Roberto wrote:What's this guy talking about?
A peace agreement with Japan not preceded by surrender of its government and enemy forces?
Scott Smith wrote:You mean like the Communists in Korea and Vietnam?
That seems to be Smith's suggestion.
Scott Smith wrote:We beat Japan so we could have gotten most of the terms that we wanted.
Due to Japan's aggression and atrocities, there was more at stake than whatever "terms" the US may have wanted.
A lasting peace, for instance, which required the aggressor nation to realize that it had been totally defeated and to accept such defeat.
Roberto wrote:After the Japanese aggression and their horrendous crimes in China and Southeast Asia, was the approach supposed to be "Well, dear folks, some unfortunate things happened, but let's forget about it and make peace", thus allowing Japan to emerge from the war as a political victor, be rewarded for its aggression and atrocities and kindle a "never defeated on the battlefield" legend, with dire consequences for the future?
Scott Smith wrote:Rewarded? I just said we would have gotten what we needed--even the hanging of symbolic villains if that's what we wanted.
Same crap.
The issue was not what anyone wanted, but what was required to prevent a repetition of brutal aggression as committed by the Japanese militarists.
And the villains were everything other than "symbolic".
They were responsible for the brutal murder of millions of people in China and Southeast Asia and on the islands of the Pacific.
Roberto wrote:Smith again is as demanding on governments he doesn't like in terms of humanity and benevolence as he is condescending in regard to the same issues towards those he likes.
Smith wrote:Smith isn't demanding anything--just offering analysis.
What Smith calls "analysis" is obviously nothing other than apology of governments he likes and condemnation of such he doesn't, each without regard for the evidence.
Smith wrote:He just got through critiquing Hitler's handling of strategy in another thread, albeit more fair to Hitler than is usually the case from most analysts.
I know what Smith's critique of his favorite warlord is about. It focuses on the political and/or military convenience of a mass murderer's policies. Big deal.
Roberto wrote:Fortunately the policy-makers of the time were smart enough to realize that lasting peace with Japan must be preceded by the Japanese nation's consciousness that, for the first time in its history, it had been utterly defeated.
Smith wrote:Truman was totally out of his depth and Churchill wasn't much better. Guys like Stalin could eat them for lunch. And Hitler too, were it not for his occasional naïvete regarding Anglo-Saxons, which Churchill had carefully studied and often exploited.
I think I'm not the only one who doesn't understand how these hollow mumblings relate to my quoted statement.
Smith wrote:Japan still does not have the mentality of a defeated people, thanks to MacArthur, and despite being forced to "renounce war." Unlike the Germans, I'm sorry to say, for they do have the mentality of a defeated people, and I hope America never sinks so low.
Well, I hope it never sinks as low as Japan - murdering millions of people and then lying to its schoolchildren about the whole thing, refusing to pay compensation to the victims or even to apologize.
As to the Germans, I dare say that Smith knows as much about them as a pig knows about Sunday, which is not surprising for someone who has never been to the country and draws his "knowledge" of it from "Revisionist" comic books.
After two years on this forum, the beatings he has taken mostly from German citizens should at least have shown Smith just how little Germans suffer from "the mentality of a defeated people".