@JTT,
LOL All the above does not turn any of it into war crimes my friend.
Once more show me a international court who had declare any of this to be a war crime.
Oh you should bring up our treatment of the Indians also.
@JTT,
There is in effect no such thing as a US war crimes as the US will not allow the ICC to function when it come to the US see below.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:pfwaz7ETB_EJ:www.amicc.org/docs/ASIL%2520ICC%2520Report.pdf+sense+of+congress+war+crime+court+us+military+american+servicemen+act+icc&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&lr=lang_en
Congress also approved legislation designed to insulate U.S. military personnel and others
from ICC jurisdiction, the American Service-Members’ Protection Act of 2002 (ASPA). ASPA
placed numerous restrictions on U.S. interaction with the ICC and its States Parties, including
prohibiting military assistance to certain States co-operating with it. Consistent with ASPA,
the United States began pursuing conclusion of the so-called “Article 98 agreements” with the
aim of insulating all U.S. nationals from ICC proceedings. These agreements generated the
criticism, from some quarters, of being inconsistent with a State Party’s obligations under the
Rome Statute. Also in 2002, the United States sought a Security Council resolution to insulate
permanently the U.S. troops and officials involved in U.N. peacekeeping or peace-enforce-
ment missions from ICC jurisdiction. This resolution was required by ASPA if the United
States were to participate in such operations where no exemption arrangement existed with
the host government. Opponents objected that such a resolution would “rewrite” an inter-
national treaty"the Rome Statute"and argued that, despite Articles 25 and 103 of the U.N.
Charter, the Security Council does not possess such authority. While the United States failed
to get permanent exemption for all its peacekeepers, it did obtain such an exemption in coun-
try-specific U.N. resolutions. Additional legislative action in 2004 further stimulated the U.S.
Government’s pursuit of “Article 98 agreements.” For fiscal year 2005, Congress approved the
“Nethercutt Amendment,” prohibiting assistance funds, with limited exceptions, to any State
party to the Rome Statute. Similar to the waiver provisions included in ASPA, the Nethercutt
Amendment permitted the President to waive this prohibition for those States that concluded
“Article 98 agreements” with the United States. By May 23, 2005, the U.S. State Department
reported that one hundred States had signed “Article 98 agreements” with the United States.
3
Marc Grossman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, American Foreign Policy and the International
Criminal Court, Remarks to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. (May 6, 2002),
available at
http://www.iccnow.org/documents/USUnsigningGrossman6May02.pdf.
4
Letter from John R. Bolton, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, to Kofi
Annan, U.N. Secretary General (May 6, 2002) [hereinafter 2002 U.S. letter to the U.N. Secretary General], avail-
able at
http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/9968.htm.
@BillRM,
You really are incredibly stupid. "in effect" no, but in reality, most assuredly. This doesn't say much about your personal level of morality; let me. You're just another piece of excrement, a really dumb one.
You're doing a wonderful job of highlighting the USA's low standards regarding the humane treatment of others. Keep it up.
Quote:
Tiger Force
In December 2002, Michael Sallah, a reporter at the Toledo Blade newspaper, obtained unreleased, confidential records of U.S. Army commander Henry Tufts. One file in these records referred to a previously unpublished war crimes investigation known as the Coy Allegation. To investigate this further, Sallah obtained access to a large collection of documents produced by the investigation held at the National Archives in College Park, MD.[6]
Sallah and fellow Toledo Blade reporter Mitch Weiss found that between 1971 and 1975 the Army's Criminal Investigation Command had investigated the Tiger Force unit for alleged war crimes committed between May and November 1967.[7] The documents included sworn statements from many Tiger Force veterans, which detailed war crimes allegedly committed by Tiger Force members during the Song Ve Valley and Operation Wheeler military campaigns.
The statements, from both individuals who allegedly participated in the war crimes and those that did not, described war crimes such as the following:
the routine torture and execution of prisoners[8]
the routine practice of intentionally killing unarmed Vietnamese villagers including men, women, children, and elderly people[9]
the routine practice of cutting off and collecting the ears of victims[10]
the practice of wearing necklaces composed of human ears[11]
the practice of cutting off and collecting the scalps of victims[12]
an incident where a young mother was drugged, raped, and then executed[13]
an incident where a soldier killed a baby and cut off his or her head after the baby's mother was killed[14]
The investigators concluded that many of the war crimes indeed took place.[15] Despite this, the Army decided not to pursue any prosecutions.[16]
After studying the documents, the reporters located and interviewed many veterans who served in Tiger Force during the period in question. The reporters also traveled to Vietnam and tracked down residents of Song Ve Valley who identified themselves as witnesses.
Sallah and Weiss reported that the war crimes were corroborated by both veterans[5] and Song Ve Valley residents[17].
In October 2003, the reporters published their findings in a series of articles in the Toledo Blade. Subsequently, the New York Times performed their own investigation, contacting a few Tiger Force veterans and corroborating the Toledo Blade's findings.[18]
Since the Toledo Blade story, the United States Army has opened a review of the former Tiger Force investigation, but has not yet provided much additional information. On May 11, 2004, Lt. Col. Pamela Hart informed Toledo Blade reporters that she had been too busy responding to prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers in Iraq to check on the status of the Tiger Force case.[19] The Toledo Blade has not reported on any more recent updates from the U.S. Army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Force
@Advocate,
Advocate, It's about "logistics" from the logical point of view. I have already posted the numbers of casualties on both sides, and the numbers of Palestinians maimed and killed by the Israelis outnumber those of Israelis maimed and killed by 1000%. These are the most accurate numbers available, because the Israelis deny human rights organizations to go to places where the Israelis have literally bombed out places where innocent people have be maimed and killed. Your defense that the Israelis don't target innocent people has been proven wrong - even during the last Gaza conflict. If the Israelis don't target innocent people with their weapons, how does it result in 1000% more casualties against innocent Palestinians?
@JTT,
JTT, Japan didn't seem to worry when they surprise attacked Pearl Harbor to start their war that not only killed innocent people, but destroyed our naval forces in the Pacific. Whether the US could have taken another option to attack Japan is an issue still being discussed by historians, but at the time all we could rely on was how our war against Okinawa ended up with high casualty numbers on both sides.
It was a different time and place during WWII compared to 50-years after the war when armchair discussions on the concept of war that has changed.
This is from Wiki.
Quote:The Battle of Okinawa, also known as Operation Iceberg, was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II as well as the last pitched battle of the entire war.[1][2] The 82 day long battle lasted from late March through June 1945.
The battle has been referred to as the "Typhoon of Steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or tetsu no bōfū ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of gunfire involved, and sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle has one of the highest number of casualties of any World War Two engagement: the Japanese lost over 100,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) suffered more than 50,000 casualties, with over 12,000 killed in action. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, wounded or attempted suicide. Approximately one-fourth of the civilian population died due to the invasion. The Tenth Army had five Army Divisions, the 7th, 27th, 77th, 81st, and 96th; and two Marine Divisions, the 1st and 6th fought on the island while the 2nd remained as an amphibious reserve and was never brought ashore. All these divisions were supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces.
I still believe Truman did the right thing. Japan didn't want to commit to an unconditional surrender, so the onus of the continuation of the war is on them. It doesn't matter how much prior to the bombs being dropped they started talking about surrender, because casualties on both sides were increasing in numbers.
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
Quote:... but the US was the first to develop those weapons, and used them against our enemy to save lives on both sides. Many of the atom bomb developers were against the use of the bomb, but Truman made the right decision to use the bombs to end the war, and it did. It also saved lives.
Another oft repeated piece of propaganda, CI.
By ending the war quickly, by using the bomb, we also prevented the Soviets from joining the war against Japan. It is possible that if the Soviets were fighting Japan, when the the Pacific Theater was ended, the Soviets might have wanted some territory for their efforts. We may have, in effect, also saved the integrity of the Japanese Islands, by using the bomb.
Also, do not forget that if the war continued with Japan, for any length of time, the men in the European Theater were slated to go to the Pacific Theater. Not good for morale. Unless one just got finished fighting the Nazis, one may not know how discouraging it can then be to think one was then going to the Pacific Theater. We lost 500,000 military in WWII. If it doubled, due to storming the Japanese Islands, the attitude towards the war could have changed, and jeopardized the post-war occupation efforts. That could have been taken for a sign that it would be easy to have a resurgence of Naziism. That would have just given the Soviets more territory in Germany.
The use of the bomb saved American lives, Japanese lives, the integrity of the Japanese Islands, and our ability to allocate needed occupation forces in Europe. The U.S. does not vanquish its prior enemies, so it was already known, that with time, Japan would be a stalwart ally. Who else in Asia so thoroughly embraces western culture? Even sports - baseball, golf.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:JTT, Japan didn't seem to worry when they surprise attacked Pearl Harbor to start their war that not only killed innocent people, but destroyed our naval forces in the Pacific.
What innocent people, CI, they were overwhelmingly military? Surprise attack?
Quote:Aircraft and midget submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy began an attack on the U.S. Contrary to popular belief, these attacks were not a surprise. The Americans had deciphered Japan's code earlier and knew about a planned attack before it actually occurred. However, due to difficulty in deciphering intercepted messages, the Americans failed to discover Japan's target location before the attack occurred.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor
Quote:Some issues have developed since the investigation into responsibility, that have given some historians the opportunity to argue that the event was manipulated by the American government to ‘persuade’ an isolationist public into supporting a desire to get involved in a war assisting the Allies in Europe. These include:
The issue of intelligence gathering. How could a fleet of 30 capital ships spend 11 days at sea travelling 4000 miles without being detected? American seaplane patrols that had taken place each day up to December 6th were stopped the day of the attack. Why? Why were the reports from the captain of the USS Ford ignored? He reported at 3.a.m. and 5 a.m. that the sea around Oahu (the island in Hawaii where Pearl Harbour is stationed) "is full of Japanese submarines". On both occasions he got the reply "Reinvestigate and report".
One crew member of the 'Tangiers' also reported that the chain that was always put across the mouth at the entrance to Pearl Harbour at night for added security against a sea borne attack, was not secured on the night of December 6th. Why was a radar operator told "not to worry" when he reported that something "completely out of the ordinary" was on his screen? The official finding for this was that the response came because it was believed that what the operator saw was a fleet of incoming B17’s expected at the base that day. In fact, he had seen the incoming Japanese planes. Why was a message from General Marshall which stated that Japan had issued "what amounts to an ultimatum" not sent as a matter of urgency to Kimmel and Short? This would possibly have allowed both men to put the base on a state of alert. It arrived by motorbike courier after the attack.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/pearl_harbour.htm
Compare Pearl Harbour to any number of attacks on the country of Japan. The USA specifically targeted civilians with their fireboming campaigns and even more so with the atomic bombs. It was racism, pure and simple.
The bomb dropped on Nagasaki was centered on a hospital, the Shiina Hospital, I believe the name was.
Curtis Lemay, the butcher responsible for firebombing stated that had the US lost, he surely would have been held accountable for his war crimes. He knew that what he was doing was pure evil but that didn't stop him.
Quote: Whether the US could have taken another option to attack Japan is an issue still being discussed by historians, but at the time all we could rely on was how our war against Okinawa ended up with high casualty numbers on both sides.
I still believe Truman did the right thing. Japan didn't want to commit to an unconditional surrender, so the onus of the continuation of the war is on them. It doesn't matter how much prior to the bombs being dropped they started talking about surrender, because casualties on both sides were increasing in numbers.
It was well known that there would be huge losses on D-Day but a concern over huge losses does not allow one side to commit war crimes to mitigate those losses.
Quote:The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to December 31 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
But could American leaders have known this in August 1945?
The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted.
It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered.
On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to " and did " relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to conclusion."
The US had spent too much on the development of the bomb to stop what was to them, simply a little test on. Did they delay the second bomb to give the Japanese a chance to consider?
The concern over unconditional surrender was a crock. The USA jumped at the chance to allow the Emperor to stay in order to keep the Russians out, but as a measure to save hundreds of thousands of innocents from a horrific death, many hundreds of thousands more from excruciating pain and suffering, no, the US wouldn't consider "negotiating".
That saint, the kindly Harry Truman said,
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar was possible, the killing of civilians."
It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report:
"Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."
@JTT,
You really are incredibly stupid. "in effect" no, but in reality, most assuredly. This doesn't say much about your personal level of morality; let me. You're just another piece of excrement, a really dumb one.
You're doing a wonderful job of highlighting the USA's low standards regarding the humane treatment of others. Keep it up.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry but I live in the real world where war crimes charges and international courts are just for the weak and or the losers of conflicts and will never be otherwise.
Nations will always do what they feel it needed to do to win a conflict and that had always been so.
If winning mean wiping out major population centers so be it or taking no prisons or not worrying one little bit about non-combatants in a war zone.
You do not and can not apply laws/rules that is mean to be used internally in a nation at peace to a war/battlefield situations.
Dream on about international laws and international morality
@Foofie,
Quote:By ending the war quickly, by using the bomb, we also prevented the Soviets from joining the war against Japan. It is possible that if the Soviets were fighting Japan, when the the Pacific Theater was ended, the Soviets might have wanted some territory for their efforts. We may have, in effect, also saved the integrity of the Japanese Islands, by using the bomb.
Foofie admits that the measure was simply a geo-political move. No matter that hundreds of thousands of innocents died. They were viewed as vermin by Truman and a large portion of the US population anyway.
The deaths of innocents means nothing when weighed against the greed of the USA.
Quote:Also, do not forget that if the war continued with Japan, for any length of time, the men in the European Theater were slated to go to the Pacific Theater. Not good for morale. Unless one just got finished fighting the Nazis, one may not know how discouraging it can then be to think one was then going to the Pacific Theater.
One more time; war crimes/crimes against humanity can never be condoned by such insignificant details.
Imagine the effects that would have had on "morale"!
These foofieisms just keep pouring forth from a brain that seems to know only of appalling ignorance.
@BillRM,
Quote:Sorry but I live in the real world where war crimes charges and international courts are just for the weak and or the losers of conflicts and will never be otherwise.
There really was no need for you to make this grand admission that you a degenerate piece of scum, Bill, but if it makes you feel better, okay.
Oh just to be very clear given a choice of wiping out a few populations centers of an enemy or losing millions of American troops I would cheerfully order such an attack and then go to bed and sleep very soundly.
In fact I can not off hand think of one American government in the history of the country or any at all likely future governments that would not give the same order Truman did give.
In a war your first second and third duty is to your own people not the enemy population.
International law be damn.
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
Compare Pearl Harbour to any number of attacks on the country of Japan. The USA specifically targeted civilians with their fireboming campaigns and even more so with the atomic bombs. It was racism, pure and simple.
Was it racism that the Allies fire bombed Dresden? No, like firebombing Japan, it was just waging war. The Allies were fighting to maintain their way of life and their territory. The concern about humane warfare is a non-sequitor, at best, during a war of such import for the Allies.
@Foofie,
I would like to thank Foofie and Bill for confirming that all the sanctimonious nonsense spewed by the USA about "fighting for people's freedom and equality" is just a line of bullshit, propaganda meant to dupe the citizenry.
Quote:The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850-1898). Bellamy's original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published in the September 8th issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America.
The event was conceived by James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, in a campaign to sell American flags and American nationalism to public schools.[2][3]
Bellamy's original Pledge read, "I Pledge Allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."
The pledge was supposed to be quick and to the point. Bellamy designed it to be stated in 15 seconds. He had initially also considered using the words equality and fraternity[3] but decided they were too controversial since many people opposed equal rights for women and blacks.[citation needed]
Written by a socialist, done to sell flags and unthinking patriotism, full of lies and deceit, my, what a tarnished little web the whole sad program is.
Could you do the oath of subservience and vacuousness for us one more time, Foofie?
@JTT,
Even though the majority were military personnel, it was a surprise attack without any concern for the civilian population. Yes, their primary targets were military, and the civilians were not any of their concern.
The civilians in Japan were ready to use anything to fight off American military in the event we started the war on their land. Many believed the Americans soldiers would rape and torture them; there was no way to change their mind-set, and the civilian population would have sacrificed themselves for the emperor who was seen as a god. They preferred death by suicide over surrender.
I'm sure that CI will quibble this to death, but this is the truth of the matter.
The 14 Lies Blocking Peace in the Middle East
Steven Plaut, August 14, 2009, FrontPageMagazine.com
If a Martian were suddenly to land on earth and start listening to and reading the mainstream media, he would form the impression that the entire Middle East conflict were due to Israel building some settlements in land that much of the world thinks should become a Palestinian state. A near-consensus exists among the governments of the world and among media writers that peace has yet to break out in the Middle East because of three principle reasons. The first is that the Jews and the Arabs have been unable to agree about whether there should be a Palestinian state. The second is because Israel has obstinately refused to withdraw its troops from (so-called) "occupied Arab" lands. The third is because Israel behaves cruelly towards the Palestinians.
The Martian could easily carry these beliefs back to its home planet, as long as it did not bother to learn the background and the history of the Middle East conflict. Those three reasons cannot survive an antibiotic of familiarity with Middle East history.
President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seem to think the idea of Palestinian statehood is the most wonderful idea to come along since the Thirteenth Amendment. And almost all world politicians, along with the Israeli Left, insist that all Israeli settlements must be removed from the West Bank because they serve as the main obstacle to peace. The reality is that the Middle East conflict has very little to do with debate over Palestinian statehood and even less to do with Israeli "settlements." In fact Israel has agreed in principle, somewhat foolishly, to the erection of such a Palestinian state, at least subject to some security conditions and other concessions from the Palestinians -- like recognizing Israel's right to exist. As it turns out, even so-called "moderate" Palestinians reject any such idea.
Meanwhile debate about the Middle East conflict is based on an incredible absence of historic information and on a series of stylish misconceptions about Middle East history. The anti-Israel Lobby, which grows by the day in its maliciousness and anti-Semitism, counts on the ignorance of much of the public concerning how the Middle East got to where it is.
Here are just a handful of popular misconceptions and their antidotes:
1. Falsehood: Israel was erected on land that belonged to Palestinian Arabs.
Truth: Before Israel was created its territory never belonged to Palestinian Arabs and had not been ruled by any Arabs at all since the Middle Ages. It had been a Turkish province for centuries until it was captured by Britain during World War I. The League of Nations awarded governance of "Palestine" to Britain at the end of the war in exchange for its commitment to turn the area into a Jewish homeland. The lands on which Jewish immigrants settled before Israel was created were purchased by Jews at above-market prices and in most cases had no Arabs living on them. Virtually no Arabs were evicted.
2. Falsehood: The Jews came to Palestine as foreigners and aliens, whereas the Palestinians were the indigenous people of the territory.
Truth: Jews lived in "Palestine," which is the Land of Israel or "Eretz Yisroel," continuously from the time of the Bible. Most families of "Palestinians" migrated into "Palestine," during the same period as the Zionist waves of immigration, starting in the second half of the 19th century. The largest ethnic group in the country at the time was the Turks. The "Palestinian Arabs" in 1948 were primarily families of migrants from Lebanon and Syria. Ironically, they were motivated to become "Palestinians" in the first place thanks to the Zionist movement, which brought capital and labor into "Palestine" and improved living conditions there. Huge numbers of the names of "Palestinian" Arab villages and towns are slightly-modified Hebrew names. It is difficult to dig in the ground of "Palestine" without uncovering Jewish artifacts, some thousands of years old. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Mandatory Palestine's territory had been sliced off in the 1920s and used to set up Jordan, an Arab Palestinian state much larger than Israel. The remaining territory, Western Palestine, was to become the Jewish homeland. That was the original "two-state solution," the same "innovation" now being promoted for the Western third of the remaining part of Palestine.
3. Falsehood: There is no Palestinian state today because of Israeli aggression and obstinacy.
Truth: There is no Palestinian state today because of Arab aggression and obstinacy. In late 1947, the United Nations approved by a two thirds majority a proposal to create in to create in Western "Palestine" two states to replace the British Mandatory regime there. One would be Jewish and the other a Palestinian Arab state. The Jews agreed. The Arabs rejected the idea. The Arab states launched an attack of genocidal aggression against the Jews, invaded "Palestine" and gobbled up the lands earmarked for the Arab Palestinian state. Most of those lands were then held illegally by Jordan and semi-legally by Egypt until 1967 when they were liberated by Israel in the Six Day War. The Arab world has maintained a state of war with Israel since 1948, refusing to recognize its legitimacy, and attacking Israel over and over in a series of wars and terrorism campaigns. The Arab states attacked Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006, and sponsored terrorist atrocities against Jews in Israel since it was created. The reason for the attack which produced the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 is exactly the same thing that stands in the way of any real peace settlement today.
4. Falsehood: Israel conducted "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948-49.
Truth: The Arab states conducted ethnic cleansing of Jews after 1948. About a million Jews were expelled by Arab states, their property stolen, and most then became citizens of Israel. Palestinian Arabs became refugees in 1948-49 as a direct result of the Arab war of aggression against Israel, in which the Palestinians participated. The estimated number of such Arab refugees varies between 400,000 and 750,000, with the former the more likely correct estimate. Afterwards, many were quietly allowed to return to Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs from other Arab countries then declared themselves "Palestinian refugees" in order to get handouts from the UN and other international relief organizations. The actual Palestinian Arabs became refugees for the same reason that ethnic Germans living in Eastern Europe became refugees after World War II: because they were on the losing side of the war of aggression launched by their own political leaders.
5. Falsehood: Israel is an apartheid regime and mistreats Arabs.
Truth: Israel is the only Middle East country that is NOT an apartheid regime. Arabs living under Israeli rule are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy freedom of speech and of the press, free access to courts operating with due process, legal protection for property rights and the right to vote. Israeli Arabs have higher standards of education and health than any other group of Arabs in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs are quite simply the best-treated political minority in the Middle East and are in some ways better treated than are minority groups in many European countries. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that does NOT deal with Islamist terror through wholesale massacres of the people in whose midst the terrorists operate
6. Falsehood: Arabs engage in aggression and terrorism because Israel occupies territories.
Truth: Israel occupies territories (that had been controlled by Jordan and Egypt before 1967) because of Arab aggression and terrorism. Had the Arabs made peace with Israel after 1949, the West Bank and Gaza would have remained under the hegemony of Arabs and they could easily have erected a Palestinian Arab state there any time they wished. Instead, they attacked Israel in an attempt at genocidal extermination in 1967 and they lost.
7. Falsehood: The Middle East conflict is and has always been based on Israeli opposition to Palestinian self-determination.
Truth: The Middle East conflict is and has always been based on Arab opposition to Israeli-Jewish self-determination. There is one and only one cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if that single cause is buried beneath an avalanche of media mud designed to obfuscate and confuse. That single cause is the refusal of the Arab world to come to terms with Israel's existence within any set of borders whatsoever. The cause of the war is Arab refusal to come to terms with Jewish self-determination in any form whatsoever. The Middle East conflict is not about the right of self-determination of "Palestinian Arabs," but rather it is about the Arab rejection of self-determination for Israeli Jews. For a century, the Arabs have attempted to block Jewish self-determination, using violence.
No Palestinians before 1967 demanded any "homeland," although they did demand that the Jews be stripped of theirs. That is because Palestinians are not a "people" at all and do not consider themselves such, any more than do the Arabs of Paris or of Detroit. Palestinians never had any real interest in their own state, and in fact rioted violently in 1920 when "Palestine" was detached from Syria by the European powers. Indeed the original term "Nakba" ("catastrophe" in Arabic and in leftist NewSpeak) was coined to refer to the outrage of Palestinians separated from their Syrian homeland. Immediately after the Six Day War a sudden need for a Palestinian state was fabricated by the Arab world, as a gimmick to force Israel back to its pre-1967 borders. Israel would then again be ten-miles wide at its narrowest, and so prepped for the new Arab assault of annihilation and genocide.
The Arab world invented the "Palestinian people" so that it would serve the same role as the Sudeten Germans did in the late 1930s. That role was to provide a pretense of legitimacy for the war aims and aggression of a large fascist power. The term "self-determination" has been repeated as a rhetorical "inalienable right" for so long that few people recall that pursuing "self-determination" can also serve as a tool of aggression by barbarous aggressors and totalitarian powers. When Hitler decided to go on a war of conquest in the late 1930s, he dressed up his intentions in the cloak of legitimacy, merely "helping disenfranchised and oppressed people attain self-determination." He distorted the plight of ethnic Germans living in the Czech Sudetenland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, inventing tales of mistreatment. In reality of course these ethnic Germans already had the option of "self-determination" within the neighboring, sovereign German nation-states, and in fact enjoyed far more freedom and rights than did Germans inside Germany. Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia was prepared through postured indignity over the mistreatment of Germans by Germany's neighbors. Hitler insisted he was simply seeking to relieve the "misery of mistreated ethnic Germans," supposedly suffering inside democratic Czechoslovakia. "Self-determination" was also the pretense when Germany attacked Poland and other countries.
The Arab world decided that the "Palestinians" must play the role of Sudetens, serving as the political and moral pretense for Arab aggression and Islamofascist imperialism. The Arab fascists then misrepresent themselves as pursuing noble efforts at protecting a mistreated oppressed minority group of Arabs in need of "self-determination."
8. Falsehood: Palestinian terrorism has been a response to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and as a response to Israeli settlements there.
Truth: Palestinian terrorism against Jews began in the 1920s, escalated in the 1930s, continued non-stop in the 1940s even in the midst of World War II, and reached heights of barbarism in the 1950s. All this was long before Israel "occupied" anything. The PLO was set up long before the Six Day War, meaning before Israel "occupied" the West Bank and Gaza, and before those areas held a single Israeli settlement.
9. Falsehood: Israel has no right to build settlements in the West Bank.
Truth: Israel has as much right to build settlements in the West Bank as France has to build towns in Alsace and Lorraine, or as Poland has to build in areas that once held ethnic Germans. The Arabs launched a series of wars of aggression against Israel and lost. Aggressors who lose a war also lose territory. The bulk of Jewish "settlers" are actually Israelis living in the suburbs of Jerusalem that were constructed after 1967. A handful of small rural "settlements" have been constructed in empty West Bank lands from which no Arab civilians were evicted. In any real peace settlement, Jews would have as much right to live in the West Bank as Arabs have to live inside Israel. A peace accord that rules out such an arrangement would be no peace accord at all.
10. Falsehood: The Middle East conflict continues because Israel refuses to share its land and resources with Palestinians.
Truth: The Middle East conflict continues because the Arab world refuses to share its land and resources with Jews. It is about the absolute refusal of the Arab world to acquiesce in the existence of any Jewish-majority political entity within any set of borders in the Middle East. The Arabs today control 22 countries and territory nearly twice the size of the United States (including Alaska), whereas Israel cannot be seen on most globes or maps. Arabs as an ethnic group control more territory than any other ethnic group on earth. They refuse to share even a fraction of one percent of the Middle East with the Jews, even in a territory smaller than New Jersey. Without the West Bank, Israel at its narrowest point is less than 10 miles wide, about the length of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The main reason the Arab world demands that Israel relinquish the West Bank to Palestinian terrorism is so that it can be used to attack Israel again and so that Israel can at last be militarily annihilated. The Arab world controls such vast amounts of territory and such vast amounts of wealth (thanks to petroleum) that it could have created a "homeland" for Palestinian Arabs anywhere within its territories at any time.
11. Falsehood: Israel deals with Palestinian violence and terrorism using excessive disproportionate force.
Truth: The number of innocent Palestinian civilians intentionally killed by Israel is exactly zero. The number of civilians injured in Israeli anti-terror operations is tiny when compared with NATO and Allied military operations in Serbia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Given the near universal support among Palestinians for terrorist atrocities against Jews, the self-restraint and moderation used by Israel in dealing with the threat has no precedent in the world. Israel's own Arabs make little attempt to hide their open identification with the genocidal enemies of their own country and they by and large support the annihilation of the state in which they hold citizenship. No other democratic country facing such open sedition and identification with the enemy in time of war ever responded with anywhere near the same restraint as shown by Israel. In World War II, when faced with a far less-dangerous problem, the United States locked up its ethnic-Japanese domestic population in internment camps. Democratic Spain set up teams of death squads to deal with its separatist terrorists. Democracies in war have junked habeas corpus and treated their internal Fifth Columns as the enemy, with no hesitation or squeamishness.
Democratic Czechoslovakia and India (as well as non-democratic countries throughout Eastern Europe) undertook wholesale expulsions of millions of members of their internal ethnic minorities who had sided with the enemy. Greece and Turkey and the two sections of Cyprus simply expelled altogether their minority populations. Israel, in contrast, operates affirmative action programs that benefit Arabs, finances Arabic-language schools in which Israeli Arabs preserve and develop their culture, overfunds Arab municipalities, and turns a blind eye to massive Arab sedition and lawbreaking, including with regard to illegal mass squatting on publicly-owned lands. Israel is a Western democracy with a Scandinavian style social welfare system, the only democracy in the Middle East. It is hard to come up with words to mock satisfactorily the ludicrous nature of the complaints about Israeli "mistreatment" of Arabs. These complaints come from the very same people who are apologists for genocidal Islamofascist terrorist movements and for the Arab fascist states, regimes that are among the most barbarous and openly war-seeking on earth. The endless complaints about "human rights violations" of the "Palestinians" by Israel are a rhetorical part of the broader campaign of aggression against Israeli survival. Arabs living under Israeli rule are the world's foremost illustration of "Moynihan's Law," which holds: "The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country."
12. Falsehood: Israel can achieve peace by trading "Land for Peace" and by relinquishing territories that it "occupies."
Truth: Every time Israel relinquishes territory it "occupies" it triggers an escalation of terror and violence by Arabs against Jews. The main cause of anti-Israel terrorism today is the removal of Israeli occupation from Arabs. This is so obvious that it is a major intellectual challenge to explain why so few people understand it. Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in its entirety in 2004 and evicted all Jews who had been living there. The complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip produced a barrage of thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli civilians inside Israel (NOT in the "occupied territories"), a barrage that eventually forced Israel's reluctant leaders to carry out the "Cast Lead" operation against Gaza terrorism. The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon was unilaterally ended in the year 2000 by then-Israeli socialist Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The direct result of that fiasco was the launching of 4,000 Katyusha rockets from Lebanon against northern Israel in the summer of 2006, and several times that number now poised to strike Israel. The worst waves of Palestinian suicide attacks were directly triggered by the early Oslo withdrawals " before which there had been no suicide bombings. There can be no doubt that a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and a return to pre-1967 borders would trigger a massive rocket and terror assault against the remaining areas of Israel, launched from the "liberated" lands in the West Bank. The same thing would result from Israel relinquishing the Golan Heights to Syria.
13. Falsehood: The Zionist Lobby exercises excessive influence and dictates policies to the United States, protecting Israel from just criticism.
Falsehood: The anti-Zionist Lobby exercises excessive influence and dictates policies to the United States, protecting Palestinians, Arab fascist regimes, and Islamofascism from just criticism. While the media overflow with nonsensical talk about a "Zionist/Israel Lobby," it would only be a small exaggeration to claim that there is no such thing at all. The anti-Zionist lobby binds together anti-Semites and fanatics, ranging from Islamists, to the radical Left to the Neo-Nazi Right. There is little today that separates anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism and I have never met an anti-Zionist who was not also an anti-Semite. (Jewish leftist anti-Zionists are the self-hating moral equivalents of Taliban John and Tokyo Rose).
14. Falsehood: The Middle East conflict can be resolved through "Two States for Two Peoples."
Truth: The "Two States for Two Peoples" idea is not a solution at all but simply a strategy for weakening Israel and forcing it behind indefensible borders. Right after "Two States for Two Peoples" would be implemented, the new "Palestinian state" would invite the rest of the Arab world to finish off what remains of Israel. Even the "moderates" within the PLO insist that any "Israel" left standing within "Two States for Two Peoples" must be flooded by Arab migrants and stripped of its Jewish majority, in effect converted to yet another Arab Palestinian state. The Arabs still condition any "two-state solution" on Israel agreeing to being flooded with Arab immigrants purporting to be Palestinians, so that it will morph demographically into the 24th Arab state. Israel obviously cannot agree. Israel would be blanketed in rocket and mortar fire from "Palestine" and waves of Arab terrorist infiltrators into Israel would raise the carnage to unprecedented levels.
That such a "two-state solution" will not end the conflict, but only signal the commencement of its next stage, has long been the quasi-official position of virtually all Palestinian groups. These have long insisted that any two-state solution is but a stage in a "plan of stages," after which will come additional steps ultimately ending Israel's existence as a Jewish state. The "two-state solution" is no more realistic an option today than it was in 1948, when it was militarily squashed by the Arab states, terrorists, and armies. It is ultimately as much of an existential threat to Jewish survival in the Middle East today as the so-called "one-state solution," favored by the anti-Semitic Left, in which Israel is replaced by a Rwanda-like bi-national entity controlled by Arabs, in which the Jewish problem will be resolved in a Rwanda-style manner.
Creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel would be a major step in the escalation of the Arab war against Israel's existence, even if that war is delayed for a brief time while the world celebrates the outbreak of a Potemkin "peace" in the Middle East produced by the end of Israeli "occupation" of "Palestinians."
Since the Oslo "peace process" began in the early 1990s, the working hypothesis endorsed by nearly everyone on the planet (including large numbers of IQ-challenged Israeli politicians) has been that the most urgent task at hand is to end the Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian Arabs. The problem is that ANY Palestinian state, regardless of who rules it, will produce nothing but escalated violence, terror and warfare in the Middle East, certainly not stability or peaceful relations. It will seek war with the rump Israel, and will seek to draw the entire Moslem world into that war. It will be indifferent to the economic and social problems of its own citizens.
Humans seem to have a basic impatience with hearing the truth repeated over long periods of time. In an era in which technology, politics, and science change so rapidly, many consider it to be implausible that a statement that had been true 60 years ago could still be true today. Surely, they insist, explanations from the past, such as those of the Middle East conflict, must be obsolete by now, replaced with new updated "theories" and more-modern perceptions of reality.
The result of all this is pseudo-history, where people invent new "theories" about some of the most widely-accepted truths of history. No subject has been subject to quite so much pseudo-historic revisionism and denial of "out-of date" truths as the Middle East. George Orwell once said that the first duty of intelligent men is to restate the obvious. Obvious truths need to be restated because they are under assault by so many dishonest men.
The Palestinians have no legitimate claim to a right to set up their own state, and creation of such a state would result in escalated warfare and bloodshed, not peace. There was never in history an Arab Palestinian state. Even if such a right ever existed, the Palestinians " like the Sudeten Germans - would have forfeited it thanks to decades of terrorism, savagery, mass murders and barbarism. Their pacification today requires reimposing of martial rule by Israel and a thorough program of Denazification.
The promotion of a "Two States for Two Peoples" solution has radicalized and Nazified most Israeli Arabs, who now identify with and openly support Arab parties and politicians openly calling for violence against Jews and for the destruction of Israel. The "solution" is a recipe for more bloodshed and strife.
@cicerone imposter,
Quote:it was a surprise attack without any concern for the civilian population.
Not a surprise attack at all, CI.
Quote:The civilians in Japan were ready to use anything to fight off American military in the event we started the war on their land. Many believed the Americans soldiers would rape and torture them; there was no way to change their mind-set, and the civilian population would have sacrificed themselves for the emperor who was seen as a god. They preferred death by suicide over surrender.
That's been the propaganda line, for sure. Why would you want to believe anything the US ever says or has said, CI? And still, even if there was a measure of truth in it, international law doesn't allow that as an excuse to commit war crimes.
If there were to be an invasion of the American homeland, Americans would think that a good thing, to fight to the death rather than surrender; fighting for the American way, which is also seen as a god.
The Japanese, as a people, accepted defeat and surrendered more easily and more graciously than I suspect Americans ever would.
Read the article again. It had nothing to do with the usual line of propaganda. That was an afterthought, meant to hide the almost casual inhumanity of the Americans.
@JTT,
I'm not excusing or denying that Americans are also guilty of atrocities, but when discussing WWII, we all know it was a different time and place in our world when most of us viewed it quite differently from today's world.
I can only rely on my memory for most of this stuff from much reading about MacArthur and other men involved during the war. Even the officers of the Japanese army treated their own men brutally quite often, and my understanding of the Japanese culture is extent, although I'll admit I'm not an expert.
@JTT,
Not a surprise attack at all, CI.
-------------------------------------
You know little history along with your other failings.
The attack was not mean to be a surprise attack however it turn out to be one or in any case they was suppose to break off talk before the attack.
The Japanese goverment clerk was a slow typist/decoder and ours was faster however all we know was that they was breaking off the talks and being told to destroy their papers and decoding machines but they did not declare war and did not plan to do so only to break off talks.
