its funny that you claim to know more than others regarding the subject,
Than *some* others, yes indeed I do make that claim and I stand by it.
but fail to see the situation from the japanese point of view.
You err in assuming that I have not tried. But, and here is a critical point, the Japanese point of view as such is really not the Japanese point of view but Japanese MILITARISTS point of view. Your request is a bit like suggesting that I ought to be more sensitive and receptive to the underlying premise of, for example, the people who came up with Germany's occupation policies in Europe. Before we get on our high horse about comparing someone with the hated Nazis, bear in mind that Japanese policies in China were (a) genocidal, when they weren't merely brutal, (b) deliberate, (c) done with the full knowledge of the Imperial General Staff and the Emperor. Under such circumstances (millions of noncombatant civilians killed for the pleasure of occupying troops) I see little there in the Japanese point of view worthy of sympathy. And the hell of it is that the Japanese repeated the treatment vis captive noncombatant civilian populations throughout southeast Asia.
open your mind for a bit.
F**k off or open your own. Take yer pick.
England and the United States both pursued very aggressive empire building campaigns long before Japan ever started to or are you saying that land was simply handed over to these countries out of the goodness of the original owners hearts?
Without a specific reference I'm not sure which American activities you'd have in mind. If this is a vague, panglossian reference to treatment of Native Americans I'll suggest that you actually read something about US Native American policy. In Americas worst days you can find only one Federally sanctioned attempt at genocide, vis a vis the treatment of the Cherokee and Choctaw under Jackson's administration, but even some of that story is overstated (particularly in British, Soviet, Chinese, and other Marxist presses). There are for ex rumours of smallpox ifested blankets that, while plausible, remain rumours. (And it's hard to accord with the Cherokee survivors accounts... most everyone who died in the Trail of Tears appear to be victims of starvation). Deliberate or crappy logistics? I think deliberate, and that's why Andrew Jackson should not be on our currency. But not anywhere in scale, organization, intent, and implementation remotely approaching anything meted out by the Third Reich, Japan, Britain in India, Netherlands in Indonesia, and about fifty other examples.
There are three accounts of US massacres of Native Americans plains Indians. Two of them under the famous, heh, Custer, for which we may thank Sitting Bull and his colleagues for killing off the bastard, and one organized by an armed civilian mob.
There are also many other legtimate grounds for objecton to treatment under the law, but these don't rise to the standard of garden variety homicide, much less the basic standard operating procedure of Imperial Japan or the Third Reich for treating captive civilian populations.
US "land grabbing" is in the context of German, Japanese, British, Spanish, Dutch, French, and Italian land grabbing, pretty minor. It's there, but tempered in the usual stupidly optimistic American Way (i.e. "We can FIX this place." So far that appears to have worked for a little while in the Philippines. Maybe.)
the problem was that the Japanese didn't start their land grabbing at the same time that the western powers did. if they had, then china would be japanese right now and everything would have been fine.
Ah no. Had Japan started land grabbing in China in the early 19th Century they would have been defeated, because both states had comparable military technologies but China had Japan *vastly* outgunned. China's vulnerability to Japan came about primarily as a consequence of British and Portuguese (and to a lesser extent German) imperialism in China. Earl Grey for example (the man, not the tea) "opened up" China's tea economy to Britain by smuggling tea cuttings from China to India and by smuggling opiates into China, both of which activities were against 19thC dynastic Chinese law, giving the British the dubious distinction of having the first State organized drug cartel.
also its very narrow minded to label Japans conduct of the war as horrific and yet don't label the US actions of firebombing non-strategis targets as horrific!
You obviously missed the fact that Ursa (and my response) pertained to the ORIGINS of the war and the likelihodo that the US public would have supported its pursuit to a Japanese defeat regardless of the immediate causus belli. If you want to argue the morality of the means used to bring a genocidal imperial state to its knees you may. I've given it alot of thought over the years and in the end can only conclude that in fact he who cuts first holds the lion's share of the blame for all that logically follows, morally speaking. And, I also hold that since Japan was both genocidal and the aggressor, the ends (Japan's surrender) completely justified the means. From my point of view, if a few million civilians are going to die, it were better that they be Japanese civilians (because Japan started the war) rather than Chinese civilians (who had not in any way warranted the brutality meted out on them by the IJA).
The Japanese were the perps and they were in complete control of their circumstance. All they had to do was (a) not kill millions of Chinese, (b) not start a war with the United States, (c) when it was apparent that they were incapable of resisting further, STOP killing Chinese and surrender to the United States. They chose poorly.
Frankly, your comparison is assinine. Because for your comparison to be valid you'd have to think the US would have continued to firebomb Japan after Japan surrendered or else start a campaign of genocide against Japan's civilians during the subsequent occupation. Japan made murder of harmless noncombants a mass industry.
to you, the attack on Pearl harbor is the ultimate in sins because of formal diplomatic protocol.
Clearly you have not read the previous posts. I do not view the attack on Pearl Harbor as the ultimate sin. Indeed, I do not view it as a "sin" at all. The targets were military targets. If yer gonna have a war, I can't fault someone for hitting a military target, or even civilians in and around military targets. Sh*t happens. Nor do I give a crap about the "diplomatic protocol." As I have already noted, in my opinion the presence or absence of a formal diplomatic declaration of war hours or even days in advance of the Pearl Harbor attack would not have mattered in the slightest to the American public. The nations were already predisposed to hostility, both on the grounds of ethnocentrism, and because of Japan's previous decades of conduct in China, and because of mutual economic interests in the western Pacific.
yet the senseless slaughter of civilians is OK?
No one has advocated the senseless slaughter of civilians. Indeed, one of the reasons that the United States had such diplomatic friction with Japan leading into the war was because Japan routinely committed senseless wholesale slaughters of noncombatant civilians in China. Now, my person moral point of view is that if one can put a stop to that sort of shit one should put a stop to it. (There's a caveat as to why I do not think that the US should have invaded Iraq recently, involving presumption of sovereignty over people within your own national borders). In short, the firebombings weren't "senseless" (they were purposeful, and achieved in measure the objective of Japan's surrender) and the targets were not wholly "innocent."
To the extent that putting a stop to mass executions in China, the Phillippines, and the far flung reaches of the empire (have you ever bothered to find out WHY the Solomons Islanders were so insistent on helping the United States once the USN became active in the South Pacific?) required killing lots of Japanese, that's what was required to do the job. Japan could have easily put an end to the firebombings and forefended the nukings by surrendering.
amazing
Well, "amazing" as in "I shake my head in disbelief at the arrogance of your post" is only viable if you don't have a factual or moral clue.
Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.
Didn't we have this conversation already?
