'Ground Zero mosque'

Yeah, and when I was in Germany, every war veteran claimed to have fought in Russia, never against us Americans.

Go to China, Korea, Burma, the Philippines, American Samoa, and tell people who remember the Japanese occupation from WWII about the 'innocent" Japanese and see how many tears are shed. Talk to allied soldiers who were prisoners of war under the Japanese during that war, when the death rate among POWs held by Japan was much, much higher than among those held by any other Axis or Allied participant in the war. The firestorm Japan rained down on others during its imperialistic expansion came home to roost when the islands came within striking range of the B-29s. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. I don't feel a bit sorry for what happened to Japan and Germany during the war they started. The Japanese can take their "bitterness" and shove it where the sun don't shine.

The thing about the atomic bombs is that they instantly obliterated some people and things in the target area, while some victims died more slowly--not unlike Allied civilians and soldiers tortured and starved to death by the Japanese. Actually many more people died in fire-bombed cities that created firestorms in Japan and Germany than died from the atomic bombs. And there was one Japanese pilot who was in Hiroshima and later in Nagasaki when atomic bombs fell on each of those cities--and survived both!

Yes but Yods, those extreme members of a religion carrying out extremely violent actions against people of many nations and religions are not the people who are going to use the mosque/community centre. Aren't the main users of the new space going to be American citizens who happen to be of the Muslim faith rather than people exactly like the 19 men involved in 9/11 who were mostly Saudi Arabian?
It's not the same as one of a murderer's family moving next door to their victims family at all, that's like saying just being a muslim is equal to being one of the 9/11 bombers - or like someone from Leeds coming to live next door to a victim of our 7/7 bombers and them getting upset cos of that. How close a connection does it make for someone to be uncomfortable before it's actually discriminatory? Would a person living next door to me feel uncomfortable that their wheels were going to be stolen off their car cos I come from Liverpool?

Reading up on Muslims in New York I see there already exist mosques within near distance of ground zero. What distance is a respectful distance to build a new community centre/mosque/place of worship - 3 blocks? 4 blocks? a mile ? 2 miles? somewhat arbitrary argument distancewise.

First of all, how "near to Pearl Harbor" are we talking? I've been to Pearl Harbor itself, certainly not during WWII since I was born in 1943. But in all the Army bases where I've been stationed or visited here and abroad, I've never seen a "store" of any kind just outside the base gate. Even for booze and broads, soldiers had to go to a nearby town, not just outside the gate where someone behind the bar could see what was happening on base.

Thing is, the Japanese population in the Hawaiian islands was large both before and during WWII, a bigger percentage of the local population than was the case in California. That's why it was easy to round up Japanese imigrants and American-born people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast and put them in relocation camps. There were no relocation camps in the islands because if they had started rounding up Japanese, the island's economy would have collapsed because of the lack of workers. All they managed to do was to keep the prostitutes of all races working in one area of town. Before the war, the police chief had all the prostitutes living in that area too. But under military rule, the prostitutes were able to buy properties and homes outside the redlight districts for the first time. Some accumulated a lot of choice property by the time the war ended. Today the largest single group of residents and the biggest landowners in the islands are Japanese.

No argument there, bud, so thanks for nailing home my private/public domain remarks!

__________________
"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

I think you were missing his point. Innocent being civilians, as both sides deliberately targeted citizens in WWII.

Only if I saw you with some bricks.

One of my favourite Jimmy Carr jokes. "I did a gig in Liverpool in 2008 and the city really took that "City of Culture" thing to heart. I came out of the gig at 2am to find my car up on books."

Originally Posted by spudracer
Japan, on the other hand, lost many innocent lives to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings. While I was in Japan, it was clear in the older Japanese, that they still were bitter about that (whenever they saw an American, that is).

Those old fools should be grateful to the United States for giving them a better lifestyle than they ever had under their militaristic regime. We gave them democracy which led to a thriving economy and a standard of living which is among the highest in the world. If they won, they wouldn't have been so magnanimous to us

Wow.

You live in a Country whose Government has invaded how many countries since 1953?

The Arrogance is mind-blowing.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

like a for instance?

I don't like some of the U.S's military actions, but what country did we "invade" is under our control today? The United States at its very worse are choir boys compared to Japan and Germany (and the Soviet Union also).

Do YOU think you ask a lot of questions? Why leave angry post comments? Is it not okay that I think it's funny? What if I was a terrorist?

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If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?

Excellent post. Right on.

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"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it, never really care for anything else thereafter." - Ernest Hemingway

wrong thread.

try harder

Do you get the concept at all that the citizens of japan and Germany had as much say in what their government and military did as you do?

so when there country side gets nuked..its kind of odd to be America F*ck yea ,,,when huindereds of thousands of innocents are wiped off the face of the planet.

For a people that are mighty upset about losing 3000 at 9/11 you seem to have very lil regard for the loss of hiuman life in other parts of the world.

American Humans aren't worth more than Humans that aren't American. You had no choice whatsoever in where you were born, and neither did they.

Exactly. They had just as much say: which means they chose their government, and are to some degree responsible for it. It wasn't wrested from them in a coup. German citizens of that era absolutely bear some responsibility for electing a genocidal madman. I'm sympathetic to how easy it must have been to fall into such a thing, but the idea that they're blameless doesn't make any sense to me.

Good grief, this is one heck of an accusation. Saying that something had to be done or suggesting that it was a country's comeuppance may be a bit callous, but it's not the same as disregarding all life, or valuing American lives over others.

I also think there's some conflict between saying things like the above, but laying into America for "interventionist" wars. Believing what you seem to here and now would seem to suggest that the usurping of dictators is not merely justifiable, but practically an obligation. This is a contradiction (or a near-contradiction, at least) that I've seen a lot over the last few years, where people bounce back and forth from "Iraq was none of our business" to "we shouldn't value American lives more than others."

Sure it does; if it were okay, it wouldn't be in bad taste. It is not feasible to police all behavior, and it would probably be draconian and counterproductive for any number of reasons. Thus, social stigma and basic courtesy fill the gaps of reasonable human behavior that the law cannot oversee. Why would this suddenly change when an issue is public?

We shouldn't get hung up on the adultery example, because it's just one of many. It's not like we can't come up with plenty of examples of public decorum, anyway, so the public/private distinction (whatever it's based in) wouldn't be comprehensive.

And it's in bad taste to build the mosque, but they most certainly can do that, too (at least from what I understand of the legality of the issue).

Americans chose their government like japan or germany or Canada or any other democracy. Governments then go and do stuff contrary to the peoples will. This shouldn't be news.

Bombing the crap out of innocents is wrong no matter who it happens to.

The civilians that got annihilated by the second atomic bomb dropped, had as much influence on their Countries military decisions as the rank and file joe and jane six-pack.

America is not sacred ground.

oh and Iraq was about oil lets not be naive.

It's not news. What's news to me is the idea that the citizens of a nation are totally blameless for the governments they choose and tolerate. Who's responsible for their leaders if not the people who chose them?

Besides, we're not talking about someone who does a few things contrary to some of them, like a Bush or an Obama where people simply disagree with them, albeit strongly. We're talking about the most infamous genocidal dictator in history. Some people chose him, and all of them let it happen. I'm not suggesting revolution is easy, or that I don't sympathize with how difficult it surely is to have to stand up to that sort of thing, but that doesn't earn blank absolution for the people who both chose and tolerated such heinous leaders for so many years.

Too simplistic. If you make civilian casualties unjustifiable in any scenario, then all you do is give unscrupulous people total invulnerability provided they're willing to hide amongst civilians. This is why almost every society in human history has found these sorts of things necessary at times: because the alternative is unthinkable and gives the most power to the people who act the least responsibly with it.

Which is to say, quite a bit, since we choose our leaders and all. But nevermind that: if you were a Japanese citizen, and you disagreed strongly with what your government was doing, allowances were still maid. We dropped leaflets. We TOLD them it was going to happen. It wasn't an ambush.

I dunno what the point of these kinds of statements are. Please argue with things people say, not things you think they might say, or things that an American caricature might say, etc.

Again, incredibly simplistic. But even if true, it would still miss the point: you're arguing about motivation, not results.

It isn't a few things first of all, and this has nothing to do with Bush or Obama per se, as they are maintaining the status quo.


I've posted this before, though i don't think you found time to listen to it.

its a video sure, but its a guy in a chair, so viewing it is unnecessary.

Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic , talks about the U.S. 'military-petroleum complex,' the overextension of the American military, nuclear proliferation, and the decline of Washington's credibility abroad.

Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research and public affairs organization devoted to public education concerning Japan and international relations in the Pacific.

I didn't watch it before and I'm still not going to watch it. I've heard all that crap before. I don't care who the guy is. There are other people, a majority more, with just as impressive credentials who disagree with him. I am not a Republican. I am a registered Democrat and never voted for a Republican for President and this stuff about the Iraq War was done all for oil is hooey. As theories go it doesn't make much sense because in this scenario Junior Bush was carrying out the policies of Bush Senior, but Poppa Bush thought the war was a bad idea. I agree with Poppa Bush.

So we are suppose to fight wars all nice, even though our enemies don't? We don't fight just governments, it's the whole nation. And dropping the bomb was necessary because the Japanese soldier was very loyal to their superiors and fought fiercely to the last man. If they surrendered like the Italian soldiers did, no bombs would have been dropped. That madman Hitler thought it was the German people, not him, who lost the war.