slippery slope getting steeper

[Crux]

Seems I've sprayed about this crap, off and on, for days now. But today when riding down University Way, I paused and looked at a newspaper box. I saw the headlines. What I saw stunned me like no other headline ever has, not even the one of 11/22. Something about seeing it there, above the fold and on the street corner, made it seem like it didn't seem quite real until now.

 

What the fuck is going on!

[catbirdseat]

This article was on the front page of the PI. I think it is germaine to the discussion. It shows how we've made similar mistakes in the past and have regretted them, as someone already stated. Japanese Internment

[underworld]

crux - read more than headlines

cbs - we dont' bring up the past, remember, someone got scolded for that earlier. it's too hard to blame bush for that stuff anyway.

[G-spotter]

bush rap bolted infinite bliss

[Fairweather]

This article was on the front page of the PI. I think it is germaine to the discussion. It shows how we've made similar mistakes in the past and have regretted them, as someone already stated. Japanese

 

Internment

 

...and let's not forget his total war doctrine which (rightly or wrongly) left an estimated 3 million japanese civilians incinerated on the streets and in the homes of most major cities there. Yet FDR is a universally loved icon of the american left today. I just don't get it.

[catbirdseat]

This article was on the front page of the PI. I think it is germaine to the discussion. It shows how we've made similar mistakes in the past and have regretted them, as someone already stated. Japanese

 

Internment

 

...and let's not forget his total war doctrine which (rightly or wrongly) left an estimated 3 million japanese civilians incinerated on the streets and in the homes of most major cities there. Yet FDR is a universally loved icon of the american left today. I just don't get it.

I get it. Better to kill 3 million of the enemy to let them kill 100,000 of your own people. It's a no-brainer.

[chucK]

Wasn't it Truman who had the tough decision on whether to drop the bombs?

 

And jesus, where do you get the number 3 million?

 

Have you been drinking?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Wasn't it Truman who had the tough decision on whether to drop the bombs?

 

And jesus, where do you get the number 3 million?

 

Have you been drinking?

 

we did more than drop nukes (i.e. fire bombing of German and Japanese cities ).

Edited September 30, 2006 by KaskadskyjKozak

[ScottP]

"In the night of March 9th 1945 320 B-29 (6 tons of bomb each) make a incendiary raid on Tokyo by dropping 1667 tons of bombs (more than Hambourg in Europe). At 0h15 the first two bombers were dropping their bombs following perpendiculary axes so that a giant fire cross appeared in the center of the city. With a 45km/h wind 33km square of the city are burned and 100 000 civilians die: boiled in their pool where they had taken refuge, asphixied or burned; and another 100 000 are injured. This raid cost only 14 B-29 to the Americans of which many were damaged by the ascendant wind due to the fire and which pitched things 2000m high. In the next week the raids continue on the 5 major cities: March 12th Nagoya, 286 bombers destroy 5km square; March 14th 2240 tons of bombs explode on Osaka and remove 14km square of the city; Kobe is reduced of 5km square on the 16th; Nagoya is visited by 300 B-29 on March 22nd which drop their 2000 tons of stock; May 29th Yokohama is destroyed at 85% by 460 bombers and Tokyo is not spared: from April 13th to May 26th 4 raids of about 400 bombers each will destroy some 60km square of the city. With the night raid, the american losses are reduced to 1.4%. So the raids continue in the following months. On June 17th the 5 major cities have lost 80% of their industrial potential. The only big city which is not bombed is Kyoto, for religious reasons. In June the medium cities (350 000 inhabitants), about 25 of them, are also targeted. From July 12th the targets are all cities of 100 000 inhabitants and more."

 

I don't know about 3,000,000, but Allied carpet bombing of Japanese cities killed many, many people.

[Fairweather]

Wasn't it Truman who had the tough decision on whether to drop the bombs?

 

And jesus, where do you get the number 3 million?

 

Have you been drinking?

 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just the final chapter written by Truman. FDR's use of incendiaries during the last year of the war killed far more civilians than the two atomic bombings. Maybe you should try to dig past history's headlines, put down that beer, and attend history class at least once or twice per semester.

 

The basics:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_World_War_II

[murraysovereign]

Wasn't it Truman who had the tough decision on whether to drop the bombs?

 

And jesus, where do you get the number 3 million?

 

Have you been drinking?

 

I haven't tried to check the figures, but I wouldn't be surprised if 3 million was conservative. Remember, one of the reasons Truman dropped "The Bomb" on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was because FDR had already bombed most Japanese cities off the map. And they used a lot of incendiary bombs on all those "conventional" raids, causing a lot of firestorms. The cumulative death toll from a long series of Dresdens would be pretty high, and then you top it off with Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Like I said, 3 million might be conservative.

 

Fairweather, I don't think FDR is a "darling of the left" due to his prosecution of the war effort. I think maybe it has more to do with the New Deal. His war effort I thought was pretty well regarded by people on both sides of the spectrum. Well, except maybe the Nazis, and the Japanese Imperialists, but other than them, most people seem pretty happy with the way he prosecuted the war.

[chucK]

I read your link.

 

Where do you get the number 3 million?

 

And I would guess that FDR is beloved by the left because of his legacy of domestic social policy.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I read your link.

 

Where do you get the number 3 million?

 

And I would guess that FDR is beloved by the left because of his legacy of domestic social policy.

 

The irony is that the New Deal policies were not ultimately responsible for the turaround in the economy; the war effort was.

[slothrop]

If you think the New Deal was purely about improving the economy, you're missing the point.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

If you think the New Deal was purely about improving the economy, you're missing the point.

 

the point? oh, you mean the beginning of "feel good gestures" (never mind the results). the birth of American liberalism.

[cj001f]

If you think the New Deal was purely about improving the economy, you're missing the point.

 

the point? oh, you mean the beginning of "feel good gestures" (never mind the results). the birth of American liberalism.

 

Isn't the marquis de sade the founder of conservatism?

[Mos_Chillin]

If you think the New Deal was purely about improving the economy, you're missing the point.

 

the point? oh, you mean the beginning of "feel good gestures" (never mind the results). the birth of American liberalism.

 

Isn't the marquis de sade the founder of conservatism?

 

"Why do you hang out with that sadist?"

 

"Beats me!"

[Fairweather]

I read your link.

 

Where do you get the number 3 million?

 

And I would guess that FDR is beloved by the left because of his legacy of domestic social policy.

 

FDR's prosecution of the war seems like it would be a deal breaker to someone who hates GWB for far less.

[chucK]

Sorry, GWB has many things to dislike, domestic and foreign. What's there to like, oh, he did cut taxes. Oh wait that was mostly only for the rich, oh nevermind.

 

Besides FDR won his war. Bush and his handpicked cadre of high-level contributors to the GOP just seems to fuck up more every day in his.

[Crux]

This article was on the front page of the PI. I think it is germaine to the discussion. It shows how we've made similar mistakes in the past and have regretted them, as someone already stated. Japanese Internment

CBS, the article for which I saw the headline during my ride-by this morning was a story about new laws. Maybe they got it straight this time, made the laws stronger, and authorized the summary arrest, imprisonment, and torture of Congress. For the executive, a firing squad would naturally be appropriate.

[murraysovereign]

... Besides FDR won his war. Bush and his handpicked cadre of high-level contributors to the GOP just seems to fuck up more every day in his.

 

FDR fought the war he was confronted with, and fought it through to its conclusion. GWB started to fight the war he was confronted with, by going after Al Quaeda and their Taliban allies in Afghanistan. But then he backed off and went after some side-show of a family grudge match in... Iraq? WTF? That's like FDR starting to go after the Axis, but then just letting that slide and diverting the Allies' energies toward some place like Kenya, or Brazil maybe.

[PBRstreetgang]

Fuck Amerika, long live Cascadia.

[cj001f]

meanwhile, back in Abramoff land...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009594.php

[Dechristo]

An irony appears in the "slippery slope getting steeper", or more slippery, as the presence of oil decreases.