tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post6222781575725637891..comments2024-03-22T11:55:50.335+13:00Comments on Not PC: The bomb that ended the warPeter Cresswellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-28833066006720992612010-08-11T02:33:10.005+12:002010-08-11T02:33:10.005+12:00I suppose I'd better post a reference that Buc...I suppose I'd better post a reference that Buchanan charge. Given Buchanan's views on WWII, locating it is like trying to find a specific turd in a truck-load of raw sewage.<br /><br />http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-desert-storm-ii-422<br /><br />"Never close off an enemy’s avenue of retreat. JFK gave Nikita Khrushchev a way out of Cuba, and nuclear war was averted. We did not offer the German generals who wanted to kill Hitler anything but “unconditional surrender.” So, Nazi Germany fought to the death and took untold millions of innocents down with them."<br /><br />Why is this buffoon important? Because he peddles an isolationist philosophy that I partly agree with. And he isn't the only one, many 'libertatians' hold to the same standard and Mr Buchanans: isolationism at any price. <br /><br />I do not believe in isolationism at any price. <br /><br />Standing up against nations or organizations infected with a cult of Death and possessed with the means to export it is vital to the long term security of any nation.<br /><br />And if that means taking pre-emptive actions then so be it. Had Hitler been opposed militarily prior to 1939, the German people may have foreseen that the fruits of aggression would be ashes in their mouths and would have been moved to remove him while it was still in their power to do so.<br /><br />And even if that is a pipe dream, the fact is that it is easier and less dangerous to kill a jackal when it is a pup.Robert Winefieldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-29037192103768690792010-08-11T01:27:36.788+12:002010-08-11T01:27:36.788+12:00"Surrender is a decision, by the political le..."Surrender is a decision, by the political leadership and the dominant voices in the culture, to recognize the fact of defeat..."<br /><br />One of the best paragraphs I have ever read. And an effective antidote to the idiots like Pat Buchanan who argue that demanding unconditional surrender from the Nazis and the Shintoists (Death cults both) was unfair, unnecessary and prolonged the violence.Robert Winefieldnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-21640715167548225132010-08-10T13:28:42.853+12:002010-08-10T13:28:42.853+12:00drunken watchman, At war's end the Japanese Im...drunken watchman, At war's end the Japanese Imperial Navy and other research agencies were working towards an atomic bomb. Seeing how the military regime never saw a weapon they didn't like and use, [chemical, biological or conventional], it's logical to assume they would have used it if they could. You see, they were not nice kind compassionate folks; they were a blight on the face of the earth. The US dealt to them with extreme prejudice and liberated the Japanese population from the total destruction that would have accompanied invasion.<br />Imperial Japan sowed a breeze and reaped a whirlwind. Jihadists will one day wake up to learn a similar lesson, but it won't be from a history book. Evil will not limit itself, it has to be eliminated by force.<br /><br />GeorgeAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-66311433307582868422010-08-10T10:25:19.156+12:002010-08-10T10:25:19.156+12:00War is so obviously horrific that it always seems ...War is so obviously horrific that it always seems harsh to speak in such terms, I know. But fortunately, however, war is not the normal mode of human life. <br /><br />Peaceful co-existence can and is possible, but only if aggressors are offered no possibility of reward for their aggression, and and the roots of war, the ideologies of statism and collectivism, are expunged.<br /><br />That's one reason at least to celebrate the outcome of WWII--from out of the two most militaristic nations in the modern world emerged two of the most peaceful and most productive.<br /><br />The lesson of that emergence must be among the least told, and and the most little understood--yet it must surely be among the most important in the modern world.Peter Cresswellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-53332587982363496532010-08-10T10:19:02.577+12:002010-08-10T10:19:02.577+12:00@DW: There is a definite distinction between a pea...@DW: There is a definite distinction between a peaceful nation acting in self-defence against an objective threat, and a bunch of thugs aggressiing against others under the pretext of some manufactured "harm."<br /><br />It's the latter that the jihadists operate under--and in the same way as Adolf Hitler was emboldened by being rewarded for using such pretexts, soo too have today's jihadists been emboldened by the very moral equivalence your argument relies upon.<br /><br />"<br />Targeting civilians is targeting civilians..." Well, yes it is. But "<a href="http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/war-peace/4367-Killing-Innocents-War.html" rel="nofollow">the responsibility for all deaths in war lies with the aggressor who initiates force, not with those who defend themselves</a>."<br /><br />"<a href="http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?id=2547" rel="nofollow">The moral principle is this: the responsibility for all deaths in war lies with the aggressor who initiates force, not with those who defend.</a>"<br /><br />If you're concerned about the killing of innocent people in war, It has to be said that "<a href="http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_america_at_war_morality_and_civilian_casualties" rel="nofollow">this is a major reason people should be concerned about the nature of their government.</a>"Peter Cresswellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-13024838444831214792010-08-10T09:26:13.494+12:002010-08-10T09:26:13.494+12:00PC, I'm not disputing the (supportive) mentali...PC, I'm not disputing the (supportive) mentality of the German and Japanese populaces.<br /><br />Simply saying that the jihadists can make the same argument, that they believe the citizenry of the USA is sufficiently supportive of what they (the jihadists) (rightly or wrongly)see as a proxy occupation of the Saudi peninsula, Western anti-Islamism etc etc.<br /><br />Targeting civilians is targeting civilians - since when did a newborn baby hold political views?the drunken watchmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-76674035294114154892010-08-10T08:32:07.148+12:002010-08-10T08:32:07.148+12:00@Angl0American: I'm sorry you find the ending ...@Angl0American: I'm sorry you find the ending of the most destructive war in human hostory "cartoonish." If you think it could have been ended any other way, with any lesser loss of life--especially Allied lives-- then make that argument. I think you'll find that you can't.<br /><br />YOur suggestion that there is some kind of moral equivalence between those who started that violent and agressive war (Nazi Germany and Shinto Jopan) and those trying to end it is worse than cartoonish-it is an obscenity.<br /><br />@Drunken Watchmans: Bush's argument is one of the errors of talking about waging a "war on terror." WWII was a war of self-defence against two dangerous and particularly virulent aggressors. I'm fully persuaded by John Lewis's argument. Neither the Japanese nor the German citizens were entirely innocent; they were both complicit and even enthusiastic in their country's prosecution of aggressive war and vicious dictatorship. (Read any history about Japan's conquest of China if you want to understand the nature and domestic support of the Japanese regime; and Daniel Goldhagen's 'Hitler's Willing Executioners' to understand the level of support the Nazis had in the populace.) Both Nazi Germany and Shinto Japan were partakers of a "morality of death," with the enthusiastic support of their citizens, and "the need for total victory over the morality of death has never been clearer."<br /><br />Both citizenry wanted war; they were right behind it. And both of them had brought home to them in its full force and with its literal meaning the real destruction of war ; and as an almost indirect result we've now seen the most peaceful and beneficient transformation IN ALL HISTORY of two vicious dictatorships who couldn't be allowed to exist.Peter Cresswellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-4198767483845150842010-08-10T07:46:01.736+12:002010-08-10T07:46:01.736+12:00This seems quite a cartoonish view of WW2. The All...This seems quite a cartoonish view of WW2. The Allies had become masters of holocaust, burning people alive in epic fire bomb raids against civilian centres. The atomic bombs were the ultimate weapon for this purpose and were, without doubt, war crimes. Even at the time this barbarity was called into question.<br /><br />If you can justify the deliberate mass killing of civilians with fire then one has to be somewhat forgiving of enemy atrocities. Why don't we continue to do it, considering it is so effective?<br /> <br />Ever since the end of the war we have been barraged with tales of enemy atrocities in an effort to deflect attention away from our own and those of our 'friends', the Soviets.AngloAmerikanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02002362092073890146noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-40274495466281341712010-08-10T03:30:59.393+12:002010-08-10T03:30:59.393+12:00YES, but ....
wasn't the dropping of those bo...YES, but ....<br /><br />wasn't the dropping of those bombs on cities a "deliberate targeting of innocent civilians", which when done by jihadists is described by, among others, GW Bush, as a cowardly and unacceptable act?the drunken watchmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11906042.post-24336105873641076902010-08-09T19:36:22.742+12:002010-08-09T19:36:22.742+12:00I remember being at school and one of the vile lit...I remember being at school and one of the vile little anti-American leftists from the "peace movement" came to tell us that neither bomb needed to be dropped.<br /><br />Well it was a state school after all, and this was when the Labour Party was scaremongering about US nuclear ships.<br /><br />It has always astonished me how the militarist Shintoist cult of Japan's wartime leaders and their genocidal and rabidly imperialist approach to the rest of the world is glossed over by the Western lovers of peace. As if somehow that got defeated without the US being involved!Libertyscotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12741049550997300680noreply@blogger.com