Carville: Wake up Democrats; you could lose

[Akhlut]

Yes, economic sanctions against one of three/four nations on the earth that was managing to somehow avoid the effects of the Great Depression mainly through internal actions. I'm sure that is going to work out in a stunning manner.

Like I said, I don't like sanctions, but it is something they considered at the time. And the Depressions limited the option there because we were leaning toward protectionism anyway, which actually contributed to the war. The big difference between sanctions and protectionism though is the other side might be able to end the former with a deal. With the other countries closing exports for their own purposes, you might see war as the only way out.

I will note that for Japan, they were already slaughtering Chinese people and using them for human experimentation well before the US started trying to use economic sanctions against Japan: the Rape of Nanking happened in 1937, the US started sanctions in July 1941.

So, it turns out that the sanctions were too little, too late, and probably wouldn't have had the desired effect anyway.

So, how do you propose on combating their already well-established and highly polished propaganda arm?

With the truth.

"Success is the important thing. Propaganda is not a matter for average minds, but rather a matter for practitioners. It is not supposed to be lovely or theoretically correct. I do not care if I give wonderful, aesthetically elegant speeches, or speak so that women cry. The point of a political speech is to persuade people of what we think right. I speak differently in the provinces than I do in Berlin, and when I speak in Bayreuth, I say different things than I say in the Pharus Hall. That is a matter of practice, not of theory. We do not want to be a movement of a few straw brains, but rather a movement that can conquer the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular, not intellectually pleasing. It is not the task of propaganda to discover intellectual truths. " - Goebbels

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success. " - Adolf Hitler

Don't get me wrong, I do think the truth if a most wondrous thing, but the Nazis were hiding behind what they believed the truth to be and were more than willing to spill blood over their perceived truths. The best way and the way to least suffering to stop them was to bloody them first.

Or it could have convinced them that the other nations were too weak to stop them and they'd be willing to invade more.

Trade isn't caused by invasions.

After the Mongol conquests, trade seemed to flourish quite well as former barriers were broken down, allowing for new trade to expand.

In the real world, there was some resistance inside the German army before 1939, which was struck a big blow when Germany actually won some battles early in the war. They got what they wanted, and it didn't cost them much. This helped to solidify Hitler's support.

And had they lost some battles in 1938 with an Anglo-French invasion over the occupation of Czechoslovakia, those resistance elements would have been proven right and Hitler's regime would be on thin ice, if not thrown out of office entirely.

If Poland repelled the German invasion militarily, that would have probably been the end of Hitler. Or, if trade was doing ok and the economy was picking up, then they launch the invasion and get cut off. That may well have also led to a coup.

All of which would have been easier with a Western Front after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, a most decidedly military solution, not pacifist solution.

And where would you get these materials from? The US's own flagging economy?

Yes, of course, the other options are non-options. Asking someone else to make our concessions would be like using holocaust guilt to force hundreds of thousands of Arabs, who had nothing to do with it, out of their homes to make room for a Jewish state. That's utterly ridiculous.

Yeah, but Britain had the power to force the Arabs out of Palestine; who had the power to force the US to trade with Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan?

Also, unlike Palestine/Israel, how many options were there to German or Japanese invasion in the laste 1930s?

The US economy was recovering throughout the 1930's, and we could use the foreign trade as another kind of demand stimulus.

We were able to mobilize to build tanks and guns for the war, after all.

Or we just could have gone to war earlier to stop Japanese aggression in Asia. :v

I don't like the idea of a preemptive invasion, though I could perhaps accept improving the military defense of Poland or France.

Not Czechoslovakia?

Still let Hitler make the first invasion, but get enough shit there to see to it that his invasion fails. (With a little luck, that could deter the invasion too, though it could also provoke it earlier... which might itself throw Hitler off base.)

The UK and France both could have acted against Nazi Germany after the Munich Agreement or the invasion of Czechoslovakia and they just sort of sat on their asses for fear of repeating WWI. Turns out, had they been prepared for WWII to be as bad on them as WWI, they would have been pleasantly surprised, as the UK and France had less than half the deaths as they received in WWI, while simultaneously preventing over 26 million Soviet deaths. And this is assuming that in a war with Germany in 1938 was as much of a problem for them as one in 1940, especially considering that prior to the Pact of Steel that brought Italy into an alliance with Nazi Germany, Italy was willing to ally itself with the UK and France.

Turns out that inactivity in hopes of utilizing pacifistic means of avoiding warfare and slaughter contributed far more to the largest slaughter of humanity the world has ever seen than an early, straight-forward military action would have.

Except that torture doesn't actually produce any results like that, and most people who go to war rarely do a good analysis on the outcomes; hell, as a 17 year old high school kid, I could have told you that going to war in Iraq in 2003 was just going to result in a large insurgency and more terrorists for no discernible reason.

That's kinda the point: humans often aren't qualified to do a consequentialist analysis. We get it wrong, a lot. Hell, we can't even be sure - look at this discussion, can either of us actually say if Plan B would definitively have been better or worse than plan A, considering its outcomes are unknown? What about a Plan C neither of us even considered?

Humans are imperfect and can make poor decisions? Shocking. :v

Seriously, though, if you're going to use that argument, then by extension, you should be constantly paralyzed by indecision as you go through Plans A-Z x 10 ^10^10^10.... You would lose all initiative as you must consider every conceivable option available to you. Thus, like most things in life, one must approximate and make the best decisions with the best available information. Sometimes, those options will be shitty and you have to choose the lesser of two evils lest you be paralyzed by no decision and end up with an even worse outcome than by doing something, though it may require some pain and evil outcomes.

We might be able to isolate some variables in retrospect, and maybe use that to predict the future, but that's fucking hard, and people will get it wrong. Worst of all, they might be confident in it anyway.

Like with pacifism?

This has happened again and again. It isn't that these people don't believe that the consequences of an action determine right or wrong... they do believe that, making them true consequentialists, but they are either incompetent or just tragically wrong about what those consequences will be, over and over again.

And? That's true of everyone, pacifists included.

A true consequentialist must renounce that philosophy based on a consequentialist principle of risk management. If you allow it, people will believe it, and they will get it wrong.

I can make the same exact argument for nearly all philosophies: people will inevitably fuck it up and hurt other people. Unless you cleave to an oblivionist sort of philosophy stating all humans should be exterminated, one has to accept that people are going to screw things up and make poor choices from time to time. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater solves nothing but to paralyze one with indecision based on fear that somewhere, somehow, something may be fucked up.

[Bakustra]

Are you really saying that the 2nd Sino-Japanese War was a consequence of religious fanaticism and a supposed divine mandate, Nitram? Is this really where you're going with this? I'll see you on the other side of "It's their culture!!!", if you don't mind, but I would like to note that even if this was the case, they still acted as rationally as any of the belligerents in the Second World War did.

Also, implying that the Japanese government wanted to exterminate the Chinese (presumably based on Nanking, comfort women, Unit 731, etc.) is disingenuous. It's like saying that the American government wanted to exterminate the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, based on My Lai, free-fire zones, defoliants, the torture of supposed Vietcong captives, and so on. Note that nothing about this suggests that the actions of the Japanese government were right or acceptable or excusable.

When we put these two things together, though, what we see is one of the signs of protofascism, though one that is hardly universal to it- creating amorphous enemies. The Japanese are so primitive and stupid they believe that God told them to fight this war, but at the same time they're so deadly and dangerous we have to destroy them before they murder literally all of China and turn the dead bodies into slave labor. Doing this for enemies decades past is funny, but sad, as it is part of the means by which the past is forgotten and replaced with the simpler, easier past we would prefer.

EDIT: Also, every single justification of war, especially preemptive war, relies on the assumption that groups cannot be held to the same moral standards as individuals and I would like to see a defense of that, since it underlies the arguments of many in this thread.

[Simon_Jester]

I wonder how chimerical the idea of a 'primitive' mindset armed with modern weapons of deadly power really is.

Why did Bush Jr. invade Iraq? I've heard quite a few people try to tell me he thought God told him to.

The idea that someone is at once belligerent because they're dumb or crazy, and dangerous because they're well armed, is totally sensible at the individual level. A lot of violent criminals have something going wrong in their brain, for instance- they don't function in society and lash out, or they're mentally ill, or they're intoxicated.

Why should we be surprised if most wars are started by nations that have some kind of dysfunction in their collective consciousness?

It's not like this idea doesn't generalize. A plague of craziness or folly can affect a Western democracy about as easily as it can affect an Asian military dictatorship, after all.

I'd think this would be a very logical and appealing notion to anyone who dislikes war- war is a dysfunction. If a war starts, it means something has gone wrong, and it probably means that some particular group is thinking badly. Either they're being foolish, or they're being immoral, or in some other way their thoughts have led them to set off a war.

The alternative seems worse. If right-thinking people can start wars, then the decision to fight a war can be totally rational, which makes it harder to say that war is always bad.

I don't see any problem with saying "people who start wars are thinking wrong," if the ideal is really pacifism.

Although it's murkier if we start to apply double standards to our pacifism. Which I think D-13 is doing when he considers the US attacking Japan to be bad, but considers Japan attacking China to be irrelevant.

[Zinegata]

they still acted as rationally as any of the belligerents in the Second World War did.

Actually, any sensible student of the Pacific War will tell you that the Japanese were completely insane for even starting the war. Crazier than Hitler invading the Soviet Union. For the most part, were not acting "rationally".

Attempting to attack the United States when the latter has overwhelming material superiority (as well as being the source of most of Japan's vital strategic materials) was not merely stupid. It was incredibly stupid.

Moreover, most of their battles (particularly ground battles) were fought based on sheer fanaticism as opposed to sound tactical sense. Battles like the Tenaru River (wherein the Japanese were essentially making bayonet charges against artillery and machine guns) were the norm rather than the exception, and much of their early successes owed to the fact that they were fighting poorly trained or disciplined troops. War does, in fact, sometimes favor the fanatics instead of the rational thinkers.

And a lot of this was, in fact, caused by the seisen (Holy War) propagada and the general mood of the Japanese government.

Moreover, you are very stupid to believe that being a fanatic prevents you from having rational thought. What instead happens is that fanatics takes rational thinking to its extremes without regard for morals, or they base their thinking on flawed presumptions that cannot be questioned, which results in irrational actions (based on an objective viewpoint) to be taken instead.

For the Japanese, the idea that they were somehow God's chosen people who cannot be defeated (I'm generalizing, it's more nuanced in reality but Bakustra won't appreciate them anyway) is what caused them to choose going to war with the United States, as opposed to agreeing to stop their invasion of China.

"We cannot lose!", therefore, "Attack the United States which is many times more powerful than us!". Internally, that's a consistent train of thought. In reality, they were idiots for presuming that "We cannot lose".

[Bakustra]

Why does it matter whether we classify the world into "primitive" brown people and "civilized" white people? Well, for one thing, in the world that we actually live in, the largest reason for the 2nd Sino-Japanese War was Japan's desire to move from the first category into the second. They did this by emulating the successful powers of the world at the time. Part and parcel of that was the establishment of colonies, of a strong military, and of a flexing of that military to show that they were a force to be reckoned with. This came to a head with the Japanese attempt to throw the other colonial powers out of East and Southeast Asia and establish their own dominance over the region. As a consequence of various factors, probably including colonialism and the peculiarities of the IJA, the Japanese efforts in China saw a number of massacres and war crimes committed, culminating in latent anti-Japanese racism still being a major thing in the US today.

But this mindset created a world where nations in the inferior category wished to move into the superior category, and the only way they saw to do that was to emulate the successful, which led to tragedy, as the successful nations got that way through systematic evil.

Even if we wish to modify things so that there is no longer a racial component to this hierarchy of nations, the evil lay in the hierarchy and the desire to escape inferiority.

*snip lengthy rant about how the Japanese were all uniquely religious fanatics among the WWII belligerents and completely irrational*

No, their goal was a perfectly rational one. They declared war in order to gain a quick victory through decisive battles to break the ability of the US to fight them, at the end of which the US would be forced to admit that Japan had its own corner of the world they couldn't do anything about. This was a rational goal, built with a consciousness of their advantages and disadvantages, perfectly in keeping with the strategic mindset of the rest of the world, barring Japan actually intending to keep to the anti-submarine-warfare treaties. The modern approach to naval warfare was developed through the course of the war, and here we can see that the authoritarian nature of the Japanese military did slow down their ability to respond to this development. So in attacking the US, they were acting to fulfill their central strategic goal of establishing a sphere of influence in East and Southeast Asia that was wholly theirs, and indeed it was the only thing they could do to keep to that goal- submitting to the US would mean abandoning it, as would curtailing their efforts to achieve political and military domination of China and SE Asia. It was inhumane, evil, etc., but it was still perfectly rational.

As for the Tenaru, you're either lying or ignorant, as the IJA units fought using man-portable support weaponry against an enemy they underestimated the size of, (instead of the picture of stupid jackasses charging machine guns with bayonets affixed and shitloads of Zulu imagery you present), and while it isn't known why they didn't retreat, in my estimation Ichiki made the decision to go down fighting rather than be slaughtered as they ran by the US Marines (those IJA troops which did run were strafed and cut down to the last by American forces, by the way), which is nothing that American and Soviet units did not do at other times throughout the war.

The fanaticism of the IJA probably resulted from the practice of common and ritual abuse as part of training, in much the same approach as fraternity hazing- suffer for something, become invested in it, be willing to sacrifice for it. But it's overstated in any case- Allied propaganda efforts had major successes in Burma, which was the only theater for most of the war where retreat was practical for IJA troops. Perhaps the refusal to surrender of so many IJA soldiers was in part because they were cut off from any hope of retreat, or perhaps there were several reasons.

However, "Japanese fanatics lolol" is not a reason, it is an excuse, and a shitty one. So is blaming the Second Sino-Japanese War on religious fanaticism alone. Both forbid any further look into the roots, no matter how much nuance you claim to be able to see. I think I'd prefer if you were blaming this on the malign influence of a cult of Amatsu-Mikaboshi worshippers. At least that might be fun.

[Bakustra]

As an addendum, if we are evaluating based on "success", then the IJN and IJA came very close with Kokoda and Guadalcanal to achieving their goal of rendering the US unable to fight them effectively, so their strategy was hardly a joke.

Also, while the fanaticism of individual IJA soldiers is a common trope, it's almost certainly exaggerated by the fact that Marine units on Guadalcanal and later throughout the Pacific made a policy of killing wounded Japanese soldiers, so you have nothing to lose by trying to shoot them anyhow- even if you don't, there's still a good chance they'll kill you anyways.

[Block]

Also, while the fanaticism of individual IJA soldiers is a common trope, it's almost certainly exaggerated by the fact that Marine units on Guadalcanal and later throughout the Pacific made a policy of killing wounded Japanese soldiers, so you have nothing to lose by trying to shoot them anyhow- even if you don't, there's still a good chance they'll kill you anyways.

That had nothing at all to do with wounded Japanese soldiers blowing themselves up rather than be taken prisoner, I'm sure.

[Zinegata]

No, their goal was a perfectly rational one. They declared war in order to gain a quick victory through decisive battles to break the ability of the US to fight them, at the end of which the US would be forced to admit that Japan had its own corner of the world they couldn't do anything about.

Actually, all you're demonstrating is Japan was - as I was saying - working on a flawed premise thus leading to insane actions being taken.

Defeating the United States is not Japan's ultimate goal. You're an idiot for thinking it is. It's ultimate goal is to have "its own corner of the world".

One of the core beliefs under Seisen revolves around the belief that as God's chosen people, Japan is entitled to its own corner of the world.

However, this is a flawed premise. Because the corner of the world they are claiming is already owned by someone else - the Chinese. The Chinese rightly saw the Japanese as foreign invaders and fought back. The Japanese - who were shocked and angry at how the Chinese fought back - commit mass atrocities. The United States then stepped in and told Japan to stop.

It was only at this point that "Defeating the United States" became a goal. Because Japan refused to give up on its flawed premise, and instead decided that they should try and win a war against an enemy with far superior material strength.

The IJN simply made the most rational plan possible based on this insane premise. Because again, it's totally possible to make rational plans based on insane premises.

As for the Tenaru, you're either lying or ignorant

The United States lost something like 50 men at Tenaru, as opposed to over 700 Japanese. The fact that they had some heavy weapons like light machine guns does not change the fact that they charged machine guns like idiots, because they fought with fanaticism more than common sense.

But it's overstated in any case- Allied propaganda efforts had major successes in Burma, which was the only theater for most of the war where retreat was practical for IJA troops.

Burma was practical for retreats because of the Monsoon which periodically halted offensive operations completely; not because of Allied propaganda. Moreover, Kimura was again one of the few exceptions among the IJA Generalship who were willing to retreat.

So is blaming the Second Sino-Japanese War on religious fanaticism alone.

I'm not denying that there are other reasons. But thinking that it's not one of the major reasons is pretty much in denial of almost all historical fact.

[Zinegata]

As an addendum, if we are evaluating based on "success", then the IJN and IJA came very close with Kokoda and Guadalcanal to achieving their goal of rendering the US unable to fight them effectively, so their strategy was hardly a joke.

LOL.

Neither Kokoda nor Guadalcanal had any real hope of rendering the US Navy unable to fight.

The former was a disastrous land battle for the Japanese, because it's one thing to land troops to fight and another thing entirely to kept them supplied and fed. It wasn't close to doing anything of the sort.

Guadalcanal was a battle of attrition, and as the side with the inferior numbers the Japanese could ill-afford to fight battles of attrition.

Nothing Japan did could have rendered the US Navy unable to fight. At best they can delay defeat by maybe another six months.

Wanna move this to history so you can get properly bitch-slapped?

[Simon_Jester]

to simon:

I don't consider it to be irrelevant, but look at some facts - Japan didn't want to kill Chinese just for the sake of killing Chinese. It was just a means to an end. Prior to 1937, it was pacifying a source of raw materials (Note: I'm pretty sure the Chinese civil war killed 50x more people in that period than the Japanese did... the Chinese government at the time was a pretty brutal military dicatorship. I wonder if Japanese war propaganda sold the invasion as "liberating" the Chinese?)

No, the Chinese civil war did not kill fifty times more people than the Japanese did. If they had managed to do that, they would have totally depopulated all of China and there would be nothing left, because fifty times (or even twenty times) as many Chinese people as were killed in WWII did not exist. There literally weren't that many Chinese people in the world. I looked it up.

Try not to make these things up according to preconceptions about who is bad and who is good. It makes you look as silly, like the guys who think we found WMDs in Iraq.

In 1937 it started out as either another land grab or something like that (one reason this thread takes a long time to reply to is while it is very easy to find lists of how many of each model of tank there was in some battles, trying to figure out why the people made the decisions they did, what other options they had, what they hoped to gain, etc. is a lot more time consuming, and I'm no historian either)

But then the Chinese decided this had crossed the line and upped it to total war. This is when the killing really took off, with all kinds of poor people being roped into soldiering and dying by the millions and the Japanese were also using all kinds of strategic bombing and WMD attacks, really nasty shit, but not just to kill Chinese, but as a means to end the war.

And yet the Japanese could, at pretty much any time, have said "You know what? Fuck it, owning an extra chunk of China isn't worth all this killing" and just... walked away. By your own argument they could just walk away, hand China back all the crap they'd taken from China over the years, and China would be like "sweet, this is great!" China was not the aggressor here; every ten years or so since about 1895 the Japanese had been coming back to grab random chunks of China and turn them into chunks of Japan. The Chinese were understandably displeased about this- how would you like it if people kept showing up to take piles of your stuff every few weeks? Where were the Japanese going to stop doing this crap?

But no, Japan had to decide to up and grab another part of China's land. And then, when China went all "fuck you, we will fight you like crazy to make you quit grabbing our damn land every time we turn around," Japan flipped out, pulled out the big guns, and went double-or-nothing.

The same reason we incinerated over 100,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The same reason we burned over 100,000 people in Dresden and Tokyo.

Stopping the war doesn't allow the Japanese to keep killing of millions of people. It means they achieve their desired ends by a different means; it means they can stop the mass killing.

No, because Japan was fighting in China before they were fighting anyone else. To stop the war between the US and Japan, and avoid the war between Russia and Japan, would do nothing to stop the war between Japan and China.

Unless, of course, the US dictated terms of "pull out of China," which would have been possible but it was very hard to convince the Japanese to take that seriously while leaving their homeland the hell alone. Japan's overall World War Two strategy was frighteningly similar to that of the Black Knight in Monty Python, and it's hard to see how Graham Chapham was getting out of that one without the Black Knight losing a limb or two.

But anyway I just got up because what I just realized while lying in bed that what I called "human rights observers" and Nitram called "spies" actually have a word well known to people at the time, and today:

Journalists.

The problem was that the Japanese didn't worry very much about what foreign journalists said. This is sort of like how Churchill was talking to Stalin and they had the following exchange, roughly:

C: "If you do that you'll make the Pope mad."

S: "How big is the Pope's army?"

Since the Pope's army was basically this random bunch of Swiss guards with those funny halberds or whatever, Stalin wasn't going to pay a lot of attention to him. Some people are like that, they just don't get the militarism out of their system like they ought to.

Why does it matter whether we classify the world into "primitive" brown people and "civilized" white people? Well, for one thing, in the world that we actually live in, the largest reason for the 2nd Sino-Japanese War was Japan's desire to move from the first category into the second. They did this by emulating the successful powers of the world at the time. Part and parcel of that was the establishment of colonies, of a strong military, and of a flexing of that military to show that they were a force to be reckoned with. This came to a head with the Japanese attempt to throw the other colonial powers out of East and Southeast Asia and establish their own dominance over the region. As a consequence of various factors, probably including colonialism and the peculiarities of the IJA, the Japanese efforts in China saw a number of massacres and war crimes committed, culminating in latent anti-Japanese racism still being a major thing in the US today.

But this mindset created a world where nations in the inferior category wished to move into the superior category, and the only way they saw to do that was to emulate the successful, which led to tragedy, as the successful nations got that way through systematic evil.

Even if we wish to modify things so that there is no longer a racial component to this hierarchy of nations, the evil lay in the hierarchy and the desire to escape inferiority.

If the nations in the superior position can be blamed for evil acts, surely the nations in the inferior position can be blamed for committing similar evil acts en route to superiority.

I don't advocate punishing Japan now for what Japan did then. It's a different country now in a lot of ways. But I don't think we can grant any one nation an ethical free pass for its aggression just because they were trying to imitate the stronger powers of a thuggish, aggressive international order. To do that is to deny them moral agency, to ignore the practical consequences of any suffering caused by the ambitious country, and to promote a cycle of international violence.

If Country A attacks Country B in imitation of Country X's attack on Country Y, should we ignore Country A's actions because no one stopped Country X? How are we to ever move beyond old evils if we think that way? Should we say the US is right to invade Outer Berzerkistan because that's how the colonial French would have behaved in 1900? I don't think so- I think we should say the US is wrong to invade if that's how the colonial French would have behaved, because the way they behaved was wrong back then.

So when looking at the Pacific War, I think dead Chinese people still count in moral calculations, even if the people killing them are just as brown as they are and are really only doing it because that's what all the cool countries are doing.

As an addendum, if we are evaluating based on "success", then the IJN and IJA came very close with Kokoda and Guadalcanal to achieving their goal of rendering the US unable to fight them effectively, so their strategy was hardly a joke.

Neither of those would have secured Japan's defensive perimeter indefinitely, because they didn't do anything to stop the US from building more ships. Ultimately, you cannot control a far-flung network of islands if you can't get stuff out to the islands, and you can't get stuff out to the islands if it keeps ending up on the bottom of the ocean because someone snuck up on your ships and shot them full of torpedoes.

The problem with the Japanese strategy was that it simply wasn't going to work for very long; it was based on the assumption that their enemies' industrial strength was irrelevant because of their moral weakness. When their 'weak-strong' opponents turned out not to be as cowardly as expected and didn't give up fighting as expected, the war became unwinnable no matter how many superficial victories and massive bodycounts they stacked up.

Does this sound familiar? It should, because it's the same mistake a lot of people make going into guerilla wars that they wind up losing.

Also, while the fanaticism of individual IJA soldiers is a common trope, it's almost certainly exaggerated by the fact that Marine units on Guadalcanal and later throughout the Pacific made a policy of killing wounded Japanese soldiers, so you have nothing to lose by trying to shoot them anyhow- even if you don't, there's still a good chance they'll kill you anyways.

That was part of a vicious cycle- fake surrenders were common enough that soldiers trying to take Japanese prisoners were putting their own lives at serious risk, so they got paranoid and trigger-happy and assuming that all surrenders were fake, so yes, there was not much incentive to try to surrender anyhow.

After they've heard a few horror stories about a guy "surrendering" to someone in the next platoon just so he can get close enough to lob a grenade into their trench, most soldiers stop taking prisoners even if the vast majority of people trying to surrender to them are sincere. Both sides started acting like this a lot on the Eastern Front, for example.

War does that to people, which is yet another reason on top of many others why it's a very bad thing all around.

[Sea Skimmer]

Burma also happens to be the only place the Japanese used lethal chemical weapons against anyone other then the Chinese, its hardly a great campaign for Japans reputation.

[Eulogy]

It really doesn't matter how badass or divinely favoured you think you are. When it comes down to it, wars can't be fought on morale alone - if they were, Japan would have stomped on everybody. As it is, a Dalek-like superiority complex is as much a danger to you as it is useful.

It also illustrates that those in charge must always keep a cool and down-to-earth head, or bad things will happen. If Japan didn't act like a petulant bully - or at the very least properly punished its war criminals - the US might not have bothered taking an interest in them. Too bad Japan's insanity burned out whatever horse sense they might have had, or else they wouldn't have gotten nuked twice.

[Zinegata]

Burma also happens to be the only place the Japanese used lethal chemical weapons against anyone other then the Chinese, its hardly a great campaign for Japans reputation.

Was this during the time of Mutaguchi? I mention Kumira, who commanded from '44 onwards and who did the sensible thing by retreating. He also spared Rangoon from street fighting.

Mutaguchi by contrast was the idiot who ordered that offensive at Imphal-Kohima, which led to the deaths of 50K IJA soldiers due to his "no retreat" bullshit; and he was the one in charge while the Death Railway was being built.

I've always thought it was a shame that Kimura was convicted and executed for war crimes when Mutaguchi only got a prison sentence.

[SirNitram]

Are you really saying that the 2nd Sino-Japanese War was a consequence of religious fanaticism and a supposed divine mandate, Nitram? Is this really where you're going with this? I'll see you on the other side of "It's their culture!!!", if you don't mind, but I would like to note that even if this was the case, they still acted as rationally as any of the belligerents in the Second World War did.

Also, implying that the Japanese government wanted to exterminate the Chinese (presumably based on Nanking, comfort women, Unit 731, etc.) is disingenuous. It's like saying that the American government wanted to exterminate the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, based on My Lai, free-fire zones, defoliants, the torture of supposed Vietcong captives, and so on. Note that nothing about this suggests that the actions of the Japanese government were right or acceptable or excusable.

When we put these two things together, though, what we see is one of the signs of protofascism, though one that is hardly universal to it- creating amorphous enemies. The Japanese are so primitive and stupid they believe that God told them to fight this war, but at the same time they're so deadly and dangerous we have to destroy them before they murder literally all of China and turn the dead bodies into slave labor. Doing this for enemies decades past is funny, but sad, as it is part of the means by which the past is forgotten and replaced with the simpler, easier past we would prefer.

EDIT: Also, every single justification of war, especially preemptive war, relies on the assumption that groups cannot be held to the same moral standards as individuals and I would like to see a defense of that, since it underlies the arguments of many in this thread.

I'm saying religious extremism was part of the entire clusterfuck that was Japan's general decision to try and fuck everyone they could reach. And, as much as you might want to think I said it, I never said they wanted to exterminate the Chinese; but they sure as hell murdered alot of them. The Rape of Nanking(300,000 mass murdered), chemical weapons(375 authorized uses in the Battle Of Wuhan alone), and releasing the bubonic plague into cities to induce outbreaks do rather speak to genocide as modernly described. Throw in the outreach to ethnic minorities, and it's rather open and shut. Genocide is not 'Extermination of all people of a grouping'.

And do stop putting retarded words in my mouth, you slimy bucket of pus. Very smart people can be religious extremists, and as I've maintained, it's not the main reason. It's just the reason that naive pacifists conveniently forget.

[Sea Skimmer]

Was this during the time of Mutaguchi? I mention Kumira, who commanded from '44 onwards and who did the sensible thing by retreating. He also spared Rangoon from street fighting.

As I recall it was during the Imphal campaign, I can track down the exact cites tomorrow, but anyway it was not clearly authorized at the army or area army level as far as anyone can tell now. Rather one brigade took chemical grenades from stockpiles and began using them on British armor and kept doing so for a considerable time. Once Tokyo found out they hastily ordered all toxic chemicals overseas shipped back to Japan, except for those in China which were allowed to be used on a regular basis because the Chinese had no means of retaliating and the US and British weren't willing to make the war even more horrible just over China (also people were uncertain of many Chinese claims, Japan used toxic smoke more so than highly deadly agents). The British ignored the issue, as they rightly suspected the use was not formal Japanese policy. But it sure doesn’t say much for the discipline or mentality of Japanese officers in the field that they would just take the initiative to start something like that.

Rangoon was spared because Japanese forces were out of position to defend it, and making the attempt after everyone had been sent north, would have left all of Thailand and Malay open to near unopposed invasion, which I don’t think any Japanese officer was dumb enough to think was a good idea. The NEI had already been dangerously stripped of troops in 1942-43 as it was, so no real reserves existed closer than central China and Formosa. The city is a terrible place to defend, and while I can’t say I know much on the exact nature of it, I’m pretty sure it lacked a big fortress and near indestructible office buildings in the center like Manila so attractively held. Its certainly not an example of Japanese mercy, but it did show that at least an army group commander with a wider mission was capable of giving up a city he had no troops in… not too impressive.

Mutaguchi by contrast was the idiot who ordered that offensive at Imphal-Kohima, which led to the deaths of 50K IJA soldiers due to his "no retreat" bullshit; and he was the one in charge while the Death Railway was being built.

Imphal-Kohima made some real sense no matter the losses; Japan was going to loose Burma if the allies were allowed to attack as they would be able to strike by land and sea at the same time. The plan might have worked had the allies not pulled back before hand, and not had such lavish aerial resupply with cooperative weather available. Refusing to withdraw when the men were starving though, yeah that’s one of the more notable examples of fanatical stupidity. Loosing 50,000 out of 65,000 men is a difficult thing to do.

I've always thought it was a shame that Kimura was convicted and executed for war crimes when Mutaguchi only got a prison sentence.

They both should have been executed but I don’t feel like talking about those trials. The jist of it being, that use of POW and civilian slave labor under brutal conditions continued on the death railway and other projects until the end of the war. The death railway was built like utter crap and needed lots of work to repair even without the allied bombing.

[Bakustra]

Their goal was to force the US out of the war, and early in the war the US was heavily dependent on Australia, and if they managed to take Port Moresby and assemble a credible invasion or blockading force, then Australia would suddenly be a lot more likely to withdraw from the war. If they managed to throw the US off of Guadalcanal, that would have delayed further American assaults, and things would look more like the stalemate the Japanese wanted, making a negotiated settlement more likely. While they didn't have the ability to destroy or even cripple the US Navy, or win a long-term war, those were never the Japanese goal, since they were quite cognizant of their faults in this regard.

I like, Zinegata, that you ignored that the Tenaru was not a case of Zulu imagery (more insisting on how primitive the Japanese were), and rather a case of a intelligence blunder where the IJA thought they were engaging a much smaller, unfortified force. A later attack by larger units almost succeeded in penetrating American lines at Guadalcanal, meanwhile. I wonder how those primitive Nihonese could possibly have done that?

If Japanese policy in China was genocidal, so was American policy in Viet Nam. They are both technically accurate but completely misleading descriptions of what happened, used largely to inflame rather than to discuss.

Similarly, obsessing over how the Japanese were sooooo religious and obviously this was why they wanted to establish themselves as a world power is nutty. I mean, you could say the same thing about the US- obviously we are motivated by our civil religion of Manifest Destiny and the Global Policeman to establish ourselves as global hegemon, but all that does is make the US sound like a bunch of mindless fanatics. No matter how much people insist that "you can be rational while being religious", the purpose of the initial argument by Nitram was to say that they were completely irrational- indeed, maniacs. The fact that you are only disputing this with me and not with him suggests that you don't really care about the content of the argument as much as what "side" people are on. That's not very intellectually honest.

quickedit: Also, fuck trying to accommodate people's stupidity anymore. When I post that the reason Japan committed so many crimes was because they were following a policy of systematic evil, and people say "Well, gee, I think that you should be willing to say that Japan is evil too!"- well, there's no point in trying to phrase my responses in a particular way, because you motherfuckers will read what you want to read anyhow. The hell with you.

[Zinegata]

Oh, how cute. Bakustra wants more bitchslapping because he can't be bothered to check his facts

Their goal was to force the US out of the war,

Again, wrong. Their ultimate goal was to carve out a corner for themselves. You admitted this yourself.

Forcing the US out of the war only became a goal because they refused to admit that their ultimate goal (carving our a corner for themselves) was stupid and insane, because the Chinese didn't want to be under Japanese rule.

Concession accepted.

the US was heavily dependent on Australia, and if they managed to take Port Moresby and assemble a credible invasion or blockading force,

LOL.

First of all, they failed miserably at taking Port Moresby. Because they failed to resupply their troops. Because Japan started the war with an extreme shortage of merchant shipping; because they were reliant on US shipping to keep themselves supplied before the war (again demonstrating the fucknuts insanity of the Japanese war plan). It got so bad that some of their troops had to resort to cannibalism. There is no "if" in this scenario. Port Moresby wasn't going to fall.

Secondly, taking Port Moresby was only one step of many before you can take Australia. Yes, Port Moresby gives them a base to attack Australia - but any invasion will still require a massive commitment of ground troops. Ground troops which the navy already couldn't keep supplied for the Port Moresby operation. There is a reason why the IJA themselves ruled out any invasion of Australia - they didn't have the troops to spare and there's no point in landing troops that will just starve sitting outside of Perth.

Thirdly, the US fleet was actually largely based not out of Australia, but out of Pearl Harbor. Taking out Australia would have been an inconvenience at best, but it wouldn't have stopped the US juggernaut. Everything the US fleet needs actually largely comes out of the West Coast of the US.

I like, Zinegata, that you ignored that the Tenaru was not a case of Zulu imagery (more insisting on how primitive the Japanese were), and rather a case of a intelligence blunder where the IJA thought they were engaging a much smaller, unfortified force.

Except of course I'm not comparing it to the Zulus. But then again, I don't think you even know who the Zulus are given your clear lack of historical knowledge.

What I said is that the battle involves the Japanese charging machine guns with bayonets. Which happened, which is why Tenaru is often cited as the first instance of the US encountering "Banzai Charge" tactics. One USMC MG position (manned by 3 guys) in fact killed something like 200 enemy soldiers on their own. Because again, while everyone else realized during World War 1 that charging machine guns was a bad idea and that morale doesn't help you against bullets (the French called it elan), the Japanese never got the memo and continued to believe seisen will protect them.

That the Japanese commander at Tenaru was too fucking stupid to live and attacked an enemy that significantly outnumbered them and had better firepower doesn't help your case at all. It only further demonstrates the sheer stupidity and fanaticism that drove many of Japan's wartime decisions; this was their norm rather than their exception.

=====

The rest of your post doesn't really need a reply, because you've resorted to ad-hominem attacks which boils down to "YOU ARE EVIL FOR NOT SAYING AMERICA IS EVIL". Why else would you continue to pointlessly peddle your opinion that the Vietnam war was genocide? I'm not arguing about whether or not Japan's actions in China were genocide; that's your beef with Nitram - where you are mostly definitely holding the idiot ball.

However, I'm going to call you out for being a closet racist, by calling the Japanese rude names in italics.

Really, what kind of idiot except a closet racist can believe that Japan's insane actions was because of their race? I already mentioned the fact that there's propaganda involved; but apparently in Bakustra's twisted world if your country does something stupid, then there's something wrong with you entire race.

[Bakustra]

Hey, stalkerboy, this entire argument is predicated on Japan somehow being especially bad or evil in order to justify burning civilians alive, aka saying that WWII was a just war. If colonialism means that a nation is stupid and insane, well, gee, all of the belligerent powers barring the USSR were thus insane and stupid and irrational, which is an actual concession that Japan was no different from the other belligerents. Congrats.

Also, accusing people of racism while arguing that the Japanese were dumb and so goddamned stupid because of their culture, "cleverly" disguised as "well PROPAGANDA" is hilarious, but I guess that it ultimately results from your inability to understand mockery, which thus explains both your pitiful attempts at disses, your obsession over insults that I don't even remember making, and screeching about how I made fun of the constant insistence that the Japanese were oh-so-primitive, haha look at those fucking idiots using bayonets. I guess that much like your idols over at TheGamingDen, you can squawk out insults like the macaw you are, but you can't take 'em at all.

PS: The point is that the literal definition of genocide is killings targeting a particular (civilian) subgroup, but the connotation is of extermination. One definition applies to both the Japanese conduct in China and the American conduct in Viet Nam, while one does not apply to either. Get it? Oh, no, you don't, because WWII was a perfect war between the forces of Good and of Evil.

[Zinegata]

Hey, stalkerboy,

Oh, how cute. You keep lusting after my hot body, and you have the nerve to call me a stalker?

this entire argument is predicated on Japan somehow being especially bad or evil in order to justify burning civilians alive

I don't really care what you think the discussion is about, because your positions boil down to a Metal Gear Solid-style mindscrew plot.

I am instead arguing that the idea that the Japanese involvement during the Second World War as being "rational" is false. It was an insane decision bred by fanaticism, for which they used the term seisen.

So again, if you're desperate to lose more argument, argue with Nitram or whoever, because I'm not at all interested in talking about your regurgitated bullshit about how AMERICA IS EVIL.

Also, accusing people of racism while arguing that the Japanese were dumb and so goddamned stupid because of their culture,

I never said it was because of their culture. What I did say is that there was widespread fanaticism during the period, in the form of seisen. This again revolves around the Japanese operating around a false premise (We are entitled to our corner of the world!), for a variety of reasons - among which was propaganda. This is simple historical fact.

So, I now demand a retraction, in addition to the concession you already gave. Nothing in my argument is racist.

Moroever, again: You essentially claim that if a country does something stupid, then it must be because the entire race is stupid. You are therefore the one making the racist argument. You are the racist.

Finally, may I remind you that the Japanese deserve an apology from you because you called them rude names in italics just because you want to play race games?

[SirNitram]

PS: The point is that the literal definition of genocide is killings targeting a particular (civilian) subgroup, but the connotation is of extermination. One definition applies to both the Japanese conduct in China and the American conduct in Viet Nam, while one does not apply to either. Get it? Oh, no, you don't, because WWII was a perfect war between the forces of Good and of Evil.

Gods forbid I use the term as it is. I might offend a moron's delicate sensibilities. And who in this is saying WW2 is a perfect war between good and evil? Oh right: NO ONE. You're trolling, Bakustra. At least, I hope so. You're dangerously stupid if you aren't.

[Bakustra]

What differentiates the Japanese position that they deserved to be one of the great powers from the German one, or the American one, or the French one, or the British one, or the position of any nation that wants to be on top? What makes them so much crazier? Why are we assuming that Japan did this because of religion? If you argued that the Philippine-American War was because of the US being religious maniacs motivated by propaganda, historians and sociologists would rip you to shreds (further than you already are, I mean). And there was a religious justification of the war in the US! So why is Japan the other way around? Why is the secular reasoning just a justification for the religious one? The answer is seemingly, "because that's just the way the Japanese were!!!!" This explains why you're freaking out about me calling you racist, a thing which never happened- the guilty flee when no man pursueth.

Gods forbid I use the term as it is. I might offend a moron's delicate sensibilities. And who in this is saying WW2 is a perfect war between good and evil? Oh right: NO ONE. You're trolling, Bakustra. At least, I hope so. You're dangerously stupid if you aren't.

Now you're bragging about how you're unwilling to admit that "connotation" is a thing that exists! Fuck you, you're actively toxic to the mind of society. Go buy an English Literature textbook and beat yourself to death with it, because that's the only way it'll make an impression on you. You're also unable to get exaggeration for the purpose of mocking the position that WWII was a justified war, which is only a hop, skip, and jump from "WWII was a struggle between the forces of Good and Evil", which is a position that people actually believe. I'm sorry that you're unwilling to accept the existence of an outside world, but at least that keeps you indoors and away from people.

[Zinegata]

What differentiates the Japanese position that they deserved to be one of the great powers from the German one, or the American one, or the French one, or the British one, or the position of any nation that wants to be on top?

Who cares? Again, you can spout your Metal Gear Solid mindscrew AMERICA AND THE WEST ARE EVIL ideas however much you want. I'm not discussing it. Such regurgitated stupidity doesn't deserve discussion or an audience.

What I'm simply doing is pointing is your massive factual errors as far as history are concerned. Again:

1) Japan was not "as rational" as all the other Second World War powers. They decided to fight a country with far superior military and economic strength. This was based on a false premise ("We are entitled to our corner of the world!"), which was in large part driven by fanaticism (which again has many roots, among which was propaganda). While the Pearl Harbor plan was rational, its underlying premise was not, making it an ultimately irrational plan.

2) Japan was nowhere near beating the US during the war. You are an idiot for thinking the Japanese were close to winning at Kokoda (a Japanese disaster wherein their troops essentially starved to death) or Guadalcanal (an attrition battle that they lost). Australia was also never seriously threatened, and the IJA themselves admitted they didn't have the manpower to invade.

3) Tenaru was an instance of the endemic problem in the Japanese military - which is that it relied on fanaticism to a much greater extent than rational thought. This is why you have guys charging machine guns supported by a numerically superior foe. You idiotically cite Burma as a counter-example, without failing to realize Kimura's actions in 1944 were the exception rather than the rule, and that the previous commander - Mutaguchi - had lost 50,000 men out of 65K because he fanatically ordered his troops to not retreat despite them already starving.

Now, I can go into more detailed reasons as to why Japanese were still essentially using World War 1 tactics, but you're just going to go "Those reasons betray your racism!" anyway so why bother?

Again, these are all simple factual corrections. But again, you're not interested in factual corrections; just spouting more AMERICA IS EVIL nonesense when I'm not even discussing US actions at all.

[HMS Conqueror]

Japan's main problem is that it wasn't a great power. It had a comparable industrial base to Italy, and was simply in no position to challenge Britain let alone the USA. It did alright for a while because its opponents were distracted, it had really high peacetime mobilisation, it got lucky betting big on carriers, and it was a long way from the industrial centres of its opponents. But really, Japan had lost on day 1, and could have got a much better deal by negotiation. Its fanatical levels of self-belief surely contributed to making that bad decision.

Then to add insult to injury, they refused to abide by any of the accepted standards of the civilised powers in treating non-combatants and PoWs, ostensibly because they thought they were a superior race.

[Bakustra]

Every other nation operated under false premises, and only the USSR managed to have a different false premise from Japan, you fucking imbecile. The point is that if Japan is irrational, so were all of the other belligerent nations! If the US or UK or USSR or France were rational, so was Japan! If the Japanese were colonial and imperial because they were religious fanatics, so were the US and UK and France! Jesus!

Japan's main problem is that it wasn't a great power. It had a comparable industrial base to Italy, and was simply in no position to challenge Britain let alone the USA. It did alright for a while because its opponents were distracted, it had really high peacetime mobilisation, it got lucky betting big on carriers, and it was a long way from the industrial centres of its opponents. But really, Japan had lost on day 1, and could have got a much better deal by negotiation. Its fanatical levels of self-belief surely contributed to making that bad decision.

Then to add insult to injury, they refused to abide by any of the accepted standards of the civilised powers in treating non-combatants and PoWs, ostensibly because they thought they were a superior race.

Are you fucking stupid? Nobody among the Allies was going to give them what they wanted, because what they wanted was incompatible with what the Allies wanted, so they didn't negotiate because it would be pointless! Also, apparently being a great power is inherent and thus Japan shouldn't have tried to become one.

Meanwhile, US troops massacred surrendering or wounded Japanese because they thought them an inferior race. But I guess Japan is unique, right? Or at least as PURE EVIL as the Nazis and Fascists.

[HMS Conqueror]

Are you fucking stupid?

I know, it's not Facebook, but I couldn't express my feelings in words and don't have time to make a better image.

Nobody among the Allies was going to give them what they wanted, because what they wanted was incompatible with what the Allies wanted, so they didn't negotiate because it would be pointless!

The allies weren't going to hand over South East Asia, but the Japs were never going to get SEA by fighting anyway. If they hadn't fought, they would still own Korea, Taiwan and parts of China, which were taken from them after WWII. They would also have been able to retain a military. I don't see any argument that fighting WWII was good for Japan's interest.

Also, apparently being a great power is inherent and thus Japan shouldn't have tried to become one.

Nothing wrong with trying. The issue is rather that Japan's chosen method was stupid, and this was likely a result of bad decision-making driven by hubris. I'm not sure I'd call it quite religious - Shinto isn't even a religion in the sense a Judeo-Christian would mean anyway - but it was certainly something mystical.

Meanwhile, US troops massacred surrendering or wounded Japanese because they thought them an inferior race. But I guess Japan is unique, right? Or at least as PURE EVIL as the Nazis and Fascists.

Allies stopped accepting Japanese battlefield surrenders de-facto (though this was never a general policy) after surrendering Japanese troops starting blowing themselves up or turning on their captors after surrendering. This is considered somewhat gauche irrespective of race.