bobzilla said:but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
The Germans were conquered by the people they were exterminating, the Japanese were not.
red_stapler said:bobzilla said:but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
The Germans were conquered by the people they were exterminating, the Japanese were not.
I wonder if it seems that way here because the US is tied much closer to Europe than Asia. Koreans certainly have not forgotten or forgiven Japan for what it did.
In reply to thatsnowinnebago :
Is that why I want my Korean cars and despise the Japanese? Was I Korean in another life?
In lighter news, the wife and I took a rare night out from the kids to drive 3.5 hours and see the Kiev City Ballet perform Swan Lake. They have been touring the states, we caught them in Suffolk Va.
bobzilla said:In reply to thatsnowinnebago :
Is that why I want my Korean cars and despise the Japanese? Was I Korean in another life?
Haha, sounds like it.
thatsnowinnebago said:red_stapler said:bobzilla said:but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
The Germans were conquered by the people they were exterminating, the Japanese were not.
I wonder if it seems that way here because the US is tied much closer to Europe than Asia. Koreans certainly have not forgotten or forgiven Japan for what it did.
We were willing to overlook that and ally with the Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese, because they opposed communism which we hated more.
bobzilla said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands.
A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
There is a somewhat (not just sonewhat) racist reason for that, involving many of the West's grest philosphers and scientists coming from Germany, so they really should have had better behavior than that, whereas Japan... yeah. Not even going to give it voice.
Eugenics was also practiced in the US, too, but kind of fell out of favor after witnessing Germany's having taken it to its logical conclusion. Other Western countries took longer.
bobzilla said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands.
A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
It's morally and historically complicated stuff. While only the fringiest whacko would make excuses for Hitlers scourge of the Jews, you can still find a good number of communist apologists, despite the fact that between the USSR, China, Vietnam and Cambodia FAR more people were killed either rapidly or very slowly through starvation. And while we'd like to think that in the wake of WWII we were far more evolved in our treatment of our defeated foes, how much less so would we have been if we hadn't wanted their help against the Soviets?
Edit: As far as European atrocities versus Asian ones, there were a lot more Western journalists around Europe than there were in Asia. Also most Americans traced their heritage to Europe.
I suspect it has a lot more to do with the fact that the US (and Western) military where directly faced with the atrocities in Europe because they not only discovered some of them (e.g. camps) but where very much present in the country for quite a while (to find the more hidden one).
The west had very little involvement in China past the beginning of the war and certainly had nothing to do with occupying the country after the war. It probably also does not help that Japan has been in full on denial mode since then and the US did very much occupy them. The communist revolution happened right after the war also, and as I am sure most are aware, there was very little contact with the west after that.
So, I don't find it surprising at all.
02Pilot said:Building up forces in Crimea makes zero sense for anything other than amphibious operations against the Ukrainian littoral (look at a map - the exits from Crimea are the definition of chokepoint), and I haven't seen any information suggesting that's likely. The satellite image looks like a training area more than anything else (PI is not something I'm formally trained in, but I do have an interest).
Increasing NATO QRF readiness status is not exactly a major step; it's more likely intended to reassure border state governments and give them something to point to when their people start screaming that the Russkis are coming (again). I do find it an interesting detail that Turkey is currently in command of the QRF.
I still contend this is posturing carried out simultaneously with negotiations in an effort to drive the public narrative, nothing more.
The last paragraph aged poorly
I hope now we could admit that Putin is obviously an irrational actor and will continue to act as such.
If anything, this has only served to strengthen Ukraine. They will be closer to the west than they ever had a chance of being before this conflict, and other Eastern European nations will notice this.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:bobzilla said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands.
A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
It's morally and historically complicated stuff. While only the fringiest whacko would make excuses for Hitlers scourge of the Jews, you can still find a good number of communist apologists, despite the fact that between the USSR, China, Vietnam and Cambodia FAR more people were killed either rapidly or very slowly through starvation. And while we'd like to think that in the wake of WWII we were far more evolved in our treatment of our defeated foes, how much less so would we have been if we hadn't wanted their help against the Soviets?
Edit: As far as European atrocities versus Asian ones, there were a lot more Western journalists around Europe than there were in Asia. Also most Americans traced their heritage to Europe.
The starvation etc. happened because dictators gonna tater. Stalin and his henchmen didn't starve Ukraine for any other reason than "they aren't Russians, fark 'em, if we get them out of there we can take their land." Ironically the same damn thing Hitler wanted to do. Mao was a berking idiot with delusions of competence who suggested such brilliant things as planting crops twice as close together to double the yield, and having farmers smelt iron in their "spare time", which due to quotas had them melting down whatever metallic items they could find into worthless slag, including the tools they needed to farm with, so they could try to avoid arrest.
They key is not whatever -ism they pretend to be following, the key is a ruler (not leader) with a cult of personality and a fear of reprisal from saying "no, that won't work."
aircooled said:The west had very little involvement in China past the beginning of the war and certainly had nothing to do with occupying the country after the war. It probably also does not help that Japan has been in full on denial mode since then and the US did very much occupy them. The communist revolution happened right after the war also, and as I am sure most are aware, there was very little contact with the west after that.
So, I don't find it surprising at all.
Or that the US, IIRC, pretty much only helped Chiang Kai-shek's forces against Japan, as a way of making the Chinese civil war work towards political ends. Between that and the Allies sort of letting things slide with Japan in comparison to Germany, the breaking with the West is perfectly understandable.
bobzilla said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands.
A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
Communism.
Nobody ever brings up either the number of soviets who died in the war (~20M), nor the slaughter of anyone in the Soviet Union.
Once China went red, we forgot everything they did.
tuna55 said:02Pilot said:Building up forces in Crimea makes zero sense for anything other than amphibious operations against the Ukrainian littoral (look at a map - the exits from Crimea are the definition of chokepoint), and I haven't seen any information suggesting that's likely. The satellite image looks like a training area more than anything else (PI is not something I'm formally trained in, but I do have an interest).
Increasing NATO QRF readiness status is not exactly a major step; it's more likely intended to reassure border state governments and give them something to point to when their people start screaming that the Russkis are coming (again). I do find it an interesting detail that Turkey is currently in command of the QRF.
I still contend this is posturing carried out simultaneously with negotiations in an effort to drive the public narrative, nothing more.
The last paragraph aged poorly
I hope now we could admit that Putin is obviously an irrational actor and will continue to act as such.
If anything, this has only served to strengthen Ukraine. They will be closer to the west than they ever had a chance of being before this conflict, and other Eastern European nations will notice this.
I'm not sure how far back you had to dig for this or exactly what your intent is in posting it, but I stand by every assessment I made at the time I made it, right or wrong. I continue to reject entirely the argument that Putin is an irrational actor - there is no significant evidence to support such an assertion if one considers the perspective from which he is operating. If one insists on applying the moralistic Western perspective of Wilsonian internationalism and a linear understanding of history, I can understand how it might look that way, but it should be fairly self-evident that this is not the approach with which Putin, or Russian leadership in general, align themselves. They are rational pragmatists - the fact that they have made numerous poor decisions does not change that; it just suggests that they failed to execute their plans successfully. If the execution had been successful, they would have achieved their war aims and altered the geopolitical balance in their favor - an entirely rational objective.
In reply to 02Pilot :
"The Russians may not act rationally by our standards, but they do act rationally by their own."
- _The Hunt for Red October_ (I forget which character in the book said it)
So if 300,000 Russians go into training to become soldiers and say an equal amount leave Russia.....
Who is going to build things?
I realize this is only a small part of the Russian population, but is it a large part of the trained, working population?
In reply to Noddaz :
Not really, not anymore. Russia has less than 1/2 of America's population. And 3 times the land mass.
There are really big parts of Russia where it's a long way to someone else. So if they go to the wilderness and grab some kid, who's going to keep the wolf population down?
They can't grab many off the street because so many are either drug addicts or alcoholics. That or suffer from VD or other diseases. Those are real serious problems in Russia. Massively higher percentage then here in America.
Finally with every educated person that can leaving Russia anyway they can get out, taking 300,000 semi decent young men will seriously hurt any productivity.
If you go on those Russian dating sites you'll see that there are 11 million more women than men. Because of the high mortality rate of young men.
Russian women scare me. Perhaps they're sending the wrong gender to fight Ukraine.
Apexcarver said:In lighter news, the wife and I took a rare night out from the kids to drive 3.5 hours and see the Kiev City Ballet perform Swan Lake. They have been touring the states, we caught them in Suffolk Va.
This is some really great, and classy, trolling.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:Russian women scare me. Perhaps they're sending the wrong gender to fight Ukraine.
That's weird. There's always a lot of them in my area and they all look really friendly?
I don't think the Russians can drag this out much longer. Their economy was already smaller than ours in Canada when the world closed its doors to them. Their only trade with China, India and the Stan countries would dry up completely if they tried to escalate things, and now they are removing a large chunk of their wage earners to sit in a trench in the Crimea. And once the conscription door has been opened it will be hard to close it when the thinking is that just a few hundred thousand more might make the difference. It may be months yet but when the economic pain really sets in its going to be very traumatic domestically.
In reply to bobzilla :
You have no idea the internal conflict I have when I see a “Semper Fi” bumper sticker on a Camry...
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:Russian women scare me. Perhaps they're sending the wrong gender to fight Ukraine.
If you go on those sites it's obvious they too want to get out of Russia. If it takes having sex with fat old westerners to achieve that, they are OK with that.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:bobzilla said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands.
A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
It's morally and historically complicated stuff. While only the fringiest whacko would make excuses for Hitlers scourge of the Jews, you can still find a good number of communist apologists, despite the fact that between the USSR, China, Vietnam and Cambodia FAR more people were killed either rapidly or very slowly through starvation. And while we'd like to think that in the wake of WWII we were far more evolved in our treatment of our defeated foes, how much less so would we have been if we hadn't wanted their help against the Soviets?
Edit: As far as European atrocities versus Asian ones, there were a lot more Western journalists around Europe than there were in Asia. Also most Americans traced their heritage to Europe.
The starvation etc. happened because dictators gonna tater. Stalin and his henchmen didn't starve Ukraine for any other reason than "they aren't Russians, fark 'em, if we get them out of there we can take their land." Ironically the same damn thing Hitler wanted to do. Mao was a berking idiot with delusions of competence who suggested such brilliant things as planting crops twice as close together to double the yield, and having farmers smelt iron in their "spare time", which due to quotas had them melting down whatever metallic items they could find into worthless slag, including the tools they needed to farm with, so they could try to avoid arrest.
They key is not whatever -ism they pretend to be following, the key is a ruler (not leader) with a cult of personality and a fear of reprisal from saying "no, that won't work."
This is one of the best discussions I've heard on Stalin's domestic actions in the 1920s and 30s.
I haven't yet read Kotkin's books on Stalin (I have to get started on Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War first), but his presentation here is compelling.
frenchyd said:In reply to Noddaz :
Not really, not anymore. Russia has less than 1/2 of America's population. And 3 times the land mass.
There are really big parts of Russia where it's a long way to someone else. So if they go to the wilderness and grab some kid, who's going to keep the wolf population down?
They can't grab many off the street because so many are either drug addicts or alcoholics. That or suffer from VD or other diseases. Those are real serious problems in Russia. Massively higher percentage then here in America.
Finally with every educated person that can leaving Russia anyway they can get out, taking 300,000 semi decent young men will seriously hurt any productivity.
If you go on those Russian dating sites you'll see that there are 11 million more women than men. Because of the high mortality rate of young men.
Frenchy, are you just making this ^^^ stuff up off the top of your head or do you have references? Your post reads like an old man rambling about stuff he thinks, making up stuff as he writes. Do you survey Russian dating sites for statistics? If you're making stuff up, please keep that type of writing to the Jaguar threads, threads like this can easily be derailed. I follow a couple Russian youtubers and when they post videos of the poor sections of cities I haven't seen the type of drug addiction, homelessness, etc. like I've seen in videos of US cities.
02Pilot said:Pete. (l33t FS) said:Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:bobzilla said:In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
Terrorism is an act performed by nation states not at war. We were very much at war in the 40's. Germany had already bombed english civilians during the battle of britain and set the stage for future engagements. Japan had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in mainland china and lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Korean children introduced into the sex slave market for their military. No one in that conflict had clean hands.
A bit off topic for a second.... but what I find odd is that war atrocities from WWII are always brought up surrounding Germany. Yes, they killed millions of jews during the war. But the Japanese killed between 3 and 10 million chinese during that same time yet that's just brushed under the rug.
It's morally and historically complicated stuff. While only the fringiest whacko would make excuses for Hitlers scourge of the Jews, you can still find a good number of communist apologists, despite the fact that between the USSR, China, Vietnam and Cambodia FAR more people were killed either rapidly or very slowly through starvation. And while we'd like to think that in the wake of WWII we were far more evolved in our treatment of our defeated foes, how much less so would we have been if we hadn't wanted their help against the Soviets?
Edit: As far as European atrocities versus Asian ones, there were a lot more Western journalists around Europe than there were in Asia. Also most Americans traced their heritage to Europe.
The starvation etc. happened because dictators gonna tater. Stalin and his henchmen didn't starve Ukraine for any other reason than "they aren't Russians, fark 'em, if we get them out of there we can take their land." Ironically the same damn thing Hitler wanted to do. Mao was a berking idiot with delusions of competence who suggested such brilliant things as planting crops twice as close together to double the yield, and having farmers smelt iron in their "spare time", which due to quotas had them melting down whatever metallic items they could find into worthless slag, including the tools they needed to farm with, so they could try to avoid arrest.
They key is not whatever -ism they pretend to be following, the key is a ruler (not leader) with a cult of personality and a fear of reprisal from saying "no, that won't work."
This is one of the best discussions I've heard on Stalin's domestic actions in the 1920s and 30s.
I haven't yet read Kotkin's books on Stalin (I have to get started on Sean McMeekin's Stalin's War first), but his presentation here is compelling.
Ironic that Joe wasn't Russian, either. He was Georgian.
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