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To: RBroadfoot
Well, General Curtis LeMay, the architect of the strategic bombing campaign in the Pacific theater, was concerned about this question. He once remarked that, if the US were to lose the war, he expected to be tried for war crimes.

And the context? The fact that the Japanese summarily executed a lot of Allied prisoners. Note that people joke about things they consider remote. For instance, if I were in Japanese-occupied Asia during WWII, and I had justified the wartime bombing of Japan by the Allies, I would fully expect to be executed if caught doing so, not because it is a particularly bad thing to advocate, but because the Japanese don't have any problem executing anyone under their control for whatever reason. LeMay may have joked about being tried for war crimes, not because the bombings were particularly bad, but because he expected the Japanese to do away with him regardless if they won. It may also have been his highly-tuned Christian conscience at work. Did the Japanese High Command even pause for reflection as they subjected American prisoners-of-war to dissection in mainland Japanese medical facilities while they were still alive?

The other LeMay quote that I think is more relevant, but less used, is the following: "We’re at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?" This isn't some academic debate - it's about defeating the enemy with as few American losses as possible, at a time when 300 American boys were getting killed daily. People who complain that we put too little value on the lives of enemy civilians are putting too little value on the lives of American civilians wrenched from their daily lives, in the flower of their youth, to face the rigors of a cruel, pitiless and fanatical enemy.
208 posted on 05/20/2006 11:24:54 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
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To: Zhang Fei

The baddest: the Army has its Gen. Patton, the Navy its Admiral Halsey, the Marines its Chesty Puller, the Air Force? Who else but LeMay. He was tough as nails that guy.


213 posted on 05/20/2006 11:35:01 PM PDT by sasportas
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To: Zhang Fei

...and let us not forget that the Japanese military was killing MILLIONS in China, including millions of civilians. China was our ally. The USA had every right and reason to do all in its power to end by the earliest possible date the insane depravities the Japanese military was inflicting daily in China. Similarly, the Nazis and their allies were killing countless millions on the Eastern Front, including millions of civilians. The US and UK had every right and reason to seek to end THAT series of depravities at the earliest possible date. The revisionists of history never even bother to discuss the staggering scale of the atrocities we were trying to END when they indict the USA and UK. I'm not saying such moral balancing has an easy or obvious answer, but most of the time the dilemma is not even presented -- the revisionists write as though the Allies could have won WWII just as soon without the urban bombing, when in fact the war would almost certainly have gone on another year or two or more and cost millions more lives in the ALLIED countries. THAT is never taken into account by the revisionists.


215 posted on 05/21/2006 12:05:13 AM PDT by Enchante (General Hayden: I've Never Taken a Domestic Flight That Landed in Waziristan!)
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