Arnold, Please consider compiling your father's dicta (about politics, social science, life), insofar as you remember them, and writing a little essay about them.
I don't think anyone who believes that contemporary ethics of war and the law of armed conflict (or the whole tradition of just war dating back to the medievals) are on anything like the right track could believe that Japan deserved everything that it got in WW2. By today's standards the 1944/45 bombing campaign campaign was flagrantly illegal.
WW2 was the most just conflict in history by the standards of "jus ad bellum," but probably the worst in history by the standards of "jus in bello."
The war crimes committed by the Japanese were as barbaric as anything the Nazis ever conceived of. They were just more scattered. Anyone who lived through the occupation of Manila, Burma, Singapore, or Manchuria would likely go into a fit of hysterics at the suggestion the Japanese were treated too harshly during the War.
As I was alluding to in my initial comment: it's a fundamental principle of just war that, since the Japanese civilians who burned to death in 1945--in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and many other cities--did nothing themselves to provoke the Allied nations, they were not legitimate targets.
Dropping the Bombs pushed the Japanese into rapid surrender. Plan B was to continue firebombing (as already in Tokyo), which would have killed many more people. War IS Hell, and there are no Good Guys.
The Good Guys must do bad stuff in order to stop the Bad Guys from doing worse stuff.
My grandmother thought the US should nuke Hanoi to end the Vietnam war, killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to stop the terrible commies from winning.
How many Vietnamese and Cambodians need to be killed by commies before you think a nuke to end the war & stop communism would have been better?
Most ethics of war folk today care far more about blaming the West, than about saving lives of civilians.
Or think how many civilians lives would have been saved has we just entered into the war in the first place. The average Vietnamese is doing ok today under "the Bad Guys" and better than most Americans on metrics that matter.
That is a Cold War myth that was fully discredited in the early oughts once all the archives finally started to get opened via time (fifty+ years) or government changes (Soviet records systems were released in mass). Japan surrender because of the Soviet invasion, Japanese, US, and Russian archival records of meeting minutes and communications from the time all agree on that point . But we (US) needed to rapidly create the myth to support Japan remaining our puppet state as well as ex post facto veneer of moral legitimacy in using the bombs.
It's a myth that just won't die because even today it's useful for the US and Japanese governments in the same way we underplay how it was China and Russia, not the West, that enabled a Western victory in WW2 in both theaters and how they, not US, were the primary combatants and sufferers.
“That is a Cold War myth that was fully discredited in the early oughts once all the archives finally started to get opened via time (fifty+ years) or government changes (Soviet records systems were released in mass). Japan surrender because of the Soviet invasion, Japanese, US, and Russian archival records of meeting minutes and communications from the time all agree on that point .”
Cool story bro, but your claim of myth and fully discredited is mostly false. Or at best, you have no way to know.
Your suggestion that the nuclear bombs dropped had minimal or even no impact on the quick end to the war is ridiculous.
Just because it is the view of some revisionist historians - and make no mistake, the Soviet invasion factor likely played a role, and no doubt said role was downplayed previously - does not make the idea that the nukes dropped were at barest minimum a very significant factor a “myth”.
The actual historical records from the decision makers themselves at the time they made the decisions disagrees. This isn't revisionist history, this is facts coming to light with declassifications decades later. The only revisionist history was made by the US in 1945 about how the nukes played or fire bombings played any role in the surrender decision.
If the US was going to abandon a side during WWII, it would have been Europe. In January 1943 at the Casablanca conference, Churchill and Stalin both had serious concerns that the US was going to just focus on the Pacific, and would continue slow rolling support in those other theaters. The reason for this is just that the Japanese war was more clearly in the American interest, and also in the personal interests of Roosevelt and those from whom he emerged and who supported him (the China trade lobby).
The culmination of American foreign policy in Japan was the result of a long ranging plan for transforming America from a backwater to a first rate power going back to the late 19th century developed by Teddy Roosevelt and Alfred Mahan among others, entirely in the open, in a case made without guile or much in the way of secrecy. So while the US' commitment to Europe was always based on contingencies and opportunities, the push to Asia was a total commitment not entirely caused by Pearl Harbor itself. Pearl Harbor, however, was very helpful to secure the popular support needed for the policy.
The US did stop short of unconditional surrender in the war against Japan: it just redefined "unconditional surrender" at the last minute to acquiesce to former sticking points like the office of the Emperor sticking around. Otherwise, the Japanese would have kept going after the nukes. The drama of the those big mushrooms also permitted a major semantic switcheroo in forming the peace.
With respect to the US role in the current Middle East, the US wants to treat nationalities like it treats snail darters or like San Francisco NGOs treat homeless people. There is no long ranging plan aside from going to conferences, spending a lot of other peoples' money, saying nice things, and maintaining "bases" that are just places for soldiers to accumulate lifelong injuries that the VA has to pay for. The Iran deal was unconstitutional, as are all agreements like it, and it is pretty reckless to try to base long term policy around constructs like it, and that goes doubly for secret diplomacy. This fracas was the outcome of the typical postmodern American fortune cookie way of looking at the world through slogans like "eat soup with a knife" and "who moved my cheese."
If you take a problem seriously, you’re pretty much going to spend somebody else’s money. I mean, unless you’re a Gates or a Bezos. It seems unserious to make a blanket statement like that.
The Fish and Wildlife Service made a plan for the snail darter in 1978, they executed that plan, they delisted it. And the objective - unlike the neocon policies which presumably you are searching for a means of opposing - saved lives (life).
If the alt-right or paleocons or whatever the name might be, can’t figure out a way to oppose the right and left without beating up on snail darters - it may not be worth doing. Conservatism is going to need much sturdier legs than that. It is also going to need something to conserve, and it’s pretty obvious what that should be if you’re a traditionalist, especially one in the Anglo mold.
But America lost China in 1949. Perhaps the “realist” Americans that think that the future of a Western Republic depends on fighting a billion country across the longest Ocean instead of liaison with the European democracies are not so realist.
Apart from that, if I were a Zionist, I would compare distance from America to Israel across the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Sure, it lost China in 1949, but as compensation it gained South Korea, Japan, secured the Philippines, tried for Vietnam, lost Vietnam, Nixon goes to China in 1972, and only now does it look like the US might "lose China" again.
Distance doesn't matter over oceans like it does over land in terms of time and cost so long as security issues do not come into play. It's a deeply counterintuitive fact that has been made more salient by technology. The psychological distance between the West and Asia is much more consequential than the physical distance.
How can you “compensate” losing China? Asia was mostly lost, and it was economically regained in the 2000s, at the price of putting the American Hegemony at risk.
Rant incoming. While Israel's conflict with the 'Palestinians' (Hamas), Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran has deep historical and religious roots, the timing of the October 7th attack itself and the subsequent attacks by Hezbollah and the Houthis are the fault of this Administration because of its consistent projection of weakness and its appeasement of Iran, and consequently, this Administration has some chutzpah asking Israel to accept a peace-fire with either Hamas or Lebanon. The projection of weakness begins with the 'installation' of an obviously senile, dementia-ridden old coot as President. Then there was the disastrous way the withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out, and the unmitigated failure of the NATO-backed Ukrainian spring-summer 2023 'counteroffensive' against the Russian military that preceded the October 7th attack. In the aftermath of the attack, the failure to stop the Houthis from disrupting shipping added to the perception of weakness. No wonder Hezbollah and the Houthis felt emboldened. The ongoing 'feminization' of the US military also sends a signal of weakness, the most recent example being the ludicrous announcement of a 'gender-neutral' submarine, the submarine fleet being the one branch of the military that had heretofore been immune. These moronic idealogues can leave no stone unturned in destroying the country from within. Notice also that while trying to bring about cease-fires in the Middle East, or at least pretending to do so, there has been no mention or, or attempt at, a cease-fire in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, even though it is obvious that Ukraine has no chance of stopping the Russian military from taking additional territory, let alone regaining the territory Ukraine has already lost, and even though negotiating an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict might be helpful in solving the Middle East crisis given the alliance between Russia and Iran. Time will tell whether critics who argue that Israel cannot achieve victory simply by decapitating Hezbollah are right, but I don't see why Israel should take the hit for these idiots.
In thinking about WW11 when war became more dominated by "belief" systems with both the Nazi and Japanese having unchangeable beliefs and people could claim that just killing the "believers" won't allow victory. Truly and totally defeating Germany and Japan did change their belief systems and we did kill a lot of civilians. We know what indiscriminate bombing does to cities which is why we know that the Gaza bombings were not indiscriminate and the activists making such claims are just believing their "own truth". In one night we killed 100,000 people in Tokyo with less that 5% of the munitions used by Israel.
Hamas is a belief system and like the kamakazi, people want to be martyrs and loosing a conventional battle won't change their beliefs. The kamakazi like the Hamas martyrs were successful and killed a lot of people. But total defeat changed their thinking. They had no way to rationalize that they could have victory if they fought harder.
Given a pathological belief system like Hamas espouses, history has show that these beliefs can be defeated. However, effectively killing a belief system has been achieved by total victory never by "diplomacy" and compromise. Both the Nazi and Japanese belief system were effectively eliminated by victory. China has removed much of the threat from the Uyghurs Muslim belief system by ignoring our advice to compromise with a group whose beliefs don't allow compromise.
You can't be tolerant to an intolerant belief system.
“If we had it to do over again, we should be more restrained, and Israel should learn from that.“ This is not about Israel’s view and America’s view. There is no “we.” This is about individual experience to events. We cannot easily put ourselves in their shoes. We should have tolerance for their desire to respond with deadly force.
"Israel’s enemies have shown that they do not want to live in peace with the Jewish state, under any terms."
There is a problem with you analogy to Japan. There are many things Israel can accomplish militarily and I don't fault them for doing so but they will not gain peace by military victory.
Maybe. Though I'm not sure what the logic of that is. Would the civilian deaths in Lebanon and the West Bank be pointless? The deaths in Syria or Iran? What about the military deaths (does an armed forces leader in Hezbollah count as military?)?
To take a ridiculous hypothetical, if the US had assassinated Hitler on December 8, 1941 but World War II had proceeded anyway, would that death have been pointless?
There is a big difference between the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and the October 7 attack. War between Israel and the Palestinians (and whoever had been supporting the Palestinians at any given time) has been continuous since 1948. Oct. 7 was just the latest round in that continuous war. There have been some relatively quite periods, particularly after Israeli "victories", but these victories never actually solved anything. There is no reason to believe "victory" in the current situation would be any more successful solving the situation than previous victories.
There was no war between the US and Japan before Pearl Harbor. There were some tensions, basically the US stood opposed to Japanese imperial goals, but these were supposedly being handled diplomatically. Diplomacy did not work in this case, the Japanese attacked, and the US entered WWII.
The end result was a US victory over Japan and the Japanese giving up its imperial goals. Japan has worked and played well with its neighbors ever since. There is an extremely low likelihood that Israel will be able to achieve such a victory.
Wars only end when one side or the other, or both sides at the same time, give up on goals that conflict. Israelis and Palestinians have the same goal but from a different point of view, the entire Palestine area to be one nation under the control of their own people rather than controlled by the “other.” Totally understandable goals given each group’s history, and goals that garner each side a certain amount of international support. But these goals are completely conflicting and not likely to be resolved with any "victory." The only way this war (I mean the war that started in 1948) ends militarily is either Israel is conquered and ceases to exist, or the Palestinian people accept the fate of becoming either exiles or semi-willing second class citizens within the nation of Israel encompassing all of Palestine. Neither of these is likely to happen.
Diplomatically, war will not end in a "2-State Solution." The two sides will continuously fight over boundaries and sovereignty. But I do maintain some hope for a “one state solution”, a power-sharing agreement between the Jews and Arabs over the entire area of Palestine. Though animosity runs deep, there is nothing automatically antithetical about Jews living in harmony with Muslims. Negotiations would be very difficult but if animosities can be set aside for a period of time the obstacles may be overcome. The alternative is another 75 years or longer of continuous war.
The Arab Muslim Israelis, now almost 2 million (- 20%) of the pop. Of Israel are both higher class than surrounding middle class Arabs, yet also slightly second class in Israel. A Jewish state, which respects other religions but does slightly privilege Jews.
The 3 state solution I support allows Israel to be Jewish, the Palestinian West Bank to be Muslim (and Jew hating), and Gaza to be secular under the secular laws of Israel during the occupation.
Israel wants to be Jewish and democratic—it can’t be both in any one state configuration.
Perhaps Egypt could absorb Gaza, like from ‘48 - ‘67, but once they lost it, they didn’t want the hate filled terrorist Gazans to be in Egypt. Haven’t you seen their Big Beautiful wall to keep Arab Muslim Egypt safe from Gazans? Tho there are dozens of tunnels.
In your scenario, how does the West Bank get to be Muslim with so many Jewish settlers in the area? Do the Jews in the West Bank give up their Israeli citizenship and become citizens of a Muslim-dominated Palestine? That will never happen. Alternatively, all the Jewish settlements in the West Bank could become part of Israel and the Palestinian state will look like Swiss cheese. That does not sound like a fair compromise.
Israel claims to be democratic yet wants to be dominated by Jews. Fine, if they restrict themselves to just a tiny area. But Israel wants all of Palestine as Israel. The only way to get it all is ethnic cleansing, get most Muslims to leave the area or die. I don't think the US should support such ambitions.
Israel has finally learned the fool me once your fault, fool my twice my fault. They could have fixed Iran as well years ago but Obama blocked them, on the reasons why anyone might have his own theory, and they ended up being attacked from everywhere. This time they will go much farther.
Israel could not have 'fixed' Iran years ago; that's too tall an order. The geopolitical logic of the situation has been entrenched and robust for a long time.
Even with help from 'friends' (less reliable and generous with every passing year) they are barely able to keep a lid on Iranian nuclear capacity just below that necessary to to breed Plutonium*, which is a wise thing for them (or anyone who really doesn't want Iran to get nukes) to prioritize, but shows the limits of Israeli capability.
What the Israelis could and should have done a lot better - and faster, that is, while Trump was still in the White House - was to more thoroughly neutralize Iran's ability to project power close to Israel by deploying, arming, funding, smuggling through, and training its allied Shiite proxies and Hamas. For whatever reasons, perhaps under various kinds of diplomatic and international pressure, and lulled into complacency and wishful thinking by a period of relative calm, they stopped being serious and determined about the threats they faced, took their eyes off the ball, and shifted focus to distracting and petty internal political struggles. #NeverAgain? We'll see.
*Plutonium is valuable in lots of ways. First of all, it's "easy" to make by modern technological standards and economic capacity: the US was breeding lots of the stuff from cheap Uranium-238 80 (!) years ago at the B Reactor, enough for Trinity in the last quarter of 1944. Yes, it spent incredible amount of money doing so, however, consider how technologically backward things were at the time! The bred Plutonium is also much easier and cheaper to refine than Uranium-235 because one can do it with ordinary chemical processes, and you hardly need industrial quantities - Fat Man only needed 6 kilograms, and had a very inefficient yield compared to more modern designs which need even less.
It's also much more practical to use Plutonium designed for nuclear warheads in long-range ballistic missiles, the possession of which is of course Iran's overarching strategic objective, and one supported by its allies as it means "The Shiite Bomb" - a game changer not just about Israel but for the whole region's long-running Great Game.
That the Obama people were able to genuinely fool themselves into imagining they could bring Iran with tons of money and promises of normalization into giving up such a goal is a truly depressing and alarming statement on the condition, competency, and sanity of the regime's foreign policy 'experts' and political class. That the Biden people couldn't figure out how to walk that error back without getting paralyzed by the feeling of disgust of validating Trumps' reversals and so are determined to simply wait until its clear to double-down on that failure is an order of magnitude more alarming, and, I suspect, several orders more so for the Israelis.
Civilians in a war support their country and are thus fair game. German civilians were bombed, why exempt the Japanese? If it's not gaining anything and there's a chance of creating some goodwill, then that should be the criteria for deciding to bomb civilian targets. However; if both sides can inflict damage on civilian targets but one side decides not to if the other responds in like kind, then that's something to consider.
Well how's that idea working out? If you watch the news, not so good. As for the same old same old about Japan. The firebombing. The nukes. The war cabinet had a vote. 4 to continue the war, 4 against. The Emperor voted no. He could have voted yes. Think about it. The vote was not 8-0 for peace, not 7-1, not 6-2, not 5-3. 4-4! After the vote was in elements in the Japanese army tried to stage sort of a coup. They invaded the Imperial Palace. Pointed a gun at the Chamberlain and demanded to know where the record was that the Emperor had recorded his speech on. Chamberlain said he didn't know. It was tucked under some linens in the closet behind him and he knew. The soldiers left in frustration. Another group invaded the radio station in Tokyo. A flight of B-29's flew overhead on a bombing mission. Tokyo went into a blackout. The army told the station manager to broadcast a message that the Japanese people were to continue to fight . Manager said he couldn't. It was a lie. There were back up generators in the basement. They then left. Later on arrested and some committed suicide. Emperor's record was played. War ended.
If not? Well war would have continued. Probably one more A-Bomb. Tokyo? More firebombing. Invasion. The US is still handing out Purple Hearts that were made back then because they made so many for the casualties they expended. Probably at least 500,000 more Americans' dead. Million or so Japanese. Doubt if we would be allies, even now.
As I've said before. When the Nazi's and the Japanese (and Stalin and Mao) took over the killings just began. They killed most of their victims after the surrenders.
When the US took over? The killings stopped.
The Palestinians and the Iran leadership want to exterminate the Jews. They don't just want a separate state. There are no "nice" wars. And Isreal is fighting a war of survival.
Arnold, I know in the past you have taken the position that Pearl Harbor is more analogous than 9/11 to Oct. 7 and 8, but I'm not sure why. Comparisons to 9/11 don't really weaken Israel's position as far as I can tell. After 9/11, the US invaded a sovereign Afghanistan to dismantle Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban regime that harbored them. The entire Free World supported the US after 9/11, the only time NATO's Article 5 has been invoked. I'm not sure why a double standard is being applied to Israel as it enters Gaza to dismantle Hamas and Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah. Re: civilian casualties, early reports were that the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in Gaza was even lower than in Afghanistan, which itself was lower than average for similar urban wars. Maybe, that has changed in the ensuing months, but I haven't heard Israel's critics say what applicable civilian-protecting measures, if any, the US took in Afghanistan that Israel refuses to take in Gaza. Regardless, the US certainly wouldn't have "ceased fire" before Al Qaeda was completely dismantled.
One could also consider a hypothetical equivalent where a Native American terrorist group attacked a US city and killed and took hostage as many Americans as Hamas did Jews. Whatever one might think regarding "land acknowledgements" and Native Americans' ancestral claims, there is no way the American public would be expected to accept a "cease fire" that left that terrorist group in tact, reconstituting itself on a Native American reservation somewhere. As far as I know, there are no such Native American terrorist threats --- despite understandable ancestral grievances --- no Native American equivalent to Hamas, the absence of which only highlights the double standard applied to Israel.
"After 9/11, the US invaded a sovereign Afghanistan to dismantle Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban regime that harbored them. ... I'm not sure why a double standard is being applied to Israel as it enters Gaza to dismantle Hamas and Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah."
Perhaps because in 2001, lots of people thought that it was possible to dismantle the Islamists in Afghanistan (and Iraq) and turn those countries into democratic, open societies like Germany and Japan after WW II. And indeed the military missions were largely successful in "killing people and breaking things". But the Islamists couldn't be wiped out. Afghanistan is now a sh*thole ruled by the Taliban and Islamists have a large influence in Iraq. Lots of people now think trying to dismantle Hamas and Hezbollah won't be any more successful.
This doesn't address the well-meaning criticism of Israel at all. The argument is that Israel's current course of action, with zero consideration for Palestinian life, is bad for Israel. Israel is shunning allies, like risking breaking the bi-partisan pro Israel consensus in the US, snuffing out the diplomatic progress in the region that might have isolated the Palestinians and planting the seeds for yet more decades of terrorism against Israel.
It's facile to say "we need victory". All that's offered in this post is invading Tehran. Great.
Add in any consideration for Palestinian lives and the war is a complete atrocity.
Accusing Israel of "zero consideration for Palestinian life" makes you unpersuasive. If anything, that phrase describes Hamas, which uses Palestinians as human shields, rather than Israel, which tries to do what it can to target fighters.
Recently I was talking to a twenty-something girl outside my local grocery store who was soliciting donations for Doctors Without Borders, and making a similar case- her words of choice were "indiscriminate bombing". I let it go. As the rednecks say, you can't cure stupid.
I now realize that my phrasing was ambiguous. What I mean is " The argument is that Israel's current course of action, if even you completely ignore the effect on Palestinians, is bad for Israel."
Arnold, Please consider compiling your father's dicta (about politics, social science, life), insofar as you remember them, and writing a little essay about them.
I don't think anyone who believes that contemporary ethics of war and the law of armed conflict (or the whole tradition of just war dating back to the medievals) are on anything like the right track could believe that Japan deserved everything that it got in WW2. By today's standards the 1944/45 bombing campaign campaign was flagrantly illegal.
WW2 was the most just conflict in history by the standards of "jus ad bellum," but probably the worst in history by the standards of "jus in bello."
The war crimes committed by the Japanese were as barbaric as anything the Nazis ever conceived of. They were just more scattered. Anyone who lived through the occupation of Manila, Burma, Singapore, or Manchuria would likely go into a fit of hysterics at the suggestion the Japanese were treated too harshly during the War.
Absolutely agree that Japanese war crimes were more severe than Allied ones by a wide margin.
The former did much to provoke the latter. That's the part you're missing.
As I was alluding to in my initial comment: it's a fundamental principle of just war that, since the Japanese civilians who burned to death in 1945--in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and many other cities--did nothing themselves to provoke the Allied nations, they were not legitimate targets.
After Pearl Harbor and Bataan, nobody felt much like making those distinctions. Funny how that works.
Dropping the Bombs pushed the Japanese into rapid surrender. Plan B was to continue firebombing (as already in Tokyo), which would have killed many more people. War IS Hell, and there are no Good Guys.
The Good Guys must do bad stuff in order to stop the Bad Guys from doing worse stuff.
My grandmother thought the US should nuke Hanoi to end the Vietnam war, killing hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese to stop the terrible commies from winning.
How many Vietnamese and Cambodians need to be killed by commies before you think a nuke to end the war & stop communism would have been better?
Most ethics of war folk today care far more about blaming the West, than about saving lives of civilians.
Or think how many civilians lives would have been saved has we just entered into the war in the first place. The average Vietnamese is doing ok today under "the Bad Guys" and better than most Americans on metrics that matter.
That is a Cold War myth that was fully discredited in the early oughts once all the archives finally started to get opened via time (fifty+ years) or government changes (Soviet records systems were released in mass). Japan surrender because of the Soviet invasion, Japanese, US, and Russian archival records of meeting minutes and communications from the time all agree on that point . But we (US) needed to rapidly create the myth to support Japan remaining our puppet state as well as ex post facto veneer of moral legitimacy in using the bombs.
It's a myth that just won't die because even today it's useful for the US and Japanese governments in the same way we underplay how it was China and Russia, not the West, that enabled a Western victory in WW2 in both theaters and how they, not US, were the primary combatants and sufferers.
“That is a Cold War myth that was fully discredited in the early oughts once all the archives finally started to get opened via time (fifty+ years) or government changes (Soviet records systems were released in mass). Japan surrender because of the Soviet invasion, Japanese, US, and Russian archival records of meeting minutes and communications from the time all agree on that point .”
Cool story bro, but your claim of myth and fully discredited is mostly false. Or at best, you have no way to know.
Your suggestion that the nuclear bombs dropped had minimal or even no impact on the quick end to the war is ridiculous.
Just because it is the view of some revisionist historians - and make no mistake, the Soviet invasion factor likely played a role, and no doubt said role was downplayed previously - does not make the idea that the nukes dropped were at barest minimum a very significant factor a “myth”.
The actual historical records from the decision makers themselves at the time they made the decisions disagrees. This isn't revisionist history, this is facts coming to light with declassifications decades later. The only revisionist history was made by the US in 1945 about how the nukes played or fire bombings played any role in the surrender decision.
And you can be certain that said historical records provide the truth, the whole thrush, and nothing but the truth how exactly?
And you explain the fact that not all historians completely agree with you now how exactly?
Seems to me at minimum some epistemic humility is called for, even where you feel strongly.
If the US was going to abandon a side during WWII, it would have been Europe. In January 1943 at the Casablanca conference, Churchill and Stalin both had serious concerns that the US was going to just focus on the Pacific, and would continue slow rolling support in those other theaters. The reason for this is just that the Japanese war was more clearly in the American interest, and also in the personal interests of Roosevelt and those from whom he emerged and who supported him (the China trade lobby).
The culmination of American foreign policy in Japan was the result of a long ranging plan for transforming America from a backwater to a first rate power going back to the late 19th century developed by Teddy Roosevelt and Alfred Mahan among others, entirely in the open, in a case made without guile or much in the way of secrecy. So while the US' commitment to Europe was always based on contingencies and opportunities, the push to Asia was a total commitment not entirely caused by Pearl Harbor itself. Pearl Harbor, however, was very helpful to secure the popular support needed for the policy.
The US did stop short of unconditional surrender in the war against Japan: it just redefined "unconditional surrender" at the last minute to acquiesce to former sticking points like the office of the Emperor sticking around. Otherwise, the Japanese would have kept going after the nukes. The drama of the those big mushrooms also permitted a major semantic switcheroo in forming the peace.
With respect to the US role in the current Middle East, the US wants to treat nationalities like it treats snail darters or like San Francisco NGOs treat homeless people. There is no long ranging plan aside from going to conferences, spending a lot of other peoples' money, saying nice things, and maintaining "bases" that are just places for soldiers to accumulate lifelong injuries that the VA has to pay for. The Iran deal was unconstitutional, as are all agreements like it, and it is pretty reckless to try to base long term policy around constructs like it, and that goes doubly for secret diplomacy. This fracas was the outcome of the typical postmodern American fortune cookie way of looking at the world through slogans like "eat soup with a knife" and "who moved my cheese."
If you take a problem seriously, you’re pretty much going to spend somebody else’s money. I mean, unless you’re a Gates or a Bezos. It seems unserious to make a blanket statement like that.
The Fish and Wildlife Service made a plan for the snail darter in 1978, they executed that plan, they delisted it. And the objective - unlike the neocon policies which presumably you are searching for a means of opposing - saved lives (life).
If the alt-right or paleocons or whatever the name might be, can’t figure out a way to oppose the right and left without beating up on snail darters - it may not be worth doing. Conservatism is going to need much sturdier legs than that. It is also going to need something to conserve, and it’s pretty obvious what that should be if you’re a traditionalist, especially one in the Anglo mold.
But America lost China in 1949. Perhaps the “realist” Americans that think that the future of a Western Republic depends on fighting a billion country across the longest Ocean instead of liaison with the European democracies are not so realist.
Apart from that, if I were a Zionist, I would compare distance from America to Israel across the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Sure, it lost China in 1949, but as compensation it gained South Korea, Japan, secured the Philippines, tried for Vietnam, lost Vietnam, Nixon goes to China in 1972, and only now does it look like the US might "lose China" again.
Distance doesn't matter over oceans like it does over land in terms of time and cost so long as security issues do not come into play. It's a deeply counterintuitive fact that has been made more salient by technology. The psychological distance between the West and Asia is much more consequential than the physical distance.
Seems to me it gained a sudden and unexpected and unprepared-for war around that time.
How can you “compensate” losing China? Asia was mostly lost, and it was economically regained in the 2000s, at the price of putting the American Hegemony at risk.
Rant incoming. While Israel's conflict with the 'Palestinians' (Hamas), Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran has deep historical and religious roots, the timing of the October 7th attack itself and the subsequent attacks by Hezbollah and the Houthis are the fault of this Administration because of its consistent projection of weakness and its appeasement of Iran, and consequently, this Administration has some chutzpah asking Israel to accept a peace-fire with either Hamas or Lebanon. The projection of weakness begins with the 'installation' of an obviously senile, dementia-ridden old coot as President. Then there was the disastrous way the withdrawal from Afghanistan was carried out, and the unmitigated failure of the NATO-backed Ukrainian spring-summer 2023 'counteroffensive' against the Russian military that preceded the October 7th attack. In the aftermath of the attack, the failure to stop the Houthis from disrupting shipping added to the perception of weakness. No wonder Hezbollah and the Houthis felt emboldened. The ongoing 'feminization' of the US military also sends a signal of weakness, the most recent example being the ludicrous announcement of a 'gender-neutral' submarine, the submarine fleet being the one branch of the military that had heretofore been immune. These moronic idealogues can leave no stone unturned in destroying the country from within. Notice also that while trying to bring about cease-fires in the Middle East, or at least pretending to do so, there has been no mention or, or attempt at, a cease-fire in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, even though it is obvious that Ukraine has no chance of stopping the Russian military from taking additional territory, let alone regaining the territory Ukraine has already lost, and even though negotiating an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict might be helpful in solving the Middle East crisis given the alliance between Russia and Iran. Time will tell whether critics who argue that Israel cannot achieve victory simply by decapitating Hezbollah are right, but I don't see why Israel should take the hit for these idiots.
In thinking about WW11 when war became more dominated by "belief" systems with both the Nazi and Japanese having unchangeable beliefs and people could claim that just killing the "believers" won't allow victory. Truly and totally defeating Germany and Japan did change their belief systems and we did kill a lot of civilians. We know what indiscriminate bombing does to cities which is why we know that the Gaza bombings were not indiscriminate and the activists making such claims are just believing their "own truth". In one night we killed 100,000 people in Tokyo with less that 5% of the munitions used by Israel.
Hamas is a belief system and like the kamakazi, people want to be martyrs and loosing a conventional battle won't change their beliefs. The kamakazi like the Hamas martyrs were successful and killed a lot of people. But total defeat changed their thinking. They had no way to rationalize that they could have victory if they fought harder.
Given a pathological belief system like Hamas espouses, history has show that these beliefs can be defeated. However, effectively killing a belief system has been achieved by total victory never by "diplomacy" and compromise. Both the Nazi and Japanese belief system were effectively eliminated by victory. China has removed much of the threat from the Uyghurs Muslim belief system by ignoring our advice to compromise with a group whose beliefs don't allow compromise.
You can't be tolerant to an intolerant belief system.
I don’t think Israel should accept a ceasefire now. Rather I say, maintain fire until the job is done.
“If we had it to do over again, we should be more restrained, and Israel should learn from that.“ This is not about Israel’s view and America’s view. There is no “we.” This is about individual experience to events. We cannot easily put ourselves in their shoes. We should have tolerance for their desire to respond with deadly force.
"Israel’s enemies have shown that they do not want to live in peace with the Jewish state, under any terms."
There is a problem with you analogy to Japan. There are many things Israel can accomplish militarily and I don't fault them for doing so but they will not gain peace by military victory.
The great tragedy is that there may well be nothing they can do that will gain peace.
And if there isn't, it follows that all of these civilian deaths in Gaza are pointless.
Maybe. Though I'm not sure what the logic of that is. Would the civilian deaths in Lebanon and the West Bank be pointless? The deaths in Syria or Iran? What about the military deaths (does an armed forces leader in Hezbollah count as military?)?
To take a ridiculous hypothetical, if the US had assassinated Hitler on December 8, 1941 but World War II had proceeded anyway, would that death have been pointless?
Yes to all of your questions.
There is typically some distance between everything and nothing.
What should they do instead, just give up?
Focus on making Iron Dome a lot better and accept insularity
And in the meantime, just live with the rockets raining down? Easy to say from half a world away, I wager.
People live with a lot of shit around the world. We don't expect them to make the resolution to their problem a risk to ourselves.
Well said.
There is a big difference between the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and the October 7 attack. War between Israel and the Palestinians (and whoever had been supporting the Palestinians at any given time) has been continuous since 1948. Oct. 7 was just the latest round in that continuous war. There have been some relatively quite periods, particularly after Israeli "victories", but these victories never actually solved anything. There is no reason to believe "victory" in the current situation would be any more successful solving the situation than previous victories.
There was no war between the US and Japan before Pearl Harbor. There were some tensions, basically the US stood opposed to Japanese imperial goals, but these were supposedly being handled diplomatically. Diplomacy did not work in this case, the Japanese attacked, and the US entered WWII.
The end result was a US victory over Japan and the Japanese giving up its imperial goals. Japan has worked and played well with its neighbors ever since. There is an extremely low likelihood that Israel will be able to achieve such a victory.
Wars only end when one side or the other, or both sides at the same time, give up on goals that conflict. Israelis and Palestinians have the same goal but from a different point of view, the entire Palestine area to be one nation under the control of their own people rather than controlled by the “other.” Totally understandable goals given each group’s history, and goals that garner each side a certain amount of international support. But these goals are completely conflicting and not likely to be resolved with any "victory." The only way this war (I mean the war that started in 1948) ends militarily is either Israel is conquered and ceases to exist, or the Palestinian people accept the fate of becoming either exiles or semi-willing second class citizens within the nation of Israel encompassing all of Palestine. Neither of these is likely to happen.
Diplomatically, war will not end in a "2-State Solution." The two sides will continuously fight over boundaries and sovereignty. But I do maintain some hope for a “one state solution”, a power-sharing agreement between the Jews and Arabs over the entire area of Palestine. Though animosity runs deep, there is nothing automatically antithetical about Jews living in harmony with Muslims. Negotiations would be very difficult but if animosities can be set aside for a period of time the obstacles may be overcome. The alternative is another 75 years or longer of continuous war.
The Arab Muslim Israelis, now almost 2 million (- 20%) of the pop. Of Israel are both higher class than surrounding middle class Arabs, yet also slightly second class in Israel. A Jewish state, which respects other religions but does slightly privilege Jews.
The 3 state solution I support allows Israel to be Jewish, the Palestinian West Bank to be Muslim (and Jew hating), and Gaza to be secular under the secular laws of Israel during the occupation.
Israel wants to be Jewish and democratic—it can’t be both in any one state configuration.
Perhaps Egypt could absorb Gaza, like from ‘48 - ‘67, but once they lost it, they didn’t want the hate filled terrorist Gazans to be in Egypt. Haven’t you seen their Big Beautiful wall to keep Arab Muslim Egypt safe from Gazans? Tho there are dozens of tunnels.
In your scenario, how does the West Bank get to be Muslim with so many Jewish settlers in the area? Do the Jews in the West Bank give up their Israeli citizenship and become citizens of a Muslim-dominated Palestine? That will never happen. Alternatively, all the Jewish settlements in the West Bank could become part of Israel and the Palestinian state will look like Swiss cheese. That does not sound like a fair compromise.
Israel claims to be democratic yet wants to be dominated by Jews. Fine, if they restrict themselves to just a tiny area. But Israel wants all of Palestine as Israel. The only way to get it all is ethnic cleansing, get most Muslims to leave the area or die. I don't think the US should support such ambitions.
The PM's speech at the UN and bombing that took place was an Israeli message to the world: we will do what we have to do regardless of your views.
Israel has finally learned the fool me once your fault, fool my twice my fault. They could have fixed Iran as well years ago but Obama blocked them, on the reasons why anyone might have his own theory, and they ended up being attacked from everywhere. This time they will go much farther.
Israel could not have 'fixed' Iran years ago; that's too tall an order. The geopolitical logic of the situation has been entrenched and robust for a long time.
Even with help from 'friends' (less reliable and generous with every passing year) they are barely able to keep a lid on Iranian nuclear capacity just below that necessary to to breed Plutonium*, which is a wise thing for them (or anyone who really doesn't want Iran to get nukes) to prioritize, but shows the limits of Israeli capability.
What the Israelis could and should have done a lot better - and faster, that is, while Trump was still in the White House - was to more thoroughly neutralize Iran's ability to project power close to Israel by deploying, arming, funding, smuggling through, and training its allied Shiite proxies and Hamas. For whatever reasons, perhaps under various kinds of diplomatic and international pressure, and lulled into complacency and wishful thinking by a period of relative calm, they stopped being serious and determined about the threats they faced, took their eyes off the ball, and shifted focus to distracting and petty internal political struggles. #NeverAgain? We'll see.
*Plutonium is valuable in lots of ways. First of all, it's "easy" to make by modern technological standards and economic capacity: the US was breeding lots of the stuff from cheap Uranium-238 80 (!) years ago at the B Reactor, enough for Trinity in the last quarter of 1944. Yes, it spent incredible amount of money doing so, however, consider how technologically backward things were at the time! The bred Plutonium is also much easier and cheaper to refine than Uranium-235 because one can do it with ordinary chemical processes, and you hardly need industrial quantities - Fat Man only needed 6 kilograms, and had a very inefficient yield compared to more modern designs which need even less.
It's also much more practical to use Plutonium designed for nuclear warheads in long-range ballistic missiles, the possession of which is of course Iran's overarching strategic objective, and one supported by its allies as it means "The Shiite Bomb" - a game changer not just about Israel but for the whole region's long-running Great Game.
That the Obama people were able to genuinely fool themselves into imagining they could bring Iran with tons of money and promises of normalization into giving up such a goal is a truly depressing and alarming statement on the condition, competency, and sanity of the regime's foreign policy 'experts' and political class. That the Biden people couldn't figure out how to walk that error back without getting paralyzed by the feeling of disgust of validating Trumps' reversals and so are determined to simply wait until its clear to double-down on that failure is an order of magnitude more alarming, and, I suspect, several orders more so for the Israelis.
If the JCPOA was such a sweetheart deal for Iran, why didn't they want to get back into it after Biden offered that?
Civilians in a war support their country and are thus fair game. German civilians were bombed, why exempt the Japanese? If it's not gaining anything and there's a chance of creating some goodwill, then that should be the criteria for deciding to bomb civilian targets. However; if both sides can inflict damage on civilian targets but one side decides not to if the other responds in like kind, then that's something to consider.
Go to West Point and say this to the cadets and see what sort of response you get.
Well how's that idea working out? If you watch the news, not so good. As for the same old same old about Japan. The firebombing. The nukes. The war cabinet had a vote. 4 to continue the war, 4 against. The Emperor voted no. He could have voted yes. Think about it. The vote was not 8-0 for peace, not 7-1, not 6-2, not 5-3. 4-4! After the vote was in elements in the Japanese army tried to stage sort of a coup. They invaded the Imperial Palace. Pointed a gun at the Chamberlain and demanded to know where the record was that the Emperor had recorded his speech on. Chamberlain said he didn't know. It was tucked under some linens in the closet behind him and he knew. The soldiers left in frustration. Another group invaded the radio station in Tokyo. A flight of B-29's flew overhead on a bombing mission. Tokyo went into a blackout. The army told the station manager to broadcast a message that the Japanese people were to continue to fight . Manager said he couldn't. It was a lie. There were back up generators in the basement. They then left. Later on arrested and some committed suicide. Emperor's record was played. War ended.
If not? Well war would have continued. Probably one more A-Bomb. Tokyo? More firebombing. Invasion. The US is still handing out Purple Hearts that were made back then because they made so many for the casualties they expended. Probably at least 500,000 more Americans' dead. Million or so Japanese. Doubt if we would be allies, even now.
As I've said before. When the Nazi's and the Japanese (and Stalin and Mao) took over the killings just began. They killed most of their victims after the surrenders.
When the US took over? The killings stopped.
The Palestinians and the Iran leadership want to exterminate the Jews. They don't just want a separate state. There are no "nice" wars. And Isreal is fighting a war of survival.
Arnold, I know in the past you have taken the position that Pearl Harbor is more analogous than 9/11 to Oct. 7 and 8, but I'm not sure why. Comparisons to 9/11 don't really weaken Israel's position as far as I can tell. After 9/11, the US invaded a sovereign Afghanistan to dismantle Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban regime that harbored them. The entire Free World supported the US after 9/11, the only time NATO's Article 5 has been invoked. I'm not sure why a double standard is being applied to Israel as it enters Gaza to dismantle Hamas and Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah. Re: civilian casualties, early reports were that the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in Gaza was even lower than in Afghanistan, which itself was lower than average for similar urban wars. Maybe, that has changed in the ensuing months, but I haven't heard Israel's critics say what applicable civilian-protecting measures, if any, the US took in Afghanistan that Israel refuses to take in Gaza. Regardless, the US certainly wouldn't have "ceased fire" before Al Qaeda was completely dismantled.
One could also consider a hypothetical equivalent where a Native American terrorist group attacked a US city and killed and took hostage as many Americans as Hamas did Jews. Whatever one might think regarding "land acknowledgements" and Native Americans' ancestral claims, there is no way the American public would be expected to accept a "cease fire" that left that terrorist group in tact, reconstituting itself on a Native American reservation somewhere. As far as I know, there are no such Native American terrorist threats --- despite understandable ancestral grievances --- no Native American equivalent to Hamas, the absence of which only highlights the double standard applied to Israel.
"After 9/11, the US invaded a sovereign Afghanistan to dismantle Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban regime that harbored them. ... I'm not sure why a double standard is being applied to Israel as it enters Gaza to dismantle Hamas and Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah."
Perhaps because in 2001, lots of people thought that it was possible to dismantle the Islamists in Afghanistan (and Iraq) and turn those countries into democratic, open societies like Germany and Japan after WW II. And indeed the military missions were largely successful in "killing people and breaking things". But the Islamists couldn't be wiped out. Afghanistan is now a sh*thole ruled by the Taliban and Islamists have a large influence in Iraq. Lots of people now think trying to dismantle Hamas and Hezbollah won't be any more successful.
This doesn't address the well-meaning criticism of Israel at all. The argument is that Israel's current course of action, with zero consideration for Palestinian life, is bad for Israel. Israel is shunning allies, like risking breaking the bi-partisan pro Israel consensus in the US, snuffing out the diplomatic progress in the region that might have isolated the Palestinians and planting the seeds for yet more decades of terrorism against Israel.
It's facile to say "we need victory". All that's offered in this post is invading Tehran. Great.
Add in any consideration for Palestinian lives and the war is a complete atrocity.
Accusing Israel of "zero consideration for Palestinian life" makes you unpersuasive. If anything, that phrase describes Hamas, which uses Palestinians as human shields, rather than Israel, which tries to do what it can to target fighters.
Recently I was talking to a twenty-something girl outside my local grocery store who was soliciting donations for Doctors Without Borders, and making a similar case- her words of choice were "indiscriminate bombing". I let it go. As the rednecks say, you can't cure stupid.
“As the rednecks say, you can't cure stupid.”
But far far more likely than “stupid” is that she has been badly miseducated.
*That* can be cured.
But it’s really hard, takes a long time, and admittedly is not always successful.
I now realize that my phrasing was ambiguous. What I mean is " The argument is that Israel's current course of action, if even you completely ignore the effect on Palestinians, is bad for Israel."
It's possible that there is no course of action that would lead to a good outcome.