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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Yeah, turns out war is pretty fucked up. Look up the rape of nanjing. Or Pearl Harbor. Or Hiroshima.
You get the idea.
Imperial Japan was obviously a fascist state that needed to be dismantled (and sadly wasn't nearly as much as it should have been), but if we're talking barbarism, Pearl Harbor was nothing compared to the other items listed. It was an air strike on a naval base, nothing was really exceptional about it except that it's rare for someone to dare to attack the US.
It was done during a period of negotiations for peace. It was the perfidy, not the damage, with a dose of racism/xenophobia that mobilized Americans.
I'm pretty sure it was because someone dropped bombs on American soil. In any case, the fact that it touched on the American aggrievement fetish does not put it on par with the other events listed.
Yeah, but American troops did it so its just a heckin "war is hell" moment. No need to wrestle with it, just shug your big R rational shoulders
In fact, war crimes can only happen during war. That means they need to be discussed and not just handwaved with "war is hell"
And don't forget to shit on the Soviets while you're at it
Liberals and the irresistible urge to compare yourself to literal Nazis
Not really sure what you mean here. Is that what I’m doing in your estimation?
Probably not intentionally. Looking at this and saying some variation of "war is hell" or "war is pretty fucked up" as you said is extremely handwavey. War being hell doesn't mean we can't focus on individual war crimes, particularly those done by the US.
Theres a lot of people who reflexively throw up there hands and say "War is Hell" (they're swarming here) when you bring up a US war crime. But if you bring up sonething done by a designated enemy of the US people don't do that.
Its may not be intentional but its still not good
It does add needed context though. These arent peacetime actions of civilians. These are the actions of people forced into melting pot of slaughter.
Its a war crime
Oh yeah. I considered mentioning 9/11…. Of 1973. But suspect most people don’t know the us supported an attack on a foreign country surreptitiously. And abu ghraib, but wasn’t sure how it’s spelled.
This country is militarily fucked up, as are the cops.
There’s no whitewashing for me.
Ah, the real 9/11
I don't know how spell abu graib either lol
And Japanese cannibalism of executed POW's, and Ishii's biological warefare unit. War is Hell.
Yeah, so taking skulls as war trophies is fine
Maybe I have an edgy take but I really don't care about brutality against Japanese imperialists. I hold them as much more evil than the Nazis during the 20th century.
I don't care about the deaths of fascists. That doesn't make it less sick to take skulls as trophies.
The point is Amero-fascists are also barbarous and always have been. The "war is hell" handwaving getting invoked doesn't mean you can't talk about crimes. The sane way i wouldn't handwave away the many crimes of the Japanese fascists
That is edgy. Stalin virulently rebuked war crimes against Nazi Germany's civilians and POWs as it pushed them back.
By contrast, the brutality, starvation, and high death rates for nazi POWs held by the US in western europe during and after ww2 is not a story most ppl know about. Losurdo gets into this a bit, as well as contrasts the nazi's position that the slavic ppl must be eradicated and made into slaves, while the USSR's position was that germany and the german ppl will go on after the war, and efforts should be made to not follow the nazi's scorched earth policy.
The US was the model for biological testing and eugenics, that's not why they fought japan, nor was it even one of the stated reasons at the time.