60 Years Ago This Week

[Griff]

Truth, I'm back to reading the Rise and Fall blah blah and references keep coming about so and so, just back from Bolivia. However, I stand by the point no way we get rolled by an OUTSIDE power. We also need to remember that, like Castro, Hitler had a limited shelf life and it's really hard to smoothly replace an absolute dictator.

Well, going back to the OP and national soul searching, yeah right. We had someone jump on the thread and claim the ridiculous number of 400,000 or so war dead in the name of pacifism. Whatever. We've had a disagreement over who was worse- Stalin or Hitler? I've read stat's on Hitler that put him reponsible for 20 million deaths directly and 44 million indirectly. ABCXYletter pudding head would have us forget about everything, including the current war in Iraq and bury our heads in the sand and say, Hitler did it. We have Busterb posting live from one of the worst disasters in recent American history and detailing the lack of response from ANYONE except people here on the Cellar. We have Keryx posting back and going "nyah, nyah, stupid Katrina victims get what they deserve!" We have tw's ever growing thread on Bush's shrinking safety zone. Hell! W. didn't have a safety zone 5 years ago before 9/11 ever happened! What's he got is a wealth and power zone and that has NOT changed.

So when is the last time a single one of you - left, right, center, communist or libertarian has written a single letter to your state representative, attended a single session of your local town council, written a letter to the editor of your local paper, or donated an hour of your own time to whatever cause is most close to your own heart? Its easy to debate Stalin versus Hitler. How about doing something real? 60 years ago today, Americans were dancing in the streets and Japanese children were watching their faces peel off. So fucking what?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Griff

Truth, I'm back to reading the Rise and Fall blah blah and references keep coming about so and so, just back from Bolivia. However, I stand by the point no way we get rolled by an OUTSIDE power. We also need to remember that, like Castro, Hitler had a limited shelf life and it's really hard to smoothly replace an absolute dictator.

I agree, as long a we had the foresight to maintain enough military strength to stop an initial attack. It's one of those, if you can stand the first punch, then you'll be ok.

So when is the last time a single one of you - left, right, center, communist or libertarian has written a single letter to your state representative, attended a single session of your local town council, written a letter to the editor of your local paper, or donated an hour of your own time to whatever cause is most close to your own heart?

Last time? Two days ago. And more times than I can count but the only thing I probably accomplished was stress relief for myself.

Oh, and I try not to tell other people what to do with their money.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, tw, in post #104, p.7, you said something smart. Good going.

djacq, you got some holes yet: what the decent members of the human race should demand is an end to the indecencies of oppression. You've been sucked in by the specious arguments of the moral-equivalency set, and you should not have been so deceived.

Democracies avoid oppression(s), though without complete success, owing to human nature: the root of prejudice is that man is a categorizing animal, and the two largest categories are Me and Not-Me. It is all too easy to be disdainful of the Not-Me, which can lead to attacking and abusing such Other. The faculty of self-restraint is a happy one here, and we both know it's not always present.

Non-democracies, on the other hand, mostly exist to oppress somebody, somewhere, somehow. Being unaccountable to their subjects, nondemocracies make war on, well, whim.

It is also too much, even for a joke, for a belligerent leader to refuse to conduct negotiations (as Truman did in July 1945)--and then use the lack of negotiations as an excuse to unleash whatever destruction tickles his fancy.

Your last paragraph needs taking apart, as it misrepresents Truman's motivations and policy: Japan's government sent out peace feelers in mid-1945, asking about terms for peace. Since we Allies had decided at Yalta in 1942 that the only peace would come with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, and Truman did not waver from this when he inherited the Presidency, the kindest thing to say about Japan's representations in 1945 was that they were the product of wishful thinking. Truman could see the whole thing was bootless. Since there was still the war to win, it was time to shock and awe the Japanese into unconditional surrender. This was done. In large measure, come to think of it, this was done by Hirohito telling the generals it was time to quit, and it seems looking back that we were duly grateful.

[djacq75]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Your last paragraph needs taking apart, as it misrepresents Truman's motivations and policy: Japan's government sent out peace feelers in mid-1945, asking about terms for peace. Since we Allies had decided at Yalta in 1942 that the only peace would come with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, and Truman did not waver from this when he inherited the Presidency, the kindest thing to say about Japan's representations in 1945 was that they were the product of wishful thinking. Truman could see the whole thing was bootless. Since there was still the war to win, it was time to shock and awe the Japanese into unconditional surrender. This was done. In large measure, come to think of it, this was done by Hirohito telling the generals it was time to quit, and it seems looking back that we were duly grateful.

If Roosevelt made a deal with the devil, it was not Truman's job to carry it out without question. He chose to sacrifice 120,000 civilian lives for the dubious privilege of being allowed to hang the Emperor if we chose (which, of course, we didn't.)

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Unconditional surrender by each of the Axis powers doesn't sound like a deal with the devil.

And to the Japanese, I would ever point this out: Hiroshima died that Japan might live. And live it did; it's a better Japan now.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

And to the Japanese, I would ever point this out: Hiroshima died that Japan might live. And live it did; it's a better Japan now.

..and Nagasaki?

That's like hearing the 9/11 hijackers telling us they did it for the good of the USA.

Were you by any chance name 'Mr. Sensitivity' in your high school yearbook?

[slang]

Originally Posted by richlevy

'Mr. Sensitivity' in your high school yearbook?

I would think that those "really sensitive people" are elderly Filipinos that still remember the Japanese occupation.

Paraphrasing from a conversation with one;

Do we feel bad for those Japanese people? No. We were hoping that the US had more such bombs to drop there.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by slang

I would think that those "really sensitive people" are elderly Filipinos that still remember the Japanese occupation.

Paraphrasing from a conversation with one;

Do we feel bad for those Japanese people? No. We were hoping that the US had more such bombs to drop there.

Which is why I find it so funny when Michelle Malkin soothes the conservatives by stating that the US interment of Japanese Americans was necessary. The racists among them simply see an Asian-American granting absolution without considering the fact that she is Filipino-American. This is like consulting an Armenian-American about the treatment of Turkish-Americans. Only a racist who lumps all Asians into a single group or someone who is ignorant of world history would be dumb enough to make that kind of generalization.

The Japanese abuse of the Filipinos served the important purpose of making our abuse of the Filipinos seem enlightened by comparison. We were literally the lesser of two evils. In the end, we did give the Phillipines their independence after WWII. Up until that time, freedom for the Phillipines meant picking their colonial masters (Spain, the US, or Japan).

[wolf]

Point of technical fact, Michele Malkin is an American. No hyphen.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by wolf

Point of technical fact, Michele Malkin is an American. No hyphen.

Are you saying that noone pays any special attention to her comments based on her race? Are we really such a democratic society that we have become truly colorblind and there are no racial or cultural perspectives? Or are you just saying that I shouldn't have placed a hypen there?

IMO, the reality is that there are still Polish Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, etc. How much these distinctions affect attitudes depend on how insular was the community in which an individual was raised.

My point is that some people give Ms. Malkins words additional weight in issues such as the internment of Americans in the US during WWII because of her race, ignoring the cultural and political bias she may have inherited.

[xoxoxoBruce]

ignoring the cultural and political bias she may have inherited.

By hyphenating you intimating she is bias.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Rich, I know this is just a typo, but it's too good to gloss over:

I find it so funny when Michelle Malkin soothes the conservatives by stating that the US interment of Japanese Americans was necessary.

About two days postmortem, it is necessary. [Emph mine]

..and Nagasaki?

I wasn't ignoring Nagasaki, merely constructing a better-flowing and more concise sentence; it starts to clunk if I go for a pedantic completeness. I could have written precisely the same sentence of Nagasaki. Hiroshima carries the greater weight of meaning because it was the first.

That's like hearing the 9/11 hijackers telling us they did it for the good of the USA.

No; the purveyors of antidemocracy do not have the moral authority to make such an argument believable. We, being a free people, in contention with anti-freedom people, do. That you choose not to accept that view has very little effect on its rightness.

[djacq75]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

No; the purveyors of antidemocracy do not have the moral authority to make such an argument believable. We, being a free people, in contention with anti-freedom people, do. That you choose not to accept that view has very little effect on its rightness.

The idea that democracy possesses any inherent moral authority is one of the more contemptible forms of modern self-induced moral vacuity.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by richlevy

Are you saying that noone pays any special attention to her comments based on her race? Are we really such a democratic society that we have become truly colorblind and there are no racial or cultural perspectives? Or are you just saying that I shouldn't have placed a hypen there?

What I'm saying is that Michelle Malkin describes herself as an unhyphenated American.