I wasn’t trying to rip on “American moral standards”, or bitch about imperial ambitions. I was making a point, which seemed interesting to me.
As far as bitching about Hiroshima, I recall being with a younger person around 9-11. I said, “this time we need to go into Afghanistan and take no prisoners, get the job done, like we did in WWII.”\
The person looked at me with horror and said “You are a sick person for wishing death on thousands of innocent people. Have you ever been to Hiroshima? I was there with my friends on a college trip and it was a shame what America did to those people. I was embarrassed for our country.”
I replied, “I ain’t never been to Hiroshima, but I been to Pearl Harbor. Maybe you should go there and then tell me how you feel.”
Captain Morgan and my M14 by a campfire is more my thing, and me and God get along just fine, thanks.
It’s those who presume to speak for him (and I don’t mean you) whom I have a problem with.
As for the erudite sophisticate stuff, well, let’s just say that I agree with what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time, and sometimes feel a bit sorry for those who can’t.
And Chushin, as Push said (and he knows it to be true because I’ve told him so), sometimes I say stuff because I want to challenge something that’s been said, but other times, I just like saying stuff to see what kind of reaction people have.
It doesn’t even have to be tremendously inflammatory stuff.
I believe, in fact, that I could come onto here and say “I read somewhere that Jesus liked children,” and within minutes someone would shoot back, “oh yeah, well as you so conveniently neglect to mention, Mohammed happened to ‘like’ children too, like his ‘bride’ Aisha, who was only nine years old when the randy old goat herder married–or should I say raped–her! Which is just like what they do now in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, but of course you wouldn’t acknowledge that, because they’re noble savages, and you only hate Christianity and America, just like Lixy and Lifty and Orion and all those other Euro-fags!”
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
And Chushin, as Push said (and he knows it to be true because I’ve told him so), sometimes I say stuff because I want to challenge something that’s been said, but other times, I just like saying stuff to see what kind of reaction people have.
It doesn’t even have to be tremendously inflammatory stuff.
I believe, in fact, that I could come onto here and say “I read somewhere that Jesus liked children,” and within minutes someone would shoot back, “oh yeah, well as you so conveniently neglect to mention, Mohammed happened to ‘like’ children too, like his ‘bride’ Aisha, who was only nine years old when the randy old goat herder married–or should I say raped–her! Which is just like what they do now in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, but of course you wouldn’t acknowledge that, because they’re noble savages, and you only hate Christianity and America, just like Lixy and Lifty and Orion and all those other Euro-fags!”
Of course, I could be wrong.
[/quote]
Christianity and America, in exactly that order.
Do you know why dead soldiers have a flag on their coffin?
Because with the levee en masse armies got so huge and the number of butchered people was so enormous that Napoleon ordered to have dead soldiers covered with a flag after they had stapled a dozend or so on a cart to make it look less like a slaughterhouse and more like a dignified affair.
I know that the US are rich so every soldier gets his own flag now, but I wonder if the basic concept really has changed that much.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Chushin wrote:
lixy wrote:
An 1944 opinion poll found that 13% of Americans were in favour of exterminating ALL the Japanese.
That should tell you something about the extent of the anti-Japanese propaganda.
Yeah, I guess it pretty much failed, eh?
So…you think dehumanizing the Japanese to the point where 13% of Americans want them all dead (that’s women, children included) is a PR failure?[/quote]
[quote]lixy wrote:
An 1944 opinion poll found that 13% of Americans were in favour of exterminating ALL the Japanese.
That should tell you something about the extent of the anti-Japanese propaganda. [/quote]
Source? We’ll assume this is right for the moment.
Yes indeed it does. So let me see, by 1944 we had well over 1 million men at arms and had been fighting the Pacific war mostly alone for 3 years. Pretty much every one had some member of their immediate circle of family and friends who was in the military. Men and boys were returning home everyday in coffins or maimed. If one of your siblings had been killed, would you have a completely neutral opinion? Especially if it was done in the name of a semi-divine Emperor?
So try this on:
13% is arguably a pretty low number, given the number of casualties, the brutality of the fighting and the enormity of the war effort.
Attributing it all to propaganda is simple. If you shoot my brother, I don’t need propaganda to get mad at you.
[quote]jj-dude wrote:
lixy wrote:
An 1944 opinion poll found that 13% of Americans were in favour of exterminating ALL the Japanese.
That should tell you something about the extent of the anti-Japanese propaganda.
Source?
– jj[/quote]
www.tarleton.edu/~jdixon/WWIIOpinion.ppt
Not original source material, but here is a PowerPoint presentation that references a number of prewar and wartime public opinion polls conducted by the American Institute of Public Opinion, circa 1938-1945.
Here is the relevant question, and its answer:
December 1944: What do you think we should do with Japan as a country after the war?
Re-educate, rehabilitiate: 8%
Supervise and control: 28%
Destroy as a political entity, break up: 33%
Kill all Japanese: 13%
For comparison, here’s the equivalent question concerning Germany:
July 1944: If you had your say, how would we treat the people who live in Germany after this war?
Lenient treatment, active assistance, re-education, etc: 65%
Strict supervision, probationary period, isolation, disarmament: 42%
Severe measures, punitive action, torture, extermination: 8%
by 1944 we… had been fighting the Pacific war mostly alone for 3 years.[/quote]
Yup. Mostly alone… except for that teensy weensy, itty-bitty, almost too small to be noticed bit of help from China, the United Kingdom, British India, Australia, the Philippine Commonwealth, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada.
by 1944 we… had been fighting the Pacific war mostly alone for 3 years.
Yup. Mostly alone… except for that teensy weensy, itty-bitty, almost too small to be noticed bit of help from China, the United Kingdom, British India, Australia, the Philippine Commonwealth, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Canada.[/quote]
Nope. I said War in the Pacific and it was mostly a US undertaking. The land war in Asia was mostly Chinese (and a surprisingly strong Vietnamese insurgency) with US support. We were pretty much the only ones island hopping, not the Chinese.
Now if you have cites to show I’m wrong, I’d like to read them and improve my factual understanding of this. Seriously.