Posted on 04/17/2017 7:37:05 AM PDT by SpeedyInTexas
Some sixty-eight years before U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, America conducted an assassination of another kind.
This time, the target wasn’t a terrorist. It was the Japanese admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor operation. But the motive was the same: payback for a sneak attack on the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
I just saw this WWII-era film about P-47s in Italy: Link
When God was angry at Judah for worshipping false gods (and sacrificing their children) He said [Jeremiah 7]:
“16 “As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you. 17 Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. 19 Do they spite Me?” declares the Lord. “Is it not themselves they spite, to their own shame?” 20 Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, My anger and My wrath will be poured out on this place, on man and on beast and on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground; and it will burn and not be quenched.””
Men, women, children.
It was so meaningless, no one, I mean no one- reacted to his death. Think McFly! Think!
Either would have been capable postwar leaders had they survived the war.
Good sarcasm!
War is about breaking the enemy's ability & will to fight. Taking out their leaders is an excellent way of doing that. I had a USMC buddy who was a sniper in Vietnam. He once dropped an NVA colonel standing at a blackboard giving a lecture to three rows of troops sitting on benches. The shot was from 1400 yards.
In addition to the NVA loosing a senior leader, can you imagine the psychological effect on those troops at the lecture?
It wasn’t an assassination because Yamamoto was a legitimate military target.
The Soviet Union did not want to fight a two front war.
“The Imperial Army just before Hiroshima was spoiling for a fight with the US Army. They had never really fought us. “
There were plenty of Army units fighting in the Pacific war, I think people just assume that everyone was a Marine. There were as many as 22 Army divisions assigned to the Pacific war, about a quarter of the Army’s total manpower. Marine Corp had around 6 divisions.
https://www.armydivs.com/pacific-theater/
Understandable - but it isn’t inconceivable that the Japanese hoped the Americans had the same thought (and would settle with Japan while destroying Germany).
Interesting; I remember when they found the plane he’d died in.
American POWs were surprised at how many Japanese officers spoke English well; many had studied in the US.
That’s true, and there were assassinations related to that military control.
That may be true at first, but once home is destroyed, there is little left to fight for? As the source of supplies and replacements if you destroy the supply chain, armies can only pillage so much from the current war zone.
Destroy my home and family then REVENGE is all I have left and I’ll take as many of you bastards with me as I can. Haven’t freepers said this very thing often enough?
No,I have to disagree with your stance. A total war that targets civilian’s home and families is morally repugnant to Christians. I understand bombing factories and government offices in addition to traditional military units.
Under your concept of total war are you going to target hospitals ,old folks homes,orphanages,churches and synagogues?
They are not direct targets, but if they are storing the materials of war then they are legitimate targets. The concept of" human shields" must be eliminated and have a direct cost to those prosecuting the war. Let them explain to their citizenry why X hospital was destroyed. Understood that they will lie about it for as long as the lie can be maintained.
The Geneva conventions are fine, as long as both sides adhere to them. Presently, only we are adhering to them. If one side violates them, they need to face the price for doing so in real time, not at some war crimes commission after the fact. War is a messy business, and collateral damage is unavoidable.
The way the some legalists seem to think, specifically aiming at an enemy is a war crime. At least if we do it.
Not until we dropped The Bomb...
I heard someone who had fought in the Pacific say that he once ran across one of his old Los Angeles schoolmates on one of the islands- what made that unusual is that the kid was fighting for Imperial Japan. Apparently a few with Japanese ancestry had been raised with the view that they owed their allegiance to the parent’s homeland.
Yes, some returned to Japan as things heated up.
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