Why doesn't Java support operator overloading?

Actually, it does support operator overloading... of a very limited, built-in only nature. For instance "+" is overloaded for String's in addition to the usual arithmetic.

Of course, most people want to know why Java does not support user-defined operator overloading. :-) The simplest answer seems to be that the Java creators did not, at the time, see any clean way to add it to the language without making Java a mess (like C++) in the process.