60 Years Ago This Week

[djacq75]

Originally Posted by tw

Bottom line point is that if one goes to war, then human life must be regarded as something completely expendable until negotiations will start.

That they will be regarded as expendable by the criminals who launched the war goes without saying. And while it is true that the decent members of the human race should demand an end to the war, if it were hypothetically within one's power to hold the casualties caused by a given war to 100,000 instead of 1,000,000, it is absurd to pretend that the two scenarios make no difference to anyone. That our leaders treat lives as cannon fodder merely establishes that we should be as unlike our leaders as we can manage.

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.

[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.

[barefoot serpent]

Further point of technical fact, Michele Malkin being female would be: Filipina American.

[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.

[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.

[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.

Originally Posted by djacq75

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

HEH! Urbane could be the poster child for Orwellian thought.

Let's take a closer look at his statement:

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.

"purveyors of antidemocracy" - Would have the reader beleive that there is a group out there who fully understand the principles of democracy and have rejected them. In fact, there are many such groups "out there," but I would submit that the group to which UG refers - Muslims - are more xenophobic and religous fundamentalist than they are "antidemocracy." The deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians have only served to fuel UG's "antidemocracy" movement.

Democracy - from the Greek - demos - government by the people. Only someone who has no idea of what democracy actually is could beleive that a foreign nation can invade another country's borders, kill 100,000 people, and then call the result "democracy." The correct term is "military invasion" NOT "democracy."

"Moral authority" - an interesting term. Please define "morality." Please define "authority." Please state under which conditions a given group has "moral authority" over another. Please use premises that all parties agree to be correct, and please use logic in your reply. Points will be taken off for empty rhetoric and propagandist replies will receive a failing grade.

"We, being a free people" - "We" who, white man? Please define what it is to be a "free" person. Please state in which ways the average American is more a "free" person than the average Iraqi. "My son is in the US Army and my money goes to Halliburten." When I walk into the polling booth, I may choose one outrageous liar versus a second outrageous liar. My letters to my elected representative are met with form replies, if I'm lucky enough to get a reply at all. My country's leader is worse than an inept, bungling fool. My country's leader has done more to take away the constitutional rights and freedoms of my people than any other leader in my country's history. My country's leader has been responsible for the deaths of 100's of thousand of innocent people, including my own countrymen. Please explain how I have greater freedom than an Iraqi citizen.

"That you choose not to accept that view has very little effect on its rightness." i.e. "I'm right because I say so," or, my personal favorite, "I'm right and you're stupid." That you choose to assume YOUR view is the only correct one has NO effect on the actual truth of your position, especially when you do not back your position up with accurate facts and logical conclusions.

By the way, djacq, there ARE other threads on the Cellar. You don't have to keep bringing this one back up to the top. Its wandered so off topic that I don't even remember what it was originally about, anymore.