Bradky, your arguments make no sense. Which is it? Did we do the right thing in Japan or not? Were we the “indiscriminate” butchers you seem to think I wish we were now? You seem to be arguing just for arguments sake.

Rick on February 7, 2007 at 11:20 AM

The bombing of Hiroshima is understandable – Nagasaki was not necessary and arguably indiscriminate as was Dresden.
What are you suggesting for Iraq that should be or should have been done? Your comments seemed to indicate we should have been more “indiscriminate”. Correct me if I am misinterpreting your intent.

Honora, I’m sure he was referring to the automobile deaths caused by illegal immigrants last year, that’s just over 4,000. Nice of you to make his point for him by correcting his number upwards, though. Yeah, there was a point, and yeah, as usual you evaded it in favor of something less important but also less dangerous to your ability to ignore the truth.

By the way, we ARE occupiers in Iraq, it pains me no end that politicians think we dare not say so. Beyond that, Wyrd has it right, we WON the invasion, and we are now helping the indigenous people of Iraq to restructure their government in favor of liberty rather than tyranny. It’s too bad that there’s still many people who don’t want it that way. That’s who we are fighting.

Freelancer on February 6, 2007 at 6:22 PM

No, he meant all deaths and if you actually read the thread, you would see that he later made that correction himself. Sorry if that doesn’t fit your narrative.

I suggest you look up the definition of occupier in this context–when MacArthur was in charge in Japan, he was in charge completely and absolutely. We claim the Iraqis are running their country.

It is easy to see why you would be confused, I’ll give you that.

We lost around 4,000,000 troops before we unabashedly occupied any country in WW2.

Where’s honora with the flag on this one? The U.S. military casualty total for WWII is 407,300, and a substantial portion of those occured AFTER Pearl Harbor. Try again.

Definition of indiscriminate is “failing to make or recognize distinctions” — exactly what happened with dropping the nuclear weapons. Whether it was the right move or not there is no way it was anything but indiscriminate.

Actually, the bombs we dropped in Japan were not indiscriminate as you defined it there. We KNEW we were killing civilians when those targets were chosen, and Truman was depending on the immense shock value to make them stop fighting. Although horrible, not indiscriminate.

Freelancer on February 6, 2007 at 6:33 PM

Even JaiBones makes a mistake once every five years or so… I added too many commas and zeros .. sue me.

BTW Freelancer where is the link for the 4,000 automobile deaths due to illegal aliens you mention? That sounds a little high as well. Prove it.

Wyrd,
According to http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm there were an estimated 35,000 – 100,000 deaths in Dresden.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki Hiroshima suffered 140,000 deaths and Nagasaki 74,000.
Hiroshima made sense for the reasons, Nagasaki only three days later made no sense since there was no imminent danger in waiting a bit longer for the Japanese to assess what had just happened.

We lost around 4,000,000 troops before we unabashedly occupied any country in WW2.

Where’s honora with the flag on this one? The U.S. military casualty total for WWII is 407,300, and a substantial portion of those occured AFTER Pearl Harbor. Try again.

Definition of indiscriminate is “failing to make or recognize distinctions” — exactly what happened with dropping the nuclear weapons. Whether it was the right move or not there is no way it was anything but indiscriminate.

Actually, the bombs we dropped in Japan were not indiscriminate as you defined it there. We KNEW we were killing civilians when those targets were chosen, and Truman was depending on the immense shock value to make them stop fighting. Although horrible, not indiscriminate.

Honora, Iraq is not getting awfuller and awfuller. The problem is that the true story is not getting out. The war in Iraq was won several years ago, and it was nearly a flawless victory. The rebuilding of Iraq is what we are doing now. Is it hard? Yes. But be real! More people died in car crashes last year (around 4K) then all the soldiers in Iraq since we won that war.
Wyrd on February 5, 2007 at 4:48 PM

know that you have no interest in statistics, but look again at the number of deaths you attribute to auto accidents.

Does that even look right?? I have no idea what the real number is, but will bet you the farm that’s way, way, way off.

honora on February 5, 2007 at 5:18 PM

Honora, I’m sure he was referring to the automobile deaths caused by illegal immigrants last year, that’s just over 4,000. Nice of you to make his point for him by correcting his number upwards, though. Yeah, there was a point, and yeah, as usual you evaded it in favor of something less important but also less dangerous to your ability to ignore the truth.

By the way, we ARE occupiers in Iraq, it pains me no end that politicians think we dare not say so. Beyond that, Wyrd has it right, we WON the invasion, and we are now helping the indigenous people of Iraq to restructure their government in favor of liberty rather than tyranny. It’s too bad that there’s still many people who don’t want it that way. That’s who we are fighting.

As an aside,
Wasn’t the fire bombing of Dresden more costly in terms of human life then Nagasaki or Hiroshima?

Hmm, interesting… we were “unabashedly occupiers” in a country that we bombed with two nukes, took over and imposed our way with, but yet are ashamed and/or embarrassed as to our current state of affairs in a country where we have tried our best to keep casualties to a minimum, tried to respect the culture, etc. I wonder why all this worked out that way? Has to be that Bush guy… has to.
Rick on February 6, 2007 at 2:08 PM

No, indiscriminate killing is what you seem to regret us not doing in the parallel you drew.

Definition of indiscriminate is “failing to make or recognize distinctions” — exactly what happened with dropping the nuclear weapons. Whether it was the right move or not there is no way it was anything but indiscriminate.

Honora, as to your question we are not occupiers. We are not demanding a tribute, nor are we enforcing our own rules on the Iraqi’s. At this stage we are more like a partner trying to help the Iraqi’s mature in a meld of theirs and our culture.

I think the entire post war Iraq plan was based on a lot of wrong suppositions. But thats done, and can not be changed. Indiscriminate killing is not the answer (unless the question was “what are terrorist good at”)
Killing those that would harm the maturalization process is a different story though. Most fanatics can not be swayed by words or deeds. Much like mad dogs the only cure is to put them down.

Perhaps if Syria and Iran had their invading forces slapped hard enough in Iraq they would pull back and let us finish the mission. Course in a land where death and murder has been the number one spectator sport for 1500 years, who knows how long peace would last.

Indiscriminate killing is not the answer no matter how much some people wish for us to employ those methods in the mideast.

Bradky on February 6, 2007 at 2:35 PM

If you think that I’m for “indiscriminate killing” in the Middle East, then you aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying.

Hmm, interesting… we were “unabashedly occupiers” in a country that we bombed with two nukes, took over and imposed our way with, but yet are ashamed and/or embarrassed as to our current state of affairs in a country where we have tried our best to keep casualties to a minimum, tried to respect the culture, etc. I wonder why all this worked out that way? Has to be that Bush guy… has to.

Rick on February 6, 2007 at 2:08 PM

We lost around 4,000,000 troops before we unabashedly occupied any country in WW2. We used the same types of considerations in determining what we would bomb in Japan and Germany — why is that such a horrible thing to do now? But if we had gone in as the overlords instead of with the humanitarian approach it would have never worked. It took almost 7 years to help get the Germans and Japanese self sufficient.
Indiscriminate killing is not the answer no matter how much some people wish for us to employ those methods in the mideast.

It was a “state religion” beginning in 1867-68 but you should consider reading http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2130.html to understand what that really meant — nothing at all like the Islamic influence on the Arab Countries. The referenced article describes some of the many factors that led to the militarization of Japan, Shinto faith being a minor factor.

A good reference about Shintoism in particular is at http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2056.html and one paragraph states
“In contrast to many monotheist religions, there are no absolutes in Shinto. There is no absolute right and wrong, and nobody is perfect. Shinto is an optimistic faith, as humans are thought to be fundamentally good, and evil is believed to be caused by evil spirits. Consequently, the purpose of most Shinto rituals is to keep away evil spirits by purification, prayers and offerings to the kami.”
– hardly a religion of domination and conquering

As to your questions
Some reasons could be:
1) Crushing defeat
2) A mojority of the most warlike and bloodthirsty of the Japanese were dead
3) The people were demoralized by seeing their devine emporer humiliated.

(1)Of course a crushing defeat helped but the Iraqi military was crushed and that has yet to win the peace.
(2) Disagree vehemently with this: they were uniformed soldiers like ours, fighting for their country with honor. This is an unfair characterization and plays to some of the negative stereotypes about the Japanese.
In Iraq, like Viet Nam it is difficult to figure out who the bad guys are, no uniforms or central command and control.
(3) To some degree but again, in a country with 2000 years of history, 70 years was all the time that this concept existed. Prior to that the Buddhists had been aligned with the ruling powers for the last 1000 years. In addition the US decided not to prosecute Hirohito because of cultural considerations — good move that muted some of the old hard line guard.
Hirohito became Emperor in 1926, at the age of 25, and in the height of the military build up. I think it is reasonable to assume he was used more by the military than being the leader.

The way we treated Japan and Germany in the post war years was what won the peace and established new alliances and stability. There was no real plan for this in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Now we have to live with that short sightedness.

Well, let’s see, according to the MSM, the “war in Iraq” is still going on, and has been since we invaded in ‘03. I guess that means we can’t be seen as “occupiers” yet…can we?? Aren’t we still just “invaders”? I’m so confused. Those darn insurgents/freedom fighters, they’ve gone and made a mess of things.

Rick on February 6, 2007 at 2:21 PM

If you don’t know, and I don’t know…..

This is a very elegant summary of the whole situation, we don’t even know what the hell to call it or ourselves!!

But, seriously, if we are not occupiers, we are what? (This is not a set-up, I honestly don’t know. Facilitators? Peace-keepers?)

honora on February 6, 2007 at 2:11 PM

Well, let’s see, according to the MSM, the “war in Iraq” is still going on, and has been since we invaded in ’03. I guess that means we can’t be seen as “occupiers” yet…can we?? Aren’t we still just “invaders”? I’m so confused. Those darn insurgents/freedom fighters, they’ve gone and made a mess of things.

Hmm, interesting… we were “unabashedly occupiers” in a country that we bombed with two nukes, took over and imposed our way with, but yet are ashamed and/or embarrassed as to our current state of affairs in a country where we have tried our best to keep casualties to a minimum, tried to respect the culture, etc. I wonder why all this worked out that way? Has to be that Bush guy… has to.
Rick on February 6, 2007 at 2:08 PM

Well, duh…is he or is he not the CIC?
But, seriously, if we are not occupiers, we are what? (This is not a set-up, I honestly don’t know. Facilitators? Peace-keepers?)

What he said. Plus, we were unabashedly occupiers in Japan. And in Iraq, we’re……what?

honora on February 6, 2007 at 1:30 PM

Hmm, interesting… we were “unabashedly occupiers” in a country that we bombed with two nukes, took over and imposed our way with, but yet are ashamed and/or embarrassed as to our current state of affairs in a country where we have tried our best to keep casualties to a minimum, tried to respect the culture, etc. I wonder why all this worked out that way? Has to be that Bush guy… has to.

The rest of your points are pretty good. I always considered Japan a democracy, but will have to look into that more, I am not as up to date on their politics as I could be.

Are their any refereces? Its been a long time since I read up on post WW2 japan, would not mind getting a few books.

Gotta wave the BS flag on this. (1) Shintoism was never funded by the state, the Japanese acknowledged that the emperor was not divine (2) There were not dissidents in Japan that were trying to shoot Americans (3) The Japanese still have McArthur’s office because they think very highly of what he accomplished in the post war reconstruction (4) Japan is more of a socialist state in structure (5) Of all the countries we have bases in, Japan is one of the two or three that actually pays for all the construction and labor on the bases instead of the U.S. (6) For those who complain that the Japanese don’t do enough for their defense, keep in mind that the constitution we helped them write binds them to about 4% of their GNP for military spending

Bradky on February 6, 2007 at 12:14 PM

Gotta waive the BS flag on your comment – Shintoism was the the state religion and it wasn’t until the U.S. encouraged the separation of church and state (in wake of WWII) that the Emperor renounced claims to “living god” status.

Also, Japan is a constitutional monarchy, based on the British form of government. It does, however, follow the civil code (based on the French model.

Gotta wave the BS flag on this. (1) Shintoism was never funded by the state, the Japanese acknowledged that the emperor was not divine (2) There were not dissidents in Japan that were trying to shoot Americans (3) The Japanese still have McArthur’s office because they think very highly of what he accomplished in the post war reconstruction (4) Japan is more of a socialist state in structure (5) Of all the countries we have bases in, Japan is one of the two or three that actually pays for all the construction and labor on the bases instead of the U.S. (6) For those who complain that the Japanese don’t do enough for their defense, keep in mind that the constitution we helped them write binds them to about 4% of their GNP for military spending

Bradky on February 6, 2007 at 12:14 PM

What he said. Plus, we were unabashedly occupiers in Japan. And in Iraq, we’re……what?

Springtime for Hitler

Hilts on February 6, 2007 at 1:12 PM

don’t be stupid
be a smarty
come and join
the Nazi party

Love it.