feck·less
Function: adjective
Etymology: Scots, from feck effect, majority, from Middle English (Scots) fek, alteration of Middle English effect
Date: circa 1585
1 : weak , ineffective
2 : worthless , irresponsible
-- Merriam-Webster Dictionary
This is the New York Times Building.This is the latest New York Times editorial demanding more draconian gun control laws:
The Drug Cartels’ Right to Bear Arms
Published: February 27, 2009
The hypocrisy grows all too gruesome: The Justice Department pronounced the Mexican drug cartels “a national security threat” this week, even as American gun dealers along the border were busily arming the cartels’ murderous gangs. Mexico complains that American dealers supplied most of the 20,000 weapons seized last year in drug wars in which 6,000 Mexicans died.
A vast arms bazaar is rampant along the four border states, enabled by porous to nonexistent American gun laws. Straw buyers can pick up three or four high-powered war rifles from one of more than 6,600 border dealers and hand them off to smugglers. They easily return to Mexico, where gun laws are far less permissive.
Licensed dealers routinely recruit buyers with clean criminal records to foil weak laws and feed the deadly pipeline, according to a report by James C. McKinley Jr. in The Times. The countless unlicensed “gun enthusiasts” free to deal battlefield rifles at weekend shows, thanks to loophole-ridden laws, are a second source.
The federal government is allowed to only trace weapons used in crimes and has no idea of the full scope of the border trade, which accounts for 9 out of 10 recovered weapons.
One dealer exploited the lack of federal controls by packing up his California shop, where laws were tougher, and moving to the lenient Arizona border. He is accused of selling hundreds of AK-47 rifles to the cartels before he was finally arrested in a sting by undercover agents. He’s more the exception. At best, 200 agents work the border expanse where gun smugglers operate as a “parade of ants,” in the words of one frustrated prosecutor.
There should be enormous shame on this side of the border that America’s addiction to drugs is bolstered by its feckless gun controls. Firm federal law is urgently needed if the homicidal cartels are to be seriously challenged as a threat to national security.
This is what Serbian Television and Radio Headquarters looked like after Bill Clinton decided to modify American rules of engagment to include the media, politicians and ideological support structure of an enemy regime as legitimate targets of war.Among the 16 vicious enemy combatants killed in the air strike above were janitors and makeup artists.
Can someone explain to me why, if the NYT gets its way and the current American regime provokes a civil war over gun confiscation, this
shouldn't look like this?
After all, Bill Clinton said it was OK.
Of course Three Percenters don't have cruise missles and precision guided bombs, and unlike our enemies (witness Waco and Ruby Ridge)we wisely eschew any attacks which might cause innocent deaths. That only makes the potential process more targeted and personal.
The New York Times editorial board is willing to fight to the last ATF agent to enforce the theft of our traditional, God-given and natural rights to liberty and property -- a process they must fully realize will be resisted and will place our own families at risk of government execution by raid party. Thus, they are also more than willing to fight to the last firearm owner.
But, are they willing to fight to the first editorial writer?
The second anti-gun politician?
The third columnist?
The fourth collectivist intellectual?
If they get their wish, we will most likely find out.
Be careful what you wish for, New York Times, Bill Clinton's rules of engagement may give it to you.
You want "feckless"?
Look in the mirror, before it is too late.
36 comments:
Perhaps Obama is going to cut a treaty with Mexico that will negate the 2nd? Then Heller really will be irrelevant.
" Can someone explain to me why, if the NYT gets its way and the current American regime provokes a civil war over gun confiscation, this
(Photo)
shouldn't look like this?
Because we're not Bill Clinton. We are better than his ilk, and we can still win by fighting morally.
I agree with applying the "Serbian ROE" rules to politicians; they are using force against us just the same as a mafia don ordering a hit. Loudmouth statists of all sorts, those on the Internet and in print, have done nothing more than express an opinion, same as I'm doing here.
Respectabiggle: You apparently saw the first draft before this change was made:
"After all, Bill Clinton said it was OK.
Of course Three Percenters don't have cruise missles and precision guided bombs, and unlike our enemies (witness Waco and Ruby Ridge)we wisely eschew any attacks which might cause innocent deaths. That only makes the potential process more targeted and personal.
The New York Times editorial board is willing to fight to the last ATF agent to enforce the theft of our traditional, God-given and natural rights to liberty and property -- a process they must fully realize will be resisted and will place our own families at risk of government execution by raid party. Thus, they are also more than willing to fight to the last firearm owner."
Good luck with that fighting morally. History does not show that victory favors the moral. It shows that only the most ruthless, bloodthirsty, and vicious come out as winners. Demonstrate to me the good morality of taking 500 men, in the flower of their youth, out to a field and shooting them to death. That's what happened in the first battle of Manassass. After that little dust-up, both sides settled in for a knock-down, drag-out death match that saw so much depravity, starvation, waste, and misery that parts of the South still harbour ill will towards the North. Moral men do not win wars. Ruthless killers do. And for all that hoping that our own Armed Forces don't draw a bead and shoot down their "brothers", Fools Paradise is located over by Hope Junction. The biggest reason so many combat vets came back from WW2, Korea, Vietnam, etc, and didn't care to talk about their experiences is because of what they had to do. No sane man wants to be like that, and when they do, they realize how evil a man can be. And they knew they were somewhere west of moral. A year after this begins, the only ones left will be killers and those about to be killed.
I read the front page "news" article that inspired this editorial Thursday. I note they assume that a gun dealer charged is the same as a gun dealer convicted. Also with even cheap AKs going $400 @ here, wouldn't it make more sense to use the money to bribe the guard at a Mexican military or police armory? Or bribe an official - in ANY country, not just Mexico - to provide an end user certificate so they can buy the guns directly from the manufacturer? Still, I'm probably wasting my time using logic and evidence on the New York Slimes and the rest of the lame stream media.
WOW Dutchman, just WOW! Finally, someone with the 'kahunas' to lay it all out in black & white!
But, are they willing to fight to the first editorial writer?
The second anti-gun politician?
The third columnist?
The fourth collectivist intellectual?
If they get their wish, we will most likely find out.
Be careful what you wish for, New York Times, Bill Clinton's rules of engagement may give it to you.
You want "feckless"?
Look in the mirror, before it is too late.
And, to those that believe these "mental-retard-leftist-loons" will ever stop their attempt to disarm and enslave you and yours (the 'good outcome' option) - you're total idiots that should sell me your guns and go to the other side.
I'm a moralist and a realist, and currently their are only two possible paths (if the Good Lord doesn't take us home tomorrow) for us eternally free Americans: 1.) Surrender & Die; or 2.) purge the virus that infects, and will ultimately kill the body!
Their is no hope for reasoning or negotiating with this disease we suffer ... our unmerciful, brutal, yet smart systemic antibodies are our only chance for survival - outside of full-on bloody hemorrhage.
Sorry folks ... that's the reality of the situation.
"A vast arms bazaar is rampant along the four border states, enabled by porous to nonexistent American gun laws. Straw buyers can pick up three or four high-powered war rifles from one of more than 6,600 border dealers and hand them off to smugglers. They easily return to Mexico, where gun laws are far less permissive."
I live in a border state. When I go into a gun shop or to a gun show, unless I buy from someone who is selling their own gun (i.e. not a dealer), I have to fill out a 4473. If I didn't have a Texas CHL, I'd have to go through a background check. I don't even THINK about approaching a border crossing with a gun.
You see, all of these things that the Slimes is decrying are CRIMES. That, or lack of border enforcement. If those laws were followed, absolutely zero guns would go from here to Mexico.
Oh, BTW, I question how many are going over the border - if the gangs have full autos, they are buying/stealing them from the Mexican military. If that's the case, why should American gun owners have to have their rights stripped? Hell, if it was some American doing a crime, why should the rest of us be restricted? This is letting our rights be governed based on the lowest common denominator.
This notion that Mexico's drug war is our fault and justifies assaults on the 2nd Amendment is fresh from the fertile mind of Eric Holder. It was put forth as justification for renewing the "assault weapons ban".
It didn't take long for his fellow travelers at the NYT to jump on board: "There should be enormous shame on this side of the border that America’s addiction to drugs is bolstered by its feckless gun controls. Firm federal law is urgently needed if the homicidal cartels are to be seriously challenged as a threat to national security."
I blogged on this earlier, in response to Holder's original statement: "I have a novel idea - let's close the border! That will solve all of Mexico's alleged "problems" with us, not to mention our problems with them. If I were president (heh!) I'd take care of that problem by this weekend, for free, using citizen volunteers (a militia - fancy that!) with their assault rifles in hand, to do the job."
This NYT kind of thinking is the result of that delusional mental illness we too kindly call liberalism. Fact is, humans are addictive creatures - whether it's gambling, sex or drugs is irrelevant. (Power is a special category. All other addictions are equal...) Only a small percentage of Americans are addicted to drugs, and this is a medical issue. To construe it as something more - to use this sinful nature as an argument to strip a nation of its rights is just evil - pure evil.
Yeah the South attempted to fight and surrender morally in the first round of defending State's rights. You saw how well that went.
It was met with raping and pillaging by Union troops throughout the south and a total rape of everyone and everything in the south during Reconstruction.
Morally would apply if in the end it was going to be freckle faced American boys that came for you. It won't be, it will be foreign troops, sell outs, and over-eager power hungry law enforcement.
Punching holes in the Davidian compound to make a perfect chimney wasn't morale, but I watched it happen.
Capping Randy's wife at Ruby Ridge wasn't morally right.
I'm not advocating selling out your beliefs, just that you challenge them and don't assume that if it comes down to it, your opponent will act with kindness or moral conviction. If your opponent had any intention of doing that, they'd have honored, supported, and defended the Constitution in the first place.
Sean: Have you ever killed a man?
Sean, surely there are more important things than "win at any cost"? Is that not what our opponents are doing?
Surely there are more important things than mere life? Is that not why we're willing to fight to the death?
If our principles merely include "be armed," and do not include "slay no man without just and holy cause," then we are thugs, and might as well submit our applications to join the BATFE.
I'd like the MSM to give some real bonafide sources where the 'average' American is allowed/can buy at a gun show to have the kind of armament regularly picked up by the Mexican army! For example, fragmentation grenades, full-auto weapons, plastique, RDX, bazookas, mines, etc. If that really is the case, I'm REALLY late to the party! What a bunch of B.S.! Y'all readers of this blog know that a person would have to have invited the BATFE up their colon to even get a license to possess, much less sell that stuff.s
Here is a good source of translated-to-English from the Mexican papers.
http://m3report.wordpress.com/
G'day,
Ben
Count me in as a 3%er!! I didint give this country 20 years in the miltary for whats happining now!
Dave in SE Pa, reporting for duty!
Great points from all.
Yes, I have zero illusions that our likely enemies will spare our families, our friendly press outlets,our churches, or our bloggers. No matter what they do, I'm not going to burn their churches down, or kill their kids.
Beyond the moral reasons, look at the recent paper Mike posted by the General Museveni . There are good practical reasons to let noncombatants live - even the ones who publicly oppose you.
Re: Respectabiggle and Sean.
Both of you have very good points, however, if indeed a conflict does result due to the reckless and tyrannical behavior of big brother, it won't be like the Civil War of 1861-1865. There will be no marching bands and colorful Zouaves, no picnics and elaborate stagecoaches on the hills, none of that shit.
It will be like World War II in Shanghai. THERE ARE MANY important lessons of war to be learned from the war in Shanghai, a war against a seemingly unstoppable enemy. Ah, Shanghai, the great city where Japanese officers always fall asleep and never woke up again. The Japanese tried to pacify Shanghai since 1938, but how can you pacify an opponent who never fights by "normal" rules of war. Hell, there were not even uniformed soldiers. Even a young shoe-shiner boy working in an alley has a razor tucked under his apron-to slit the throats of unsuspecting imperialist officers. If you call that ruthless, you are wrong. That is DEFENDING THE NATION. It is a dirty and dangerous job, but someone has to do it.
Now, how can Japanese tanks and aircraft be employed against an army of grey men, ghosts? These agents of vengeance operates only under one rule: assassination. Their precision guided weapons are their pistols and rifles. Shanghai has many brothels, which the Japanese always frequents. On warm, steamy nights from 1938-1945, it is not uncommon to hear constant gunfire coming from the red light district. Chinese nationalists, operating alone or in small teams would stalk the darkness and simply blow away any Japanese personnel they encountered. Sometimes a loud party at a teahouse filled with Japanese soldiers would end up with a grenade, or several grenades coming through the windows. The Japanese were no doubt terrified by the attacks, but they could not even realize where they were coming from. An elderly man walking on the street, bowing and smiling to an occupationist officer one minute, would instantly pull out a pistol and blast the officer through the head the next.
Re: John Higgins. Man's natural instinct is aversion to the harming or killing of other life forms. However, when your opponents are ruthless, and will care less about your family or your loved ones than an alley rat, like the Redcoats, Tories, and Japanese, this instinct disappears. Just ask my Grand Uncle, who was a 8th Route Army veteran during the Anti Japanese War.
I have to agree with Sean. Running your mouth can get you killed in any real world scenario and why should civil war be different. The NYT has chosen it's side and although they are free to do so they have chosen to undermine the others cause. This includes lying, misrepresentation of facts, figures and purpose. Welcome to warfare 101. Get some.
I haven't calle this fight and I won't. But should it be visited on me anyway, I will do whatever it takes to win. Period.
Once I am forced to fight, there is no morality, only victory or defeat.
No one has to like it, Hell, I don't like it. But all those who would force me to fight, be warned I will grant no sanctuary, I will not be "principled", I will be deadly for as long as I survive.
Didn't F.D.R. and Truman include civilian populations in their warped definitions of legitimate targets? Civilians. They deliberately targeted and incinerated hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan and Europe. And you complain about a TV station being hit at Slick Willie's command? You need to lay a smackdown on the ideology that says any civilians are legitimate targets. And if you use such arguments as "They did it first!" or "They started it!" We need to move out of the realm of third-grader playground morality. Some things are intrinsically evil. Intentionally killing civilians is one of them. Will you ever be able to admit that?
The God of peace demands it. At whose altar do you burn incense?
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses his soul? Think about that, gentlemen, when you spout your "Win at any cost, no moral boundaries" filth.
Some things are worth more than physical life itself. Or don't you believe that.
Those are very fashionable sentiments, but the hard facts rule the day. We have seen for certain what happens when you show mercy to those who we will face. I saw the ATF run out of ammo and surrender at Waco, then after they were allowed to limp off the field, they returned with tanks to burn children alive.
Since we are fighting the face of the Communist state, what about the old term "Agitprop?" Agitpropers are the propagandizers of the State, in whatever media they exercise their opinions.
With that in mind, the Agitpropers fit nicely into the same mental bag as the uniformed thugs who come to the door, and the elected thugs who send them.
Yeah, it's Clinton's rules, but the actions of Agitprop in its support of collectivism predates Clinton by about seventy years. I'd bet that the victims of Stalinist butchery, if they had a chance to comment here, would place press organs on about the same level as uniformed thugs and elected thugs.
John Higgins: I've killed 8 men and 1 woman. And a number of probables bringing down artillery on them. I can't tell you how much I despise the BATFE and the rest, no, I don't advocate being like them. Whose altar do I burn incense at? Uh, none. The G*d I believe in tells me that to hearken is better than choice silver, to obey, than the fat of rams. I will do what I have to, and be judged by the same G*d. War is bitchery. Slay no man without just and holy cause. Love to go by that. Except you're going to bump up against reality, and although I don't think burning churches and killing children will ever be a tactical neccessity, things will happen.Open your eyes. The PLO and Hamas have fired rockets from schoolyards and hospitals. That is the kind of crap that happens in war, and you can deal with it, or you can let the bad guys get away with all kinds of outrageous crap and watch more of your people die because you wanted to do the morally responsible thing. There is nothing of any importance without life. Ideas, concepts, morality, anything. If you don't survive, you are nothing, and all your wonderful beliefs, ideas, morals, the world, everything, is irrelevant. The idea is not to live forever, but to pass on a life of freedom to your progeny. Remember, "What will you do without freedom?" Aye, fight and you may die, run and you may live. And you know the rest. I'd love to fight a moral fight, but it just ain't gonna happen. I've "seen the critter". It will get completely out of hand, savagery and butchery will determine the "winner". When war comes to the point where one side is unwilling, or unable to go any further, it stops. Like an alley fight. Sometimes good does not triumph. Sometimes evil rules the day. If, when we step into that alley with these goons, we are not willing to use every dirty, underhanded, and treacherous method, our children, our wives, everyone and everything we hold dear, will be in their hands. Are you willing to trust who and what you love into the tender mercies of these accomplished murderers, or have you got something for them? I don't like it any more than you do. I intend to win, and when it is over, whether I am there or not, G*d will judge me, and all I can do is accept. I don't want anybody with me that won't pull their knife and hatchet and go to work.
Sean said:
"Good luck with that fighting morally. History does not show that victory favors the moral. It shows that only the most ruthless, bloodthirsty, and vicious come out as winners."
Bullshit. What we are talking about here is not two armies engaged in total war, or two nations engaged in total war. We are talking about a potential rebellion, a guerrilla war, and then a revolution, and for that you need popular support.
This is Fourth Generation warfare, where the moral element is vital, if not the most important part.
Go read up on it.
Remember? "Be like Jesus with a gun."
Be no threat to anyone but the government. Lots of wisdom there.
If you take and hold the moral high ground, you will increasingly have the population on your side.
The more the government cracks down, the more brutal its tactics, the more it will drive the populace to support the rebels.
And likewise, the less the people see you as a threat to them and their family, the more they will come to see you as their protector against the evil government.
Classic revolutionary strategy.
And, in this nation, with a volunteer, citizens military, if you hold the moral high ground AS THE FOUNDING FATHERS DID, you will also have more of the troops on your side. Some of them will side with us - especially when the man giving them the orders to disarm us is Obama.
Go around killing indiscriminately, using "Waco rules of engagement" (what else are you talking about?) - targeting families, killing your perceived enemies' kids, and you will be justly hated and hunted as the fucking terrorist you are.
I would put a bullet in you.
But not only is it wrong to stoop to your enemy' level, it is also just plain dumb.
Anon @ 9:19, excellent points, and what I've been trying to say to Sean and others. There's nothing wrong with fighting hard. Even using hatchets. But when you deliberately start using hatchets and weapons against civilians, who pose no threat to you, you are just as much of a scumbag as those as you are fighting, and deserve the same fate. If you have to shoot back into a hospital or a school from whence fire is coming, do so. That's neutralizing a threat. If you have to shoot a child who is deliberately trying to kill you, do so. What is involved there is unintentional collateral damage. That's not "fighting dirty."
Fighting dirty is using torture, rape against anyone, and violence against civilians as means to your ends. And for performing those kinds of action, you will burn in hell, and likely be eviscerated on this earth by men who are far more human and manly than you.
There's nothing wrong with being hardcore and unflinching in killing aggressors. There IS something wrong with acting like the thugs you're trying to overcome, by using torture, deliberately engaging non-combatant civilians, and generally using human beings as means to your ends.
Here's a question that falls into the "how much morality can we afford?" column:
For those of you who would have killed the out-of-ammo gun gestapo agents, ask yourself this. What if the Davidians had taken the ATF raiders prisoner instead of letting them back away with their hands in the air?
They may not have been able to get all of them, but enough to trade for a news crew to do live broadcasts from Mount Carmel. Had they been able to get their narrative of events out, they would all be alive today.
We must not become the monster we seek to slay, or what is the point?
"History does not show that victory favors the moral. It shows that only the most ruthless, bloodthirsty, and vicious come out as winners."--Sean
By that standard, the the SS should have won a decisive victory in WWII and the Communists ought to have won the Cold War. Have I been read an alternate history, Sean?
First I would like to say that would not want it to ever come to use of arms to defend my country from it's own government.
However, I think it's safe so say that none of us would want to harm any innocents; man, woman, or child. There should be absolutely no "collateral damage" we cannot win with bad publicity, even though we won't get any good publicity, pictures of dead children will not gain us anything but animosity.
Should we interfere with the MSM's ability to spread whatever the lie of the week is? tough call, but the more we attack targets that the normal joe on the street would consider "Civilian" the more we will lose. I think that the engagement of media would be against the 1st Amendment. I believe that we will be more than able to spread correct information through alternate sources. I.E. bloggers, youtube, ect.
This should not be an engagement that involves alot of the classic military targets, in the way of Water, Sewer, Power, ect. Don't make lives miserable for the sheep and they wont stampede the wrong way. The Fed will do what oppressive governments are wont to do, and the more they crack down, the more people see what we are fighting for. sooner or later the media will post something that the fed doesn't like, then the fed will attempt to silence the media. At that point the media will really begin to be on our side.
I have never advocated, nor ever will, killing innocents, non-combatants, wounded,any of those. What I think you don't understand is that I'm talking about is being ruthless with the ENEMIES. Where in hell did anyone get the idea I was talking about being tough on the people who are not involved? What I am saying is, when it comes to the ENEMIES, you have not got room to play moral, or Mr. Nice Guy. You do so at your peril. I do want you to look at the horrible logic of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo. Firebombed and nuked, in order to convince a ruthless dictatorship that we intended, and were capable, of killing every last one of them. The surrender saved about a million US dead and wounded. And maybe as many as 10 million dead,wounded,starved Japanese.Do the math. 300,000 dead in those three cities, or approx. 11,000,000 dead, wounded, starved. Absolutely disgusting logic, but a choice that HAD to be made. A war will spiral out of anyones' ability to control what happens. Choices will confront you that will cause your bowels to rebel against you, cause you to hate yourself, cause you regret and shame the rest of your life, and if you don't make them, people will die,suffer,and live in abject misery. YOUR people. And then you will make your choice. If I believed or knew of something else that would happen, I'd go for it. Keep your standards and morals, I've got them, and I intend to live by them. I'm saying that no matter what you believe when it begins, by the time it ends, you will understand that all you are is flesh and blood. I don't condone, want, or endorse atrocities. But no matter, they will happen. You will wake up one morning and find you are just as nasty as they are. And you will go on, and when it is over, you will go back to being good. The futility of THINKING you are basically good will be gone, and it'll be replaced with the KNOWLEDGE that you're not. And for me, when that moment came, I knew for the first time, who I was, and who G*d was, and what the difference is. I ask you not to paint me as a monster. I already know that I am. The difference between us, is that I know we are both the same, and you do not. Why do you think so many passages in the Old Testament are about begging for G*ds' mercy?
Mike: Right on.
I'm not a pacifist as I think I've made clear. But I'm not a murderer.
There are infinite alternatives to brutality. As Mike said, taking prisoners is a viable option, and it's been used for ten thousand years for good reason - it works.
Now, I probably would have been okay with killing the thugs at Waco, ammunition or no ammunition. They were, after all, trying to kill me. But I wouldn't shoot the reporter and I wouldn't kill the ATF agent's family. Period, end of story, that's all she wrote.
I'm not necessarily opposed to targeting the media, but not through violence. Violence is reserved for immediate threats. I'll attack their computer systems, I'll steal their equipment, in the worst cases I'd see their buildings demolished.
But unless the person in question has become a direct and immediate threat to someone's life or property, I'm not going to kill them. That's the difference between "us" and "them" and without it, you're just another bloody collectivist.
Now, harassing the press is another story...
I'd go with Respectabiggle - if God forbid it would ever come to this, we should hold the rule of law and the constitution higher than PP Clinton and leave the loudmouths out of it. Otherwise, if the resistance were to succeed, it could become some sort of statist monster that we would all love to hate, except for them's us!
Ben
Sean, that choice had to be made? Does God give us the right to violate the moral law, Sean? Is keeping your body alive the ultimate goal for you? Guess what: we all die someday. And after we die, everyone gets judged. Not by how fast a war was ended. Not by how well we fought. But by how we adhered to God's moral law. You ARE advocating murdering civilians, if you support Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Again, Sean, who the hell said they had to bomb Hiroshima. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't Admiral Leahy, MacArthur, Halsey, Nimitz, or any other phenomenally high-ranking military leaders of WWII. They all denounced the attacks. They said it was not necessary. Did you know that? Do you care, if that fact interferes with your gargling the "it was necessary, therefore, it was all right, and it saved American lives" Kool-Aid?
Admiral Leahy said "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."
Nimitz said: "I felt that that was an unnecessary loss of civilian life . . . We had them beaten. They hadn't enough food, they couldn't do anything."
Halsey said: "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment...It was a mistake to ever drop it. Why reveal a weapon like that to the world when it wasn't necessary?...It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before."
Hap Arnold said ". . . it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."
Carl Spaatz said: "That was purely a political decision, wasn't a military decision."
Douglas MacArthur said: "no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier...if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Look these quotes up yourself. But not if you don't want to let facts get in the way of your historical revision, and your damnable, hellish, Godless "might makes right, the-end-justifies-the-means" mindset.
Your quotes are accurate in that they do report what those particular people said. However, those people were wrong.
You look at history. I mean really read it. All of it. Study the Pacific Campaign, study the preparations Japan was making for invasion.
Until then, don't preach anymore about that of which you know little.
Necessary? NO! Ultimately more humane than invasion? Absofuckinglutely.
"I do want you to look at the horrible logic of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo. Firebombed and nuked, in order to convince a ruthless dictatorship that we intended, and were capable, of killing every last one of them."--Sean
For nearly fifty years, the Soviet Union used the bombing of Japan as fruitful propaganda: these United States were homocidal racists, intent on mankind's thermonuclear destruction.
The meme was so successful that it was picked up and propagated by Marxist professors at Harvard and Northwestern University. It was used to poison the minds of myriad Democrats and Marxoid Republicans who held high office and voted for gun control so as to defang "homocidal racists".
So while we won the war against Japan, we are now about to lose our own country.
In retrospect, a naval blockade would have been the better choice.
Straightarrow, so, based on your second hand reading of books, you know better than every commander of every military man who had anything to do with the war in the Pacific. That is pure arrogance.
Yes, the Japanese were giving sharpened bamboo stakes to seven year old girls and teaching them how to stab people with them. The hatches were being battened down.
Yet the invasion never needed to happen. Total air and sea supremacy had been attained. Their military factories and shipping could've been decimated as soon as they showed up.
They no longer posed any military threat. Isn't that the point of war, the macrocosm of self-defense? To neutralize the threat?
You know what? Don't even bother to answer that, because based on what you already said, I don't respect your arrogant, violent ideas anyway. I don't see how anyone else could, either.
Gentlemen,
I too have read a lot of history. First and foremost you are comparing apples and oranges when making points about twentieth century war between alliances of governments and the situation that faces us today, or for that matter the one faced the Founders.
Hindsight is 20-20. No nation which fought World War II emerged with clean hands. In retrospect, terror raids over Europe like Dresden and Hamburg which made no pretense of targeting military objectives were immoral and counterproductive. The Brits made a mockery of our punctilious preference for daylight precision bombing which cost us the lives of hundreds of thousands of our own sons because we wanted to avoid targeting innocents. Yet by the end of the war in the Pacific, which was, at least between the fighting forces, a much more barbarous war, we did the same thing to the Japanese without too much compunction in the fire raids, followed by the two nukes which ended it.
Barbarous? Certainly. But in truth compared to what? German extermination camps? Japanese soldiers tossing Chinese babies spitted on bayonets at Nanking? Deliberate infection of Chinese civilians with bio agents? Deliberate turture and massacre of prisoners, civilians, babies by the Axis powers? Demonic medical experiments in German camps?
In the end I am left with this. The two bombs ended the war. By doing so the lives of millions of Japanese civilians and hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were saved. I grew up listening to veterans who related how they fell on their knees weeping and thanking God that they did not have to go their almost certain death in the first waves of a n invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. I grew up with their kids. I know some of their grandkids today. Were their lives less worthy than the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
A blockade sounds all very well, but surely even a cursory reading of the circumstance of the beginning of the war should make you understand that had Truman resorted to that tactic AND done a demonstration for the benfit of Japanese eyes on a small island off the coast of Dai Nippon AND FAILED (as it certainly could have, since at the end the Emperor's government was on the verge of a military coup by radicals determined to prolong the war) -- why the American people would have impeached Truman and found a President willing to punish the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and the Hell Ships.
But again, gentlemen, you are comparing apples and oranges. Or, I should say, you are arguing about the canker spots on the orange when it is the worm we need to remove from the apple.
I urge you to refocus your attention on the problem before us.
I came here to say what Respectabiggle has already said. If we act like them, we're no better than them AND we won't have any support (see the IRA and their bombing campaigns). The cause may be just but the killing of non-combatants will more than cancel it out. After all, we're talking about fighting for restoration.
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