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It's 2022, not WWII.
They had helped us defeat the Japanese.
It's 2022, not WWII.
I assume you are talking about the Vietnamese and not the French, right?
The enemy of my enemy is a nice group to subjugate.They had helped us defeat the Japanese.
Not worse than Putin. Vietnam was one of the ideological wars of the period of the 20th century Cold War. Ukraine for Putin is simply a war of conquest, also popular in the 20th century.After the Japanese were defeated, the Vietnamese adopted a 'declaration of independence' modeled on ours, and asked us to support their not having France return. We did the opposite of what our 'values' say. And maybe a couple million people were killed simply because we pointlessly abused power. We were worse than Putin.
Hoo boy.
Now the allies were the bad guys.
lol
There are posters here that are simply incapable of separating their Socialist nirvana desires from the actual history. Thus EVERYTHING is the fault of capitalism. Clearly I am straining credibility to make a point. However, unfortunately I am not far off in my analysis.Hoo boy.
Now the allies were the bad guys.
lol
He certainly does spend a lot of time here expressing that same basic message throughout most, if not all, of his threads.Antiwar's entire worldview boils down to "America is evil and therefore whoever is against America must be the good side".
Which does not make it responsible for even half the stuff you appear to claim. Though they are both to be avoided, ideological wars at least pit ideologies against each other. Wars off conquest are based in pure greed.Video link is in #6.
Starting from 1:00- "The United States was, has always been, and continues to be an empire rooted in white supremacy."
Woo doggies, this historian doesn't mess around.
The way the Japanese treated those it occupied really wasn’t comparable though. The Japanese were on a whole other level of brutality.....far worse than any previously experienced.
I too note that @Antiwar has dodged this question multiple times now.He certainly does spend a lot of time here expressing that same basic message throughout most, if not all, of his threads.
Also, I notice that @Antiwar has not responded to your repeated question of what he thinks America should have done when we were attacked by the Japanese.
The Japanese were never "less brutal". In their culture of the time if you "stopped resisting" you were lower than cow dung....not worth shit and that is how they treated you. Better that you commit ritual suicide than stop resisting.They were less brutal when people stopped resisting, which is not to minimize what they did, but Japan did not seek to exterminate an entire race or culture as the Germans did. At the same time, there were absolutely efforts to destroy cultural heritage, which in itself is a pretty wicked thing to do. They did this in Korea and the Marianas, and I'm sure they did it to some degree or another elsewhere. But again, ironically, the very nation Japan colonized, China, is now doing the same in Western China. So history repeats itself, I guess.
What I do think gets almost always lost in the West is the real reason that Japan militarized in the first place. In 1854 the Japanese were largely an isolated feudalist backwater, which was then confronted and threatened with gunboats to open up its ports to Western (American) trade, or suffer a crushing military defeat and potential occupation. Japan wasn't stupid. They knew that China and other parts of the world had been occupied by European powers. So they signed a treaty and began a period of modernization for the express purpose of being able to compete militarily, economically, and politically with Western powers.
They were less brutal when people stopped resisting, which is not to minimize what they did, but Japan did not seek to exterminate an entire race or culture as the Germans did. At the same time, there were absolutely efforts to destroy cultural heritage, which in itself is a pretty wicked thing to do. They did this in Korea and the Marianas, and I'm sure they did it to some degree or another elsewhere. But again, ironically, the very nation Japan colonized, China, is now doing the same in Western China. So history repeats itself, I guess.
What I do think gets almost always lost in the West is the real reason that Japan militarized in the first place. In 1854 the Japanese were largely an isolated feudalist backwater, which was then confronted and threatened with gunboats to open up its ports to Western (American) trade, or suffer a crushing military defeat and potential occupation. Japan wasn't stupid. They knew that China and other parts of the world had been occupied by European powers. So they signed a treaty and began a period of modernization for the express purpose of being able to compete militarily, economically, and politically with Western powers.
After the Japanese were defeated, the Vietnamese adopted a 'declaration of independence' modeled on ours, and asked us to support their not having France return.
We did the opposite of what our 'values' say.
And maybe a couple million people were killed simply because we pointlessly abused power. We were worse than Putin.
The Japanese were never "less brutal". In their culture of the time if you "stopped resisting" you were lower than cow dung....not worth shit and that is how they treated you. Better that you commit ritual suicide than stop resisting.
You can read my post #46, which I think addresses the aboveUh....yes, they absolutely did. For example, the Japanese actively sought to stamp out Korean culture and subjugate the people there entirely. Japanese actions from China to Indonesia and the Philippines to Vietnam were overwhelmingly and psychotically brutal.
And no, they were never really “less brutal”. If anything, they were MORE brutal when the fighting stopped. Just look how they treated POWs.
That's how they treated soldiers, yes. Surrender was an act of cowardice, which was held with contempt. How they treated civilians is complex. I certainly won't argue that they were benevolent overlords, but they didn't slaughter everyone in sight either. I suppose they treated other Asians the way many colonial European powers did, or maybe how the U.S. treated Native and Black Americans - probably no worse than that.
"It was not long before Aung San found that what he meant by independence had little relation to what the Japanese were prepared to give—that he had exchanged an old master for an infinitely more tyrannical new one. As one of his leading followers once said to me, "If the British sucked our blood, the Japanese ground our bones!"[41