I think it's telling that the purple hearts ordered for the invasion of Japan are still being used.... though more were ordered in 2000 so they can be carried by field units, and distributed immediately.
they weren't exactly democratic at the time. their emperor and right wing will not just surrender like that. surrendering without negotiation is no go. it meant hanging for a lot of them. of course they were going to hesitate. it wasn't like, oh, we are going to surrender, please come in. a lot of them did get hanged later, not all. for example, their emperor with spared due to negotiation later. the biggest war criminal got away.
i didn't look at the links but they wanted conditional surrender. we wanted (and needed) unconditional surrender. there is an excellent book that goes thru this. i will try to find it and post the name of it.
The Chinese government was much more stupid to fight for the North Korea. China lost hundreds of thousands of young men. It would be so much better today if there was no North Korea, it would be so much easier to do business with South Korea.
if it was that simple, then world would be a much different place. it wasn't like people stopped fighting and waited for negotiation to take place. their soldiers were still killing, raping, looting everywhere. and the lives of those people don't count as much?
Here's the sermon referred to: http://inspiredvoter.com/about/transcript-jeremiah-wright’s-911-sermon/ The part that has people upset is in his "faith footnote": The sermon is about how we should respond to the 9/11 attacks and he's talking about the tendency to stray from revenge against armed opponents to revenge against unarmed innocents and the vicious cycle of violence begetting violence. I think what he's driving at in this footnote is our enemies are avenging our real violence not on their armed opponents but on unarmed innocents. And, our reaction is likely to be killing more innocents to pay them back in kind and that we need to break that cycle of revenge. Some of the sins of ours he lists are debatable (Hiroshima), some not so much (Native Americans, black slaves). Criticism of Wright on this sermon keeps bugging me. He's called unAmerican for enumerating atrocities committed by the USA. He's saying there is a reason people want to avenge themselves on us, because we've avenged ourselves on unarmed innocents (that they are collateral damage in a justified attack would be beside the point, wherever it may be applicable). Perhaps people are understanding him to mean that AQ was right to attack us. But, he's not saying that; he's saying we're in a cycle of violence begetting violence that we need to break. That we should not be surprised that the cycle was not broken elsewhere. I think it's strange (though I suppose precedented) that people can make out a pacifist sermon to be anti-American.
it's his opinion. you are entitled to your own beliefs. but his critics also have their different opinions. so no need to bash either side.
People who yell "Gdamn America" are not pacifists. Somebody like the Dalai Lama is a pacifist. This ranting and raving man is anything but.
I was referring to the war between the US and Al Qaida, not the US against the insurgency in Iraq. The US in WWII was involved in a war of attrition with Japan and Germany, bombing civilians and factories to exhaust the countries' ability to fight because it'd be a long stalemate if it was just the armies slugging it out. If you can justify bombing cities as the only way to win against an aggressor, why can't AQ justify their attack as the only way to win against a much more powerful enemy that they perceive to be an aggressor against Allah?
I'm not saying he is or isn't a pacifist, but yelling that out doesn't mean someone isn't a pacifist.
That middle east is one messed up place. Too bad they have so much oil. Someone invent oil replacement quickly and let the people there do what ever they want and the rest of the world can ignore them like before. I can see some similarities if you really really stretch it. Did the US threaten to destroy the people in middle east? Take away all their resources like the Japanese and Germans did during world war II?
I'm sorry but his actions are aggressive. It is anything but pacifist and peaceful. His words and tone are violent. They do not belong in any church.
Agreed they were. They were still at war. They wanted to surrender but terms were not agreed upon, and until that happened the war and crimes continued. I'm not denying that the Japanese weren't still fighting and doing bad things even though they wanted to surrender
replying to my own post so an edit doesn't get overlooked. it was from my modern japan class back at UT. it went to great depth about japan before surrender and after surrender. very interesting stuff. WAIT I HAVE FOUND IT! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393320278/ref=sip_pdp_dp_0 Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower anyhow...i read thru that link and it pretty consistent with people who don't think the bombs were needed. that being said i can provide just as many, if not many more, people who feel it was completely needed and justified at the time.
