Axis of evil
 

What was Bush thinking when he used the expression "axis of evil" to link Iran, Iraq and North Korea?North Korea says Bush remarks fell just short of declaring war.

Was the President's use of the the word "axis" in the State of the Union address appropriate and wise?

Especially, if these nations have "nukular" weapons, as he says?

Re: Axis of evil
 

Err. Thinking?


Patriotically yours,
X.

PS: Somebody had to make that cheap joke, and I figured it might as well be me. I like 'nukular' weapons. I like evil axes. Especially since Iran is trying really hard to appeal to the US through a secular Prime Minister and wide-reaching reforms. Nevermind all of that, now, they're evil. Nukularize them!

Beijing (SatireWire.com) — Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil," Libya, China, and Syria today announced they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be way eviler than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of his State of the Union address.
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. "Right. They are Just as Evil... in their dreams!" declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. "Everybody knows we're the best evils... best at being evil... we're the best."

Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil.

"They told us it was full," said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"An Axis can't have more than three countries," explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So you can only have three. And a secret handshake. Ours is wicked cool."

THE AXIS PANDEMIC

International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as within minutes, France surrendered.

Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what became a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan, and Serbia said they had formed the Axis of Somewhat Evil, forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the Axis of Occasionally Evil, while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the Axis of Not So Much Evil Really As Just Generally Disagreeable.

With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the Axis of Countries That Aren't the Worst But Certainly Won't Be Asked to Host the Olympics; Canada, Mexico, and Australia formed the Axis of Nations That Are Actually Quite Nice But Secretly Have Nasty Thoughts About America, while Spain, Scotland, and New Zealand established the Axis of Countries That Be Allowed to Ask Sheep to Wear Lipstick.

"That's not a threat, really, just something we like to do," said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell.

While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axes, although he rejected the establishment of the Axis of Countries Whose Names End in "Guay," accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chadguay denied the charges.

Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn't want to join any Axis, but privately, world leaders said that's only because no one asked them.

--

and yes, its one of the dumber things he's done.

The Evil Tutor's Guide to axes :)

Of course they SAY it's just short of declaring war. They'll never say, however, that it WAS a declaration of war UNLESS it's actually a declaration of war. Bush could say "We're going to kill all those slimy gooks over in Korea" and they'll say "That was just short of declaring war". Why?

Oh, 'cause the number of American men fit for service is about <b>23</b> times that of the North Koreans that are "fit for service".

And 'cause you don't provoke the world's superpower.

They're just tossing words around. Big fuckin' deal. We're not going to touch North Korea, and they're not going to touch us.

No worries.:eek:

Re: Axis of evil
 

I believe the reference to WWII was deliberate. As for "fell just short of declaring war", I believe that remark fails to qualify as either a horseshoe or a hand-grenade: close doesn't cut it. And what would N. Korea do about it anyway?

Time out. China would not stand by in a conflict between USA and North Korea.

Don't forget that the Asian perspective on weapons of mass destruction is that there is only one nation in history that has actually used nuclear weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=885

American President threatening Asian nuclear powers is not good foreign policy.

Nic, I know. The fact of the matter, however, is that the war won't happen. China won't fuck around with the US because we help them out too much (by buying all their exported shit). And if they <b>did</b>... well, it'd be a big ugly fucking mess, but I have no doubt who would come out on top.

By the way, the nookyooler ( :) ) bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives.

Yeah, and I thought the same thing, until it occurred to me that <b>these countries are doing things that we, as citizens, don't know about</b>. Until you know what's going on in Iran (especially), Iraq and N. Korea, you don't really know whether his words were justified or not.

saving villages with bombs
 

The bombs saved lives. Keep saying it. Tell it to the civilians at ground zero. Oh, thats right, you can't since they are dead. Truman had other options besides invasion or war crime, after all the Pacific theater was not FDRs main concern in WWII. We could have closed down that effort or negotiated on some other grounds than the unconditional surrender relic of Grant.

As I read it, we mostly fried those human beings to make a point to our Russian "allies" about our capacity and because Truman was a weak new President who was not intellectually or emotionally prepared to say "No, I won't use those devices no matter how much effort went into their construction." Thats why I don't buy the "if we only knew all the facts" argument, Truman was afraid to choose not to use the bombs, I wonder what Bush is afraid of?.

As the generation who fought the World War fades away, just maybe we can start to discuss this stuff without all the bowing and scraping, to false premises and recognize that these were regular flawed people making these decisions and now and then they screwed up. As always, I could be way off target here, but that bombs saved lives business always rubs me the wrong way.

P.S. if I'm sounding a little twed here I apologise in advance. ;)

Using the bombs definitely cost lives immediately. Well over a hundred thousand people died because of them, and that wasn't a decision that Truman took lightly. It had nothing to do about him being a weak new President. It had everything to do with <b>saving lives</b>. I guarantee you that if you could go back and ask him, he would say that making the decision to drop the bombs was the hardest decision he ever made.

Fortunately, those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not die in vain - we managed to avoid a full-scale invasion of Japan, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of US lives and probably upwards of one million Japanese.

The fact of the matter is, we <b>had</b> to go all the way with that war. There was no half-assing it. Japan, against their better judgement, attacked the United States and, with that one fateful attack, engaged us in a fight that could not be over until one side had very definitively won. We couldn't just fight them for a while and then go "okay, we give up, good games fellas. See you next war." That would should the world that we were weak and it would <b>invite more attacks</b>. That is not a risk that Roosevelt, nor Truman, nor the American public were ready to take. The war had to be decisively won.

Furthermore, the Japanese were warned, very explicitly, that we had a weapon of mass destruction (I forget the exact wording, but I'm sure you could locate it pretty easily) and we were going to use it if they didn't surrender. We <b>gave them a chance</b>, which is more than I can say about the folks who died at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, in their arrogance and pride, discarded our warnings. They did not heed our very explicit warnings. And only then, when there really was <b>no other choice</b>, was the first bomb dropped. After that, they still refused to surrender and, three days later, the second was detonated. The Japanese emperor and his decision makers chose the fate of those civilians - not Truman.

As sad as it may be, <b>the bombs saved lives</b>.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by the United States with first atomic bombs used in warfare.

Documents on the decision to use the atomic bomb have been made available in full-text form. In most cases, the originals are in the U.S. National Archives. Other aspects of the decision are shown from accounts of the participants.

Read the original documents.

While demanding that the axis of evil nations stop pursuing weapons of mass destruction, the administration tables a budget for the largest military buildup in two decades. Oh yeah, remind me again where that anthrax is believed to have been developed.

The world won't be safe until the USA is the only nation with weapons of mass destruction. Only the USA can be trusted not to use these weapons against civilian populations.

Tell that to the Koreans.

UT is getting a call from Mr. Ashcroft, asking for my IP. :eek:

So tempting to weigh in but fuckit.
Ill just point out
a: The US provoked Japan into war deliberately.

Talk about holllow vistory. The US and China are from an economic perspective - co-dependant, US businesses have sunk well over 20 billion into china, including lots of blue chips that have the ear of the whitehouse. China has nukes, china has a fucking big army, and a patriotic spirit that is unrivialed in a country its size.

Nother Korea is not aboutot invade DC i'm sure but i'm sure they wouldn't mind selling some TB or weapons grade plutonium to piss off the county that called them "evil".

Ah, yes. I forgot about that letter FDR wrote to Hirohito. The text is below:
<b>
Dear Slitty-Eyed:

Bet your sorry ass won't attack us! Nanny nanny boo boo! Hahahahaha! We are INVINCIBLE! You can go hiri kiri yourself!

Love,
Frank</b>

In other words: in any war, there will be a first strike, and no matter what has been done before that, that strike is going over the edge. They are crossing the line by that strike. Japan, very simply, crossed the line. If I call you names and make rude comments about your mother and, in turn, you hit me, you should expect that I will come back to pound the living shit out of you. "For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction" - except the first strike. That's always disproportionately large.


Anyway, I'd like you to back up your assertion that "the US provoked Japan into war deliberately".

Is it safe to discuss politics in America on a BB?
 

Wednesday, Feb. 06, 2002

U.S. opposes release

By LARRY MARGASAK-- The Associated Press

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSWorldTradeI.../walker105.jpg

John Walker Lindh is seen in this handout photo released by the Alexandria County Sheriff's Department in Alexandria, Va.,

Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002. (AP)

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Saying that John Walker Lindh repeatedly expressed "hostility towards his country," federal prosecutors filed court papers Wednesday arguing against his release pending trial.

Shortly after Lindh was driven to the courthouse from the city jail under heavy security, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion citing a number of e-mails written by the 20-year-old U.S.-Taliban figure accused in a federal indictment of conspiring to kill Americans.

In the motion, the government cited among other things a Sept. 28, 1998, letter that Lindh wrote his mother suggesting that the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa "seemed far more likely to have been carried out by the American government than by the Muslims."

In its 11-page filing, the government also cited an e-mail that Lindh sent his mother on Feb. 15, 2000, suggesting that she should move to England.

"I really don't know what your big attachment to America is all about. What has America ever done for anybody?" it said.

In a June 24, 2000, e-mail, the motion asserts, Lindh told members of his family that it was the United States which incited the Gulf War and that Saddam Hussein was "heavily encouraged" by an American official to invade Kuwait.

In a Dec. 3, 2000 e-mail to his mother, the memorandum said, Lindh referred to the president (George W. Bush) as "your new president" and adds: "I'm glad he's not mine."

Lindh broke off contact with his family in late April 2001.
Be careful not to express hostility toward America and use email to incite your mothers and families against America or GWB personally. Have a nice country.

Do your homework yourself? It's an established basic fact of elementary College history education that the US systematically provoked Japan into action.

Maybe if people wouldn't get their views of history from 'Pearl Harbor' and 'Black Hawk Down', they would be *somewhat* better informed?

Anyway, here're a few links to 'back up' that 'assertion'. Alternatively, pick up a College-level modern history book? (Nothing taught in freshmen courses, obviously)

http://www.blueskypie.com/nonfiction...ayofdeceit.asp
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D0F9.htm
http://www.blancmange.net/tmh/articles/pearl.html
http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/pearl_h...background.htm
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/amer...oney_wars.html
http://www.mackido.com/Politics/FDR1940.html

X.

I've seen neither, so go fuck yourself.

Anyway, you're missing the point.

If I piss in your lemonade, I am provoking you. That does not mean that I am provoking you deliberately such that you will attack my country.

The burden of proof is on the accuser. Jag suggests that we deliberately provoked Japan so that we could enter war with them. I'm asking him to provide proof. Not some web pages that say "yeah, Japan and the US weren't the best of friends". I don't care about that.

Proof that it was US policy (maybe unknown to the public) that we were going to provoke Japan such that there would be a war.

This may be off topic ... but maybe not.
 

You mean something like Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollums memorandom of October 7,1940?

"...9. It is not believed that the present state of political opinion the United States Government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado; and it is barely possible that vigorous action on our part might lead the Japanese to modify their attitude. Therefor the following course of action is suggested:

A. Make an arrangement with Britain for the use of British bases in the Pacific, particularly Singapore.

B. Make an arrangement with Holland for the use of base fascilities ans acquisition of supplies in the Dutch East Indies.

C. Give all possible aid to the Chinese Government of Chiang-Kia-Shek.

D. Send a division of long range heavy cruisers to the orient, Philippines, or Singapore.

E. Send two divisions of submarines to the Orient.

F. Keep the main strength of the U.S. Fleet now in the Pacific in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands.

G. Insist that the Dutch refuse to grant Japanese demsnds for undue economic concessions, particularly oil.

H. Completely embargo all U.S. trade with Japan, in collaboration with a similar embargo imposed by the British Empire.

10. If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war."

Check out Robert Stinnetts book Day of Deceit to see how each of these ideas were implemented.

About fucking time someone does it.

Thanks, Griff. That's mostly what I wanted to see. Not some fucking web page that some guy wrote with a conspiracy theory.

Next question is: what led to the memo?

I am woefully ignorant about the whole subject, but I gather from some of X's links that the US was alarmed at Japanese imperialism, especially into China. (If so, what a mistake?)

The decision to drop the bomb on Japan, characterized as part of an anti-American Axis of Evil, was justified based on a belief that Japs were less than human.

The first step in justification of using weapons of mass destruction is to dehumanize the enemy, in the minds and hearts, so that force can be used without thinking and without feeling.

The Japanese were no more allies of the Nazis than the Koreans are of the Iraqis, or they of the Iranians.

The current rhetoric that "you are either with us" in all we say and do, or you are "with the terrorists" and part of an axis of evil, is pretty offensive language in a State of the Union address, especially when Germany, Italy and Japan are part of the coalition in the "war on terrorism."

By whom? By Truman? Ultimately, he made the decision. If not him, then who else?

Furthermore, <b>what proof</b> do you have that his basis for the decision was that "Japs were less than human"? Was that an internally circulated memo as well? Can you go ahead and paste the part of US policy in August of 1945 that declared Japanese civilians as "less than human"?

Or, <b>maybe</b> it was justified based on the belief that it would <b>save lives</b>.

OK, dham, while I find you some evidence that American's viewed the Japs as less than human, can you clue us in as to the proof you have that has given you this entrenched belief that dropping the bomb on Japan saved lives?

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank. Americans think all sorts of things. The KKK thinks "niggers" are less than human. That doesn't shape American policy.

Regardless of whether or not even the President viewed Japanese citizens as less than human, I want proof that it was "justified" by a belief that Japs were "less than human". Those are your words, not mine. Back them up.

As for proof - I will gather information on this when I get home. Unfortunately, I am at work and have a critical piece of software that needs to be delivered on the 12th, so I can't spend time gathering it here. But here's what I'm going to show you, basically:

Number of deaths at Hiroshima + Number of deaths at Nagasaki < (Number of deaths of American forces invading mainland Japan and forcing an unconditional surrender + Number of deaths of Japanese soldiers defending mainland Japan + Number of deaths of civilians committing suicide because of invasion + Number of deaths of civilians who took up arms against invading Americans who were then forced to "neutralize" said civilians)

The last numbers and ideas have traditionally been based off the total population of Japan, the total number of ground forces needed to invade the island, the likely number of casualties, and the fact that the civilian death toll on Okinawa is estimated to have been <b>at least</b> 42,000 by <b>suicide alone</b> (suicide, in this case, being that they sealed themselves in caves) - the estimated civilian death toll on <b>Okinawa alone</b> was estimated by the US Army to have been, I believe, some 140,000 on an island with a population of about 350,000.

Anyway, yes, I will show you real numbers later that would convince even the most skeptical that if the US had invaded mainland Japan, the losses would have been far larger than those suffered by the dropping of the bombs.

to echo what griff stated, the key turning point was oil, an oil embargo was a huge provocation agains't the japanese and virtually forced their hand. Point safely proven.

The second point is that the administration wanted to enter the war(a german owned Eurpoe wasen't a too preasent reality), but public opinion was agains't such action, by provoking Japan into war, it opned the route to supporting the European war too.

Mabye on top of some high collage reading, you could have alook on the theory behind how a nations national interest and therefore, its foreign policly is formed.

The historian Allan Nevins characterized the American war against Japan as follows:

"Probably in all our history no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese...Emotions forgotten since our most savage Indian wars were reawakened by the ferocities of Japanese commanders."

The US government and media adopted an exterminationist policy towards the Japanese which called for the total destruction, annihilation, and extermination of the Japanese people and nation. John Toland, in Infamy, maintained that the war against Japan was "a war that need not have been fought...fought because of...American racial prejudice, distrust, ignorance of the orient, rigidity, self-righteousness, honor, national pride and fear." The methodology and tactics used by the US to defeat the Japanese were in part based on the patterns of the "Indian wars" and on a Manichaean total war between good and evil, between us and them. In a poll conducted in December, l944, Americans were asked, "What do you think we should do with Japan as a country after the war?" 13% of the respondents wanted to "kill all Japanese", while 33% supported destroying Japan as a political entity.

The first step in defeating the Japanese was to dehumanize them as a people and to depict them in archetypical racist terms as inferior, subhuman, apes, "savages", and "barbarians". Standard archetypes or exemplars or avatars of propaganda were utilized to dehumanize and stereotype the enemy. These archetypes of propaganda reappear in all propaganda campaigns and all wars. This was precisely how Native American Indians were defeated and how blacks were enslaved and excluded. The Japanese were denoted as animals, reptiles, insects, as "yellow monkeys", baboons, gorillas, dogs, mice, rats, vipers, rattlesnakes, cockroaches, and vermin. Depicting the enemy as an animal lessens the amount of guilt when the enemy is killed. In Nazi Germany, for instance, Jews were depicted as lice or rats to expedite mass extermination. Franz Stangl, the commander of the Treblinka concentration camp explained that dehumanization was necessary to expedite the extermination process:

To condition those who actually had to carry out the policies. To make it possible for them to do what they did.

The enemy was subhuman, or lesser than human, or not human, and thus deserved or warranted extermination. Killing such an enemy is proper and appropriate and those doing the killing should feel no guilt or moral compunction. The Japanese were "mad dogs" or "yellow dogs", and as reflected in a statement during the war, "mad dogs are just insane animals that should be shot."

A manifestation of racism and racist hysteria was to refer to the Japanese in racist stereotypical terms: "Nip", from Nippon, the Japanese word for Japan, and the shortened "Jap". These were the equivalent of "nigger" and "gook" and "Hun". New terms were also coined by US Marines: "Japes", a combination of "Japs" and "Apes". Another neologism was "monkeynips". US Marine Eugene B. Sledge recalled that native peoples of the Pacific were referred to as "gooks". The major themes were of hunting and then exterminating vermin, or predatory animals, "a nameless mass of vermin". Guadalcanal was described as "a hunter's paradise...teeming with monkey-men."

J. Glenn Gray described how American troops hunted down a Japanese soldier and killed him as if he were not a human being, but an animal, a beast of prey:

"When a Japanese soldier was "flushed" from his hiding place...the unit...was resting and joking. But they seized their rifles and began using him as a live target while he dashed frantically around the clearing in search of safety. The soldiers found his movements uproariously funny. Finally...they succeeded in killing him...The veteran emphasized the similarity of the enemy soldier to an animal. None of the American soldiers apparently ever considered that he may have had human feelings of fear and the wish to be spared."

The dehumanization of the enemy was meant to lead to extermination and total annihilation, as was reflected in the pronouncements of US military leaders and the media. Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the US South Pacific Force, at a l944 press conference declared:

"The only good Jap is a Jap whose been dead six months. When we get to Tokyo ... we'll have a celebration where Tokyo was."

A popular wartime saying was "the only good Jap is a dead Jap". In l943, Leatherneck, the US Marine monthly magazine, ran a photograph of Japanese corpses on Guadalcanal with an uppercase heading reading: "Good Japs". The caption for the photo read: "Good Japs are dead Japs."

Extermination was buttressed by dehumanization. Admiral Halsey referred to the Japanese as "yellow bastards", "stupid animals", "yellow monkeys", and "monkeymen". He stated that he was "rarin' to go...to get some more monkey meat" and that "the Japs are losing their grip, even with their tails" and explained that "the Japanese were a product of mating between female apes and the worst Chinese criminals." The objective was to persuade to kill, to kill "them". Halsey rallied his men with the following motto: "Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs." The US Marine Corps motto was: "Remember Pear harbor---keep 'em dying."

Time magazine expressed its outrage after the attack on Pearl harbor in blatantly racist terms: "Why the yellow bastards!" The New Yorker depicted the Japanese as "yellow monkeys" while the Washington Post caricatured them as a large gorilla. Rear Admiral Husband Kimmel explained his shock at the attack on Pearl Harbor as follows: "I never thought those little yellow sons of bitches could pull off such an attack so far from Japan."

Captain H. L. Pence, the Navy representative to the first interdepartmental US government committee to consider the issue of the treatment of Japan after the war, stated in May, l943, that he advocated the "almost total elimination of the Japanese as a race," because this was "a question of which race was to survive, and white civilization was at stake."

The chairman of the War Manpower Commission, Paul V. McNutt, told a public audience in May, l945, that he favored "the extermination of the Japanese in toto ... for I know the Japanese people."

Vice Admiral Arthur Radford, several days before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, stated that "Japan will eventually be a nation without cities---a nomadic people."

William Randolph Hearst's newspapers warned of the "yellow peril" and maintained that Japan was a "racial menace". The US war with Japan took on the nature of a race or racist war. The Japanese, along with other Asians, were regarded as "despised races", "unassimilable races", and "inferior races". Racism is a manifestation of consensual paranoia which sees a person or group that is different in any way as a "stranger", as an "alien", the enemy "other". Racism divides "us" against "them" based upon racial differences. In conjunction with the exterminationist and dehumanization policies, there was the use of racist stereotypes. Racist stereotyping is reflected in the following photograph caption from the National Geographic of October, 1942: "Who Says All Orientals Are "Inscrutable"? These Japanese, Arriving at an Evacuation Camp, Plainly Show They're Worried."

The dehumanization of the enemy is achieved also by picturing the enemy as a faceless and nameless "them", removing individuality from the enemy. The enemy becomes a homogeneous mass, an object for "us" to hate and to kill. It is accepted that killing other human beings is morally wrong. But defeating what we perceive as hostile ideologies can be commendable. We are not fighting a people and nation, but an ideology. Guilt and responsibility are thereby lessened. Of course, it is human beings who maintain the ideologies. As Stanislaw Lec has stated, "In a war of words, it is people who get killed." This is why ideology is so important in war and propaganda. The enemy, "them", must appear as a single, undifferentiated mass or unit guided by one idea, a single ideology, a single purpose. The Japanese people were said to be "photographic prints off the same negative". They were "an obedient mass with but a single mind", a "subservient mass" "a human herd", faceless hordes. This is a familiar and standard tactic in all war propaganda meant to lessen sympathy for the enemy people. The enemy people must be seen as an undifferentiated mass, inseparable from its leaders and government. All individuality must be eradicated. One could sympathize with the suffering and hardships of a Japanese individual caught up in a war his leaders had imposed. But as a faceless mass, the Japanese people were merely a numerical statistic, a thing, a cipher, not a person.

The exterminationist policy of the US was manifested in many ways during the war, such as not taking prisoners, killing POWs and surrendering troops, fire-bombing cities with incendiary bombs, using atomic bombs on cities, and the practice of collecting battlefield trophies from dead or near-dead Japanese soldiers. US troops routinely took gold teeth, ears, bones, scalps, and skulls from dead Japanese soldiers. In Guadalcanal Diary, Richard Tregaskis reported the following conversation between US soldiers:

They say the Japs have a lot of gold teeth. I'm going to make myself a necklace ... I'm going to bring back some Jap ears ... Pickled.

The Marine monthly Leatherneck ran this account in l943: "The other night Stanley emptied his pockets of 'souvenirs'---eleven ears from dead Japs." The Baltimore Sun and The Detroit Free Press ran stories about war 'souvenirs'. In Baltimore, a mother petitioned to be allowed to have her son mail her an ear he had cut off a dead Japanese soldier. In Detroit, a minor had attempted to enlist by promising his chaplain that he would send him the third pair of ears he collected from dead Japanese soldiers.

Eugene B. Sledge, a US Marine veteran of the Peleliu and Okinawa campaigns, recalled how US soldiers would routinely shoot even wounded Japanese soldiers to obtain their gold teeth, a practice more commonly associated with Nazi guards extracting gold teeth from Jews:

I've seen guys shoot Japanese wounded when it really was not necessary and knock gold teeth out of their mouths. .. I remember one time at Peleliu, I thought I'd collect gold teeth. One of my buddies carried a bunch of 'em in a sock. ... The way you extracted gold teeth was by putting the tip of the blade on the tooth of the dead Japanese---I've seen guys do it to wounded ones---and hit the hilt of the knife to knock the tooth loose. ...This Jap had been hit. One of my buddies was field-stripping him for souvenirs.. the guys dragging him around like a carcass...This guy had been a human being.... It was so savage. We were savages.

In l944, the New York Times reported that a US serviceman had sent President Roosevelt a letter opener made from the bone of a dead Japanese soldier. Life magazine published a photograph of a woman standing next to a Japanese skull which her fiance had sent from the pacific, with the caption: "Arizona war worker writes her Navy boy-friend a thank-you note for the Jap skull he sent her" in the May 22,l943 issue.

US soldiers routinely used Japanese skulls as ornaments on military vehicles and as war trophies, after the flesh was boiled in lye or left to be eaten by ants. On February 1, 1943, Life magazine published a famous photograph by Ralph Morse which showed the charred, open-mouthed, decapitated skull of a Japanese soldier killed by US Marines at Guadalcanal, which was placed on the tank. The caption read as follows: "A Japanese soldier's skull is propped up on a burned-out Jap tank by U.S. troops." Life received letters of protest from mothers who had sons in the war and others "in disbelief that American soldiers were capable of such brutality toward the enemy." The editors of Life explained that "war is unpleasant, cruel, and inhuman. And it is more dangerous to forget this than to be shocked by reminders." Indeed, remarkably, Life received more than twice as many protest letters over a photograph of a maltreated cat in the same issue than they did over the photo of the charred skull of the Japanese soldier. This is the ultimate achievement of propaganda and dehumanization: Man's inhumanity to man, even to the point where we are more concerned for the welfare of our pet animals than we are for other human beings. Daniel Okrent, the managing editor of Life in l996, commenting on the decision not to publish the photograph of an incinerated and charred corpse of an Iraqi soldier during the Persian Gulf War, stated that "at some point we have to acknowledge what people are capable of doing to one another." Such inhumanity is the necessary result of propaganda, of an us versus them bipolar opposition. Sam Keen has described this in Faces of the Enemy as follows:

In the beginning we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.

In an unconditional, Manichaean exterminationist war, the enemy is archetypically depicted as a superman or as supermen. The psychological pattern in propaganda to create an image of the enemy as a superman is rooted in a paranoid, infantile orientation. The paranoid orientation cannot accept balance or equality; the paranoid must either sadistically dominate or masochistically be an inferior victim. Moreover, anxiety and guilt is lessened when the enemy is omnipotent and criminal. This tactic is necessary to galvanize and mobilize all the resources against the enemy, which is not as easily done if the enemy is not perceived as a threat or danger. The analogy most often used in propaganda is that of the bully. The Japanese were referred to as "Jap bullies" and Serbia was referred to as " a regional bully". The New York Times Magazine in l943 ran a caption which asked, "How Tough are the Japanese?" In l993, in Foreign Affairs, a caption under a photograph of Serbian soldiers in a tank asked, "Can these men be stopped?"

A standard element of war propaganda is to characterize any action against the enemy as defensive or reactive in nature. We only defend ourselves. The enemy are aggressors. Paranoia creates a passive-aggressive orientation. The passive-aggressive victim always reacts to the aggression of the enemy, thus all responsibility and guilt is negated. This is how war results. A passive-aggressive victim lacks balance, lacks equilibrium. As a powerless victim, the paranoid justifies his own attacks as an attempt to gain power over the enemy. A passive orientation dissipates all responsibility and guilt. An American soldier who slits the throat of a Japanese soldier "did it only because he knew the Japs had done it to his buddies." Eugene B. Sledge explained: "You developed an attitude of no mercy because they had no mercy on us. It was a no-quarter, savage kind of thing." Similarly, a Muslim soldier slits the throat of a Bosnian Serb soldier or nurse because he seeks to "go home and to get even". The weak, innocent, defenseless were being protected and saved from the barbarous, vicious, and cruel enemy supermen. The Japanese were "barbarous", "uncivilized", "inhuman", "depraved", given to "mad dog orgies of brutality and atrocity", exhibiting "primitive blood lust and brutal butchery", a "naked, tribal savagery". Similarly, Bosnian Serbs were termed "thugs", "degenerates", "illiterates", "butchers", "rapists", "efficient battlefield killers", "killers", "murderers". Charles Lindbergh kept a diary in which he wrote down his observations of the war in the Pacific. He noted the desire to ruthlessly exterminate all Japanese as follows: "They treat the Japs with less respect than they would give to an animal, and these acts are condoned by almost everyone."

The movie industry reinforced the propaganda archetypes of the enemy in Hollywood films. Movies, like television, alter our environments, that is, they are new ways of perceiving or perception. As Marshall McLuhan has explained, these new forms of media change the manner in which we process information and "evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions." By altering the medium or environment, we change our ways of perceiving the world, thus, new media change us at the epistemological level. By changing the media, "the way we think and act" is altered. Information becomes instantaneous and communal, processed in a "global village", the information being uniform and replicated, being received as simultaneous stimuli with little time for rational examination. Movies and television have a tremendous capacity to dehumanize and to persuade. Pauline Kael, the film critic of the New Yorker, recalled the propagandistic nature of Hollywood films during World War II in reinforcing archetypes of the enemy in the "The Good War" by Studs Terkel. Kael recalled how "a lot of the movies were very condescending to Europeans and Asiatics." Movies created a bipolar dichotomy of us versus them, dehumanizing the enemy, as Kael recounted:

I hated the war movies, because they robbed the enemy of any humanity or individuality. ... Even the German or Japanese who happened to be your friend ... had to be killed ...We had stereotypes of a shocking nature. They could never be people, who were just caught in the army the same way Americans were and told what to do.... I got so angry. It was so difficult to deal with, because in some intangible way they did represent the essence of war propaganda.

As explained by John W. Dower in War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, fighting the Filipinos in the Spanish-American War and later the Japanese was directly linked to US experiences fighting Indians on the western frontier. The US thus had developed an stereotypical and archetypical blueprint for the enemy other. The Japanese and Filipinos were substituted for the Native American Indians. In fact, many soldiers were transferred to Asia from frontier posts where they had fought Indians in the Spanish-American War. Arthur MacArthur, the father of Douglas MacArthur, was "one of the more conspicuous U.S. Indian fighters."

The war against the Japanese during World War II was characterized as "Indian fighting". The US Army Infantry Journal stated that the Japanese were "as good as Indians ever were." The New York Times magazine of February 13,l942, in an article called "The Nips", explained the analogy with the Indian wars as follows:

"The Japanese are likened to the American Indian in their manner of making war. Our fighting men say that isn't fair to the Indian. He had honor of a sort. Moreover, even a dead Jap isn't a good Jap...Yet such are the Nipponese. In death as in life, treacherous."

The racist and exterminationist language was obvious. Asians were termed "yellowbellies", "yellow bastards", "yellow monkeys", "slant-eye", "slant", "squint eyes", "almond eyes", "slopey", or "slopie", "gook", "goo-goo", "dinks", "ochre horde". "Gook" derives from "goo-goo", the ethnic label used to describe Filipinos at the end of the nineteenth century.

The exterminationist policy was further exemplified by the massive bombing campaign directed against major Japanese cities, targeting civilians, unarmed men, women, and children. US military planners at first espoused a policy of "precision bombing", targeting military and industrial targets only. But on March 9, 1945, precision bombing was abandoned when Tokyo was attacked by 334 US aircraft at low altitude with incendiary bombs which destroyed 16 square miles of the city and left over a million homeless. An estimated 80,000-l00,000 Japanese civilians---men, women, and children---were killed, "scorched and boiled and baked to death". This new aerial strategy, "strategic bombing", was developed by Major General Curtis LeMay, who applauded the fire bombing of Tokyo that "scorched and boiled and baked to death" so many Japanese civilians.

What the fuck are you talking about? How a nation's national interest is formed? You mean there's some other process aside from asking "What is in our best interest"? Do they write a perl script to select a national interest at random and then go for it? Or are you just trying to insult me?

*still waiting*

Yeah yeah yeah. AFTER Pearl Harbor.

But what we were discussing was: what caused the memo? The memo that points out that, at the time, there wasn't the political will to go to war. Doesn't sound like a bloodlusty racist populace in the memo.

I'd have to read up a little on it to find out, if thats even possible, what exactly sparked the memo. I can tell you that McCollum, who was born in Nagasaki, was the head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence which handled all the intercepted and decoded Japanese intelligence. He was uniquely qualified to see what an evil empire was developing there, something which nobody should deny. Rape of Nanking/ Bataan Death March (after the fall of the Philipines)etc... many many atrocities.

The thing that folks try to link, successfully I think, is that FDR was actually concerned with getting the US into the war allied with Britain, for the sake of the British Empire, not the Far East. He, the theory goes, set up Japan since they were the only Axis Power capable of hitting the US. The defenders of Imperial Japan can only cling to one thread, their behavior in many ways reflected that of the European colonizers, who we bailed out. Stinnett is unique in that he fully supports FDR, this wasn't the book he intended to write but its the one the facts support.

Wow! looks like I need to do some thread reading to find out if thats even relevent now.... later g

The general theory is indeed what Griff said - FDR wanted to back Britain and therefore "forced" Japan to strike.

There's no doubt that they were provoked; now, I don't have any trouble believing that the provocations were even <i>intended</i> to get Japan into war. Whether or not Japan was actually <b>forced</b> into striking the US is debatable (and always will be), simply because they probably <b>could have</b> escaped a war with the US. Water over the dam though.

His long posts were in response to my request that he prove that the decision to "drop the bomb" was "justified" by the fact that "Japs were less than human" (which, unfortunately, it does not do).

As for what caused the memo - I'm not sure what caused that memo specifically, but there are all sorts of theories about why "the US wanted to go to war with Japan". It had been talked about for quite some time, that much is certain. Theories range from racism to protecting human rights and everything in between. It's hard to know what to believe.

[ Edit - You may want to check out http://www.tribo.org/nanking/ which has, at the very least, some pictures that will give you an idea of the Japanese atrocities in China ]

[ Another Edit - And here's a better page - GRAPHIC - http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~jackson/rape/pageone.html ]

Pearl Harbor, Internment, and Hiroshima: Historical Lessons

This is very interesting.

This is pure bullsh*t, but what would you expect from the International Socialist Review? Sheesh. The lunatic fantasies that some people try to pass off as historical fact are simply staggering.

Well... it certainly saved a lot of American lives. Some War Department planners (including MacArthur & Nimitz's staff planners and the US Strategic Bombing Survey) estimated that American casualties from Operation Olympic (the proposed invasion of Kyushu) in November, 1945, would exceed 250,000. Casualty estimates for Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu proposed for March, 1946, were even worse: 750,000 was the number that was usually kicked around. So, if we accept these numbers, almost 1,000,000 human beings had longer, happier lives because we dropped two atomic bombs on some other human beings. I'll sleep well tonight.

Other than the fact that Japan signed the Tri-Partite Agreement with Italy and Germany on September 27, 1940, you mean? :rolleyes:

*gales of derisive laughter*

If by "provoked" you mean that the United States failed to acquiesce in Japan's invasion of (and subsequent brutalization of) China, Korea, French Indonesia and the Malay peninsula, then yes, I suppose you're right. How provocative of us to refuse to trade (aviation fuel, high-grade scrap iron, machine tools, munitions, finished capital goods, etc.) with the peace-loving Japanese government! What could we have been thinking?

Now, I'm willing to concede that that's a vast oversimplification of the events leading to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But in return, I expect YOU to concede that the Japanese are every bit as responsible for the pasting they received at the hands of the Americans as the Americans are for dishing it out. For some inexplicable reason, the Japanese, who live on an archipelago with virtually no natural resources, got it into their collective minds that they could go toe-to-toe with the United States in a contest for naval supremacy in the western Pacific. What could they have been thinking?

Personally, I think Japan's collective guilt is FAR greater than any that accrues to the United States, and is compounded by the fact that most of the Japanese government KNEW they couldn't win a war with the United States, but they chose to start one anyway. What kind of government deliberately leads their nation into destruction? Isoroku Yamamoto certainly believed they couldn't win such a war. He said as much in a conversation with Prince Konoye more than a year before Pearl Harbor:

I don't think it is the incinerated civilians' fault, in any event. I think the use of the atomic bomb was a war crime that would certainly have been called to account and responsibility if it had been perpetrated against the good guys.

I was trying to explain was that it was unnecessary to drop the bomb to end the war, or to "save lives" as dham says, but that it was perceived as a justified retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor by a race that had been dehumanized by years of war propaganda.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey -- Japan's Struggle To End The War.

I think that having essentially won the war, the President used the bomb and sacrificed the Japs to achieve a better result in the balance of power with the Russians. And that seems to be the consensus in the historic documents that I've seen.

And I apologize for not having had all my facts correct on all points. But I don't think it's all bullshit, nonetheless.

There is a wealth of good original documentation on this at the Truman Library.

Taking such propaganda literally is often a serious mistake. Remember that back then they hadn't yet uncovered the atrocities of the Nazis to show that there WERE people who actually meant such propaganda.

There was no extermination campaign against the Japanese. There was no extermination of the Japanese, either abroad or in the US -- placing them in concentration camps was bad enough, but extermination did not occur and was never considered.

As for treatment of prisoners, you really don't want to get into that. Or the names "Bataan" and "Nanking" will come up.

Above posts demonstrate the number of pre-WWII actors fully involved in forcing a final event - war. Each actor (ie FDR) is the dog's head that forces action by the dog's body (ie. political, economic and social initiatives, speeches, encouragement, subtrifuge, etc) to wag a tail (war is declared). IOW we assume that FDR wagged the tail as he wanted. Reality is that fast moving events became the tail that wagged the dog.

All those WWII historical disucssions assume a leader acted to create an event and got that event to happen (ie FDR got the US into WWII). Reality is that events happened so quick as to drag everyone into war. Actors were almost powerless to avoid the resulting Pearl Harbor; out of ignorance, due to surprise, or just because what they tried to accomplish backfired.

Hitler knew up front that he could not wage war on two fronts simultaneously. But he did so anyway. It was not his intent. Again, the tail wagged the dog. Events of WWII dragged Hilter to start war on a second front. Yes, FDR knew that the US would have to enter WWII (as even Boeing and the Kennedy boys understood in the 1930s). But it was not FDRs actions that got the US into war. It was events, that caused FDR to respond that got the US into war. FDR responded to a tail that would not stop wagging.

Properly noted in so much detail are how so many tails wagged so many dogs. The final 'tail shake' was the US oil embargo of Japan. Was that the reason for WWII. By itself - no. The oil embargo was also created by other WWII events. US was already suffering domestic oil rationing because of so much WWII activity. Therefore it was the perfect response to Japan's invasion of China.


How does this correspond to the original post? The tail most wags nations led by lower intelligent leaders. Historically, these are people driven by their personal biases and political rhetoric rather than by historical experience and long term projection thinking.

Previously posted were examples of low intelligent US leadership. This 'Axis of Evil' simply is another step in undoing decades of work that was slowly creating peaceful solutions. Destruction of so much work was accomplished by the same kneejerk reactions that declared, for example, arsenic in drinking water as safe.

A decade of careful work and compromise brought all parties to a common water standard. But the White House choose to trash everything in a week - instead blaming environmental fanatics for the conclusions. No long term perspective. No appreciation for history. Just an assumption it must be wrong because it goes against White House political rhetoric. Same kneejerk thinking is displayed internationally.

This president views Iran as a monolithic entity. Everyone in Iran must think the same and must have anti-American attitudes. Wrong. Big time wrong. But the president has simply alienated potential American / Iranian friendship. This is but another case where the tail did not have to wag the dog. But the dog does not have sufficient long term perspective to understand why the tail will now be wagging the dog. This 'Axis of Evil' will probably have dangerous consequences for everyone here.

In another post, I will quote an The Economist interesting incite into jihad. Jihad also is not monolithic. However, our leader is aligning the US to go to war against Islam. Not because he intends to; but because he is setting America up to be wagged by its tail.

Yesterday's news only makes that scary. Sec of State Powell outrightly warning every Cellar dweller that the US may unilaterally declare war on Iraq. He is warning you that extremists may totally subvert US foreign policy:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nati...P-US-Iraq.html
If this was any other President, except Nixon, I would say 'bull'. But this is George Jr who in one year subverted, soured or destroyed every international relationship we have. Do we really need all those 9+ new military bases in the Middle East from Bulgaria to Kazakistan? Why do we need them? To be dragged into war against a jihad we don't understand and may not need to fear? Yes, that last sentence is correct. Jihad also is not a monolithic concept to those who first learn the facts before declaring 'Axies of Evil'.

I have to disagree somewhat. Just because events did happen, it does not follow that they had to happen. I could say that a general Mid-East war is predestined, if enough people bought into that idea, we would have our war since none would bother to work against that outcome. Like the pre-WWII time frame there are many social and political reasons why such a general conflict is likely, however, the fatalistic vision that these factors can't be mitigated by individuals, is counter-productive. That Boeing (aircraft?) and the Kennedys both had a profit interest in war and the increase in government power which flows from it shows that they wanted war, not that it was inevitable that America participate. FDR wanted to bring the US into the conflict and affected the changes he could, to support that outcome.

You are right about the Iran situation outside of your dog/tail analogy. Progress in our relationship with Iran seemed inevitable, until one dog wagged his tail.

Hmm... Two suits with sunglasses are knocking on my door. I wonder what thats about?

Are you suggesting that "events" have an independent will of their own?

Or are you trying to make an argument for for Predestination? Wow. That's funny... I never would have pegged you for a Presbyterian!

Nonsense. Gasoline rationing in the US didn't start until July of 1942. Roosevelt Minor signed the Export Control Act two years earlier, in response to Japan's seizure of French Indochina. The "tail" wasn't wagging anything here... French Indochina didn't seize itself... Aviation fuel and machine tools didn't decide to stop shipping themselves to Japan...

My point here is that, with the occasional exception of large-scale natural disasters, "events" don't drive anything. People do. The Late Unpleasantness in the Pacific was started because Japan's leadership decided to expand beyond their traditional borders, and the West (especially Great Britain and the US) decided to oppose their efforts.

Which international relationships could you be talking about? The really important ones (the UK, most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan) remain in pretty good shape. Relations with Russia have improved markedly of late. Even China has quieted down, though I don't think anybody really expects that to last long.

Saudi Arabia's shaky, but that's due more to internal dissatisfaction with the House of Saud than anything explicit that we've done. We continue to piss off most of the rest of the Arab world by apologizing for everything that Israel does, but that's not unique to this administration.

Nothing unusual in the subcontinent... Pakistan and India continue screeching at each other while we (and most of the rest of the world) keep our fingers crossed and hope they don't do anything stupid with their new toys.

Subsaharan Africa continues to suck. Nothing new there.

So... which relationships were you talking about?

Of course, if we continue in your previous line of reasoning, any allegedly ruined relationships would have been "soured or destroyed" by "events". Bush is merely the dog being wagged by the tail. Right?

In an upcoming post, I will quote Highlights for Children, in which Goofus and Gallant learn the meaning of "multilateral cooperation" at a birthday party.

oh great now I have to figure out how to get coffee and muscus out of my keyboard

Ture, but there has been, and will contiure to be a degree of souring of relations across the pond, mostly due to differneces in ideology. EU stop mergers, Italy has started banning new petrol cars, france and other limit work hours, america is doing the exact opposite.

Bush may have done just enough to start souring relations with Europe. To quote Chris Patten, Conservative politician, former Governor of Hong Kong, currently the commisioner in charge of the European Union's International Relations - and certainly no pacifist leftie:

Describing the Bush administration's 'axis of evil' policy:

"absolutist and simplistic"

"Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it"

'an axis of evil' - "I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful"

US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than substance"


http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story...647554,00.html

The vast majority of European governments is already quite upset with the way the Bush administration is going. It'll be interesting to see what happens next; the aggressive unilateralism by Bush will either lead to global triumph or global alienation and eventual isolationism.

Only time will tell.

X.

Your comments assume a perspective of god - looking down upon all actors. Wrong perspective. View history in terms of each person who tried to alter history. It is from that perspective that others argue FDR got the war he wanted.

From FDR's perspective, war was inevitable regardless of what he did. Even moreso, he tried desperately to have it happen in a best way possible. In the days immediately after Pearl Harbor, FDR went into a deep depression among friends because he thought he had gotten the US into war in the worst possible way. He was deeply despondent which makes his 'Day of Infamy' Congressional speech all the more phenomenal. At the time, he blamed himself for the destruction of the entire Pacific fleet - thinking too much like the myopic admirals who still thought in terms of battleships. Little did FDR realize how events had place him in the most enviable of positions - because the tail wagged the dog.

There were millions of dogs all being wagged by tails (world war) whether they liked it or not.

BTW neither Boeing nor the Kennedy's viewed war as a good thing nor could they profit. Boeing is especially interesting. Years before WWII, Boeing was building bombers as fast as they could, taking out bank loans to build planes that had no customers. Interest on bank loans alone were killers. Why did they risk so much for years without customers? US in a world war was that obvious to Boeing management who risked the entire company on something they considered that inevitable - and something they could not affect, change, manipulate, etc. The Boeing tail was going to wag the dog. So the dog set itself up for the inevitable.

Kennedy's saw world war as an inevitable disaster they should prepare for. Their father was agast at the whole concept - so much so as to lose his ambassadorship. The father was also in disagreement with all his sons. No one saw war in a profitable manner. Some were simply more ready to let their tail wag them. The father kept trying to wag his tail, but was devestated when Joe was killed - his worst fear. The death of Joe was a wagging tail that the father just could not avoid no matter how hard he tried.

So many worked against US war involvement. What happened to them? Like Lindbergh, they all got pulled into a World War they worked so hard to avoid - the tail wagged the dog.

From the perspective of individuals, the tail inevitably wags the dog. From the perspective of god, this is not obvious. But the arguements posted previously assumed that FDR successfully wagged his own tail. It just did not happen that way not matter what it looked like from a god's perspective.

Others have demonstrated how badly Geroge Jr has soured international relations. I will add more examples. We had great relations with Russia until George Jr soured them. Because he has fixed some of his damage, you then conclude they are at their best? Myopia is looking at history only 3 months previous. Russian relations are only approaching what they used to be under Clinton because Geroge Jr so soured those relationships.

As for the Middle East, again a myopic viewpoint. The 'man on the street' opinion soured everywhere in the Middle east. Even Al Jezzera (the equivalent of CNN) which is encouraged under Clinton to be open and honest is finding itself threatened with censurship by the Geroge Jr administration. This attempt to censur is widely acknowledged throughout the Middle East. IOW George Jr has played directly into a bin Laden concept - that America wants to dominate the Middle East for its oil. Any yet one would myopically say all is OK because we are not in confrontation with Sudia Arabia? Do you listen to what the president of Egypt, the crown prince of Saudia Arabia or even Malaysia is saying? Last time US relations in the Middle East got this bad is when Reagan foolishly sent the New Jersey to shell arab positions in Lebanon.

Bottom line is that US international relationships with every major country has been severely strained by George Jr. - starting right off with his embarrassment of the Chancellor of Germany. Geroge Jr is strongly contributing to the destruction of the Oslo Accords and UN Resolution 242 which as also based upon the Fundamental Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights? George, Jr in Middle East eyes violates that daily with his support and encouragment of one defined by the entire world as an enemy of Human Rights - Ariel Sharon. Sharon could only do so with George Jr's approval - as far as the entire Middle East is concerned.

Throughtout the world, too many are making valid claims that the US now acts unilaterally. Unilaterally? Yes, George Jr has so soured another world opinion of the US. That is also what Sec of State Powell has warned. Did you read the NY Times article cited elsewhere. This administration is actually considering unilateral action against Iraq! No responsible administration would give such actions serious consideration. But then this is a president without any international or domestic policital experience. So inexperienced as to almost destroy a Chinese relationship that China so desperaterately wanted to perserve.

Yes, White House actions during the spy plane incident were so irresponsible as to nearly destroy a relationship with another country that desperately did not want such political damage to happen. George Jr has so soured international relations that Tony Blair had to perform the international negotiations after 11 Sept. George Jr did not have the credibility.

Shocking! Imagine the effrontery! How dare the government of a Great Power act alone in what it perceives to be its own interests? (I'm not saying whether or not I believe that taking a poke at Iraq is a good idea... we'll save that for another thread.)

So... what's so bad about unilateral action? Sometimes, the alternatives are worse. The cripplingly multilateral European Union certainly did a splendid job of preventing the atrocities in Yugoslavia, didn't they? (Interesting to note that it's mainly American troops who are still on the job there.) What has the League of Arab States done to check the activities of militant extremists in their little corner of the world? How much success did ASEAN have preventing the recent festivities in East Timor or Burma? (oops... I meant Myanmar) The policy failures of that most impotent and multilateral of institutions, the United Nations, are too many and varied to mention here.

You're preaching to the choir here... my loathing for America's policy toward Israel is exceeded only by my loathing for Teletubbies. But, again I ask, what's different about George? The next president who has the spine to tell Israel (and the Zionist lobby in America) to go piss up a rope will be the first one.

NBC Olympic Host, Bob Costas, really did the Olympics proud when he announced at the opening ceremonies ... here comes the flag of Iran, one of the countries that President Bush said is part of an axis of evil.

Now that's the Olympic Spirit, Bob. I thought I was watching SNL with Dennis Miller doing the commentary!

How would the USA react if China were to pull some stunt like slamming American foreign policy as the Stars & Stripes is presented in Bejing in 2008?

Guardian is, while very left wing, a fantastic paper.

Don't give me that shit. The US internally argued for 10 days, while 1 MILLION Rwandans(no doubt wrongly spelt by me I know) died about whether to let its ALLIES use armored vehicles flown in purposely, and took an equally stupid about of time to respond to Kosovo - all because they were burnt previously in Somalia.

By losing any semblance of unilateralism the US is making their image worse, not only are they heavily throwing their weight around, and pouting hot air, now they openly admit they don't acre what the rest of the world thinks of their actions, great way to quash the growing clamour anti-American voices.

As for this Axis of evil bullshit, the thing that holds those three countries together is that they all have missile programs. What better way to justify a huge and useless missile defense system than tieing it to terrorism? Its the same with drugs and the Taliban, god what a crock of shit. Don't get me started on the whoring rubbish that means Suadi Arabia, one of the biggest suporters of terrorism, and most cashed up was missed out on in being in the axis of evil, bloody oil soaked administration
< /rant>

Interesting naffact: MSWord recognizing the word Taliban

George appears to be manipulated by Sharon. Ariel Sharon is one of the world's most willy political charlatans alive. He actually has George Jr blaming the Palestinians for having their own lands stolen. Neither James Baker nor the Clinton adminstration unilaterally blamed one side for all problems. Any yet that is exactly what George Jr has done. The victim has been blamed for his own plight.

The first step to Palestinian peace is the removal of Sharon. During a Clinton speech in Davo (NYC), Peres is said (in the NY Times) to have made a most interesting comment. Peace could have been obtained if they had just had enough time. Sharon single handly lead a country wide irritation intended only to entice another intafada - to destroy the peace process. That intafada in progress today still unfortunately only plays into Sharon's hand. That intafada eliminated any moderate Israeli political ground while empower right wing extremists Jews - also known in a UN conference as some of the world's worst violators of human rights. (Sharon does care since he has already massacred thousands of women and children without any outside objection).

And so lies the problem. The victims of human rights violations are blamed by Bush for those violations. Go figure. No president, except George Jr, ever did that before.

No president should have to tell Israel, et al to go piss up a rope. Simply making Jews equal to Palestinians would put those anti-humanity extremists in their place. But George Jr does not do that. Clinton did. James Baker did. George, Jr only understands what Sharon has been telling him rather than see the whole story. Clinton's NYC speech is said to have addressed those issues without naming names.

BTW this subtitle from an The Economist article I will read soon: "George Bush's hit-list could have been written by Ariel Sharon". Clearly no accident.

The only question remaining: Is Geroge Jr so unintelligent that he has become a puppet of Sharon, or were George Jr and Sharon really both educated in the same right wing, extremist sandbox.

So how entwined are George Jr with Ariel 'mass murder' Sharon? This last paragraph from The Economist article 9 Feb 2002 entitled "George Bush's hit-list could have been written by Ariel Sharon":
The only part missing was the "wink-wink".

Sounds more like two mafiosos conspiring. That is the difference between how George Jr and all other Presidents have handled the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Bush conspires, probably out of ignorance, with the most evil player to ever take the field.

The evil axis is not more evil than Ariel 'mass murder' Sharon.