.
(See, e.g., Noam Chomsky's essay, "The Background to the Pacific War"
in his collection "American Power and the New Mandarins", 1969.)
Actually, I believe that the Japanese were willing to let the
U.S.  share in the exploitation of China but negotiations foundered
because the U.S. government was "not about to be dictated to by
a bunch of little yellow men", or words to that effect.

Phillips Knightley's historical study of war correspondents,
"The First Casualty:  From the Crimea to Vietnam, The War Correspondent
as Hero, Myth-Maker and Propagandist"  (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975;
this book has been reprinted circa 1988 with a new chapter on the
coverage of the Falklands War) has the highest density of
debunking of historical myths per paragraph of any book I know;
it is quite entertaining in a grim sort of way.  What I found
particularly interesting about this book was that most of the
`mythologies' (i.e. propaganda claims) were debunked *at the time*
or soon after, but they have nevertheless become a secure part of `popular' 
history, what everyone "thinks they know" -- because these
mythologies still serve the interests of the status quo.

Ron Balden