[Dr. Sivana]

The purpose of the military is to kill our enemies swiftly, efficiently and relentlessly and break his things and confiscate enough assets to pay for every last nickel of expenses incurred in the exercise, get the hell out and repeat as regrettably necessary.

Personally, I'd go soft on the confiscate assets part. Just wars are defensive in nature, and at every level, determining and extracting just compensation leads to more wars and more misery for both sides.

France sought compensation for WWI which helped create conditions for a Hitler to come into power. It would have been a better deal if they let up a bit, and let both sides recover. After WWII, the U.S. did not enslave Japan until all was repaid; it would not have happened if we tried. That does not preclude utterly destroying them until the peace can take place, if necessary. But, if we can deal with them magnanimously after, good can sometimes be the result. Japan is a solid nation now, and has learned (compared to other countries) from her sins.

I couldn't even imagine how 1870s Republicans would try to get the Confederate States to reimburse them for expenses. Especially given the unnecessary ruination that was performed to make the point.

Even at lower levels, when low level criminals commit low level crimes that nonetheless destroy property, we cannot possibly recover the money to run that system from most of these incidents. A teenager from a poor family goes in anto a house, performing $10,000 of damage to steal $50 of copper. Besides the $10,000 damage, thousands might be spent on the expense of the investigation. Police, headquarters, district attorneys, court appointed defendant counsel, etc. We take the hit to have an overall functioning system. The current practice of asset forfeiture and things of that sort lead to corruption.

Even in ancient times, the promise of plunder does more to tempt men otherwise in the right to turn bad (think 4th Crusade).

We pay for insurance, whether we use it or not. We pay for police, whether we use them or not. We pay for war, even when we suffer a net loss of money. Requiring complete compensation for every wrong when we win the battle means more battles, and more of the things that made the battles at every level.

[BlackElk]

As to the late unpleasantness between (among?) the states, 11 Confederate States passed articles of secession as did their fathers/grandfathers from Great Britain in 1776. NOTHING in the Constitution prohibited them from doing so for whatever reason or none. Lincoln's response was a cornucopia of constitutional violations. He invaded South Carolina on the excuse of "relieving" Fort Sumter which was surrendered (as it should have been) in short order by Captain Anderson of the US Army. Once South Carolina had re-asserted its sovereignty, all that was left for Lincoln and South Carolina was to surrender and/or withdraw federal assets there and submit any squabbles over the value of lost federal property to adjudication or arbitration.

Lincoln also insisted upon "blockading" Confederate ports while simultaneously claiming that secession had not occurred. International law does not allow a nation to "blockade" its own ports. Sherman's "March to the Sea?" Nearly 700,000 American soldiers (Union and Confederate) killed, destruction of the economy of the Southland, military Reconstruction forced by the same nutcases (save Lincoln) who insisted on making war upon the South, and I can can go on and on. If any reparations were due, the Union should have been required to pay them.

Think on a model of crime and punishment.

Every time we go to war, we hear weeping and moaning over the cost of doing so. Those weeping and moaning seem not to care about the criminal misbehavior of our enemies. To that extent, they become complicit in the crimes.

If "Sharia Law" supports claims that it is OK for Allah's minions to rape "infidel" women (and girls) at will and we fail to respond with absolute suppression of such nonsense, vigorous investigation, indictment, conviction and punishment of Islamomiscreants who want to prove their Islamist worth by raping "infidel" women (and girls), we are subsidizing their crimes. If we can make them pay for the costs of investigation, prosecution, trial, conviction, and incarceration (to say nothing of reparations to their victims), so much the better. Tack on years at hard labor with payment first to the victims and then to the state.

Japan? Since Hirohito (in addition to being the living, if somewhat invisible god of Shinto) seems to have been an ignorant figurehead kept in the dark by Tojo, I can understand not prosecuting him just as I DO understand hanging Tojo and his approving colleagues. Although the Imperial Japanese Navy was the instrument of Tojo's attack on Pearl Harbor, the naval leaders appear to have been honorable men. Japan's problems were rooted in Japan's culture and in Tojo's Army which went so far as to cannibalize American POWs, generally o the Army Air Corps.

One might rationalize Pearl Harbor and numerous historians have done so but the question seems to have been our refusal to countenance and subsidize Japan's ambitions for its "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," a brand name for local imperialism of the land starved Japanese. Given what was known of the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 20th century, we were not likely to provide the petroleum Japan needed for conquest. Therefore, Tojo broke off negotiations with the US, recalled his ambassadors and ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Enslave Japan? No. The Japanese people bore no specific or collective responsibility for the crimes. Punish Hirohito personally? No. Hang Tojo and its army leaders for crimes against humanity? Absolutely. At the very least, reparations from Japanese tax revenues to those Americans disabled by the war and the families of those Americans killed in that war? Absolutely. Since I don't think that we needed to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that cost is on us. Ditto the incendiary bombing of Tokyo.

Douglas MacArthur imposed other costs on Japan after the war. History and morality will judge the wisdom of the imposed costs which were social and not economic. He broke Japanese patriarchy, imposed birth control (and, I believe, the legalization of abortion in that pagan society). His efforts in Japan and Korea earned him the title "American Caesar" in the magnificent William Manchester biography of that name. The people of the East whom he liberated regard him as practically a god.

When the feral urban punk does $10,000 damage to a home to steal $50 worth of copper and gets a slap on the wrist, we teach him that we don't care about the costs to the victim. Making him pay (by hard labor, if necessary) teaches him that we DO care about his victims and that his crime spree is not free.

We DO pay for insurance and, to the extent that we are reimbursed for our losses by burglary, we are subordinated to the insurance company in making claims against the miscreant responsible. Therefore, the insurance companies should devise methods to impose costs on the miscreants lest we believe that the status quo is only good advertising to get us to pony up premiums.

I do not want government to profit from asset forfeiture.

Crime. Punishment. Closure.