LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

How many?

Angmo

A fake war story. Next will be the brutal pushups over bayonets. Copying what the marines actually do.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

Speaking of dying. The neighboring island--Chichi Jima (sp?) is wher american POW's were EATEN by their japanese captors.That;s right EATEN. Check it out.

Quinn 4

How many people today(Feb. 28,2019) known what was Iwo Jima or every care. To them it a forgotten battle in a forgotten war. Like or not today a lot of people have no idea what WWII was and don't want to known.

Angmo

Those who don’t know history...

Ive been told a sad story by a gentleman in Asia. He was a 10 year old boy near his home when the Japanese army came through. He headed home.

Just in time to see from a short distance from his home his parents and brothers and sisters bayoneted by the Japanese.

He ran back into the forest and survived the occupation and into his golden years. Poor guy.

Lots of stories of these atrocities out there. Like a water wheel east of town, innocent locals were killed by their heads placed into the turning wheels. Bones were left there until the late 1970s.

The Japanese of today are totally different the the militarists who ran Japan in the 1900s-1945.

Today, Japan is one of my fav countries to visit. Lots of friends there and plenty of places to go and things to do.

Quinn 4

If we have known history, Korea and Vietnam would have not happen. Here we are today still at war, who is the dummy on history?

Elaine2025 Loc: Seattle, Wa

It is only that way for democrats. Others know and care.

Angmo

You can never blame the military for wars here. The civilians screw things up so much then the military is turned loose.

Vietnam could easily have never happened if we paid attention during and after WWI.

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

You poor victim of public education.

pendennis

Korea came about because of Chinese expansion into the Korean peninsula. They backed the NK's from the outset. Mao had no interest in the Koreans, and he needed a buffer in that area to consolidate holding in Manchuria. If the Koreans, North and South, had killed each other to a man, Mao would still be happy, since he could occupy that land.

By resetting Southeast Asia to Antebellum ownership, the French, British, and Dutch believed they could return to their glory days of empire expansion. However, just as warfare changed, so did political views and realities. As soon as the Japanese surrender document was signed, we returned to near pre-WWII military levels. The Navy suffered heavily, as did the U.S. Air Force and Army.

Truman was not worldly in his view of the bodies politic. His State Department was riddled with Russian agents, passing on intel to the Russians, who in turn, passed the same intel to the Chicoms. Hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to the Soviet Union was passed directly to the Chinese, to help them accomplish the conquering of China by Mao. That everyone in D.C. was surprised on 25 June 50, is testament to the blinders by which we conducted foreign policy.

The French were really stupid in the way they handled things in Viet Nam. They were committed to ground tactics suitable for Europe, not jungles. They refused to bolster their paratroop units in favor of straightleg conventional forces. They ignored nonlinear warfare and the tactics needed to be successful.

Dien Ben Phu was completely avoidable, and came about as a result of French General Staff myopia and incompetence.

The U.S. error was believing there could be a negotiated dividing line between North and South Viet Nam. The North's ultimate goal was to win the South, and they were willing to do whatever it took to win. However, the U.S. military ignored the North's strategy, and tried piecemeal battle, leaving Hanoi and Haiphong intact. They ignored a main tactic - Never give the enemy a place to rest and rearm.

Quinn 4

Pendennis : you are half right about Korea. At first it was Russia who backing North Korea. China got into the war when the America's Army get to the border between China and North Korea. China had warn US to back off, stop coming North. As for Vietnam, after WWII we back the French back into Vietnam. Which to the people of Southeast Asia US was backing foreign power to run their country. So when the French are kick out of South East Asia, so what does the US do- we replace French. Little known fact: FDR did not want French back in South East Asia, also he wanted England out of India. FDR die in April of 1945 so that idea die with him. You still beliver the myth about Truman's State Department. That myth was made up by the Republican Party as part of getting back control of Senate and the White House. One has to remember that Republican had been out of power since 1933 and by 1945-46 were looking for anything to use to get back control. So play on the fear of Russia & China. Also the fear of Communism, Which 70% + people had no idea what it was. So it was fear that put the Republican back in control in 1952. Sound like what going today.

pendennis

As with any war, there was a great deal of fog on the battlefields of Korea. Truman didn't understand the tactics used, and MacArthur ignored the political consequences of war. The Communists in Southeast Asia were always a factor, belying to a great extent, the "freedom" desires of those people.

I read the Venona Transcripts, and I believe their content. although a lot remains undecrypted. Not only was the State Department highly infiltrated during WWII (part of FDR's naivety), the Soviets infiltrated the Manhattan Project (yes, the Rosenbergs were guilty as hell), and the Soviets had near-real time access to State and Treasury Department information courtesy of Harry D. White, Lauchlin Currie, Alger Hiss, and Maurice Halperin. McCarthy was far closer to the truth, that anyone admitted at the time.

The fact that FDR did not want to allow Britain and France to re-institute their colonialism was written as part of Hoover's "Magnum Opus". Again, it was a sign of Truman's naivety; he turned down Ho Chi Minh in favor of the French. FDR was not much more worldly than Truman. He was naive enough to stay at the Russian embassy during the Tehran talks.

As to Viet Nam, Kennedy was an adventurist, eager to meddle in foreign affairs, a complete 180 from his pre-WWII days. Viet Nam was the venue. He was no different that FDR, and Woodrow Wilson in that respect. It was a myth that Kennedy had opted to get out of Viet Nam. In fact, he had already requested spending increases for the adventure in Viet Nam in 1964.

pendennis

You're overselling the reason the Republicans regained control of the Congress.

Even at the end of WWII, the U.S. was still suffering from the ills of the Great Depression. Truman expected to extend the "New Deal" with his version, the "Fair Deal". There was nothing "fair" about it. There had been no accumulation of wealth in the war years. People who weren't in the military made a lot of money via wartime industry, but Americans didn't really improve their financial status.

Not a single industry was prepared for the return to a non-wartime economy. It took the auto industry, for instance, until the 1949 model year before new designs were produced. The Great Depression lasted well into 1947. My father and mother both worked for a furniture manufacturer, and they didn't get back to dedicated civilian production until early 1947. It took quite a long time for industry to change over to peacetime demand and production.

The 1946 elections weren't so much the Republicans waiting to get in control, as they were a decision by Americans to throw out the Dems, who went along with FDR and exacerbated the Great Depression. The Republicans only held Congressional majorities from 1947-1947 after the war. Truman's 1948 win was less about his political savvy, than about Dewey's incompetence. Loss of the Congressional majority by Republicans would have been typical for a Presidential election. Republicans only held majorities for two years in Eisenhower's first term.

Truman was completely out of his element when it came to economic matters, or for that matter military and political ones.

Today, the Russians, even though they're nearly a Third World economy, still have a First World Army, and Putin longs to go back to the "good old USSR" days. Further we are under attack. The Chinese continue to steal intellectual property, and force companies doing business there to open their tech vaults so the Chinese can plunder them.

Quinn 4

Finely has come out the fact that JFK was not pulling out of Vietnam, but wanted to put more troops in Vietnam, that was also true for RFK.

Angmo

JFK liked special forces. He did put in more troops. The British used special forces only to rid Malaysia of leftie communists.

Interesting book to read “The Bright Shining Lie”.