Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Tue 07/29/2025 View Mon 07/28/2025 View Sun 07/27/2025 View Sat 07/26/2025 View Fri 07/25/2025 View Thu 07/24/2025 View Wed 07/23/2025
2025-07-29 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
If Israel had taken the US route, it would have just firebombed Gaza from the air without any warnings
[X]











Posted by trailing wife 2025-07-29 2025-07-29 00:19|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| ||Comments [306 views ]  Top
 File under: Hamas 

#1 Even if we nuke Gaza, they won't start making worthwhile anime.
Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-07-29 02:58||   2025-07-29 02:58|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#2 It just seems bizarre and incongruous to see Israel effectively building a ghetto for their enemies. Don't they remember how that turned out?
Posted by Clem+Elmish4239 2025-07-29 05:09||   2025-07-29 05:09|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#3 ^What's so bizzare about concentrating the Gazans - that will significantly facilitate the collection of Gaza's children's blood for ritual purposes.
Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-07-29 05:40||   2025-07-29 05:40|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#4 I'm not sure repeating war crimes is the best move here.
And yes, both the firebombing and the A-bombs were both war crimes, as General LeMay admitted after the war.
SHould have used the Gazan solution on Japan: wall them off and let them wither on the vine.
The invasion would have cost a million US casualties, and for what? By 1945 Japan was a threat to nobody.
Posted by Jairong+Scourge+of+the+Gepids2435 2025-07-29 06:44||   2025-07-29 06:44|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#5  both the firebombing and the A-bombs were both war crimes

The first time I’ve seen that claim, not that I’ve made a study of such things.
Posted by trailing wife 2025-07-29 08:34||   2025-07-29 08:34|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#6 Educate yourself. The Japanese did not recognize the Hague of Geneva Conventions. What they did in Manila in Feb 1944 was barbaric. There is an old adage in warfare - those who show no quarter should expect none in return.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 08:47||   2025-07-29 08:47|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#7 ^You never know that'll come out of EUrope.
Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-07-29 08:50||   2025-07-29 08:50|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#8 #7 --> #5
Posted by Grom the Affective 2025-07-29 08:50||   2025-07-29 08:50|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#9  Even if we nuke Gaza, they won't start making worthwhile anime.

We had to nuke Japan twice before we got Sony and Honda, so there is something to be said for persistence.

As for 'war crimes', as Sherman said to Mr Peabody, "War is cruelty. You cannot refine it."
Posted by SteveS 2025-07-29 09:12||   2025-07-29 09:12|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#10 Japan didn't recognize the Geneva convention? So? War crimes are war crimes. We still hanged the Japanese leadership and a ton of their commanders, too. "I was just following orders" wasn't an excuse and still isn't today.
If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” Said by General Curtis LeMay, the unsmiling man who was the Paul Wolfowitz of the firebombing campaign.
And you don't prove that crimes in Manila are wrong by committing war crimes in Tokyo. One of the few good things the UN ever did was define crimes against humanity and declare they are wrong no matter who does them or who signs any treaty. Jews had a great hand in writing these new laws because "never again" was the postwar watchword. Milosevic didn't sign any Geneva convention and still went on trial at The Hague. I think they screwed up the trial and didn't get a conviction, but the point stands.
After JD Vance made the Europussies cry by formally ending the post-WW2 era at the Munich security conference, the halo has been dispersed and people are looking at the war without the restrictions that were in place for so long. If you follow history on YouTube like I do it's positively buzzing with new scholarship on parts of the war that were totally forgotten or forbidden to be mentioned due to postwar politics. I watched one recently about a battle between the USAAF and Thai air force where the narrator made a deadpan joke about "Thai fighters" while one swooped by and made the trademark rooooiii sound from Star Wars:P
Posted by Jairong+Scourge+of+the+Gepids2435 2025-07-29 12:53||   2025-07-29 12:53|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#11 To use Marxist terms - rules of war are a white supremacy construct. Strange how it only comes from Western Civ. The old adage applies - if you don't follow them, don't expect others to follow them. That's four thousand years of human history.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 13:04||   2025-07-29 13:04|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#12 War itself is a crime. What? You think it's all gentlemen in neat uniforms on the field of honor? Of course there will be times you need to defend yourself and then, to hell with the Geneva Convention, you do whatever it takes to survive.

I don't believe that what Truman did to Japan was necessary for our survival. Their navy was in no condition to resist if we had simply blockaded them. I think it was in a book titled The Court of the Red Tsar where I read how Stalin believed Truman nuked Japan just to show him what would happen to Russia if the Red Army didn't stop after they reached Berlin.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2025-07-29 14:08||   2025-07-29 14:08|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#13 Watched the video I originally linked. The bomb, as identified in the surrender statement of the Emperor as their excuse, provided the means for the Japanese to save face and do the unthinkable. Otherwise, the casualty numbers of both sides, military and civilian, on a land invasion of the home islands would have dwarfed the lives lost in the bombings.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 14:14||   2025-07-29 14:14|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#14 Hirohito was responsible for as much death of military and civilians in Asia as Hitler was in Europe. And was too cowardly to kill himself, even though it was baked into Japanese culture. Instead he was willing to fight to the last school girl armed with a sharpened stick. Were it not for the Abomb, there'd have been Stalingrad level starvation, with moms cooking and eating their babies, and eventually the Soviets coming to occupy and enslave half the island like they did in Europe.
Posted by Regular joe 2025-07-29 14:49||   2025-07-29 14:49|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#15 I find it amusing that Italy always gets a pass, like they didn't try to sink Malta.
Posted by swksvolFF 2025-07-29 15:06||   2025-07-29 15:06|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#16 Hirohito was responsible for as much death of military and civilians in Asia as Hitler was in Europe

Hirohito was a willing puppet. The government was run by the military to took power in the 30s and was not beyond assassinating politicians. That included staging a last minute coup attempt to kidnap the emperor to halt the surrender. Strangely enough in the restoration of the Meiji Emperor and ending the Shogun period of rule, the dominate but still rival clans divided up running the country. The senior clan took the army and the next level clan took the navy.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 15:34||   2025-07-29 15:34|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#17 Grom the Affective - My dad's first cousin's future wife was saved from that little firebombing in Germany. The Gestapo had caught up to her and scheduled her to enter the prostitution corp the next day. The Gestapo didn't survive that fire and she lived to become a key US spy. Oh and can we say Slaughter House 5?
Posted by 3dc 2025-07-29 16:10||   2025-07-29 16:10|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#18 Nowhere is it ever stated WHY the home islands had to be invaded.
The US was going to use the atom bomb no matter what. Too many careers had been built on it.
Japan surrendered because their worst nightmare came true: Russia declared war.
What, they wanted to save their civilian population? Nah, they didn't give a shit about them.
The most amusing take I heard was "anime is proof that two atom bombs just weren't enough."
And those amazing Japanese production techniques were pioneered by Americans who were told to F off by America.
Posted by Jairong+Scourge+of+the+Gepids2435 2025-07-29 16:15||   2025-07-29 16:15|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#19 #15 - Italy surrendered and changed sides in 1943. El Duce got his punishment by his own people. The House of Savoy, Italy's royal house since reunification, was removed from government.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 16:16||   2025-07-29 16:16|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#20 Nowhere is it ever stated WHY the home islands had to be invaded.

Those decisions were already made by the West's leaders. Planning, preparations, and transfer of units from Europe to the Pacific were already in progress. The Potsdam Declaration had already been issued. There was only one way for that to be fulfilled.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 16:21||   2025-07-29 16:21|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#21 Japan surrendered because their worst nightmare came true: Russia declared war.

Again, read the Emperor's own statement. It mentions nothing of the Soviets.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 16:23||   2025-07-29 16:23|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#22 I used to be ambivalent about nuking Japan. Then I read a book "Downfall" by Richard B. Frank. If we had invaded the home islands, every walking person would be given a gun, a knife, a sharp stick to oppose the invaders. The civilian casualties would have been horrendous, not to mention the military casualties. Besides that, the next phase of the bombing campaign was to bomb the railroad bridges that brought food to the cities. Mass starvation would have resulted.
Posted by Rambler 2025-07-29 16:29||   2025-07-29 16:29|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#23 Aren't we lucky we live in a place and time where we can have these discussions?
Posted by Bobby 2025-07-29 16:49||   2025-07-29 16:49|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#24 ..that is sort of covered in the video I linked to that no one wants to watch.

Marching Orders by Bruce Lee was the first book after the Japanese Diplomatic code were declassified in the 90s. Our leadership was reading those while making the decisions.

No one asks the other half of the equation. Why didn't the Japanese surrender sooner?
The onus is always on the Americans/Allies. Never about those who initiated the wars that started in China in the 30s. Note well that someone bombarded a federal fort in 1861 and Sherman in 1865 left Charleston looking like any fire bombed Japanese/German city.

Once you get into the nuance of what was happening in Japan do you realize the key sticking point was retention of the Royal House. All of the population was expendable and they were socialized to accept that. However, the Royal House had to be saved, if not the Emperor. Again the videos addresses that point.
Posted by Procopius2k 2025-07-29 16:52||   2025-07-29 16:52|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#25 Watching P2k's link in #6 should be adequate. Bill Whittle. If the name doesn't ring a bell, maybe you'll remember it after the video. You won't call Truman a war criminal.
Posted by Bobby 2025-07-29 17:16||   2025-07-29 17:16|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#26 Ref #17: The Gestapo didn't survive that fire and she lived to become a key US spy. Oh and can we say Slaughter House 5?

Most people enter the intelligence community, THEN become prostitutes.

Posted by Besoeker 2025-07-29 17:24||   2025-07-29 17:24|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#27 Bill Whittle is Gold, and that's one of his best.
Posted by swksvolFF 2025-07-29 18:08||   2025-07-29 18:08|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#28 #18 Nowhere is it ever stated WHY the home islands had to be invaded.
Posted by Jairong+Scourge+of+the+Gepids2435 2025-07-29 16:15|


Same multi-nymed tool claims we failed by not invading and regime-changing Iran. FOAD
Posted by Frank G 2025-07-29 18:21||   2025-07-29 18:21|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#29 Most people enter the intelligence community, THEN become prostitutes.

Oh, *now* you tell me!
Posted by SteveS 2025-07-29 18:30||   2025-07-29 18:30|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#30 TW, the people in the west protesting Israel as unjust are the ones who were taught in high school that all the things that Prof. Bernstein is talking about, and everything else the US has been involved in since then, were unjust anyway. This isn't going to be a persuasive argument for them. Because they think the US was unjust anyway and this is their chance to be just.

Why do you think they've spent so much time trying to tear down Winston Churchill? (Besides that it was the traditional Soviet line ever since the end of WW2 and they didn't need convoys to Murmansk to survive anymore).
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2025-07-29 18:59||   2025-07-29 18:59|| Front Page || Comments   Top

#31 Maybe a topic for tomorrow at this point, but I think Starmer just threatened to recognize "Palestine" as a state.
Posted by Crusader 2025-07-29 19:57||   2025-07-29 19:57|| Front Page || Comments   Top

20:25 Woodrow
20:17 Woodrow
20:15 Woodrow
20:14 Woodrow
19:57 Crusader
19:39 trailing wife
19:32 trailing wife
18:59 Thing From Snowy Mountain
18:51 Frank G
18:49 Frank G
18:30 SteveS
18:27 Lord Garth
18:21 Frank G
18:08 swksvolFF
18:05 Mullah Richard
17:58 Silentbrick
17:43 Elmerert Hupens2660
17:31 Elmerert Hupens2660
17:24 Besoeker
17:16 Bobby
16:54 Elmomoter Mussolini9149
16:52 Procopius2k
16:52 Elmomoter Mussolini9149
16:51 Elmomoter Mussolini9149
Merry-Go-Blog










Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com