"In the 35-day fight for this eight-square-mile volcanic island, 6,821 Marines were killed, more than four times the number of US soldirs killed in two yars in Iraq. About 22,000 Japanese defendrs were killed, including 1,600 after the island was declared "secure" by military authorities...Just some comments...
"...three weeks after the battle started here, B-29 Superfortress bombers hit Tokyo with a huge firebomb raid that killd about 100,000 people, almost all civilians."
The kill ratio for the US was great... wasn't it?
So many people killed... for what? The article concludes with how US and Japan now cooperating on the fight against "terrorism"
100,000 civilians... reminds me of McNamara in Fog of War. His opinion on the morality of waging war, the montage of firebomb casulty numbers from the various Japanese cities.
Several million Vietnamese killed in that war. And for what?
I guess you have to learn for experience. At least absolute numbers of dead are decreasing.
I just don't understand why a policy of containment is not acceptable?
Sure the time frames stretches. You have to be patient. Eventually the key figures die.
Ho Chi Minh died eventually.
Castro will eventually die.
Hussain woulda died. In a sense, this gives you time to form a cohesive, long-term policy.
Let me make myself clear. I don't advocate a "do nothing policy".
You have to confront terrorism, communism, whatever -ism that is perceived as a threat.
But to wage war. To kill people. The dogs once unleased are unpredictable.
Are the scars left from war better or worse than scars from a policy of confrontation without war? I don't know. Can a policy of containment work in the real world. A world were people want immediate results, satisfaction, gratification? Probably not.
Killing... at the level of nations... growing pains?
Like the Whopper in War Games with Mathew Broderick, the computer learns that the best strategy for Nuclear War, (I extrapolated to any war) is not to play.
US foreign policy dictated by Hollywood... hmmm
Unfortunately, current policy do seem like they were taken from a Hollywood script.
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