This Pearl Harbor Day

[ralfy]

I knew the US was responsible for Pearl Harbor!

Reminds me of War Plan Orange and lack of preparations in the Philippines (see books like Jose's Philippine Army: 1935-1942.

For some weird reason, reading helps. Makes me hungry, though.

[Rev. Powell]

Oh ralfy, give it a rest...

There is no logic in giving critical thinking a rest.

While it may be always logical to indulge in critical thinking, I'm not convinced it's always logical to express the results of your critical thinking in every venue. For example, by spending a little energy in resisting the urge to respond to something I disagree with, I ultimately save a lot of energy engaging in long fruitless arguments, which I find to be the most logical choice. An off-topic thought.

[ER]

For some weird reason reading makes me hungry too. Exercise leaves me with no appetite but if I read a while I find myself hungry. Strange, huh?

[ralfy]

While it may be always logical to indulge in critical thinking, I'm not convinced it's always logical to express the results of your critical thinking in every venue. For example, by spending a little energy in resisting the urge to respond to something I disagree with, I ultimately save a lot of energy engaging in long fruitless arguments, which I find to be the most logical choice. An off-topic thought.

The original post:

May I break with tradition this Pearl Harbor Day and impart my condolences to the millions of Japanese people who suffered as a result of their warmongering government picking the stupidest fight in the long history of stupid fights. Governments decide and innocent people suffer. War is a terrible thing.

What tradition was broken? Not to offer condolences to the Japanese people who mostly supported the same warmongering government? Why do you think the U.S. resorted to using nuclear weapons? They thought that the same people would fight to the death, and that estimated allied deaths would reach over two million if they tried to invade Japan.

The same warmongering government that emerged from an economy that fell apart because of the Great Depression? An economy that industrialized because it was pried open decades earlier, allowing its country to defeat a Western one, in turn leading to trade embargoes to contain "orientals" who were considered inferior? The same "orientals" in a region that was being pillaged by the same countries for which Japan picked "the stupidest fight in the long history of stupid fights"?

And is the same country that not only picked "the stupidest fight" but to this day has not apologized for atrocities committed on other Asians in the region? And those are the same Asians that Western imperialists were oppressing before WW2, right? From what I heard, most Japanese have been taught a sterilized version of the war.

In the end, I think the issue isn't so much indulging in critical thinking as indulging in seeing everything as if it were a professional wrestling match:

Yeah, Japan's government made sure that its poor people got the worst buttwhuppin' in the history of buttwhippin's!

If only reality was as simple as that.

[ralfy]

This is a related topic, and it comes from the documentary Fog of War:

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

The speaker is Robert McNamara, who used "game theory" (i.e., seeing war as a numbers game) to direct the war in Vietnam. Long before that, he did calculations for Gen. Curtis LeMay, who directed strategic bombing in the Pacific during WW2. His point has to do with the lesson that "Proportionality should be a guideline for war."

What that means is that the U.S. had to use incendiary bombs, long before they used nuclear weapons, to kill large numbers of Japanese civilians in order to kill their fighting spirit, and thus avoid tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers dying if the country had decided to invade Japan. The proof of that fighting spirit lay in kamikaze pilots, most soldiers and even civilians who saw surrender as a weakness, etc.

But what concerns McNamara is this: what are the rules of war, and what determines that? His last point is telling: had the U.S. lost the war, then LeMay and McNamara would have been accused of behaving as war criminals. The implication is that what one does is immoral only if one loses.

[ER]

When I mentioned a break with tradition, ralfy, it was a break with my own tradition of how I have usually marked Pearl Harbor Day in the fifteen years I've been here. One of the luxuries of peace is being able to cast a kind thought toward those who were once labeled as enemies, and in mentioning that most people in a population do not start wars, only suffer from them, I don't think I was wrong. It's a shame you disagree, as I did not take you for one who advocated eternal vindictiveness.

[ER]

PS Unless you've served in some capacity, ralfy, how about you shut your flapping mouth over things you know nothing about but which you happily set yourself up as an authority on?

An academic trying to correct a veteran like Indy, who was actually stationed in Japan, is like a virgin giving sex advice.

[lester1/2jr]

Ralfy is an "academic"?

[ER]

Ralfy is an "academic"?

Yes, he said he had that honor in one of his posts in the Crazy SOB thread.

[LilCerberus]

And on this particular day in history, Hitler followed suit & declared war on the US for no reason, Despite the number of Nazi sympathizers here...

[ER]

And on this particular day in history, Hitler followed suit & declared war on the US for no reason, Despite the number of Nazi sympathizers here...

Stupidest decision in Hitler's long chain of stupid decisions. Stupider than June 22, 1941.

[LilCerberus]

And on this particular day in history, Hitler followed suit & declared war on the US for no reason, Despite the number of Nazi sympathizers here...

Stupidest decision in Hitler's long chain of stupid decisions. Stupider than June 22, 1941.

Indeed, it was.....

[ralfy]

When I mentioned a break with tradition, ralfy, it was a break with my own tradition of how I have usually marked Pearl Harbor Day in the fifteen years I've been here. One of the luxuries of peace is being able to cast a kind thought toward those who were once labeled as enemies, and in mentioning that most people in a population do not start wars, only suffer from them, I don't think I was wrong. It's a shame you disagree, as I did not take you for one who advocated eternal vindictiveness.

My understanding is that Japanese vets have been invited to Pearl Harbor for years, so I don't understand how friendship between Japan and the U.S. is new to you.

About the Japanese people fooled by their government, keep in mind that the Japanese stopped fighting only because the Emperor told them to do so. That's why the U.S. had to use nuclear weapons, as "buttwhuppin'" them with incendiary bombs wasn't good enough. From what I remember, the allies estimated that two million of their boys would die if they tried to invade the Japanese mainland.

Later, the U.S. worked with Japan, intending it to be a bulwark against the Iron Curtain. Surprisingly, the source from that is our good friend Kennan, who argued in one State Dept. memo that the Philippines, probably the only true ally the U.S. ever had in that region, would be a provider of raw materials needed to rebuild the Japanese economy. I don't think you should know about what the U.S. did to the Philippines before and after.

To this day, Japan refuses to apologize even for the "comfort women" its soldiers abused during the war. In high schools in Japan, a more sterilized version of the war is given, and far removed from what kids are taught in South Korea and China.

Finally, I don't disagree with what you wrote. Rather, I mentioned why the Japanese government became warmongering, and the context of that tradition.

[ralfy]

PS Unless you've served in some capacity, ralfy, how about you shut your flapping mouth over things you know nothing about but which you happily set yourself up as an authority on?

An academic trying to correct a veteran like Indy, who was actually stationed in Japan, is like a virgin giving sex advice.

Served in the military, like you?

If you think I know nothing about this issue, then let me know why.

Wait a minute: you were referring to Indy? You wanted to share "a kind thought," and his? "Yeah, Japan's government made sure that its poor people got the worst buttwhuppin' in the history of buttwhippin's!"

This forum operates based on anonymity, right? That means biodatas and anecdotes can't be proven. Ironically, that even includes my being an academic.

In which case, the best thing you can do is to react to the arguments that I raised instead of engaging in personal attacks.

[ralfy]

And on this particular day in history, Hitler followed suit & declared war on the US for no reason, Despite the number of Nazi sympathizers here...

Actually, there are reasons, and you will find them very surprising.

About Nazi sympathizers, I found this very interesting point from, of all places, the liberal magazine The Atlantic:

"What America Taught the Nazis"

In the 1930s, the Germans were fascinated by the global leader in codified racism—the United States.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-america-taught-the-nazis/540630/

Ross did a follow-up later for The New Yorker:

"How American Racism Influenced Hitler"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

American eugenicists made no secret of their racist objectives, and their views were prevalent enough that F. Scott Fitzgerald featured them in "The Great Gatsby." (The cloddish Tom Buchanan, having evidently read Lothrop Stoddard's 1920 tract "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy," says, "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged.") California's sterilization program directly inspired the Nazi sterilization law of 1934. There are also sinister, if mostly coincidental, similarities between American and German technologies of death. In 1924, the first execution by gas chamber took place, in Nevada. In a history of the American gas chamber, Scott Christianson states that the fumigating agent Zyklon-B, which was licensed to American Cyanamid by the German company I. G. Farben, was considered as a lethal agent but found to be impractical. Zyklon-B was, however, used to disinfect immigrants as they crossed the border at El Paso—a practice that did not go unnoticed by Gerhard Peters, the chemist who supplied a modified version of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz. Later, American gas chambers were outfitted with a chute down which poison pellets were dropped. Earl Liston, the inventor of the device, explained, "Pulling a lever to kill a man is hard work. Pouring acid down a tube is easier on the nerves, more like watering flowers." Much the same method was introduced at Auschwitz, to relieve stress on S.S. guards.

When Hitler praised American restrictions on naturalization, he had in mind the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed national quotas and barred most Asian people altogether. For Nazi observers, this was evidence that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality. The Immigration Act, too, played a facilitating role in the Holocaust, because the quotas prevented thousands of Jews, including Anne Frank and her family, from reaching America. In 1938, President Roosevelt called for an international conference on the plight of European refugees; this was held in Évian-les-Bains, France, but no substantive change resulted. The German Foreign Office, in a sardonic reply, found it "astounding" that other countries would decry Germany's treatment of Jews and then decline to admit them.