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btmj · January 17, 2013, 10:06 PM

Well, what JimDandy says is true. The Japanese did attack the Aleutian Islands, and intended to conquer some of them. At the time, Alaska was not a state. There was never a plan, strategy, or goal of the Japanese Empire to invade or conquer any part of the 48 states of the United States. Their goal was to push America’s sphere of influence back to the shore of California by eventually taking Hawaii. They wanted to push the British out of SE Asia and Indonesia.

It is important to realize that genocide is a twentieth century term. Prior to 1930, wholesale slaughter of enemy populations was often used as part of war. Sure it was considered un-gentlemanlike, but it happened pretty often. The Thirty-Years War is an example of extreme brutality, and if those people (Prussian, Austrians, Swedes etc.) had been given access to gas chambers and cluster bombs, they no doubt would have achieved Hitler-like levels of atrocities. They just had to make do with hacking and beating of helpless civilians, along with policies of enforced famine. In more ancient times, Julius Caesar achieved peace in Gaul (France) by defeating what we would today call a guerilla insurrection. How did he achieve peace? He slaughtered 1/3 of the population, enslaved 1/3 of the population and shipped them back to Rome, and the remaining 1/3 were happy to live under Roman authority. The point is this: What makes Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, Mao, The Japanese Imperialists, and Pol-Pot so utterly evil to us is not that they behaved in an uncharacteristically bad way. No, we are horrified that the rest of the world moved beyond its barbarous past, and they did not. They applied their medieval mindset using industrial war technology.

Throughout human history, barbarism and despicable brutality has been the rule, not the exception. Only within the last century has it become rare enough to be considered “beyond the pale”, and only in the most advanced of cultures. Given human nature, I doubt we have seen the last of genocide and industrial-level slaughter. It emerges with predictable regularity whenever there is a societal breakdown. Anyone who argues that the Human Race has evolved beyond barbarism, and that genocide is no longer a risk, is naïve at best… willfully myopic or delusional at the worst.

January 17, 2013, 10:06 PM	#29
btmj Senior Member Join Date: November 1, 2011 Location: Near St. Louis, Missouri Posts: 864	Well, what JimDandy says is true. The Japanese did attack the Aleutian Islands, and intended to conquer some of them. At the time, Alaska was not a state. There was never a plan, strategy, or goal of the Japanese Empire to invade or conquer any part of the 48 states of the United States. Their goal was to push America’s sphere of influence back to the shore of California by eventually taking Hawaii. They wanted to push the British out of SE Asia and Indonesia. It is important to realize that genocide is a twentieth century term. Prior to 1930, wholesale slaughter of enemy populations was often used as part of war. Sure it was considered un-gentlemanlike, but it happened pretty often. The Thirty-Years War is an example of extreme brutality, and if those people (Prussian, Austrians, Swedes etc.) had been given access to gas chambers and cluster bombs, they no doubt would have achieved Hitler-like levels of atrocities. They just had to make do with hacking and beating of helpless civilians, along with policies of enforced famine. In more ancient times, Julius Caesar achieved peace in Gaul (France) by defeating what we would today call a guerilla insurrection. How did he achieve peace? He slaughtered 1/3 of the population, enslaved 1/3 of the population and shipped them back to Rome, and the remaining 1/3 were happy to live under Roman authority. The point is this: What makes Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, Mao, The Japanese Imperialists, and Pol-Pot so utterly evil to us is not that they behaved in an uncharacteristically bad way. No, we are horrified that the rest of the world moved beyond its barbarous past, and they did not. They applied their medieval mindset using industrial war technology. Throughout human history, barbarism and despicable brutality has been the rule, not the exception. Only within the last century has it become rare enough to be considered “beyond the pale”, and only in the most advanced of cultures. Given human nature, I doubt we have seen the last of genocide and industrial-level slaughter. It emerges with predictable regularity whenever there is a societal breakdown. Anyone who argues that the Human Race has evolved beyond barbarism, and that genocide is no longer a risk, is naïve at best… willfully myopic or delusional at the worst.