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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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"Bomb them back to the stone age" is, like threatening to turn somepace in to a parking lot or unleash hell, a common phrase that is meant to be taken seriously but not literally (nobody will be replacing an entire city/nation with asphalt and parking lines, nor opening a portal to Dante's circles, after all). I'd assume that's the context here, unless I'm missing something.

The US though, is in the fairly rare position of actually being able to literally bomb the world into the stone age through nuclear arms. Furthermore, they are currently an active part of a war. Thus, the threat carries a lot more weight. It is the difference between your mom saying she's going to kill you for destroying her favorite plates, and a thug pointing a gun at you saying the same thing.

Last time the US used nukes in anger, we bombed the target into the First World.

Stealing valor again, how predictable. Japan built itself into a first world country, with mostly efforts from the Japanese people. How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing? The world doesn’t revolve around you and you’re going to keep finding that out. You don’t get to claim credit here and there.

Vietnam doing pretty fantastic. Long-term success has more to do with the people than the speedbumps

I agree, that’s one more reason why they shouldn’t claim to nuke Japan into the first world. They’re almost there already before ww2.

Enough Communism can hold any people down, though. Fortunately Vietnam (unlike North Korea) had insufficient communism.

Not to mention if there were any logic to that statement beyond a quip, then the US should’ve “bombed Afghanistan” into the first world at the outset of the war, along with every other military adventure they were involved in.

It’s a fantasy that Americans love to indulge in. Like how they “allowed” China to grow. Highest prevalence of main character syndrome, happens to both libs and magas.

Oh I’m definitely aware of that. Americans do have this national “we’re the center of the world” outlook in contrast with everyone else. When it comes to how much the average citizen here knows about what’s going on in other areas of the world, they’re shockingly ignorant.

Like how they “allowed” China to grow.

America had the strongest industrial base in the world. We made deliberate decisions to dismantle than industrial base, and to trade on generous terms with China in a way intended to help them build up their own industry and trade. We did this on the belief that Chinese economic prosperity would converge them toward a liberal, democratic "end of history". This was all public policy, debated in the open, and the effect on China's economic and industrial growth is obvious. Maybe (even likely!) they would have made good some other way, but absent specific actions we took, their ascent would have been considerably harder.

How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing?

To my knowledge, none of those countries actually experienced "carpet bombing" in anything even approximating the way Japan and Germany did in WWII. We dropped a lot more bombs on Vietnam, but almost all those bombs were dropped on the countryside rather than being used to obliterate major urban centers. Subsequent wars, we haven't even dropped that many on the countryside.

The history of US military operations post-WWII is a long succession of attempts to achieve political ends without engaging in total war. Notably, the last total war we fought is popularly understood to be an overwhelming victory, and all subsequent, "limited" wars are popularly understood as stalemates or defeats, often humiliating defeats.

"Proportionality should be a guideline of war" appears, empirically, to be an excellent way to generate longer, bloodier, messier wars that we then go on to lose. And of course, the fact is that the firebombings didn't end the war, but the nukes, generally held to be even more horrifying, did.

The above is not an argument for securing all political desires through maximum brutality. It is an argument against "limited" and thus cheaper and more frequent war. Nor is it an argument that war should be all or nothing, that there is no place for limited strikes, raids or punitive actions. But if you are going to fight an actual, for-serious war, "proportionality" is very clearly a miserable way to do it.

We did this on the belief that Chinese economic prosperity would converge them toward a liberal, democratic "end of history". This was all public policy, debated in the open, and the effect on China's economic and industrial growth is obvious.

I want to remind people once again that neither your government nor mine is a single entity with coherent, unified beliefs. I do miss the era when Americans with a positive vision wanted to bring peace and prosperity everywhere, even if sometimes wrongheaded or naive. I think that’s noble and admirable, and I wish my government could be as outward-facing as yours to bring more positive vision to the world, and I thank Americans deeply for that vision. But the main driver behind those policies was that Americans benefited dramatically from "helping" Western Europe through the Marshall Plan, "helping" Japan rebuild with loans and subsidies, and "helping" China reform its command economy. It was a fair trade, and you agreed to the terms. You have bigger guns too and I’m not sure if those countries were able to resist.

Reneging 50 years later and saying "we’ve been fooled/ripped off!!!" - you’ve got yourselves to blame, sorry. How about you give back those benefits you reaped all those years too? Same with the NATO situation these days.

To my knowledge, none of those countries actually experienced "carpet bombing" in anything even approximating the way Japan and Germany did in WWII.

You most certainly did carpet bomb North Vietnam, if the term carpet bombing means anything. The Korean War too, I’m not counting them here because it’s a human tragedy caused by China, not because of the initial war, but you did carpet bomb them nonetheless. Not even going to provide source here because it’s easily google-able.

First of all, Japan rebuilt under American occupation, which included a lot of cultural changes forced upon them notably demilitarization (in fact any weapon longer than 6 inches were banned, and a lot of Japanese culture that was too martial was banned. It wasn’t like Japan got nuked and just suddenly changed.

I didn't say Americans did nothing either, and there's no need to lecture me on the existence of GHQ and such. I said Americans, especially Americans today, should stop claiming other countries' hard earned achievements as their own. If anything the fraction of positive externalities America brought to those countries should be attributed to those apt politicians of yesteryear, and your country sure have changed a lot.

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How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing?

We never nuked any of them, carpet bombing doesn't work as well. Vietnam's doing pretty well. Iraq... well, better than under Saddam Hussein. Syria's on Putin's plate, and Libya on Europe's.

One would easily conclude that those countries do well with you out of the picture. Most glaring example being Saddam, Ghaddafi and Assad’s sand kingdoms. Diem’s Vietnam is worse than Vietcong’s Vietnam too. Plus whatever strong influence hbd has on these countries. Point being they have agency and you didn’t do much, and it would require some self-awareness for Americans to stop we wuzing others’ success.

I don’t know how saying Iraq is better than Saddam is somehow is a score for the US side of the ledger when the US backed Saddam and put him into power in the first place.

I don’t even know if Iraq now is better than Saddam. You can’t do control experiments with reality and who know what Baathism will become today.

I know next to nothing about what’s going on there today except their foreign policy after we pulled out of the country became much more aligned with Iran. I did know quite a bit about the country under the Ba’athists and that was an intense republic of paranoia and fear. If I had to guess the country is better today than it was then. There are no Uday Hussein’s opening roaming around or people in the parliament being rounded up to be executed.

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Vietnam? Sure. Japan... not so much.

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