-----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of jon louis mann > Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 6:33 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: war is terror... > > the evidence is that a blockade would not have ended WWII. > it would have allowed the Soviet Union to switch it's forces to the > Eastern Front... > which probably would have resulted in a Soviet sphere. (snippet) > > my japanese stepmother told me the americans dropped the bomb because > japan was negotiating a surrender to the commies, which would have > ended the war, and japan would have become a soviet satellite. > jonsan
I'm not sure if you know, but extensive documentation of the deliberations of both the Japanese and American governments exists. I was able to get a copy of "Why Japan Surrendered" by Robert Pape (International Security, Vol 18, No 2, pp. 154-201). He brought up some factors that I knew and some I didn't (including that the USSR invasion of Manchuria's devastating success was a factor in the surrender of Japan). But, the important point here is that this question has been the subject of tremendous scholarship by people who have access to a wealth of primary documents. I would trust a rumor heard in Japan about the motivations of the US and Japanese government about as much as I'd trust a rumor in Germany, or the US. After all, there are stories that a fraction of the US is convinced about the UN and its black helicopters about to take over the US or the WTC being rigged with explosives that are believed. > >what role do governments have in going to war when the solution might > >be to find a way to give people in these countries hope? > > if most wars are due to government seeking advantage (which certainly > is the case in iraq) it is even more tragic that freedom loving > americans went along with bushco. we had no dictatorship to resist. But, the advantage that the US sought was not a bad thing. A government that existed to provide for the people it governed in Iraq would be a good thing for them. > wars may not be correlated with desperation, but this war is to defeat > terrorism, which can be described as tactics of desperation. > the wars of the last 30 years are vastly different than 250 years ago, > although people lived under oppessive regimes. As framed and stated by GBW et. al. it does sound silly. But, framed differently, as a long term worldwide COIN, fighting the insurgency does make sense. Like the cold war, though, individual battles (such as Gulf War II) can be disastrous and/or foolish. But, that doesn't mean that isolationism is a better option. For example, was the US wrong to stick its nose in the business of others in Gulf War I or the Balkans? I think a neoisolationism policy, which I think you are advocating...but would happily accept clarification on....will be more harmful than our policy of the last 20 or so years. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
