naraburns nihil supernum
2yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
On the other hand... Japan surrendered to the US! How were the Japanese able to swallow their pride in the face of total nuclear annihilation and decide that bending their knee to the West and adopting all of their customs was better than going down in a blaze of glory? But yet the Palestinians find this utterly unthinkable?
After that, though ... was the institution of the Japanese Emperor a blessing in disguise? Anti-terrorist tactics consider "decapitation strikes" killing enemy leaders to be high-value goals, but if there's nobody left at the top who's respected enough to order the foot soldiers to stand down then ipso facto the foot soldiers never stand down. From a moral standpoint it feels like assassinating a "mastermind" is greater justice than killing tons of poor grunts who merely got persuaded or coerced onto the front lines, but maybe the rules of war are more useful in the long run than the rules of anti-terrorism, if wars can come to an end but terrorism just goes on and on?
The Japanese were not displaced from their homeland and only temporarily lost control of Japan after their defeat. The Palestinians lost both their homes and control of Palestine permanently.
The emperor surrendered unilaterally against the wishes of his advisors. There is no god emperor in Gaza to make the Palestinians surrender against popular sentiment.
I’d guess it’s because Japan’s entire people were on the line, whereas Hamas identifies with other Arabs/Muslims such that the loss of Palestine doesn’t mean total defeat.
Yeah, he signed off on it about a week beforehand, and was clearly on board.
See also the “Early Showa period” section of this article. He was actively involved in managing war plans, though surely not to the extent of Hitler or Mussolini.
After the bombs his answer to the question ‘what if they refuse to keep you as emperor, will we fight on? ‘ was ‘of course’. I always have to think of this ridiculous man when people talk of the mythical ‘noblesse oblige’. Here was a man considered a god, whose subjects were killing themselves and others by the millions for him, who could not even take one ounce of responsibility – think of others for one second. Had he never heard of suicide?
It’s human I guess – if you tell a man he is noble, he is godly, he will believe it – and question his actions even less than he would have otherwise. His instinct will never be to turn towards the ragged masses and ‘give back’ (As far as he knows, he did not receive anything from them, so he couldn’t anyway) or sacrifice anything. These strictly hierarchical relationships are purely one-way.
Ever notice that, as, you rise through a company , both your salary and the respect you’re getting increase simultaneously ? It’s not like your superiors help you more when you take out the trash because noblesse oblige. It’s not complicated, the lower on the layer cake you are, the more shit you take. And Mr. Hito was never taking and always giving.
Because to a monarchist, the king or emperor is not the same as a CEO. They are, literally, the soul of the country. Even if many Japanese people die, as long as the emperor is in place Japan remains. So ‘the emperor should step down for the sake of the people’ is nonsensical, it’s saying that you should accept absolute defeat in exchange for not-absolute defeat.
As @dr_analog notes, this is how you manage to make huge changes to the culture of the country without mass uprisings. The emperor is still in place and has publicly given his assent to the new direction. There is continuity in the most visible way. Japan is still Japan.
Obvious solution to maintain the institution while holding the man responsible is suicide. Beyond the man, I woud question why such an institution who failed and was largely responsible for the militaristic and anti-democratic turn of japan should have been maintained in the first place. They made liars of “unconditional surrender’ to maintain this joke of an institution. I’m sure a continuation of the nazi party in germany would have done wonders at stability and limiting riots and such, but hey, they’re the ones who made a mess of it all in the first place, and so did he.
And yet it worked, and it still works. Whereas they got rid of the Kaiser and twenty years later we had the Third Reich.
I don’t claim to be able to read alternate timelines but if America stopped insisting on total regime change every time they went to war their record might look a lot more successful.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
ImmanuelCanNot 2yr ago
Starting the war with the US in the first place tests that theory to the limit.
No, it really doesn't. First of all, the US being a juggernaut of any sort is 20-20 hindsight. Second, the amount of "sensible" it takes to be convinced by two atomic bombs is quite low.
The Japanese were explicitly aware of US industrial capability.
[A]s we have a high prospect of winning in the initial stage of the war, we are convinced that we have an advantage in maintaining and reinforcing that national strength by utilizing that assured result compared to a waiting strategy until the enemy starts to oppress us.
Teiichi Suzuki, 5 November, 1941.
Japan’s strategy relied on exploiting China and the Dutch Indies to get enough industrial resources, especially steel and oil. The initial steps in this process had already antagonized the US, as seen in the Hull note. Since they expected the US to jump in any month, they decided to make it happen on their terms, snatch every resource and base possible, and hope for the best. Ideally, either the American will to fight would crumple, or the Axis would gain enough leverage to make intervention unappealing.
First of all, the US being a juggernaut of any sort is 20-20 hindsight.
How ? In WWI they were the decisive factor. In the washington naval treaties they commanded first rank (nominally equal to britain, but everyone knew, industrially far superior) . Major european power france accepted a 1,75 to 5 ratio to the US fleet, it's a huge disparity, making any serious contest impossible. And they couldn't even build that much. No one was treating the US as a lightweight.
Certainly the japanese understood they were screwed in case of a long attritional war against the US.
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Notes -
On the other hand... Japan surrendered to the US! How were the Japanese able to swallow their pride in the face of total nuclear annihilation and decide that bending their knee to the West and adopting all of their customs was better than going down in a blaze of glory? But yet the Palestinians find this utterly unthinkable?
The Japanese weren't all initially able to do so. Tens of thousands of soldiers tried to kidnap their Emperor and assassinate their Prime Minister to stop the surrender, and that was after two nukes (plus a few tens of millions of incendiary bomblets) had already been dropped.
After that, though ... was the institution of the Japanese Emperor a blessing in disguise? Anti-terrorist tactics consider "decapitation strikes" killing enemy leaders to be high-value goals, but if there's nobody left at the top who's respected enough to order the foot soldiers to stand down then ipso facto the foot soldiers never stand down. From a moral standpoint it feels like assassinating a "mastermind" is greater justice than killing tons of poor grunts who merely got persuaded or coerced onto the front lines, but maybe the rules of war are more useful in the long run than the rules of anti-terrorism, if wars can come to an end but terrorism just goes on and on?
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Two reasons:
The Japanese were not displaced from their homeland and only temporarily lost control of Japan after their defeat. The Palestinians lost both their homes and control of Palestine permanently.
The emperor surrendered unilaterally against the wishes of his advisors. There is no god emperor in Gaza to make the Palestinians surrender against popular sentiment.
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I’d guess it’s because Japan’s entire people were on the line, whereas Hamas identifies with other Arabs/Muslims such that the loss of Palestine doesn’t mean total defeat.
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Because Hirohito was more sensible than any member of Hamas (and perhaps any Palestinian).
Did Hirohito start the war? He certainly made the surrender decision but did he decide to launch Pearl Harbor?
Yeah, he signed off on it about a week beforehand, and was clearly on board.
See also the “Early Showa period” section of this article. He was actively involved in managing war plans, though surely not to the extent of Hitler or Mussolini.
After the bombs his answer to the question ‘what if they refuse to keep you as emperor, will we fight on? ‘ was ‘of course’. I always have to think of this ridiculous man when people talk of the mythical ‘noblesse oblige’. Here was a man considered a god, whose subjects were killing themselves and others by the millions for him, who could not even take one ounce of responsibility – think of others for one second. Had he never heard of suicide?
It’s human I guess – if you tell a man he is noble, he is godly, he will believe it – and question his actions even less than he would have otherwise. His instinct will never be to turn towards the ragged masses and ‘give back’ (As far as he knows, he did not receive anything from them, so he couldn’t anyway) or sacrifice anything. These strictly hierarchical relationships are purely one-way.
Ever notice that, as, you rise through a company , both your salary and the respect you’re getting increase simultaneously ? It’s not like your superiors help you more when you take out the trash because noblesse oblige. It’s not complicated, the lower on the layer cake you are, the more shit you take. And Mr. Hito was never taking and always giving.
Because to a monarchist, the king or emperor is not the same as a CEO. They are, literally, the soul of the country. Even if many Japanese people die, as long as the emperor is in place Japan remains. So ‘the emperor should step down for the sake of the people’ is nonsensical, it’s saying that you should accept absolute defeat in exchange for not-absolute defeat.
As @dr_analog notes, this is how you manage to make huge changes to the culture of the country without mass uprisings. The emperor is still in place and has publicly given his assent to the new direction. There is continuity in the most visible way. Japan is still Japan.
Obvious solution to maintain the institution while holding the man responsible is suicide. Beyond the man, I woud question why such an institution who failed and was largely responsible for the militaristic and anti-democratic turn of japan should have been maintained in the first place. They made liars of “unconditional surrender’ to maintain this joke of an institution. I’m sure a continuation of the nazi party in germany would have done wonders at stability and limiting riots and such, but hey, they’re the ones who made a mess of it all in the first place, and so did he.
And yet it worked, and it still works. Whereas they got rid of the Kaiser and twenty years later we had the Third Reich.
I don’t claim to be able to read alternate timelines but if America stopped insisting on total regime change every time they went to war their record might look a lot more successful.
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No, it really doesn't. First of all, the US being a juggernaut of any sort is 20-20 hindsight. Second, the amount of "sensible" it takes to be convinced by two atomic bombs is quite low.
The Japanese were explicitly aware of US industrial capability.
Teiichi Suzuki, 5 November, 1941.
Japan’s strategy relied on exploiting China and the Dutch Indies to get enough industrial resources, especially steel and oil. The initial steps in this process had already antagonized the US, as seen in the Hull note. Since they expected the US to jump in any month, they decided to make it happen on their terms, snatch every resource and base possible, and hope for the best. Ideally, either the American will to fight would crumple, or the Axis would gain enough leverage to make intervention unappealing.
Always have an exit strategy.
http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/event/forum/pdf/2011/17.pdf
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Why you think so?
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How ? In WWI they were the decisive factor. In the washington naval treaties they commanded first rank (nominally equal to britain, but everyone knew, industrially far superior) . Major european power france accepted a 1,75 to 5 ratio to the US fleet, it's a huge disparity, making any serious contest impossible. And they couldn't even build that much. No one was treating the US as a lightweight.
Certainly the japanese understood they were screwed in case of a long attritional war against the US.
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