hnu123

The entire propaganda apparatus and the entire political class has been drumming up war with china for nearly a decade. So yes. There is a geniune concern. But it's not an immediate fear of war but a looming sense that there will be a war with china sometime in the future.

Take this article. It really has nothing to do with war or even china. But propagandists or people influenced by propaganda always insert that narrative. Try it with anything remotely china related. Someone or some bot or something always inserts a war narrative or anti-china narrative in it. It's clearly intentional and not organic. There is a coordinated effort to fearmonger war with china.

Edit: Interesting. Downvote brigaded. Wonder if it was this comment or the comment about ukraine...

> Like Ukraine started a war with Russia by economic alignment with the western powers

The ukraine war started when the US and Russia agreed to partition ukraine. Like the germans and soviets did to poland in ww2. Ukraine has no say in the matter. No more than poland did in the 1930s. Ukraine didn't start anything. Ukraine can't stop anything.

> or Poland starting a war with Germany in WW II for their offenses against German citizens.

No. The war in poland started when the Germans and the Soviets decided to divided poland up. Sound familiar?

> It's very poor form to introduce a not only controversial opinion but a wholly subjective one

It's not controversial. It's a fact. Sanctions are an act of war. Blocking trade is an act of war. You blockade 90+% of oil to a country, it's a declaration of war. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why pearl harbor happened.

> Japan was never colonized in the usual sense of the word.

It was in every sense of the word.

> I guess the first event you're referring to is Perry's gunboat diplomacy that brought an end to the Tokugawa isolationism

Not isolationism. Japan didn't isolate itself. It maintained contacts with their 'civilized' neighbors china, korea, etc. Japan simply banned imperial european nations because imperial european nations were behaving badly in japan. Heck even then, they still had european contacts.

The gunboat diplomacy didn't bring an end to isolationism. It ended japan's sovereignty and japan's pathetic attempt to keep european colonizers at bay. It was the start of american/european exploitation and colonization of japan.

> the second is the occupation post WWII.

Yes. The only difference being that the former colonization didn't involved war while the latter did.

> Neither of these involved the economic exploitation and imposition of total hegemony that typify imperialistic colonization

Perry went to japan precisely for economic reasons. To expand US whaling to the other side of the pacific since we wiped out all our whales along our shores. And post ww2 colonization is predominantly about economic exploitation. We literally forced japan to tank their economy in the 80s to enrich ourselves.

> After all, we don't generally say that the US colonized West Germany after the war.

But we say that about the soviet union and east germany... Welcome to the wonderful world of propaganda. Where we have allies whom we firebombed and nuked. While the enemy has 'vassals and colonies and satellites'.

Japan is the most poignant example of american economic colonization. It's the longest lasting and most brutal example of it. We just don't see the obvious because we are programmed by propaganda. Just look at all the propaganda in response to my original comment. If china or russia nuked japan and took it over. It would be obvious because the propaganda would tell us so.

> I, for one, prefer Lynch's Dune to Villeneuve's. I was very hyped for the latter and left the theater disappointed.

I prefer neither. Lynch's is odd and silly while villeneuve's is just eye candy. Dune should be read. A movie simply isn't going to capture all the emotions, inner dialogues, intrigue, history, etc. I think it's impossible to make a good movie out of Dune without completely reimagining and rewriting it. Dune isn't like a detective story or a horror story where the ending or jump scares are the the payoff. Dune is the culmination of the entire journey. It's greatness lies in the details.

Try it. Read Dune and then watch Dune. Something is off. Something is missing. It's like the difference between a grape drink and a grape flavored juice. The latter is a poor imitation of the former.

> I assume this is what it was like in the World War I & II era watching tanks being developed.

A better analogy would be the airplane as it had dual civilian-military uses like the drone. Whereas a tank is solely a military use vehicle.

But the drone definitely has the ability to change war like the airplane did. Especially drone swarms backed by AI. You could buy 100,000 drones for the price of a single jet fighter. Imagine millions or even billions of drones fighting to take control over a city.

> Sanctions started to be imposed in 1938.

And? You realize that 1938 is before 1941?

> But Japan invaded Manchuria in 1933 and by 1937 invaded China and had already perpetrated the Nanking Massacre.

The US ( and much of europe ) invaded china in the 1800s and by 1937 had committed hundreds of massacres. What's your point? Why was Nanking so important? Oh that's right, it was the center of american and european colonization of china.

> The sanctions were in part a response to the invasion of China and Japanese atrocities against China.

No. The sanctions were in response to japan taking american and european possessions in china. Had nothing to do with atrocities in china.

If the US cared about atrocities against china, we would have sanctioned the british, germans, russians, italians, french, etc long before we sanctioned the japanese. Heck we would have sanctioned ourselves long before we sanctioned japan for committing atrocities against japan.

BTW, the only nationality explicitly banned from the US was the chinese with the Chinese Exclusion Act. The idea that the US cared about chinese lives is laughable.

If you stand back and look at the garbage propaganda you are regurgitating, youd' realize how silly it all is.

"We dropped the nuke to save japanese lives". "We sanctioned japan to save chinese lives". Amazing how racist white supremacists cared so much about asian lives.

> Ah, you are the kind of person who consider the US the aggressor of the Pacific War.

You mean the country that colonized japan ( twice ), philippines, korea, china, vietnam, not to mention stole hawaii and a bunch of pacific islands? Yes. We have been aggressors in the pacific for centuries.

But if you are talking about US-Japan war, it is historical fact that US sanctions ( an act of war ) was the beginning of US-Japan war.

If you are talking about the overall Pacific War, then it's complicated. European and american invasion and colonization of almost all of asia spurred japan militarization and eventual war.

But regardless, doesn't matter who the aggressor was. Nuking innocent civilians is evil. Period.

> It's bad practice to simply dismiss arguments as "propaganda" without engaging with them.

Sure. If you are new to the discussion. But I'm not. I've come across all the rationalizations and of course the propaganda all my life. It's always the people peddling debunked propaganda who demand that propaganda be taken seriously.

> The dropping of the atomic bomb was significantly more nuanced that what you are suggesting.

Who cares? It's genocide. It's a war crime. It is pure evil. No excuse for it.

> If the Allies had to engage in an island hopping campaign, then the lives lost likely would have outnumbered those lost to the atomic bombs.

Are you seriously arguing the most racist nation on earth ( US ) cared about a bunch of non-white japanese lives? You do realize that the US had banned japanese immigration decades earlier because the japanese were inferior asians right? The genocidal firebombings of much of japan and hiroshima/nagasaki prove that the US did care about japanese lives.

> The US wanted to end the war before the Soviet Union had time to get involved and start gaining territory;

If so, the US would have accept japan's surrender in 1944 when japan start offering peace terms.

> Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate targets under the then accepted doctrine of total war.

No they weren't. If japan or germany had nuked the US, those involved would have been tried and executed for war crimes/crimes against humanity.

You are just regurgitating debunked and pathetic propaganda I've heard many times. All one has to do is think to see through the nonsense.

How pathetic do you have to be to believe a white supremacist nation/government cared about saving japanese lives? The rationalization of evil. It's always evil that rationalizes the most. You sound more ridiculous than nazis who claim hitler tried to save the jews from the soviet communists. Imagine believing we nuked the japanese civilians to save japanese lives. That's beyond dumb and evil.

> The Japanese government started the war and was free to stop it at any time.

No. The US started the war with economic sanctions. This is a historical fact.

> They could have issued an unconditional surrender and the fighting would have stopped within hours.

They could have. Or the US could have accepted japan's conditional surrender. Just because a government refuses to surrender doesn't justify murdering innocent civilians. Do you think if a criminal refuses to surrender, the cops are justified in murdering the criminal's wife and children?

> All of the deaths in Hiroshima were entirely their responsibility.

No. The responsibility lies on the people who dropped the nukes.

What you and your ilk are doing is using terrorist logic to justify murdering civilians. Murdering civilians because you don't like the actions of a government is terrorist logic. When you share the morality of terrorists, you should reevaluate your moral foundation.

But you prove my point. Evil is alive and well. Justifying genocide and nuking of civilians is evil.

> For what it's worth, by 1945 (Hiroshima) the Japanese army had grown from 1,700,000 (1941) to 6,000,000 (1945).

Yes. A bunch of elderly and young boys 'armed' with broomsticks. That you have to resort this level of nonsense should tell you something...

> they were actively running offensive military campaigns through 1944

You do know that hiroshima occurred in the latter half of 1945 right?

> There's also a credible argument to be made that the US dropping nuclear bombs on Japan might've had a net positive effect on total lives lost if the war continued another 6 months.

There is no credible argument. Just propaganda.

There is no defense of genocide and war crimes period. Doesn't stop evil people who rationalize the genocide of the native americans, hiroshima/nagasaki, holocaust, etc. But then again the genocide of the native americans, hiroshima, nagasaki, etc happens because of evil people in 'civilized' nations.

It's amazing that you fail to realize that you are proving me correct. Evil and barbarity is alive and well today. Just like in ww2. Just like in the days of caesar and augustus.

> You are encouraged to read deeper about the end of WWII.

I have. Beyond the propaganda and all the nonsense. But you don't need to read deeper to understand evil is evil. Nothing justifies acts of genocide like nuking civilians.

> If anyone sacrificed the people of Hiroshima, it was the Japanese Imperialist Government that refused to surrender despite the obvious obliteration of their conventional forces.

The japanese government had been suing for peace for more than a year prior to hiroshima. But even if they didn't, it still doesn't justify nuking civilians. Just because a government doesn't act in a manner you want doesn't justify murdering civilians. That's the logic of terrorists. Killing civilians to hurt the government. If your morality aligns with terrorists, you really should reassess your moral foundations.

> To make it brief...

You just spouted off propaganda that we all are spoonfed via media and school system. I'm surprised you didn't include the nonsense about purple hearts.

> It also should be noted both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were central to the Japanese war economy/machine and were not simply civilian population centers

More terrorist logic. Just because Manhattan is the center of the US economy doesn't justify 9/11.

That you are trying to justify hiroshima and the nuking of civilians just proves my point. Evil and barbaric. There is no justification for genocide. Period.

What did Hiroshima have to do with ending a war? By the time of hiroshima, the japanese army, navy, military was nonexistent and had been for nearly a year. It was just a military test of a barbaric weapon on innocent civilians. It literally was the biggest human experiment of ww2.

Hiroshima both in scale and barbarity is orders of magnitude worse than what the romans did. But then again, we model ourselves after the romans...

Your comment and the downvote proves my point. Though we think we are civilized today, we are just as evil and barbaric as ever. We rationalize our barbarity just like the romans and everyone else does. No civilized person or people would even dream of rationalizing something as evil as nuking innocent and defenseless civilians.