Posted on 07/08/2015 8:17:55 PM PDT by DemforBush
This guy is over the top.
Is this sarcasm, if so I apologize. Please specify.
No, I wish FDR hadn't tried to stick the U.S. in the middle of the centuries old war between China and Japan.
Do you think the tens of thousands of Americans who died in Korea and Vietnam were 'saved' by our interventionism?
I believe Japan started that war and the plans had been made years before.
Sarcasm? No. Japan could not conquer China, and never would have. They had zero chance of 'conquering the world', that's just silly wartime propaganda.
Europe had divided most of the Pacific into colonies. Japan wanted their own seat at that table.
The West turned the screws on Japan until they got the war they wanted. Then they could put them back in their place.
"You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten," - former President Herbert Hoover, after the Japanese attacked the U.S.
What was the reward in this war for the average American? The chance to send their sons to die in Korea, and then Vietnam?
The drowned and dead marines were on the inside of the lagoon.
The marine casualties were largely in shallow water approaching the invasion beaches. The tide was too low for Higgins boats to cross the reef so the marines had to wade in chest deep water for about half a mile under heavy machine gun and artillery fire. Some units suffered 50-80% casualty rates before they touched the beach.
That is not friendly fire. The marines were forced to wade in because the planners of the Tarawa invasion completely ignored advice about how low the tides would be. There was a congressional inquiry because of the high casualty rate due to poor planning and intelligence. Being the first major amphibious operation of its type, it was all written off as part of the learning curve.
You are a reprobate.
I think this may be the largest “find” of Marines who were buried in temporary graves during or just after the fighting and the sites were lost, i.e. those who knew where the graves were were either killed themselves, wounded and evacuated or shipped off before they could pass on the information to someone staying behind. The Corps, from what I’ve read, has known that there were still bodies to be found.
An exerpt from NYTimes article from 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/magazine/the-search-for-the-lost-marines-of-tarawa.html?_r=0
:After their victory, the Marines set about burying the dead. They wrapped the bodies in ponchos and folded them into shallow graves. Then they moved on, and military construction crews came in to raze the island flat. They expanded the airfield and built a network of roads and offices. By the time an excavation team arrived in 1946 to exhume and identify the dead — part of a global campaign to recognize the fallen — no one could remember where they were. Investigators spent three months searching, but they found only half the Marines. Today, 471 of the Tarawa Marines are buried by name in American cemeteries. Another 104 have been laid to rest in “unknown” graves at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii.
And the rest — perhaps as many as 520 Marines — are still on, or near, Tarawa.”
see also: http://tarawatheaftermath.com/News-BetioCemetary.html
Your reply to my questions is baseless ad hominem?
Perhaps you should turn yourself in to the Mods...
“Japan couldn’t conquer China”
You say that I’m silly to argue that men fighting in the Pacific helped save the world.
It sounds like you think that America winning World War Two was irrelevant to history.
But, Japan was doing a number in Manchuria. http://www.johndclare.net/EL5.htm
Imperial Japan was headed to be a hegemon in the whole of Asia and the Pacific.
The main argument is that Japan was allied with German — which had its eye on conquering the world.
“It’s Time to Say Thank You to Those that Saved the World
Michael Reagan | Jun 06, 2014”
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelreagan/2014/06/06/its-time-to-say-thank-you-to-those-who-saved-the-world-n1848159/page/full
Correct. Japan could not conquer the world. They couldn't even conquer most of China.
It sounds like you think that America winning World War Two was irrelevant to history.
Not at all. The results of WW2 shaped the world we know. It's why we lost tens of thousands of vibrant men in Korea and Vietnam. But that doesn't change the fact Japan did not have the means to conquer the world. The world was not 'saved' from Japan, but the structure of the hegemony we see collapsing today was most certainly determined by that war.
Imperial Japan was headed to be a hegemon in the whole of Asia and the Pacific.
Yes, that was certainly their desire, but it was beyond their means. I don't conflate wanting something with being able to attain something.
The main argument is that Japan was allied with German — which had its eye on conquering the world.
Germany was not trying to conquer the world, and they likewise bit off more than they could chew trying to expand east. Germany (pop. ~80mm) and Japan (pop. ~70mm) were not going to conquer the remaining 2.3 billion people on the planet. It's not a serious discussion. It's wartime propaganda and fantasy.
Thanks. Great to get diverse insights here on FR.
Guess I’ve never talked to a conservative who doubted the threat of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
I wonder however.
1. It was not inevitable that Germany would lose the war. Nazi Germany nearly defeated the USSR. They also came close to surrounding and completely destroying the British force in France. They also nearly broke the back of the Allied advance in the Battle of the Bulge.
It is possible that Germany could have developed the nuclear bomb before the US.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-third-reich-how-close-was-hitler-to-the-a-bomb-a-346293.html
The Nazis drew up plans on how to invade and occupy the US.
Hitler dreamed of world conquest. “Today Germany, tomorrow the world!”
2. Japan had dominated the Chinese in Manchuria. They made Korea a provence and required that the Korean’s speak Japanese. They took over the Philippines. And they destroyed the US fleet in Honolulu.
While they may not have concurred the world in terms of ruling every nation, without the US stopping them Japan could have been a super power that dominated all of Asia.
At least that is what I’ve always thought.
I always enjoy a good discussion. I've tried more than once to just have discussions at places like DU, but you get banned if you get too far outside of the groupthink.
Guess I’ve never talked to a conservative who doubted the threat of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.
I believe both were 'evil empires', but that isn't the same as being capable of taking over the world.
I wonder however.
1. It was not inevitable that Germany would lose the war. Nazi Germany nearly defeated the USSR.
I take the view that the decision to invade the USSR cost Germany the war. Had Hitler focused on consolidating his gains I think it's quite possible he would have died of old age.
The Germans had a lot of things go their way enroute to the successes of '41, but they badly misjudged Russian resolve and production. Hitler signed his own death warrant with Directive No. 21.
They also came close to surrounding and completely destroying the British force in France.
The Brits did have to leave behind their equipment, but at the end of the day that little strip of water saved them. Germany didn't have the means follow up even if they had captured the 300k+ that escaped at Dunkirk.
Hitler wanted a continental empire, and was fine with letting Britain maintain a global empire. He couldn't understand why they wouldn't 'accept reality' and negotiate a peace.
They also nearly broke the back of the Allied advance in the Battle of the Bulge.
Not really. At that stage in the war they simply didn't have the resources (and honestly even the manpower) to win. Hitler's effort to again make the 'Sichelschnitt' through the Ardennes merely condemned eastern Germany to the communists. Even if the Western Allies had stopped on the Rhine the Soviets weren't stopping.
It is possible that Germany could have developed the nuclear bomb before the US. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-third-reich-how-close-was-hitler-to-the-a-bomb-a-346293.html
Did you read your link?
"The only problem with all the hype is that the historian has no real proof to back up his spectacular theories."
The reality is, from 1940 on, the British and other foreign services worked to make German research in this area practically impossible. link
The Nazis drew up plans on how to invade and occupy the US.
I could 'draw up plans' on how to invade Kate Upton, but it doesn't keep them from being anything more than fantasy. :)
Hitler dreamed of world conquest. “Today Germany, tomorrow the world!”
Slogans are no substitute for means.
2. Japan had dominated the Chinese in Manchuria. They made Korea a provence and required that the Korean’s speak Japanese. They took over the Philippines. And they destroyed the US fleet in Honolulu.
Look at the production figures for Japan vis-a-vis the U.S. The Japanese hoped to repeat the success they enjoyed against the Russians in the 1904-5, but America was nowhere near as weak as Imperial Russia had been.
Yamamoto had been to the U.S., and knew the futility of the course his nation had been set upon. The Japanese gambled that the West would be busy enough with Hitler that they would be willing to negotiate a favorable resolution. It was a bad gamble.
The bulk of the Japanese Army was in China (~80%), but they still couldn't defeat them, and the occupation costs were in fact a drain on them.
While they may not have concurred the world in terms of ruling every nation, without the US stopping them Japan could have been a super power that dominated all of Asia.
I see it as preferable for Japanese imperialists to die fighting Ho Chi Minh's nationalists in Vietnam, don't you?
What ever the official story is I’m sure is cleaned up. I don’t doubt that a Marine who watched incompetence at it’s worse would have a perspective different from the official version.
That’s always been true. Many of us never even recognize the official account of a situation we were in because we see it from a micro level not a macro level.
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