Tom Lehrer - So Long Mom (A Song For WWIII)

Seemingly everything old is new again.  Apocalypse Nostalgia, anyone? 

Has WWIII already started?

Very in-depth and thoughtful post at E.M. Smith's place.  The comments are thoughtful, too.

For the life of me, I can't see what compelling interest the USA has in war with Russia.  I can see what the US Military Industrial Complex has with a war like that.  And as they say, "War is the health of the State". 

But I don't see what's in it for us.

UPDATE 31 January 2023 11:18: Chuck Pergiel has a related and very interesting post about who the chief clowns running US foreign policy are.

Update 31 January 2023 15:35 : Link corrected

Russia's intercontinental nuclear torpedo

Hmmmm:

Poseidon is an ‘Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedo’. It is a giant torpedo which can hit coastal cities with devastating results. Compared to an intercontinental ballistic missile it is very slow, but possibly unstoppable.

Russia maintains that it can also be used as a tactical nuclear weapon against warships. High-value targets would include aircraft carriers. This is harder to rationalize than the second-strike nuclear deterrence role, but it is a constant theme. Ever since it was first revealed in November 2015, then known as Status-6. it has been described as a multirole system.

The weapon’s expected speed, around 70 knots, is fast enough to make it realistically uncatchable to existing torpedoes. And its operating depths, perhaps as deep as 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) puts it beyond reach. Western planners will have to develop new weapons to intercept it. And that will take considerable time and investment.

It uses a mini nuclear reactor for power, and can deliver a small nuclear warhead.

Hat tip: Isegoria, who always finds cool stuff.

We have always been at war with East Asia

A fish doesn't notice the water it swims in.  The Western populations swim in a sea of State sponsored propaganda.  Perceptions are carefully shaped so that only Approved® preferences emerge.  Unfortunately for the "Elites" they have pushed the envelope so far from most people's perceived reality that propaganda collapses.  It seems that the American public remains sane:

The Economist/You Gov poll showed that despite a barrage of pro-war media coverage only 19% of Americans support "sending soldiers to Ukraine to fight Russian soldiers."

54% oppose.

You have to dig very deep in its poll story to find this gem. It is almost as if they were trying to manipulate the public.

So you have to dig to find out that Americans oppose World War III.  The "Elites" trying to shape public opinion have a long way to go still.  Good.

And the scare quotes around "Elites" is well earned.  A great post at Liberty's Torch lays out the case against them:

Rule by moral midgets is the rule now. The posturing Trump could not contain his feverish wish to bomb Syria in 2017 and Clinton before him inexplicably took it upon himself to bomb Serbia relentlessly for over 70 days. Obama chose groveling on the international stage as his signature gesture and his Secretary of State wet herself with glee at the death of Gaddafi. The entire political class of the United States has chosen to chase will-o’-the-wisps fueled by arrogance and delusions. Denial of fundamental biological reality is now an integral part of the mental processes of said class, superbly “educated” to a man but ignorant of life’s most precious truths.

It’s not only an American phenomenon. All but a few European leaders desire anything but national suicide by immigration to vindicate the most vaporous and sappy sentiments of compassion, fairness, and historical retribution. A mere 104 years after the massive slaughter of The Great War and not a one of that lot could summon the courage let alone vision to lift a finger to derail the asinine U.S. encroachment on Russia or question its inherent assumption of some unique Russian depravity or willful nonobservance of civilized norms. Slavic brutes!! Lessons learned from the reckless slide into the massive slaughter of modern industrial warfare? None.

Top.  Men.  Good thing the People still retain some common sense.

Let them hate, so long as they fear

The Romans were hated by a lot of people in the ancient world.  This bothered the Romans not a bit.  Their attitude was spelled out in the post title, although the original latin has a certain je ne sais quois:  Oderint, dum metuant.

The Powers That Be in these United States seem to have forgotten that this is a dynamic, and that things done to instill fear can lead to hate.  Big Country hits this nail on the head looking at all the sanctions that the US PTB are piling on Russia:

Two is that #ourguys are purely fucking up by the numbers. Initially, the Russian Population was starting to protest against the war. Lots of Grannies, regular civvies, and yeah, Vlad had a crackdown on it, as he is wont to be. However, all this 'other stuff'... the cutting off of Paypal, Applepay, Goolagpay, services and well, just about any and all economic 'stuff' in Russia by OUR Oligarchs?

Yeah, that's not helping us... in fact it just goes to prove the point to the Russian People that Putin IS right and that they, the Russian People as a whole have been targeted by the dissolute and decadent west for elimination. Hell, it ain't a hard argument to make, and we're proving it by putting the hurt on the Russian People as a whole. The Russians as history has shown rally around The Rodina when shit like this happens. A nearly singlemindedness and even bloodthirsty willingness to protect The Motherland

No matter what the cost.

So this makes me nervous, 'cos instead of them blaming Putin, they're realizing, from their POV, he might be right and it's time to make US hurt as badly as we're making them hurt. And as far as I can tell, that'd be the Giant Flashbulb Option, as they really don't have a way of fucking up or fucking with the general Untied Staaz population.

So if our beef is with Vlad and the Oligarchs (their Oligarchs, not our Oligarchs) then why do the sanctions seem to be targeted at the Russian People?  Oh, and I still don't have a good explanation as to why Ukraine absolutely positively has to be a member of NATO.  Still waiting on that one.

Ya know, what comes to mind is the ancient Greek saying that those who the Gods would destroy first are turned mad.  About sums up the US PTB, right there.

And an anonymous commenter leaves a really concerning comment over at Big Country's place:

More or less right on the money. Couple that with the administration coming up with shit like sanctions on India because they won't sanction Russia. Now India are looking at what they can trade without using the USD. Good work retards.
Lot of Arab countries now talking about investing more in/with China too. Worth watching what the BRICS countries do, once the move away from trade in USD kicks in...

"Good work, retards" looks like it's fixin' the be an excellent epitaph for the US PTB once they destroy the dollar as the world's reserve currency and the US standard of living drops by 70%.

Ah, brings to mind the old days, working at Three Letter Security Agency back in the '80s.  We all agreed that if the balloon went up we'd just go out and sunbathe in the parking lot and wait for that last big flash bulb to go off.  Been a long time since I thought of that.  And so, a musical tribute to the last tanning session (stolen from Western Rifle Shooters):

Damn, I wish we had a smarter and less reckless Ruling Class.

I still don't think that we have any business intervening in Ukraine

I wrote this a month ago and don't think any differently:

The ghosts of Stalingrad

Peter doesn't think we have any compelling national interest to get into a war with Russia over Ukraine.  I agree, and would amplify it like this:

Why on earth are we talking about getting into a war in Russia in the winter?

I mean, you could ask Napoleon how that turned out, or the German 6th Army.  Heck, you could ask the Afghani allies we just left behind how good an idea this is.  Since our military has such a good track record this century.

Peter's take is that the Powers That Be are getting desperate as the economy is mired in stagflation, the vaxx mandate is increasingly unpopular, and Biden's approval rating drops lower than any President in my lifetime.  A foreign adventure is often the prescription for what ails them - politics ends at the water's edge, right?

Except no - firstly, this is nothing but madness.  Bill Clinton at least had the good sense to bomb a Somali aspirin factory rather than Sevastapol.  Secondly, we've heard from Democrats for 20 years that politics does NOT end at the water's edge.

Quite frankly, it's time for Congress to step up as the Adult Supervision* and pass a resolution saying that we do not have a compelling national interest in NATO expansion into Ukraine, and we sure as heck don't have a compelling interest in Americans getting killed over that.  It sure would be something to see the Democrats filibuster that.

It's been a long time since I've tagged a post "Atomic War" ...

* This just goes to illustrate how weird things are.

UPDATE 22 January 2022 18:17:  J.Kb has a must read post about this.

I would expand on this, with several additional arguments: 

1. The Biden Administration has done terrible damage to our armed forces, which quite frankly may not have the capacity to respond meaningfully in a peer-to-peer shooting war.
2. There is quite a good chance that if we do engage with Russia that the Chinese will think that this is the best opportunity they will ever see to take Taiwan back.  The ability of our armed forces to simultaneously engage with two peer-to-peer conflicts is roughly between slim and none.  And Slim just left town. (UPDATE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 12:01: Aesop has some Pertinent thoughts on this topic, and is more pessimistic than I am.)
3. An actual shooting war involving the US and NATO will show that Donald Trump was right: NATO members have not been living up to their agreements on funding troop levels and readiness.  Quite frankly we all think that NATO is a paper tiger but a hot war will prove the point.
4. A corollary to #3 is that the EU will come under big pressure to do something - anything - about the conflict and any refugees.  The EU will be paralyzed (because it's always paralyzed) and will be exposed as not the "United States of Europe" but rather a paper tiger just like NATO.
5. Germans will begin to freeze in the dark.  They shut down a whole bunch of base load power (Energiewende) and now the Russians have them over a barrel.  Fuel Poverty is a real thing.

I'd like to digress in particular on #5.  We are seeing a fair amount of the usual jingoistic banging of the War Drum, with people not sufficiently enthusiastic about World War III being called "stooges" (or worse).  Quite frankly, I'd be more impressed with these attacks if they were also leveled at the greenie Watermelon crowd (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) who are hamstringing our fossil fuel industries (both here and in Europe).  Nothing gives Vladimir Putin more leverage over the West than this.  No war for European oil, and all that.

This post is tagged "idiots" because, well, you know.

UPDATE 24 FEBRUARY 2022 12:01:  Stephen Green at Instapundit muses about why Putin pulled the trigger and invaded.  I think it's quite simple: he thinks he will get away with it.  Quite frankly, I expect he's right.

Who benefits from the US in Ukraine?

One thing that I have not been able to figure out is who would benefit from the US sending 8,500 (or 50,000 - the number keeps changing) US troops to Stalingrad in winter.  We've seen this movie before and we all know how it comes out.  There are pretty much no good arguments to do this - nothing but huffing and puffing about "deterring aggression" and "stopping Putin's land grab" and "country borders are sacred".  Let's quickly dispense with these arguments and move on to who really wins.

Deterring Aggression.  It's not 1939, and the US Establishment isn't Neville Chamberland.  A quick review of the first two decades of this century will establish the wars we've fought: Afghanistan (2001-2021), Iraq (2003 - present), Libya (2011), Syria (2013).  The problem isn't an American meekness; on the contrary.  Vladimir Putin knows this, and doesn't have to read between the lines to understand what NATO expansion plans for Ukraine would mean to a Russia that shares a border with it.

Putin's "Land Grab".  So Russia has demanded guarantees from NATO that (a) Ukraine will not be admitted to the coalition (as this would compel NATO to defend Ukraine in the future, by treaty), and also guarantees that NATO offensive weapons will not be stationed in Ukraine.  The NATO General Secretary has explicitly rejected both demands, as has the US State Department (at least according to the Russian foreign ministry; while this is not proof, it does concur with the NATO General Secretary's public statements from two days ago).  So what options does Putin have?  More importantly, what options are we giving him?

"National Borders are sacrosanct".  Well, except for the US-Mexico border, I guess.  This doesn't pass the "red face" test - the fact that people can say this without shame only shows that our elites are, well, shameless.

So who wins in this showdown?  We know who is facing the risks - you know, that whole Stalingrad in winter thing, but Russia is facing substantial risks as well from sanctions, a military with some good units but many not so good ones, potential guerrilla war, etc.  NATO appears to be splintering before our eyes as Germany, France, and others refuse to do any heavy lifting (Germany's offer a a few thousand mil surplus helmets to Ukraine speaks volumes on how tight this "alliance" is).  

Oh yeah - Russia has a bunch of nuclear missiles aimed at us.  That would never go sideways, right?  So there are lots of potential losers here.  

Who wins?

China.  This is long, but clearly and plainly laid out.  I highly recommend you spend the time to watch it:

Other winners: The Military Industrial Complex (Defense suppliers and retired 4 stars who get cushy and well paid gigs on their boards of directors).  The Biden Administration which gets to keep the Hunter Biden Ukrainian payoffs swept under the carpet.  The Democratic Party which is desperately looking for something - anything - to change the electorate's focus from the disastrous Afghanistan bug out, or inflation, or the increasingly unpopular Covid lockdowns, or the Teacher's Unions destroying public education, or the weakening economy.

I guess that the Democrats aren't smart enough to figure out what adding that whole "Stalingrad in winter" thing to that list will do in the run up to the elections.

Tucker Carlson quite rightly asks: how does any of this make America stronger?  Clearly it doesn't - to the contrary.  But if you don't pound the jingoistic War Drum with the idiots in the media you're Putin's Stooge or Neville Chamberlin or unpatriotic.  Or something.

I'm so old that I remember Democrats shouting that they were tired of their patriotism being questioned.  Times sure have changed.

But remember: these people are all so much smarter (and nicer!) than you are.  You stooge, you.

UPDATE 27 January 2022 17:46:  Divemedic has a detailed post about another downside - our diminished military capability and top-heavy brass.  You should read the whole thing but this is the summation:

The US has cut its ability to project power so severely, that it can no longer afford to be, nor can it be, the world’s policeman.

Russia and China know that.

But hey - on to Stalingrad!

UPDATE 27 January 2022 18:40:  LOL:

The other things the BBC were moaning about were the winter famine wiping out the children of the Taliban and the poor pitiful Ukrainians who are ill-equipped to fight the Red Army. I see a confluence of benefits here. The Taliban have $89 billion dollars in high tech weaponry they manifestly don't need and the Ukraine produces most of Europes wheat. They could trade weaponry to the breadbasket of Europe for food. Win win!

Helpful. That's me.

Maybe $89 B of food would give them enough weapons to get to Stalingrad, amirite?  Who says that Atomic War can't be hilarious?

UPDATE 27 January 2022 19:01:  Yeah, yeah, I can stop anytime.  Kurt Schlicter (LTC USA, Ret) has an informative post about the difference between the Cold War NATO of his service days and today's NATO.  He echos and amplifies what Divemedic highlights, from an Army (vs. a Navy) perspective.  He is even more pessimistic (and sarcastically so) than Divemedic is.  But he gets deadly serious in his key point:

It seems like we might have trouble achieving our objectives. And one of the biggest reasons is that it’s not clear what our objectives would even be. Since none of the usual hawks can be bothered to articulate a vital American interest involved in defending Ukraine’s borders, that makes it hard to come up with objectives for the military. “Stop Putin” is not really a military objective; it’s sort of an amorphous goal.

So what does victory look like? Putin held off to the outskirts of Kiev? Putin tossed back over the Belarus and Russian borders? What’s our desired end state? Or are we not going to articulate that either? Maybe we can just sort of exist in a tense status quo over some sort of demilitarized zone for seven decades or so. Gee, sound familiar?

Now all these questions deserve answers, but don’t look for any since none of the answers are good. And bad answers would slow the rush to war, so we can’t have them come out. Instead, the establishment is going back to the classics. If you ask what America’s vital interest is, you love Putin. If you ask what our military objectives would be, much less how we can rev up the combat power way over there to attain them, you love Putin. Yeah, it’s always a delight to be a vet of the Cold War being who is told he digs the Russians by a bunch of DC saps whose experience with the Bear is trying a Moscow Mule once, deciding it was icky, and asking for a white wine spritzer instead.

The Ukrainians are getting a raw deal, and I hope they drown their invaders in a river of blood. But it’s not our fight. And, if we did fight, there’s a significant chance we would lose. Then every two-bit tyrant on Earth will be coming for a piece of the helpless giant. We’re weak right now, folks, and the worst thing we can do is get up in front of everyone and prove it.

This.  This exactly.  The Administration looks like it is trying to draw into an inside straight.  With the potential death, destruction, and risk to America's international position, I'd sure like answers - any answers - to the question what do we get out of any of this?

When people are taken out of their depth they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they put up.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

The ghosts of Stalingrad

Peter doesn't think we have any compelling national interest to get into a war with Russia over Ukraine.  I agree, and would amplify it like this:

Why on earth are we talking about getting into a war in Russia in the winter?

I mean, you could ask Napoleon how that turned out, or the German 6th Army.  Heck, you could ask the Afghani allies we just left behind how good an idea this is.  Since our military has such a good track record this century.

Peter's take is that the Powers That Be are getting desperate as the economy is mired in stagflation, the vaxx mandate is increasingly unpopular, and Biden's approval rating drops lower than any President in my lifetime.  A foreign adventure is often the prescription for what ails them - politics ends at the water's edge, right?

Except no - firstly, this is nothing but madness.  Bill Clinton at least had the good sense to bomb a Somali aspirin factory rather than Sevastapol.  Secondly, we've heard from Democrats for 20 years that politics does NOT end at the water's edge.

Quite frankly, it's time for Congress to step up as the Adult Supervision* and pass a resolution saying that we do not have a compelling national interest in NATO expansion into Ukraine, and we sure as heck don't have a compelling interest in Americans getting killed over that.  It sure would be something to see the Democrats filibuster that.

It's been a long time since I've tagged a post "Atomic War" ...

* This just goes to illustrate how weird things are.

UPDATE 22 January 2022 18:17:  J.Kb has a must read post about this.

Security Smorgasbord, vol. 13 no. 2

Here's a collection of security news I found interesting (and horrifying).

US nuclear weapon bunker security secrets spill from online flashcards since 2013

Details of some US nuclear missile bunkers in Europe, which contain live warheads, along with secret codewords used by guards to signal that they’re being threatened by enemies, were exposed for nearly a decade through online flashcards used for education, but which were left publicly available.

The astonishing security blunder was revealed by investigative journalism website Bellingcat, which described what it found after “simply searching online for terms publicly known to be associated with nuclear weapons.”

The flashcards “detail intricate security details and protocols such as the positions of cameras, the frequency of patrols around the vaults, secret duress words that signal when a guard is being threatened and the unique identifiers that a restricted area badge needs to have,” Bellingcat reported.

No doubt the education battalion was up to date on gender pronoun policy, though.

Food giant JBS Foods shuts down production after cyberattack

JBS Foods, a leading food company and the largest meat producer globally, had to shut down production at multiple sites worldwide following a cyberattack.

The incident impacted multiple JBS production facilities worldwide over the weekend, including those from the United States, Australia, and Canada.

JBS is currently the world's largest beef and poultry producer and the second-largest global pork producer, with operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and more.

This story is a little old but underlines the importance of having food on hand for potentially extended emergencies.  Which leads us to the next item ...

How Cyber Safe is Your Drinking Water Supply?

(Spoiler alert: not very)

The Water Sector Coordinating Council surveyed roughly 600 employees of water and wastewater treatment facilities nationwide, and found 37.9 percent of utilities have identified all IT-networked assets, with an additional 21.7 percent working toward that goal.

The Council found when it comes to IT systems tied to “operational technology” (OT) — systems responsible for monitoring and controlling the industrial operation of these utilities and their safety features — just 30.5 percent had identified all OT-networked assets, with an additional 22.5 percent working to do so.

“Identifying IT and OT assets is a critical first step in improving cybersecurity,” the report concluded. “An organization cannot protect what it cannot see.”

It’s also hard to see threats you’re not looking for: 67.9 percent of water systems reported no IT security incidents in the last 12 months, a somewhat unlikely scenario.

Security in the water purification infrastructure isn't an afterthought - it hasn't been thought of at all.  You should have a plan for a week with no water, and you really should have a plan for two weeks with no water.  Err, and food.

Working from home is a (security) bitch

The Army wants to be sure teleworkers aren’t letting smart devices in their home listen in on any government work.

In a May 25 memo, Army CIO Raj G. Iyer laid out mandatory procedures remote workers must use to mitigate leaks of official government information. They apply to all military components, civilian employees and contractors.

Effective immediately, the memo states, the remote work environment for all approved teleworkers must free of internet-of-things devices. That includes more than 70 types of devices, from Bluetooth speakers, fitness trackers, smart kitchen appliances, TVs and gaming consoles and home security systems. The memo makes particular mention of personal home assistants – like Alexa and Siri -- from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple and others. 

Well, yeah for sure.  Alexa, are you listening to secret nuclear missile training?

And here's some (rare) good news: City of Tulsa thwarts ransomware attack

Most residents of Tulsa are being prevented from paying their water bills after the city shut down its computer network as a security measure following an attempted ransomware attack, a city official said Friday.

The attempted breach was stopped before any personal data was accessed, city spokesman Carson Colvin said. Tulsa detected malware in its network May 6 and immediately started shutting it down to prevent hackers from accessing anything sensitive.

“It didn’t get far enough into the system to get personal data,” Colvin said.

The primary effect of the shutdown — which could last from several more days to about a month — is payment for city water services, either online or in person, because the city cannot process credit or debit cards with computers inoperable.

Residents will have five days after online payments are again possible to pay their bills without penalty, Colvin said.

The city said Thursday that police and fire responses continue, but issues such as uploading police body cameras are slowed because of the computer shutdown.

Mayor G.T. Bynum on Thursday said the hackers told the city to pay a ransom or else it would publicize that it had broken into the network, but Bynum said Tulsa didn’t pay and instead announced the breach on its own.

Well, mostly good news.  Well done, Tulsa.  Oh, and you know what also is great to have after a Ransomware attack?  Good backups.

The man who saved the world dies at 77

That little Swedish brat doesn't know what living on the edge of disaster is.  The world came within 30 minutes of nuclear destruction in 1983, and nobody remembers it.

But Stanislav Petrov saved everything.  Rest in peace.

Yeah, yeah, Atomic War

Yadda yadda.  Go read.

Is it me, or is there a whole lot less of this sort of hyperventilating ZOMG Nuclear War!!!! sort of thing in the Press these days?  A cynic would suggest that a biased completely in the tank for the Democrats Main Stream Media don't want to draw attention to places where nuclear (pronounced NUK-luar) conflagration might happen.  You know, Ukraine, Israel, Libya.  Iraq.  New York.

I mean, it's an election year, and a Democrat in the White House is heavily engaged in Smart Diplomacy™.

Nagasaki

Reader Dave emails in response to my post about why we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  It's something to think about on this 67th anniversary of the second atomic bomb.  Reprinted with his permission:

I highly recommend D.M. Giangreco's Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945 - 1947. BLUF: any invasion would have been bloody, extremely bloody, costing hundreds of thousands (some estimates ran as high as a million) American dead and perhaps ten times as many Japanese.

I also highly recommend Rev. Wilson Miscamble's The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs and the Defeat of Japan.  Rev. Miscamble also calls attention to the additional lives saved in Japanese occupied Asia, where tens of thousands more were being killed every month the war continued.

The truth is more nuanced than we're told, even by people who claim to value nuance.

Blow it out your ears, Atomic protesters

Today is the 67th anniversary of the first use of atomic weapons.  The day will no doubt be commemorated by the Usual Suspects - those motivated by modern politics rather than sympathy for the souls of the dead*.

We will no doubt hear how this a a barbaric, despicable act, one that was entirely unjustified.  Those who say this will probably not have heard of anything that I relate in this post.  In short, it is the empty noise of ignorance that sees in itself wisdom.  They don't know that there was a moral justification, and a practical one.

The Moral Justification for dropping the bomb

There are people who think that justice requires a response, that karma will be balanced in this world or the next, and that crime and punishment cannot be separated.  We frequently hear this from those who seek to establish the guilt of this Republic with charges of crimes committed long ago.  And so the bill of indictment for the Imperial Japanese regime in August 1945 runs like this:

The Bataan Death March

The Rape of Nanking


The Manilla Massacre

Forced Prostitution

Experiments on Humans

This is an abbreviated list, but to those who claim that this current Republic is guilty of past crimes, and that those past crimes demand justice, this list is entirely sufficient to strike the Atomic Bombs from the moral case against us.  Using internally consistent logic, of course, which is not often seen when debating such people.  But the moral case is indeed present and accounted for.

The Practical Justification for dropping the bomb

On November 20, 1943, United States Marines hit the beach on Tarawa atoll, facing 3,600 Japanese and 1,200 (possibly forced) Korean laborers.  Three days later, only 17 Japanese soldiers and 129 laborers were alive; the others had fought to the death.  1,000 Marines died, and another 2,000 were wounded.

On June 15, 1944, the US Marines moved closer to the Japanese home islands, invading the island of Saipan.  This island would finally put the Japanese home islands within the range of the B-29 bombers, and was defended by nearly 30,000 Japanese.  All but 900 of them died, 5,000 of who were civilians who killed themselves rather than be captured by the American Devils.  3,400 Marines died, and over 10,000 were wounded.

On September 15, 1944, US Marines stormed the beaches of Peleliu.  Of the nearly 11,000 Japanese defenders, all but 200 fought to the death.  1,200 Marines died, and over 5,000 were wounded.

On February 19, 1945, the Marines landed on Iwo Jima's back sand beaches.  Iwo was the only battle in the entire war where America suffered more casualties than did Japan.  27 Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor here, more than any other battle in history.  Of the 22,000 Japanese defenders, only 200 survived the battle; a large number of these committed suicide, although a few hid out in the tunnels until finally captured.  The last of these was captured in 1951.  America lost almost 7,000 dead and nearly 20,000 wounded.

On April 1, 1945, American forces finally touched Japanese soil, in Okinawa, an outlying island.  Not quite 100,000 Japanese combatants and civilians died or committed suicide; only 10,000 survived.  America suffered over 12,000 dead and nearly 40,000 wounded.

This was the situation in the summer of 1945.  Each battle that got closer to Japanese soil became more costly for both America and Japan.  Japanese defenders were fanatically dangerous, mostly choosing to die to the man if it gave them a chance to bleed the American forces.  Looking at an invasion not of isolated atolls but of Japan itself, President Truman asked for an estimate of casualties in the planned Operation Olympic to seize Kyushu and the subsequent Operation Coronet for the remainder of Japan.

The Joint Chiefs told him that based on what had been seen in Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, that he could expect American casualties to be in the millions.  The lowest estimate was 1.2 Million casualties, the highest was 4 million - including 800,000 dead.

Japanese casualties were not well estimated, but were assumed to be ten times the American figure.  Half a million Purple Heart medals were ordered, so many that we have not manufactured any since; the United States still has around 100,000 of these in stock.

It is entirely plausible that none of the protesters you might encounter today will have the slightest idea about this: that two thirds of a century of American wars have not depleted the medals ordered for a portion of the invasion of Japan.

The wonder is not the Truman ordered the bombs dropped, the wonder is that he waited as long as he did.  And that was the right decision.  Millions survived the war because of it.  People who do not know this, or who choose to ignore this are frivolous.

* Think I exaggerate?  Where were these people on March 9?

UPDATE 7 August 2012 10:01: Not just lefties, it seems.  Libertarians, too.

The Dead of Hiroshima

Today is the 66th anniversary of the dropping of "Little Boy", the first Atomic Bomb, on Hiroshima.  The event no doubt is being remembered all over the globe.

What I remember is that the last time we manufactured Purple Heart medals was 1945.  The War Department ordered half a million in anticipation of the upcoming Operation Olympic invasion of the Japanese home islands.  Experience first at the Philippines, then at Iwo Jima, and then Okinawa led the US Government to believe that the Imperial Japanese Army would fight to the death.

Perhaps a million Allied casualties were anticipated, and maybe ten times that many Japanese.

The commemorations today are not for the dead of Hiroshima, for there are no similar commemorations for the many more dead from the fire bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities - perhaps half a million dead in total.

No, the commemoration can be presumed to be political, aimed at effecting (western) nuclear disarmament.  We will leave for another day the links between the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the Warsaw Pact Intelligence Services (particularly the Stasi).  Quite frankly, we need none.  The lack of protest for the many other deaths from conventional weapons during the war, and particularly the silence on the many atrocities committed by the Japanese (and Soviets) tell us where their hearts lie.

The Dead of Hiroshima deserve better than to be used as ventriloquist dummies by today's Left.

Unit 731

Nobody does "detail oriented" like the Japanese.  In the post-war period, that's been a blessing for the world, as we've seen a flood of high quality goods come out of the Land of the Rising Sun.

During the war?  "Detail oriented" took on a much more menacing tone.  Like with Unit 731:

Unit 731 (Japanese: 731 部隊 Nana-san-ichi butai; simplified Chinese: 731部队) was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel.

10,000 people were used as human guinea pigs at "research laboratories" in China and Korea.  Men, women, and children were vivisected (dissected while alive) to see the effect of removing various organs.  Some had limbs frozen and then thawed so that the process of gangrene could be tracked with meticulous detail.

Some were used in ordnance testing, to see how new designs in grenades or flame throwers would effect the human body.  Some were used as biological test subjects, for plague, cholera, and anthrax.

The scientific results of these experiments were later used to kill 400,000 Chinese civilians.

But remember, on August 6 we in the United States are expected by our Moral Betters to hang our heads in shame for dropping the Bomb that ended the war and put this unit out of business.

Inspired by a brilliant idea from I Want A New Left.

Comfort Women

We are constantly lectured by Leftist intellectuals that America is a broken society, hopelessly mired in a Patriarchal domination oppressing women.  Fortunately, the Leftist intellectuals are ignorant of history, so they're quite comfortable making that condemnation - one that strangely isn't made against what used to be termed lesser breeds from heathen climes.  Those get a pass.

Even when they kidnap, rape, and enslave women into prostitution to serve their Army.  That's what the Imperial Japanese Army did in the 1940s.  200,000 women were taken against their will and forces to be sex workers to "comfort" the Japanese troops.

Shamefully, the Japanese government to this day denies that any coercion was involved.

But they're not American, not European, and were victims of the Atomic Bomb.  And so the Left gives them a pass.  But stay tuned for all the coverage of Hiroshima Day, coming right up!  Double points if you can paint America not just as war mongers, but as Patriarchal Opperssors™ too!

Inspired by an epic rant from I Want A New Left.

The Manila Massacre

If (as the Left keeps pointing out) America is uniquely evil in the world - we dropped two Atomic Bombs, after all - why is America so popular in the Philippines?  Some of the answer goes back to the Manila Massacre in February 1945.

General Douglas MacArthur had vowed that he would return, and he had - leading 200,000 troops.  The invasion dwarfed D-Day, and took 700 ships to pull off.  It was much more ambitious, too - not crossing 100 miles of English Channel, but a thousand miles of Pacific Ocean.  The Imperial Japanese Army was badly outnumbered, out gunned, and out supplied.

They tried to make up for it with ruthlessness.  The massacre wasn't a breakdown in military discipline, where the commanding officers lost control of their troops.  The commanding officers employed the troops against civilian Philippinos, to let their troops vent their frustration.  100,000 dead later, the American Army freed the population, essentially exterminating the Japanese Army (who fought essentially to the last man).

Perhaps most notorious at the time was how the Japanese broke into the chapel at a Catholic school.  They bayoneted everyone, leaving them to bleed to death.  They raped some of the women as they bled to death.

How very odd that the Left never speaks of these things, saving all their contempt for the twin Atom Bombs.  Odd that the warm relations between the U.S. and the Philippines are never mentioned.  We are, after all, Patriarchal European oppressors of brown-skinned peoples.  Those peoples, we're told, would be better off in a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.  Or something.

How very strange that the people of the Philippines don't seem to agree.

Inspired by I Want A New Left.

The Rape of Nanking Day

Nanking is one of the two traditional capital cities in China.  The Imperial Japanese Army went on a rampage there in the late 1930s.  Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is the best selling telling of this tale.  It inspired the 2007 documentary Nanking.

The book describes how the Japanese Army killed perhaps 300,000 civilians, and raped perhaps 80,000 women.  The Army held contests where soldiers would compete to see how fast they could kill Chinese civilians.  Many were buried alive; others were tortured to death, or thrown to dogs to be torn apart.  Soldiers sliced open the bellies of pregnant women to pull the babies out.

The story so affected Ms. Chang that she took her own life in 2004.

But remember, America is uniquely evil, because it dropped the Atomic Bombs.  At least, that's what the Left will tell you.  Odd how comfortable they seemingly are with evil, except in one particular place.

Part of a continuing saga, inspired by I Want A New Left.

Happy Bataan Death March Day!

I Want A New Left brings an excellent suggestion:

Last year I proposed (here) that we should devote each day from August 1st through August 5th to some Japanese atrocity in World War II. The point here is to counter the poisonous rhetoric that makes it seem as though America is a uniquely villainous country.

The Left is curiously silent on atrocities committed by non-Americans.  Late this week, we'll get the usual hand-wringing about how Evil America dropped nuclear bombs.  Teh horrors!

Nothing about what led up to that.  At least the communist fellow travelers took enough marching orders from Moscow to call out German atrocities.  Those done by the Japanese?

[crickets]

Ignorant, yet strangely filled with a sense of moral superiority.  Strange.