And what if we had lost WWII to the Japaneses due to the Japanese spies and saboteurs here on our land had they not been interned?
Go back and read how vicious the Japanese were in the rape of Nanking and how they treated other Asian countries on their quest for world domination (at least the Asian part) during the first half of the 20th century. American POWs were skinned alive by the Japanese. They also had medical experiments done on them by the Japanese.
You have to do what you have to do to win a war and that sometimes means restricting the freedoms. Once the war is over you can set everything back to normal. But extreme circumstances require extreme measures to deal with those circumstances effectively.
If the US government had placed the rights of American citizens over the war effort there is no doubt we would have lost.
First, it isn't a zero sum game. It was not -- either put them in camps or don't catch spies and saboteurs. There has never been any evidence that evacuating the Japanese-Americans did anything that proper and legal investigation could not have done.
And that's even assuming that spies and saboteurs could have been sufficient to turn the tide in the war. That is ridiculous assertion. Yamamoto was right. Japan could hope for, at most, one year. Once the industrial might of the US got up to speed, the end was inevitable.
Go back and read how vicious the Japanese were in the rape of Nanking and how they treated other Asian countries on their quest for world domination (at least the Asian part) during the first half of the 20th century. American POWs were skinned alive by the Japanese. They also had medical experiments done on them by the Japanese.
Yeah, I know all about it. I recommend Iris Chang's book. The Japanese culture was a vicious, brutal one which needed to be pulled out by the root. Hirohito should have been hung, and had his ashes buried in a dung heap or tossed out to sea. But the actions you mentioned were the actions of Japanese, not innocent Americans of Japanese descent.
You have to do what you have to do to win a war and that sometimes means restricting the freedoms. Once the war is over you can set everything back to normal. But extreme circumstances require extreme measures to deal with those circumstances effectively.
If you think that there are no limits to Governmental power in times of crisis, then we disagree. It is not okay to use the excuse of a war or national crisis to give the Government carte blanche to decide what, if any, of the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness actually apply to innocent people. I mean, it would have been effective to have simply murdered every innocent person of Japanese dissent, too. Would you have supported that? After all, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? A Jap is a Jap is a Jap, right??
If the US government had placed the rights of American citizens over the war effort there is no doubt we would have lost.
What a bunch of baloney. You simply cannot show that what they did, in any way, aided the war effort in a manner that a legal investigation would not have. Part of what made America successful in its fight was the fact that it valued the rights of American citizens, even in times of war. And, in fact, the relocations hindered the war effort; it wasted and misallocated resources and handed Japan a propaganda victory.
On 9/10/01, I was having an e-mail conversation with a friend in Israel. I was postulating in my fair-minded, well-meaning, naive American way that "surely the Palestinians simply want to raise their families in peace, worship as they see fit, and enjoy life like every one else." Meanwhile, a Pali homicide bomber walked into a nightclub and blew himself and several Israelis to bits.
The next morning, 9/11, I was treated to the sight of people jumping out of the upper floors of the Twin Towers to avoid burning to death. Most of us were deciding if we wanted a Danish with our coffee that morning- the folks trapped in the WTC had to decide how they wanted to die.
In my opinion, every Muslim is just one "trigger event" from becoming a radical jihadist. Xenophobic? Paranoid? Racist? Maybe so. But, I don't see gangs of Protestants setting cars afire in Europe. There are no Bhuddist death-squads. Haven't heard of any Catholic homicide bombers. I don't see Jews beheading people around the world.
Any Western country that isn't putting its Muslim population under a microscope right now is holding a viper to its breast.