James Schipper, in the comments threads, notes that before the planned invasion of Japan, the island nation was surrounded by US mines and submarines and could not import anything. I note that civilians were down to rations of 800 calories or so a day, and the military on little more. The nation as a fighting force was through.
Schipper also feels that the US war with the Japan was ridiculous. Problem is that here in the US, those are practically fighting words. Almost all Americans think we had to fight Japan, if only because of Pearl Harbor. This even includes most White nationalists, almost zero of whom supported fighting Hitler.
Foreigners underestimate the ferocious patriotism or even jingoism of the American people. Europeans seem to be far less patriotic or jingoistic than Americans. This is one of the defining features of the American, or I should say, of the White American. Black Americans are much less into this wild blind patriotism stuff. I'm not sure about Hispanics. I would suspect that they are less jingoistic than US Whites.
Schipper also notes that it was preposterous of the US to demand unconditional surrender. But this is part of the US game. We always demand unconditional surrender. The only times we don't is when we are stuck in some quagmire, and the war is unwinnable.
In addition, after a war, we often don't pay to fix up the country. For instance, we have not given one red cent to Vietnam for all the horrible environmental damage we have caused that poor nation. It's due to sour grapes because we were not able to defeat them in that war. Nor to Laos, Cambodia or North Korea.
True, we rebuilt Germany and Japan, but that's because they were soundly defeated. In addition, that was a much more reasonable era to be an American. Americans in 1948 were a much more decent lot than these nasty, creepy beasts we have morphed into in 2008.
I don't think Americans in their current nastiness would rebuild any country they wrecked with a war.
We spent tens of millions of dollars "rebuilding" Iraq, and it was a complete failure. It was a cynical Third World style corruption gravy train that sucked money from US taxpayers to pour into the pockets of US corporate criminals on no-bid joke contracts.
The crooks either stole the money outright and did no work at all, or did shitty work, walked away from their collapsing buildings and laughed all the way to the bank. That Americans are so lame that they are going to elect someone who was in on this scam from the start, John McCain, is outrageous.
Do you think we will spend one nickel cleaning up all this horrible depleted uranium pollution we have spewed all over Iraq? We haven't even cleaned up our DU mess in Serbia.
American hubris is so horrible that we go completely nuts whenever we "lose" or at least do not completely win a war. That is why it is so hard to pull out of Iraq. Americans simply can't hack the idea. Americans will literally stay in that stupid country for 5-10+ more years, our young men getting hacked up every single day, just so we don't "lose", or "not win", or however they see it.
Some friends of mine just got back from a patriotic concert put on by the US Armed Forces in Fresno. Even though I'm supposed to be an America-hater, I love going to these things. The local army unit in Iraq is there and you get to talk to them. They have all the vets in the audience stand up for each service and my Dad wobbles to his feet.
At this one, I am told that they had a screen presentation of all of the local soldiers (not sure of the area covered) who got killed - not just wounded, but killed - in Iraq. My friend said it was heartbreaking. It seemed to go on and on forever, and as she said, "It seemed like there were hundreds of them, and they were all so young." So much for "the surge is working, let's stay in Iraq for 100 years, God is calling us to Iraq" triumphalist crap.
The reason we are still in Iraq is because not enough Americans have been killed and wounded there. Americans are so self-centered that they only care about wars when lots of soldiers start getting killed or coming back wounded.
When questioned about war crimes in World War 2, my older friends and relatives get very defensive. They say that during WW2, there were these star designs you hung in your window if you had someone in the services overseas or if you lost someone in the war.
Blue star for someone in the service; gold star for someone dead in the war. You would drive around Chicago and see these blue stars everywhere. And on nearly every single street, one or more gold stars.
Get that? On every street, someone had lost a male family member in the war.
Every single day in the paper, they would list the casualties. Every day there were 70-80 new ones. The whole nation was in mourning all the time. It never seemed to end. People were sick and tired of all the dying and were getting very angry. They wanted it over and right now.
So you saw firebombing in Germany and Japan and atom bombs on Japan. I'm not trying to defend this stuff - just showing you the tremendous pain that drove these crimes. I don't think we did because we were a bunch of sadists.
Korea was a similar deal. There were ~32,00 Americans dead in only three years. That's worse than Vietnam on a per year basis.
In Vietnam too, the pain was obvious. There were 30 or so guys dying every single day at the peak. There were wounded coming back all the time, limping around or in wheelchairs. You could not avoid them - they were shoved into your face on the streets you walked.
I remember at the height of the war, Time Magazine ran a whole issue with about 200-250 guys who got killed that week, and it freaked out the whole damn country. There were two or three guys on every page with a little something about them. It put faces and lives on the names and numbers.
Unless Americans sustain heavy duty casualties, their pride will keep them in the most idiotic and insane wars almost forever. This Iraq War won't end until Americans really start feeling some real pain over it, as in the pain of death and injuries.
It's sad but true.
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