Russia on brink of ... NOPE! Russia INVADES Ukraine!

[K1052]

I strongly disagree with that argument.

It makes racist assumptions about the Japanese people without evidence.

It's not racist to say that millions would have died in Ketsu-Go and the onrushing famine in Japan had they not surrendered when they did.

These were not concerns for the US but the timing did end up benefiting the Japanese people as a whole. This is besides the ethical and moral questions of using the weapons.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

^^^ Words. Nothing but words. Vlad is using words to justify also. That will not make it proper.

 

[kage69]

I strongly disagree with that argument.

It makes racist assumptions about the Japanese people without evidence.

Specifically, this one:

The idea the civilian population would defend a cruel and tyrannical government with bamboo spears is a bit racist.

Well I disagree with your disagreement. What I mentioned is not controversial in any way, covers things accepted to be matters of historical fact. Your comments make me think you aren't familiar with Japanese history, particularly the cultural side and post Meiji. Nothing wrong with that, this thread ain't about it after all. The Japanese concept of giri and your notion of tyranny do not an easy couple make honestly. I'm just going to skip that part.

What is racist about a plentiful material being used to fashion an easy weapon? Sojutsu skills have been considered the most basic method of fighting for a soldier since before Warring States Period. Women were historically taught to handle a yari or naginata as part of their home tending skills. When steel is hard to come by thanks to wartime requisition mandates, you use what you have, no different than anywhere else really. See England's use of wood for their AF, gave Germany a bad case of Mosquitos.

Some resources for you:

Japanese preparations for Operation Ketsu-Go

More than a million American casualties estimated

Would have made Okinawa look like a picnic

 

[Leeea]

It's not racist to say that millions would have died in Ketsu-Go and the onrushing famine in Japan had they not surrendered when they did.

These were not concerns for the US but the timing did end up benefiting the Japanese people as a whole. This is besides the ethical and moral questions of using the weapons.

I do agree with the statement that an onrushing famine was hitting Japan. Even in its worst case said famine would have likely killed around 600,000 Japanese people.


I disagree with the statement it would have killed more people then the atomic bombs.


Assumes facts we do not have. We do not know if the famine would have acheived its worse case senario. It is also possible the famine itself would have compelled the Japanese government to surrender. A self inflicted WMD.

Your making assumptions Japan was fanatical and willing to fight to the end. But as I pointed out in my previous post, Okinawa showed quite the opposite. Even with a 1 to 2 ratio of military to civilian on Okinawa, the civilian population had zero interest in fighting to the end.

 

[Leeea]

What is racist about a plentiful material being used to fashion an easy weapon?

The racist component is the idea Japanese were so stupid they would blindly defend a failed regime. The idea that traditional Japanese culture made an entire people brain dead. That is a racist argument at its core.


Something we already saw prior in the war that nearly all Japanese civilians were not interested in doing.


Your making excuses to try and justify an atrocity. Excuses that are contrary to the evidence.

 

[kage69]

It's not racist to say that millions would have died in Ketsu-Go and the onrushing famine in Japan had they not surrendered when they did.

These were not concerns for the US but the timing did end up benefiting the Japanese people as a whole. This is besides the ethical and moral questions of using the weapons.

This, thank you.

 

[quikah]

There are some big differances. One being the security guarantee Ukraine has that will kick off WWIII if Russia drops a nuke on it.


There is another big one:
Russia, US, UK, China, China, and France guaranteed the security of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

Dropping the bomb instantly kicks off a war with three powerful NATO countries who all have nukes. It also forces China to put up or forever be regarded as backstabbers.


Keep in mind this is a treaty. An actual treaty, not an executive agreement. Treaties get special status in US law. They require 2/3rds the senate to approve, and effectively become law.


Russia drops the bomb and this is instantly WWIII.

That thing is not worth the paper it was written on. Russia violated that "treaty" the day they annexed Crimea. There is nothing in there that says war will result. The only thing that might happen is that Security Council will be asked to provide assistance which Russia will immediately veto.

 

[tweaker2]

Russia launched an unprovoked attack on their neighbor, Ukraine, a nation whose sovereignty they had assured by treaty. "Reasons do not change the facts," your term. They were pretty sure Ukraine would be a pushover and fall and the world would accept annexation, like they did like with Crimea. They found instead that Ukraine is quite patriotic and does not want to become part of Russia but insists on independence and is defending itself, with help from other nations (who are not officially at war with Russia, but are supplying weapons, knowhow and intelligence). If Russia ups the ante and employs nuclear weapons in this imperialism it will spell the end of Russia as we and they know it, and I think that Russia knows this, whatever Putin may think. Saber rattling is brinksmanship. I think the war will go on and the situation will evolve without nukes being employed.

Methinks a possible scenario of the infinite number of them that could play itself out whereby Putin is going to bluff his way with this nuke threat right up to the moment where he either backdoor deals himself a piece of Ukrainian soil that is not strategically vital to the Ukrainians in order to save face to his people in Russia or claim that illness prevents him from leading the nation any further. This will give him an out by installing his chosen successor in order for that scapegoat to take the blame for his failures while still maintaining control of the nation through that dupe of his.

 

[cytg111]

It cannot be denied that the U.S. did in fact set the precedent.

The only argument is the difference in technology of what was available then vs now.

.

It set the precedent for why it may never ever ever happen again.

 

[cytg111]

It must be possible to assassinate the clown

 

[Leeea]

That thing is not worth the paper it was written on. Russia violated that "treaty" the day they annexed Crimea. There is nothing in there that says war will result. The only thing that might happen is that Security Council will be asked to provide assistance which Russia will immediately veto.

Russia may choose to ignore it, but that is just Russia being Russia.

Projecting Russian behavior on everyone else is insanity.

 

[K1052]

I do agree with the statement that an onrushing famine was hitting Japan. Even in its worst case said famine would have likely killed around 600,000 Japanese people.


I disagree with the statement it would have killed more people then the atomic bombs.


Assumes facts we do not have. We do not know if the famine would have acheived its worse case senario. It is also possible the famine itself would have compelled the Japanese government to surrender. A self inflicted WMD.

Your making assumptions Japan was fanatical and willing to fight to the end. But as I pointed out in my previous post, Okinawa showed quite the opposite. Even with a 1 to 2 ratio of military to civilian on Okinawa, the civilian population had zero interest in fighting to the end.

The upper estimate of deaths from the atomic bombings combined is about 250K. The Spring-Summer 1945 firebombing campaign alone killed 300-500K. The Allies crippiled inter island shipping in Japan by sinking the merchant fleet and mining sea routes. This was compounded by sequential rice crop failures in 1944 and 1945. They were in such dire straits that MacArthur demanded immediate food shipments after the surrender.

Japan had amassed every bit of it's strength left for Ketsu-Go and given the level of destruction it would have wrought casualties in the millions were very conceivable.

 

[Zorba]

I strongly disagree with that argument.

It makes racist assumptions about the Japanese people without evidence.

They didn't even immediately surrender after the second bomb, and the nuclear attacks weren't even the final bomb raids against Japan. The emperor had the surrender broadcast on radio so the military wouldn't block his surrender order.

And to disagree with the argument you have to completely ignore the firebombing that would've replaced the usage of the nukes. I really don't understand why killing less people with nukes is worse than killing more people with firestorms.

 

[Bitek]

Seriously, at what point are people going to start ignoring everything Russia and Putin say? As you say they lie about EVERYTHING.

Because you can't just dismiss it entirely sure to the grave consequences if it does come to pass, and Putin, backed by his state media, has put it in the table.

Likely? Probably not. However there is no reason to think it's impossible, and even if he's lying, no guarantees a miscalculation doesn't lead to an accidental escalation.

Just the fact that he's throwing these ideas out escalated the situation. Same as when Trump the dope spoke casually about nukes or hell fire and that hyperbolic, overcompensating language.

 

[kage69]

The racist component is the idea Japanese were so blinded by their culture they would blindly defend a failed regime.


Something we already saw prior in the war that nearly all Japanese civilians were not interested in doing.


Your making excuses to try and justify an atrocity. Excuses that are contrary to the evidence.

Leeea, I'll thank you not to attribute your misconceptions on this to me. I specifically cited duty as the reason and here you are now trying to insinuate I consider them "stupid," "blinded by culture"? Please. Calling Hirohito's line "a failed regime" just confirms to me you don't understand Japanese culture of the time. He was divine. You get how that is different, right?

I provided you some links, I hope it helps clear things up. Please note that the 140k people who died in Hiroshima and the 74k that died in Nagasaki are together much less than the 600k you just admitted could die from famine. This isn't about race, it's about math.

 

[quikah]

Russia may choose to ignore it, but that is just Russia being Russia.

Projecting Russian behavior on everyone else is insanity.

The only remedy presented in that treaty is Security Council assistance. The treaty is worthless.

 

[Leeea]

Leeea, I'll thank you not to attribute your misconceptions on this to me. I specifically cited duty as the reason and here you are now trying to insinuate I consider them "blinded by culture"? Please. Calling Hirohito's line "a failed regime" just confirms to me you don't understand Japanese culture of the time. He was divine. You get how that is different, right?

I provided you some links, I hope it helps clear things up.

Your links are just the same propaganda justifying the atrocity we all have read many times before.


So what if the Emperor was divine? Roman emperors were divine to, that did not stop their heads from bouncing down the forum steps. The Kings and Queens of Europe were considered to have divine mandate, the guillotine did not care. Egyptian pharaohs were considered to gods, right up until they were offed by the new god.


The fact that they were "Japanese" does not magically make them not human or justify the atrocities. You know better then to believe the Japanese were somehow more holy then the rest of us.

 

[Jaskalas]

It must be possible to assassinate the clown

Putin is not alone in Russia.
Example: Frothing at the mouth for genocide, torture, and rape of civilians.
Russia is a nation of whom more than a few people wholly endorse the Russian atrocities in Bucha, and everywhere else they gained ground.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1575850093995257856

https://twitter.com/x/status/1571266222871789575

 

[K1052]

Biden will probably announce a huge arms package for Ukraine today. He has over 2B in drawdown authority left hat has to be committed by today or it expires.

 

[pmv]

To truly know your enemy, it is critical to see him through his own world view. I don't know, but I can't just a priori dismiss him as either terminally crazy or physically unwell.

I do tend to see him as crazy. Though that's precisely _because_ his world view is so alien and downright weird from my point-of-view. Same thing applied to Bin Laden and to most of ISIS.

I mean, his world view was formed by the experiences and context that he comes out of, but so what? Can't help thinking that's what 'crazy' means - formed by a context and set of experiences utterly alien to ones-self.

I've said it before, but what most surprises me is the extent to which he demonstrates how that Great Russian nationalism (and Eastern Orthodox Christianity - I think he claims to be a believer, and certainly his mother was) all happily continued to exist (and grow) within a supposedly atheist and 'internationalist' communist regime. Much of that I suppose was always present in Stalin, but I don't think I realised how powerful nationalism and religious conservatism continued to be in that society.


He does sound a bit like some of the ranting UKIP types I hear on radio phone-ins (or, indeed, a stereotypical black-cab driver).

Putin’s annexation speech: more angry taxi driver than head of state

Russian leader’s rambling speech focuses on western sins and leaves key Ukraine questions unanswered

www.theguardian.com

 

[Paratus]

But that's not really analogous to what's happening with Ukraine. Those examples lack some relevant cultural and historical distinctions you can't ignore with Ukraine/Russia. Then there is the genocide bit. FWIW I know more than a few American patriots who would be ecstatic to be rid of Texas. They don't see self-determination as the boogeyman Putin does. The GQP ability and agenda to warp and corrupt our democracy would be hamstrung overnight. I'm sure it would be complicated and painful but it wouldn't be the existential threat Putin sees in Ukrainian sovereignty, we wouldn't see Texans in mass graves for instance.

I hear you about the terminal crazy part, that is a big one too, but Putin is physically unwell. He takes the surgeon Yevgeny Selivanov almost everywhere with him, a thyroid specialist. Also a couple others, cancer specialists. It's pretty obvious he's been on steroids for awhile, generally not required for someone in good health. There's been some speculation he's actually been having a bit of 'roid rage.'

Side topic but I recently found out the US military is still giving out Purple Hearts that were manufactured during WWII. The bulk of which were manufactured at the end of the war in preparation for the assault on Japan.

“In all, approximately 1,531,000 Purple Hearts were produced for the war effort, with production reaching its peak as the Armed Services geared up for the invasion of Japan. Despite wastage, pilfering, and items that were simply lost, the reserve of decorations stood at approximately 495,000 after the war.”

They were assuming hundreds of thousands of wounded.

 

[kage69]

Your links are just the same propaganda justifying the atrocity we all have read many times before.


So what if the Emperor was divine? Roman emperors were divine to, that did not stop their heads from bouncing down the forum steps. The Kings and Queens of Europe were considered to have divine mandate, the guillotine did not care. Egyptian pharaohs were considered to gods, right up until they were offed by the new god.


The fact that they were "Japanese" does not magically make them not human or justify the atrocities. You know better then to believe the Japanese were somehow more holy then the rest of us.

Wow.

I'm not that familiar with your posts Leeea, but even then this level of ignorant blather and desire to get personal really seems out of character for you. I can't decide if you've been drinking or someone hijacked your account. Is there a Japanese woman in your life and you took my comments with offense somehow? Very weird.

I've seen you make great posts, in this very thread, so I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt and just chalk it up to a bad day and drop it. If you want to continue this in another thread about 20th century Japanese history, I am your huckleberry. I'd leave the straw here though.

 

[Leeea]

you don't understand Japanese culture of the time

Your just being willfully foolish now.

Tell me, how did the Meiji restoration come to be? Oh yes, the previous divine emperor was tossed out. ( forced abdication ). So much for godhood.

How did the Meiji restoration come to an end in 1912? When Crown Prince Yoshihito he proclaimed Taishō era. The population of Japan said screw that shit, and the Taishō political crisis occurred. This in turn triggers a time period known as the Taishō Democracy. So much for your divine emperor.

The Taishō Democracy would be killed off in 1926 by reactionary forces which would empower a military junta. Yep, the Showa era was not particularly divine either, and just used the "divine" emperor as a useful tool to legitimize their government. A bit how the monarchy in Britain legitimizes the British government.


You are the one speaking from ignorance here. Look past the propaganda. Don't let yourself believe racist propaganda that simplifies Japanese people into a bunch of mindless drones blindly obeying their divine god.

 

[pmv]

Leeea, I'll thank you not to attribute your misconceptions on this to me. I specifically cited duty as the reason and here you are now trying to insinuate I consider them "stupid," "blinded by culture"? Please. Calling Hirohito's line "a failed regime" just confirms to me you don't understand Japanese culture of the time. He was divine. You get how that is different, right?

I provided you some links, I hope it helps clear things up. Please note that the 140k people who died in Hiroshima and the 74k that died in Nagasaki are together much less than the 600k you just admitted could die from famine. This isn't about race, it's about math.

Your links are just the same propaganda justifying the atrocity we all have read many times before.


So what if the Emperor was divine? Roman emperors were divine to, that did not stop their heads from bouncing down the forum steps. The Kings and Queens of Europe were considered to have divine mandate, the guillotine did not care. Egyptian pharaohs were considered to gods, right up until they were offed by the new god.


The fact that they were "Japanese" does not magically make them not human or justify the atrocities. You know better then to believe the Japanese were somehow more holy then the rest of us.

Wish I knew what I thought about this one. I've changed my mind about it more than once in my life.

I gather there is some evidence that the ordinary Japanese were starting to crack towards the end of the war - the military officer class were not popular with Japanese civilians.

But... the Japanese fought quite ferociously - and to the death - in defending the Pacific Islands. Why wouldn't it be reasonable for the allies believe the same would be true, on a vastly-larger scale, for any invasion of the Japanese mainland? I don't think it's an unreasonable calculation to weigh the deaths at Nagasaki and Hiroshima against those that would have occured in an invasion.

 

[Leeea]

They didn't even immediately surrender after the second bomb, and the nuclear attacks weren't even the final bomb raids against Japan. The emperor had the surrender broadcast on radio so the military wouldn't block his surrender order.

And to disagree with the argument you have to completely ignore the firebombing that would've replaced the usage of the nukes. I really don't understand why killing less people with nukes is worse than killing more people with firestorms.

You are correct, the fire bombing was more horrific.

One atrocity does not make the other atrocity right.

Wow.

I'm not that familiar with your posts Leeea, but even then this level of ignorant blather and desire to get personal really seems out of character for you. I can't decide if you've been drinking or someone hijacked your account. Is there a Japanese woman in your life and you took my comments with offense somehow? Very weird.

I've seen you make great posts, in this very thread, so I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt and just chalk it up to a bad day and drop it. If you want to continue this in another thread about 20th century Japanese history, I am your huckleberry. I'd leave the straw here though.

I do not have anyone with Japanese ethnicity in my life. I also dislike Anime, with some exceptions.

I am out of time for the day, so I do have to go. This has gone off topic, so it is time to drop it.

I doubt either one of us will change our minds at this point.