[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
lixy wrote:
There’s something about blindly following orders from the hierarchy that I find utterly repulsive.
You must really love Japanese culture then, huh? Now too, but especially then. [/quote]
japanese culture at the time was very similar to modern day Islamic culture of death. To defeat the muslims, we have to fight them like we fought the japanese. No mercy
[quote]lixy wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
lixy wrote:
There’s something about blindly following orders from the hierarchy that I find utterly repulsive.
Supremely ironic coming from a muslim.
How so? What sort of hierarchy binds a Muslim?[/quote]
the caliphate, your brothers dream of restoring
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Wouldn’t be the first time Americans put an entire race to death, or the first time one group of people put another group of people to death.
Americans weren’t trying to put an entire race to death in WWII, nor had Americans ever attempted such a thing a “first time” before.
[/quote]
I never said they were trying to do so in WWII. As to whether they attempted such a thing before, we (Americans) have not only attempted to exterminate whole races and cultures but succeeded quite handily in the past. Merely count the number of native American cultures around today… just what do you think happened to the 10 or 20 million natives who roamed this continent at one point? Sure, much of the death was either the result of plague (that Europeans and Americans both thanked God for, I might add) or done at the hands of pre-American Europeans, but I can assure you the 100 years of Indian wars this country fought surely left more than one Native culture obliterated. It would be impossible to say that as a country we have not in the past made institutional and systematic attempts to “put another group of people to death”. We after all have our own trails of tears, (Indian) concentration camps, and mass genocide.
And before you get all patriotic on me, these are historical facts. Besides, I’m not trying to say “oh, we Americans, we’re so evil…”. I’m trying to laugh at the naiveness of thinking the opposite, that “oh, we Americans, we should have put all them Japs to death, but in all of our eternal, God-blessed goodness we just couldn’t do it”. Please.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
As to whether they attempted such a thing before, we (Americans) have not only attempted to exterminate whole races and cultures but succeeded quite handily in the past. [/quote]
Flatly incorrect. We never attempted to exterminate a race.
A great many of them perished due to the introduction of foreign diseases. You equate those losses with “intentional” designs to wipe them out. Horseshit. No such.
Woeful historical ignorance. First, Indian tribes were not one united people and tribes often obliterated one another, and, additionally, instituted their own version of the “trail of tears” by forced removal from certain geographical areas (i.e., Cherokees were once around the Great Lakes region but were pushed south by other Indians).
With this behavior in mind - identical to “American” behavior prior to Americans arriving - were Indians attempting to exterminate…Indians?
Nope - it was a brutal contest between nations for control of land. This contest existed prior to Americans being in the New World, and it continued with their arrival. There was never any general legitimate attempt to erase Indians from the face of the earth.
And, no, there is no “mass genocide” - the Trail of Tears was preceded by an enormous attempt to “buy out” Indian lands with millions upon millions of dollars. If this was an attempt at “genocide”, it was the most pleasant attempt in recorded history.
Fact is, you are inventing historical narratives to suit an ideological bent you want to satisfy. Does the fact that Americans never engaged in “systemic genocide” mean that the history is pristine? Of course not - Americans behaved awfully in a savage fashion, exactly like…wait for it…Indian tribes prior to Americans’ arrival.
The history is tragic and brutal, on all sides - but at least get the history right.
You haven’t presented a single fact in support of your position.
if you are going to start a war, you had better think it though. the object of any war is to win at all cost.
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
aussie486 wrote:
I realize we are well-liked by many people all over the world too, however whenever I travel to Europe (all over) this hasn’t been the case. When it comes to politics a lot of Europeans I talk to generally have a bias towards Americans, and rightfully so.
[/quote]
Agree that there is lot of Europeans that have a issue with America but they also have issues with their neighbours as shown by history, have you spoken to any Eastern europeans that used to be under the jackboot of the Russians, they also generally appreciate America and don’t have the bias that some europeans have.
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
OK so fighting in WW2 against the Japanese, you’d probably hate the fuckers, makes sense. So I guess that justifies killing their entire race… yeap, makes sense. We should have done that to the Germans too back in the day.
[/quote]
Made sense to my uncle to kill the entire race, he had seen the Japanese castrate and crucifie and butcher without remorse, they attacked America at Pearl harbour and tried to take over the world.
He wasn’t a educated man, he was simple and honest as the day was long, he saw a effort by one race of people to take over the world and butcher everything they came across, he just treated them the way they treated everyone else, made sense to him.
Personally in re to the Germans, I personally would have let the Russians deal with them again with them the American’s were very forgiving, something most europeans generally forget when complaining about America.
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
jj-dude, insightful post, thank you!
If anyone asks me “Then what would you have done PB Andy?”, here’s my answer: I have no idea. I wasn’t alive back then, and I wasn’t President.[/quote]
Yep it was a insightfull post.
But if anyone asks me if i was the President, what i would have done: I would have dropped the first atomic bomb on the emperor’s palace, you know the guy who shows no remorse and still to this day the culture will not say sorry.
Start with the head of the beast and work down, that’s what i would have done.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
A bunch of stuff…
[/quote]
There is a lot of controversy over the causes of native decline in the Americas. I am tempted to say that you are merely following the feel-good story line about native Americans presented in high school history textbooks, but since neither you nor I are probably ready to pony up substantial citations to historical research I’ll let the details go.
Nevertheless your easy dismissal of the intentions and causes surrounding the decline in native population is surely too kind. I never said Europeans and Americans went on a systematic attempt to kill EVERY native on the continent–your misquoting aside. I said that there have been instances of both Europeans and Americans systematically eliminating Native tribes. The Pequot War is surely a safe example. This is historical fact.
So I still stand by my ironic remarks that flamboyantly touting America’s generosity in ONLY dropping two atomic bombs on Japan is a bit short sighted… Surely America’s history is only so clean that we can brag about not killing every Japanese if we view it through super-patriot glasses. I think most rational people can agree that the use of the atomic bombs was if not justified, then understandable. Surely the last thing we need is mindless chest pounding about how righteous we were in dropping the bombs…
If it had been possible to leave the Japanese military in charge of the home islands and get them to agree to withdraw from everywhere else and cease hostilities without either dropping atomic bombs or invading the home islands: would that have been so bad as to be worth millions of additional human deaths to obtain a full surrender?
You know if they never bombed Pearl Harbor…
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Yep. And the Japanese were batshit crazy. One of my dad’s jobs was to guard a cliff on Okinawa where women would jump off with their children in their arms. The fucking nut leaders had told the populace that American soldiers would torture the children and make the parents watch…kind of like Saddam Hussein did.[/quote]
The Japanese were reported to be surprised with the level of compassion shown to POWs. They were given water, food, even cigarettes. The reason for the surprise? They were told American soldiers would torture them without reason and then kill them.
[quote]tom63 wrote:
You know if they never bombed Pearl Harbor…[/quote]
Retaliation. Awesome.
And people wonder why others think poorly of America.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Surely the last thing we need is mindless chest pounding about how righteous we were in dropping the bombs… [/quote]
Who said righteous?
[quote]Makavali wrote:
stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Surely the last thing we need is mindless chest pounding about how righteous we were in dropping the bombs…
Who said righteous?[/quote]
This sounds pretty righteous to me…
[quote]
The ‘‘citizens’’ got exactely what they deserved for supporting the war effort of the japanese, in fact America was extremley forgiving to the Japanese. …
Speaking to my relatives who served in the Pacific, they wanted to put the entire japanese race to death, as i have said before America has been and is still is a beacon in a sea of darkness.[/quote]
That’s what I was responding too all along, I even quoted it in my first post in the thread. I suppose those like Thunderbolt prefer this sort of attitude instead of the sort of humility and soberness this event seems to call for. It is possible to support America and her decision to drop the bombs without viewing it as just one more example of how America is a “beacon in a sea of darkness”. Defending the dropping of the bombs as giving the Japanese what they deserved or talking about putting the entire Japanese race to death is childish and antithetical to understanding the the complex issues surrounding the bombings.
[quote]aussie486 wrote:
PB Andy wrote:
OK so fighting in WW2 against the Japanese, you’d probably hate the fuckers, makes sense. So I guess that justifies killing their entire race… yeap, makes sense. We should have done that to the Germans too back in the day.
Made sense to my uncle to kill the entire race, he had seen the Japanese castrate and crucifie and butcher without remorse, they attacked America at Pearl harbour and tried to take over the world.
He wasn’t a educated man, he was simple and honest as the day was long, he saw a effort by one race of people to take over the world and butcher everything they came across, he just treated them the way they treated everyone else, made sense to him.
Personally in re to the Germans, I personally would have let the Russians deal with them again with them the American’s were very forgiving, something most europeans generally forget when complaining about America.
[/quote]
Wow… more of the same sixty year old war propaganda. I love the image of the evil, dehumanized Japanese and German citizens, whom the pure, simple, honest Christian American farmer had to pick up arms against and defend the world from. This would be accurate, until you try and understand why the Japanese and Germans did what they did and understand that those pure, simple, honest Christian American farmers were almost as indoctrinated as their Japanese and German counterparts.
Look, I’m not defending Japanese and German war crimes, nor am I saying that America committed war crimes on near the scale the Japanese and Germans did. We certainly did not. Nevertheless your archetypes are really a bit played and do not help in understanding any of the real issues.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
aussie486 wrote:
PB Andy wrote:
OK so fighting in WW2 against the Japanese, you’d probably hate the fuckers, makes sense. So I guess that justifies killing their entire race… yeap, makes sense. We should have done that to the Germans too back in the day.
Made sense to my uncle to kill the entire race, he had seen the Japanese castrate and crucifie and butcher without remorse, they attacked America at Pearl harbour and tried to take over the world.
He wasn’t a educated man, he was simple and honest as the day was long, he saw a effort by one race of people to take over the world and butcher everything they came across, he just treated them the way they treated everyone else, made sense to him.
Personally in re to the Germans, I personally would have let the Russians deal with them again with them the American’s were very forgiving, something most europeans generally forget when complaining about America.
Wow… more of the same sixty year old war propaganda. I love the image of the evil, dehumanized Japanese and German citizens, whom the pure, simple, honest Christian American farmer had to pick up arms against and defend the world from. This would be accurate, until you try and understand why the Japanese and Germans did what they did and understand that those pure, simple, honest Christian American farmers were almost as indoctrinated as their Japanese and German counterparts.
Look, I’m not defending Japanese and German war crimes, nor am I saying that America committed war crimes on near the scale the Japanese and Germans did. We certainly did not. Nevertheless your archetypes are really a bit played and do not help in understanding any of the real issues. [/quote]
Your logic and common sense will not be tolerated around here.
Make it rain.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Defending the dropping of the bombs as giving the Japanese what they deserved or talking about pdie, iutting the entire Japanese race to death is childish and antithetical to understanding the the complex issues surrounding the bombings. [/quote]
Didn’t see to many of those complex issues in your earlier post when you were stating that America had extermiated races of people in the past but hey its America, lets stick the boot in.
Complex issues my arse, incredible amounts of American die, incredible amounts of japanese die
or just incredible amounts japanese die, you choose.
[quote]stokedporcupine8 wrote:
Look, I’m not defending Japanese and German war crimes, nor am I saying that America committed war crimes on near the scale the Japanese and Germans did. We certainly did not. Nevertheless your archetypes are really a bit played and do not help in understanding any of the real issues. [/quote]
Fair enough