Date: 2013-02-06 04:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
The first one is about the most accurate summation of the politics of gender in the Middle East that I've seen.

Date: 2013-02-06 04:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miriamele.livejournal.com
Exactly. I read it and stared at it and thought "Wow... talk about spot on."

Date: 2013-02-06 04:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vodkabeforenoon.livejournal.com
You were out there... do you really think it is necessary for us to be out there? Personally I feel after 9/11 they should had just nuked the place and then we could had moved the fuck on.

Date: 2013-02-06 05:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Do you truly think we could easily move on after dropping a nuke?

Date: 2013-02-06 05:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vodkabeforenoon.livejournal.com
I think the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lead to the surrendering of Japan. Americas needing to be 'politically correct' has created more issues. Seriously what do you think has been accomplished from our troops being out there for over a decade? This war feels a lot like the vietnam war. Who won that? There is no point for our country to have anything to do with the middle east. You cannot reason with people who will die for their god.

Date: 2013-02-06 06:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
I think the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lead to the surrendering of Japan.

The timeline is undeniable. The necessity of that action is debated. It lead to the nuclear arms race we have today. if we shoot off 25% of our arsenal in the next decade, then it clearly wasn't a good thing. Well see.

Americas needing to be 'politically correct' has created more issues.

If by politically correct, you mean launching a war of choice and then an occupation, sure.

Seriously what do you think has been accomplished from our troops being out there for over a decade?

Seriously? Saddam is out of the picture. Iran is surrounded. Iraqi oil is traded near the petro dollar again. And we have the anger of all those muslims we drug through the mud for a decade. Good thing the dead don't complain as much.

This war feels a lot like the vietnam war. Who won that?

USA. 50,000 American dead. 2.5 million vietnamese dead. Climb atop the bigger pile of corpses and declare victory!

But the humidity is was different.....


You cannot reason with people who will die for their god.

Okay. Let's split. I'm with you.

Date: 2013-02-06 07:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
I think that the firebombings reducing every city in Japan but Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Kobe (I think it was) to rubble, the mass starvation of the island due to our sinking virtually its entire merchant marine, the whole rolling juggernaut of defeats on godforsaken jungle islands most people in the USA couldn't even name the ocean they're in on the map, and August Storm had as much to do with the surrender as the atomic bombings did. The firebombing of Tokyo alone still has a death toll higher than both atomic bombings. We didn't even force Japan to a truly unconditional surrender and fight over every nook and cranny of it as happened with Germany and Italy.

Is it more moral to use one bomb to do the work of a fleet of bombers over time and kills less than the bomber fleet or to maintain a series of bomber sorties that do more damage over more time and kill more people, when both motivate surrenders?

The answer as to who won the Vietnam war is obvious: Hanoi.

Date: 2013-02-07 06:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] anfalicious.livejournal.com
The answer as to who won the Vietnam war is obvious: Hanoi.

I always find it an amusing display of American jingoism when people muse over who won the American War. We got our arses handed to us on a chopper.

Date: 2013-02-08 04:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Depends upon how you define victory. Do you climb atop the pile of corpses and measure the larger one?

In reality I think there is more loss in war than winning.

Date: 2013-02-06 09:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dwer.livejournal.com
You cannot reason with people who will die for their god.

Yes, Americans are difficult in that manner.

Date: 2013-02-06 11:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fizzyland.livejournal.com
Actually historians seem pretty much in agreement that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not a major factor in the Japanese surrender.

Date: 2013-02-07 12:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Yeah, had the United States agreed earlier about the Emperor staying in power, things would have been concluded sooner if I recall correctly from Oliver Stones "Untold History."

Date: 2013-02-07 01:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
Except that the USA didn't do this with the white German and Italian regimes, so expecting it to give non-white Japan greater slack than it did to Hitler or Mussolini stretches the meaning of plausibility. Germany and Italy were told to surrender unconditionally or else, and the result was that both countries were fought over, bombed, and shelled into abattoirs. Japan actually got the conditional surrender and the ability to escape being so fought over.

Date: 2013-02-07 01:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Yeah, Stone goes into a lot of that.

Date: 2013-02-07 02:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
I was agreeing with your point, not disagreeing with it.

Date: 2013-02-07 02:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Yeah, I'm just saying Stone goes into a lot about those things as well (Germany / Italy / unconditional surrender etc). It's a cool series, but I'm skeptical of some of what Stone suggests. And the New York Times has written a lengthy article about his playing loose and fast with historical fact in the series.
Edited Date: 2013-02-07 02:21 am (UTC)

Date: 2013-02-06 05:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ice-hesitant.livejournal.com
Are you trolling or fifteen?

1. Nukes leave a lot of "collateral damage". Dropping one kills a lot of innocent people.
2. Nukes cause radioactive fallout that drifts with the winds and falls on other countries. Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or India would not be happy to be the beneficiaries of your gift of elevated cancer rates.
3. Nuke ownership operates on the principle of deterrence. If US pre-emptively nukes a country, there is a non-infinitesimal chance that a different nuclear power (e.g. Russia, China, UK, France, Pakistan, etc.) will choose to punish the US.
4. The only thing worse than a retaliatory nuclear strike on US would be no retaliatory nuclear strike on US.

Date: 2013-02-06 05:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vodkabeforenoon.livejournal.com
1. "innocent" is irrelevant

2. Then they should keep their neighboring countries in line.

3. It goes both ways.

4. wut?

Date: 2013-02-06 05:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ice-hesitant.livejournal.com
Anyways, why nuke Afghanistan? 9/11 wasn't a state action. Afghanistan's only relevant crime was not trying hard enough to locate some Saudi national. He might not have even been in the country. You might as well have nuked Somalia or Myanmar.

Date: 2013-02-06 09:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dwer.livejournal.com
Then they should keep their neighboring countries in line.

That's worked out so well for the US and the drug war.

Date: 2013-02-06 09:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wight1984.livejournal.com
"Nuke ownership operates on the principle of deterrence. If US pre-emptively nukes a country, there is a non-infinitesimal chance that a different nuclear power (e.g. Russia, China, UK, France, Pakistan, etc.) will choose to punish the US.

I very much don't think we should be using nukes, but I'm not sure about this reason. After the USA proves that it's willing to use nukes if 'provoked', then would that make other nations more or less likely to adopt an oppositional stance to the USA? I would expect the move to be widely condemned, but I doubt any individual nation would be willing to step up and address it, certainly not in forceful terms.

I can imagine that might be some attempt to resolve the problem through the UN, in the hopes of denying the crazy Americans a specific target to throw a nuke at. I think that's the most I would be willing to put bets on happening.

Date: 2013-02-07 12:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thankyoukindly2.livejournal.com
I suspect that, if the USA fired a nuclear weapon into the Middle East in anger, other nuclear powers might not respond in kind, because the probability of mutually-assured destruction would be very high. In military terms, the USA may actually be able to get away with nuking a non-nuclear country, because any sane country is not going to pursue overt aggression against the USA unless it has no other choice.

However, I suspect that the economic reprisals from China would be staggering. I'm not an economist, so I do not know what sort of effect China could bring about through its buying and possession of US debt. However, if the Chinese government perceive the US government as insanely destructive, they likely won't want to do much business with the USA, and will be looking to exploit any fiscal weaknesses that America has. At the moment, America seems to have plenty of those.

Disproportionate vengeance may sound good to armchair warmongers, but I think that other countries would cut their ties to crazy-violent states and find subtle ways to undermine them, just like people might do to a violent bully on a personal level. One reason that the USA does not go power-mad with its nuclear arsenal - I would speculate - is that it would go from having groups of fundamentalists for enemies to having major countries rooting for America's economic collapse.

Date: 2013-02-07 03:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] catlin.livejournal.com
Use of the debt becomes tricky, because if we went to the point that nukes are acceptable, we can just ignore the debt. The real question becomes greater economic sanctions from other countries. If our international trade stops completely, it will Probably be bad for the country significantly. (Not the least because electronics would become extremely expensive!)

Date: 2013-02-07 08:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thankyoukindly2.livejournal.com
The few articles that I have read so far suggest that China would be hard-pressed to use the debt to cause the USA any real harm. However, as you say, cease in international trade and greater economic sanctions could still cause a lot of damage.

As for the idea that America can ignore that debt if nukes become acceptable - I suppose that depends the definition of "acceptable". The USA would then be going from using a nuke to attack terrorists in one enemy state to pointing its nukes at the rest of the world as a means to default on its fiscal obligations. Hardly a good thing, but an example of how the nuclear option escalates and gets out of hand fast.

Date: 2013-02-07 01:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
If the North Koreans break the nuclear weapons taboo, all bets are off. It would mean the USA has no choice but to use the weapons in response or nuclear strategy gets revealed as the giant Kansas City Shuffle it's been all along.

Date: 2013-02-06 07:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
By 'place' you mean Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, right?

Date: 2013-02-06 11:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fizzyland.livejournal.com
Hey, historian, people here could use some context for the Japanese surrender based on comments to this post.

/me included

Date: 2013-02-07 01:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
The Unconditional Surrender Policy was a unilateral US decision at the Casablanca Conference. The idea is often stated that the USA made its strict demands against Japan on the grounds of racism, but if we look at how the Allies (mis)managed the attempt by the Italians to switch sides in the middle of the war, we see that the Allies strictly insisted on a rigid definition of unconditional surrender and so mismanaged the negotiations that it made it possible for the Germans to funnel in soldiers to bleed our armies in Italy for years.

In the case of Germany its leaders kept having a delusion that ours were interested in a replay of the 'Well we didn't lose, it was the November Criminals' shenanigans from the 1920s and would further this by declaring war on the USSR, explaining their approaches for a 'separate peace' with us. In reality they, too, were forced to surrender unconditionally to the UK, USA, and USSR. Like Italy Germany was fought over in a horrendous fashion in the Rhineland/Ruhr region in the West and in the East.

Japan, OTOH, was 'merely' bombed, shelled, starved by blockades, and seen its armies driven over the brink of defeat everywhere except China (and thanks to August Storm there as well). It tried the flip side to what the Nazis had been trying to get the USSR to negotiate a peace favorable to itself, only for the Soviets to reject the idea for their own reasons. Japan was not defeated due to the atomic bombings except insofar as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fit into the broader overall total destruction of Japan's war-waging capability. What made Japan different is that after the nukings its political leadership was the only Axis Power to quit before a major ground campaign occurred on its home soil.

The two atomic bombs' destructive power is also exaggerated, as is their lethality. Even in 2013 the Firebombing of Tokyo alone (not counting the firebombings of everywhere else in Japan) have a death toll that exceeds that of both Fat Man and Little Boy combined, including postwar genetic damage. Nagasaki was not as totally destroyed as Hiroshima, either. The defeat of Japan raises a number of troubling issues, but the atomic bombings has overshadowed all the others, including the gross US hypocrisy in a skillful USW campaign of the type that had driven us to break our neutrality in WWI. The idea that the bombings broke Japan had more to do with the politics of nuclear strategy in the Cold War than the reality of the defeat of the Axis in Asia. Japan also was again the only Axis power smart enough to avoid a complete catastrophe instead of an almost-complete one.

Date: 2013-02-07 04:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fizzyland.livejournal.com
Thank you very much.

Date: 2013-02-07 06:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] anfalicious.livejournal.com
lol

On behalf of the other six and a half billion humans on the planet, I hope you don't vote.

Date: 2013-02-07 08:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vodkabeforenoon.livejournal.com
I do vote. Back aside Australia. For a country that rely on other countries to take care of your sorry ass you sure got a lot to say.

Date: 2013-02-06 05:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Being driven into suicide isn't what the recruiter talked about.

Date: 2013-02-06 07:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miriamele.livejournal.com
I'm sad I haven't seen these before. I'm definitely saving to share with specific people. : )

Date: 2013-02-06 07:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Bors comic in the OP was definitely addressing a theme. And well too, I tend to like his work.

Date: 2013-02-06 06:30 pm (UTC)

Date: 2013-02-06 07:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] american-geist.livejournal.com
Uh, I can see her hand. CHOP THAT THING OFF.

Date: 2013-02-06 07:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Good catch. That had to be intentional. I didn't notice the first time.

Date: 2013-02-07 03:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] catlin.livejournal.com
Could be a cultural thing? In some places hands are ok, wrists are taboo.

Date: 2013-02-06 07:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Do you know where the image with the soldier count is? Bless that man's work. Really.

Date: 2013-02-06 07:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Tineye to the rescue:

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/brooklyn_artist_tallies_troop_suicides_20101117/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines

Date: 2013-02-06 07:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
"the writing is actually on the wall: Brooklyn-based artist Sebastian Errazuriz turned his shock over hearing that the number of U.S. troops who committed suicide in 2009 doubled the toll of Americans killed in battle into protest art on the wall of his studio. "

Date: 2013-02-08 12:07 am (UTC)

Date: 2013-02-08 07:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brother-dour.livejournal.com
Hmmm...sexual harassment in the workplace, or beheading if my husband even suspects me of being unfaithful?

Decisions, decisions.

Date: 2013-02-08 09:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beyondfake-0.livejournal.com
All of those cartoons hit really close to home for me.

Being a female who served overseas.... and seeing the Saudi culture for women...

but mostly the suicide rate.

Yeah when I was in Iraq, the suicides out numbered the troop casualties... and at my base I was there for the "bloodiest" months.

But the active duty military, reserve military, and guard won't acknowledge it. Like they won't acknowledge PTSD. And it's that stigma that prevents vets from seeking help, and actually gives them more guilt if they even thing about it.... aka being the weak link.


It's fucking sick.

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