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To: justshe
Why anyone would assume that I have anything but pride in anyone - whether Navajo Code Talker or a member of the 442nd RCT - fighting on the American side during WWII is beyond me. Why the same individual who holds them up with pride also celebrates the actions of a kamakaze pilot slamming his aircraft into an American vessel is also beyond me.

But the "white" business tells me a lot.

I'm an American. My race does not come into play when I'm discussing these things. It doesn't come into play for me at all. But if we're going to talk about Japanese military culture in 1942, I'm ready to go.

100 posted on 09/29/2002 12:40:11 PM PDT by DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet
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To: DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet
But the "white" business tells me a lot.

You were unaware somehow that our forces were segregated ... even down to restricting blacks to Messman only in the Navy, pilots to Tuskegee in the air force and considering the drafting white female nurses they were so reluctant to recruit blacks?

Sad but true. Look it up. Particularly given the fact it occurred well after the Civil War which our Federal Government OSTENSIBLY fought on the issue of slavery -- "all men being created equal" and all that rot -- it's rather odd, don't you think, they'd segregate the armed forces of "democracy" in a fashion to please the most racist Klansman?

I'm so glad you enjoy my posts even you can't understand them. I suspect there are plenty who do, however. I speak for -- and to -- them. It doesn't surprise in the least I can no longer be understood by many who post here. The place has changed quite a bit since I arrived.

It's now a spot where the bodies of aborted children are absolutely verboten (as they are for most liberals on US campuses, the internet, outside abortuaries and on American highways that the Convoy educates) but some Dead American may be used as an exclamation point on a flame.

Which flame evidenced your complete inability to understand the posts of another who sees past Appearances such that he can respect and admire the human dignity of others -- even his enemies, much less the unborn. So, it's possible I'm relieved we don't speak the same language.

One of the reasons I ended up such a Russo-phile upon my initial introduction to militant atheist communism in 6th grade was the counsel of my military father. Sitting in the back yard and listening to me lay into the Soviets with all due Askelian vigor, he reminded me that governments weren't the same as People and that there were probably plenty of young Russian girls, like me, who loved their Dads and whose Dads, as he was, simply were obligated to fight on behalf their nation as the government saw fit .,.. even it meant the Russian Askel's Dad and mine were committed to making the Russian Askel and I fatherless if at all possible.

So -- even as he reared me to be an extraordinarily pro-military sort with an intense love of country -- he also imparted to me the wisdom of restraint that stems from a respect for life and understanding that -- however vastly different folks may be -- they often share the essentials of humanity.

It's important, particularly on the eve of battle, to do what it takes to energize men into killing the enemy. our family has plenty of propaganda on the "Japs" from my great-grandfather Colonel Arthur's collection.

What I find absolutely horrifying today, though, is the way the populace at large strides about speaking in terms of Subhumans when they know damned good and well that our military is moving ever-closer toward the totally utopian fighting machine that are drones ... much less the "Clean Hands" combat that is raining down death somewhat indiscriminately from the skies ... and that our own government can speak of unborn Americans as "excess" individuals.

It would appear there's a certain inhumanity in being Super-Human as well as Sub-Human.

Even my lifelong hero Patton not admired the military genius, courage and valour of his opponents but also respected as human beings the Germans who killed so many of his men.

Patton was not one to lose sight of the Humanity of the individual combatants. And this, primarily, because he was not one to lose sight of the Just War (including that which we failed to prosecute against the Soviets when we could have routed Stalin) or rely on Machines rather than men to fight his battles.

LAMB: Let me read you what [his daughter] Ruth Ellen wrote:

"The war was all around him when he wrote Ma a letter, which shows a side of him that she always saw, but that few others outside his immediate family ever knew existed. He wrote to her that he had been inspecting a battlefield at night, and that the dead soldiers, as yet unclaimed by the burial teams, were lying there in the moonlight.

He said it was hard to tell the Americans and British from the Germans, and they all looked alike: very young and very dead. And he began to think how often their mothers had changed their diapers and wiped their noses, and suddenly the whole concept seemed unbearable. <> And he decided that the only way to survive under such stress was to try to think of soldiers as numbers, not as individuals, and that the sooner the Allies won, the sooner the slaughter of the incidents -- of the innocents would cease. However, no matter what he said, he could never quite do that.

To him, his men were individuals, people and responsibilities, always."


105 posted on 09/29/2002 8:01:51 PM PDT by Askel5
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