Well, it finally happened: Obamacare and the further socialization of America were passed on March 21—a Sunday, when many Americans still believe no work should be done, least of all in Congress.
The disastrous outcome of a multi-trillion dollar medical program is inevitable. There are not enough doctors, nurses, hospitals, labs, or clinics to accommodate another 30 million government-mandated patients, and there’s no money to pay for it. The “progressives” in congress purchased, bullied, and forced their agenda upon a population that devoutly does not want the program. Never mind: the tone was set by the chairman of the House rules committee—a disbarred judge who said on camera “There aren’t any rules because we make them up.”
How’s that Change You Can Believe In working for you?
That question, incidentally, is not aimed at “progressives”. It’s aimed at those who are most responsible for the miserable present and disastrous economic future that our progeny will inherit.
I’d speaking of you Republicans.
I know what I’m talking about because I used to be one of you. For four generations my family was GOP: state senators, mayors, precinct committee members. True believers and worker bees.
No more: not since the early 90s. The reasons are many and varied, starting with the moral cowardice and lies of the Bush 41 (“Read my lips”) administration, followed by the limp campaign of Bob Dole. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a Dream. Bob Dole had a Pulse.
What some GOPers considered a narrow reprieve in 2000 only set the stage for the fiscal irresponsibility of Bush 43 and his acolytes in congress who spent like, well, like Democrats. The same GOPers who invaded Iraq without a Plan B. Dubya declared “Mission accomplished” upon deposing Saddam’s regime but still was mired in Iraq when he left office nearly six years later.
That was predictable, folks.
Fast-forward to 2009 when pundit Dick Morris asserted that conservatism was not going to be saved by “the knuckleheads and morons who run the Republican Party.” He didn’t specify the time servers, hacks, and wimps comprising the GOP “leadership” because he didn’t have to. Instead, Morris announced that he was starting a fund raising campaign on his own to target the Democrats most needful of retirement in the next election.
So don’t blame the Democrats. They’re simply being what they are—socialist ideologues with no more than passing acquaintance with American values. But We The People spoke on November 4, 2008, and now we’re stuck.
One of the most overlooked stories of the GOP primaries that year was the Arizona primary. McCain—the party’s handpicked carpetbagger who likely became Senator For Life—failed to win a majority in his “home” state. (Actually he doesn’t have a home state, being born in the Panama Canal Zone.) That should have told the country club set that maybe the professional POW wasn’t the one to tackle the Democrat varsity. But it didn’t. Instead, we were treated to what many Arizonans and others expected: a weak, wimpish campaign that not even Sarah Palin—the only outsider in the race—could offset.
How wimpish was it? Well, since you ask, I’ll tell you. In Lakeville, Minnesota, on October 10, the GOP candidate said, “My friends (he’s forever addressing people as My Friends), you have nothing to fear from an Obama administration.”
McCain, who hasn’t felt the need to answer constituent mail in years (come to think of it, in decades) is running ads emphasizing his “character.” Of course, they don’t mention his reputation in the Navy, and maybe they have a point. After all, personal ethics became irrelevant the day Bill Clinton was re-elected. But neither do McCain’s ads allude to the fact that he was the only GOPer in the Keating Five financial scandal.
But let’s not dwell on McCain, who parlayed 5 ½ years in Hanoi into at least 28 years in DC. He’s largely irrelevant, as is his party, which has been reduced to sideline status. He’s a symptom, not the disease.
It’s more instructive to ask how we came to the present disaster. As noted above, we cannot blame the Democrats, who promised “fundamentally to change America.” They meant what they said and they said what they meant. Get used to it.
Instead, look closer to home, Republicans. Look in the mirror.
If you were among the rheumy-eyed GOPers who supported a known weak candidate and vapid campaigner, a so-called “maverick” who was forever reaching across the aisle to his “friends” (that word again) on The Other Side, you’re to blame.
You gave us John McCain, who was never going to beat the tough-as-nails, victory-at-any-cost Chicago machine.
That was bad enough. But you Republicans have taken a major step toward destroying the future of America, and whatever inspiration it drew from the inspiring past.
It’s likely that the GOP will reclaim the House and maybe even the Senate this year. But that only has the potential to slow the Demo Express, not necessarily to reverse it. After all, the Republicans squandered most of their historic opportunity after the 1994 Contract With America and wound up setting the stage for the current debacle—and then allowed the Demos and the state-run media to rewrite history about the mortgage crisis.
There’s only one reason for optimism. The country-club Republicans had their run, and consistently bungled it. With nobody else named George Bush to put on the ticket, and with Bob Dole still selling Viagra, the field is open. I predict that Sara Palin is not going to be a candidate—she has too much baggage and too little to offer besides a spunky persona. But you won’t save the Republic with spunk. If it’s to be saved at all, it’ll be done with someone burning a fire in the belly; someone beyond the recycled cast of Usual Suspects.
So whatever happens this year and in 2012, just remember one thing: you shouldn’t blame the Democrats.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
THE MYTH OF DETERRENCE
Deterrence is much over-rated. In fact, it seldom works at all.
However, much of America’s current military strategy still emphasizes deterrence. For instance, the Navy mission statement specifically includes “deterring aggression” while the Army’s “posture statement” cites deterrence.
The Air Force seems more focused: its mission statement mentions flying, fighting, and winning.
It goes without saying that every war and “conflict” in the long, sanguinary history of the human race was the result of failed deterrence.
The Roman general Vegetius said “Let him who desires peace prepare for war.” His oft-quoted statement may be interpreted two ways. It may be seen as advocating deterrence, but it can also be taken otherwise: a nation prepared to fight a war can more easily shorten the feud. Nevertheless, despite possessing the world’s greatest army, Rome was tackled by a succession of enemies including Carthage, the Celts, Epirus, Teutons, and Visigoths.
Let’s fast-forward and take a quick look at deterrence in the XX century.
Britain’s Royal Navy was the greatest afloat, both in size and capability. Yet that naval dominance failed to prevent Germany from starting both world wars within 25 years of each other. Even after the example of the Great War, with a naval blockade that choked the Kaiser into submission, Adolf Hitler went to bat a second time, knowing that his own naval construction plan would not peak until 1948.
Sometimes efforts at deterrence don’t merely flop: they boomerang. As in Unintended Consequences. No better example exists than President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 decision to move the Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii in an effort to stay Tokyo’s aggression. Instead, all he achieved was to place his fleet within striking range of the Imperial Navy, as America learned to its cost one Sunday morning. Some conspiracy theorists have concluded that’s just what FDR had in mind, since he was not otherwise going to get an isolationist America motivated to join the fight.
Despite the enormous reduction in all branches of the U.S. military after WW II, America still possessed the strongest navy and air force on earth. Neither fact impressed Kim Il Sung, who started the Korean War and ended in a tie. The absurd conduct of the Vietnam War requires no elaboration.
In 1982 Britain’s military capability far exceeded Argentina’s, but the ruling junta was unimpressed. Presumably safe 8,000 miles from England, the Argies seized the British-owned Falklands/Malvinas, and expected the fait accompli to stick. It didn’t, of course: Britain dispatched a task force to the South Atlantic and, in one of the unlikeliest wars of the century, drubbed the macho men in Buenos Aires.
There’s a sexual aspect to deterrence. The Latinate machismo of the Argentine generals led them to underestimated Margaret Thatcher. But the Bush Leaguers also fumbled badly (read: avoidably) in 1990 by sending a female ambassador to Iraq, dealing with a Muslim despot who had knifed his way to the top.
Technological superiority also is over-rated. Continuing PR for the enormously expensive F-22 Raptor stealth fighter contends that its awesome capabilities will deter aggression (from whom it is far from certain, but let’s not digress.) That’s a baseless assertion on its face. Not even the world’s finest fighter aircraft ever prevented a war, nor could it. Otherwise Hitler would have been awed by the Supermarine Spitfire; Kim by the F-86 Sabre; Ho Chi Minh by a double dose of F-4 Phantom and F-8 Crusader; and Saddam by the F-14, -15, -16 and -18! We all know how well those worked out.
So…when has deterrence succeeded? The default response is the 50-year Cold War in which the West and Soviet bloc both possessed the power to incinerate each other with thermonuclear bombs, and therefore consented to wars on the periphery. The Soviets were far more astute in their handling of peripheral conflicts, allowing fellow travelers to do most of the fighting and dying while America bled in Korean snows and Asian jungles.
Since it’s almost impossible to prove a negative, we continue to speculate upon other successful examples of deterrence, which necessarily remain unknown. But logically we may conclude this: any wars averted by respect for the potential enemy were far smaller than the world wars, and likely smaller than middling exercises such as Desert Storm.
The lesson should be obvious: deterrence only works against enemies with the same mindset as one’s self. After all, the Soviets were merely evil; not crazy. That’s why the Bushido-drunk warlords in Tokyo strapped on a nation with an economy nearly six times their own, twice the population, and the inventor of the airplane, submarine, machinegun, and mass production. And a bunch of other stuff.
North Korea and North Vietnam were well aware of America’s vast military superiority but reckoned they could beat us because they did not fear us. Saddam Hussein knew all about the U.S. military—he had received covert assistance during his eight-year war with Iraq. But he attacked Kuwait, which provided much of our oil because he did not respect us.
Now we’re entering the tenth year of a cultural/religious war with enemies who do not fear death, let alone the United States Government. There’s no reason they should. The mullahs in Tehran look at America and they see the simpering face of Jimmy Carter.
In the open-ended war against “terrorism” (read: radical Islam), there are still thousands or millions of American who Just Don’t Get It. This month’s peace rally in Washington, D.C. included twenty-something twits (and older twits) who obligingly bleated for the cameras: “We just need to get along with everybody.”
Well, Sweet Cheeks, here’s a flash for you. It takes two To Get Along, but it only one to fight.
America needs to learn the old-old lesson: a pound of respect can buy a ton of deterrence.
However, much of America’s current military strategy still emphasizes deterrence. For instance, the Navy mission statement specifically includes “deterring aggression” while the Army’s “posture statement” cites deterrence.
The Air Force seems more focused: its mission statement mentions flying, fighting, and winning.
It goes without saying that every war and “conflict” in the long, sanguinary history of the human race was the result of failed deterrence.
The Roman general Vegetius said “Let him who desires peace prepare for war.” His oft-quoted statement may be interpreted two ways. It may be seen as advocating deterrence, but it can also be taken otherwise: a nation prepared to fight a war can more easily shorten the feud. Nevertheless, despite possessing the world’s greatest army, Rome was tackled by a succession of enemies including Carthage, the Celts, Epirus, Teutons, and Visigoths.
Let’s fast-forward and take a quick look at deterrence in the XX century.
Britain’s Royal Navy was the greatest afloat, both in size and capability. Yet that naval dominance failed to prevent Germany from starting both world wars within 25 years of each other. Even after the example of the Great War, with a naval blockade that choked the Kaiser into submission, Adolf Hitler went to bat a second time, knowing that his own naval construction plan would not peak until 1948.
Sometimes efforts at deterrence don’t merely flop: they boomerang. As in Unintended Consequences. No better example exists than President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 decision to move the Pacific Fleet from California to Hawaii in an effort to stay Tokyo’s aggression. Instead, all he achieved was to place his fleet within striking range of the Imperial Navy, as America learned to its cost one Sunday morning. Some conspiracy theorists have concluded that’s just what FDR had in mind, since he was not otherwise going to get an isolationist America motivated to join the fight.
Despite the enormous reduction in all branches of the U.S. military after WW II, America still possessed the strongest navy and air force on earth. Neither fact impressed Kim Il Sung, who started the Korean War and ended in a tie. The absurd conduct of the Vietnam War requires no elaboration.
In 1982 Britain’s military capability far exceeded Argentina’s, but the ruling junta was unimpressed. Presumably safe 8,000 miles from England, the Argies seized the British-owned Falklands/Malvinas, and expected the fait accompli to stick. It didn’t, of course: Britain dispatched a task force to the South Atlantic and, in one of the unlikeliest wars of the century, drubbed the macho men in Buenos Aires.
There’s a sexual aspect to deterrence. The Latinate machismo of the Argentine generals led them to underestimated Margaret Thatcher. But the Bush Leaguers also fumbled badly (read: avoidably) in 1990 by sending a female ambassador to Iraq, dealing with a Muslim despot who had knifed his way to the top.
Technological superiority also is over-rated. Continuing PR for the enormously expensive F-22 Raptor stealth fighter contends that its awesome capabilities will deter aggression (from whom it is far from certain, but let’s not digress.) That’s a baseless assertion on its face. Not even the world’s finest fighter aircraft ever prevented a war, nor could it. Otherwise Hitler would have been awed by the Supermarine Spitfire; Kim by the F-86 Sabre; Ho Chi Minh by a double dose of F-4 Phantom and F-8 Crusader; and Saddam by the F-14, -15, -16 and -18! We all know how well those worked out.
So…when has deterrence succeeded? The default response is the 50-year Cold War in which the West and Soviet bloc both possessed the power to incinerate each other with thermonuclear bombs, and therefore consented to wars on the periphery. The Soviets were far more astute in their handling of peripheral conflicts, allowing fellow travelers to do most of the fighting and dying while America bled in Korean snows and Asian jungles.
Since it’s almost impossible to prove a negative, we continue to speculate upon other successful examples of deterrence, which necessarily remain unknown. But logically we may conclude this: any wars averted by respect for the potential enemy were far smaller than the world wars, and likely smaller than middling exercises such as Desert Storm.
The lesson should be obvious: deterrence only works against enemies with the same mindset as one’s self. After all, the Soviets were merely evil; not crazy. That’s why the Bushido-drunk warlords in Tokyo strapped on a nation with an economy nearly six times their own, twice the population, and the inventor of the airplane, submarine, machinegun, and mass production. And a bunch of other stuff.
North Korea and North Vietnam were well aware of America’s vast military superiority but reckoned they could beat us because they did not fear us. Saddam Hussein knew all about the U.S. military—he had received covert assistance during his eight-year war with Iraq. But he attacked Kuwait, which provided much of our oil because he did not respect us.
Now we’re entering the tenth year of a cultural/religious war with enemies who do not fear death, let alone the United States Government. There’s no reason they should. The mullahs in Tehran look at America and they see the simpering face of Jimmy Carter.
In the open-ended war against “terrorism” (read: radical Islam), there are still thousands or millions of American who Just Don’t Get It. This month’s peace rally in Washington, D.C. included twenty-something twits (and older twits) who obligingly bleated for the cameras: “We just need to get along with everybody.”
Well, Sweet Cheeks, here’s a flash for you. It takes two To Get Along, but it only one to fight.
America needs to learn the old-old lesson: a pound of respect can buy a ton of deterrence.
Friday, February 12, 2010
WHIRLWIND
It’s curious how the Pacific half of the Second World War turned on various winds, both literal and figurative.
“East wind, rain” was the coded message for the attack on Pearl Harbor to proceed, but not even the divine wind of the kamikazes could reverse the literal firestorm that descended upon Japan in 1945. Additionally, nature’s cyclonic winds figured in the Western Pacific, most notably with “Halsey’s Hurricane” which ravaged the Third Fleet in December 1944.
But a biblical reference struck me as particularly significant. Hosea 8:7 says, “They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Certainly that statement applied to Imperial Japan, which received immensely more violence than it perpetrated. Therefore, I took Whirlwind as the title of my current book, the first one-volume study of all allied air operations over the Japanese home islands. It’s due next month from Simon & Schuster.
Aside from the fact that it hadn’t been done before, I wanted to address the multi-faceted operations of the U.S. Army Air Forces, the Navy and Marine Corps, plus the British Royal Navy. The complexity of the subject was daunting, but I had been interviewing veterans since the 1970s and had a stack of references from previous projects. Nearly half of the men who contributed their recollections are now deceased, which was all the more reason to gather additional material while still possible. About 2,000 American WW II veterans die every day, and I was acutely aware that Whirlwind would be among the last volumes written with significant contributions from those who lived the story.
Today it’s hard for some people to grasp the magnitude of the capacity for destruction in the era before nuclear weapons. Yet on the night of March 9-10 1945—five months before Hiroshima--325 B-29s burned down one-sixth of Tokyo and killed at least 85,000 people. Major General Curtis LeMay’s bombers flew—literally—in the face of airpower orthodoxy by dropping incendiaries instead of explosives over an enemy capital, at low level, at night. Here’s a description of the results, excerpted from Whirlwind:
“As the sky over the city became superheated, huge amounts of air were sucked upward through multi-story buildings in the ‘stack effect,’ draining the cool air from ground level to feed the insatiable stack. As more and more ground-level air was drawn into the conflagration from farther afield, the storm naturally spread of its own predatory accord.
“A fully-developed firestorm is a horrifically mesmerizing sight. It seems a living, malicious creature that feeds upon itself, generating ever higher winds that whirl cyclonically, breeding updrafts that suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere even while the flames consume the fuel—buildings—that feed the monster’s ravenous appetite. Most firestorm victims do not burn to death. Rather, as carbon monoxide quickly reaches lethal levels, people suffocate from lack of oxygen and excessive smoke inhalation.
“In Tokyo that night some citizens felt that hell had slipped its nether bounds and raised itself through the earth’s crust to feed on the surface. People fled panic-stricken from searing heat amid the demonic roar of flames, the crash of collapsing buildings, and the milling congestion of terrified human beings. Some survivors found themselves suddenly naked, the clothes burned off their bodies, leaving the skin largely intact.
“In those frightful hours humans watched things happen that probably had never been seen on earth. The superheated ambient air boiled the water out of ponds and canals while rains of liquid glass flew, propelled by cyclonic winds. Temperatures reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the frames of emergency vehicles and causing some people to erupt in spontaneous combustion.”
Excepting the two atom bombs, the fiery destruction of Japan’s urban-industrial areas is the best known aspect of the multi-service air campaign. (For a look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see my August 2009 entry, “The Nuke Season.”) But there was far more. After the daring innovation of the Doolittle raid in April 1942, metropolitan Japan was immune to air attack until November 1944—a precious two and a half years squandered by Tokyo’s warlords. Meanwhile, U.S. Army and Navy fliers began the long-range “Empire Express” missions from the Aleutians to the Kurile Islands in 1943.
Three months after China-based B-29s began flying, U.S. Navy carrier aviators launched against Tokyo and environs in February 1945. They returned frequently, not only attacking factories and airfields, but shipping. Ironically, their repeated strikes against immobile Imperial Navy warships produced far less benefit than two days’ attacks on lowly coal ferries, without which Japanese industry was further starved. Then in the last four weeks of hostilities, British carriers joined Task Force 38, completing the allies’ dominance of Japanese airspace.
Meanwhile, some B-29s diverted from strategic bombing to drop mines in coastal waterways—a tremendously successful campaign that enhanced the submarine war by choking off more vital imports.
In March 1945 the B-29s gained fighter escort as 7th Air Force P-51s began long-range missions from newly-captured Iwo Jima. Flying single-engine aircraft on 1,500-mile round trips, almost entirely over water, marked a new dimension in military aviation. Some fighter pilots were then on their second or third combat tours. Said one ace, “I fought the Germans for patriotism and the Japanese for fun. Next time I’m fighting for money.”
Nor was that all. With the conquest of Okinawa that summer, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps squadrons routinely attacked targets on Kyushu and Honshu. From nearly every direction, Japan was beset by an unstoppable destructive machine, from the sea and the sky—America’s patented way of war.
Yet Tokyo’s doom-focused war cabinet refused to yield. In fact, some hardliners insisted the killing would continue into 1948. So finally, the specter of a radioactive cloud cast its ghastly shadow over a national ash heap, and Japan’s living god finally exercised his imperial option, ending the dying. Thus, the ravenous beast called the Second World War-- which had scoured three continents and claimed more than 50 million lives--succumbed to the ultimate violence, and at length the monster was slain.
Imperial Japan, which had sown the wind, truly reaped the whirlwind.
It’s curious how the Pacific half of the Second World War turned on various winds, both literal and figurative.
“East wind, rain” was the coded message for the attack on Pearl Harbor to proceed, but not even the divine wind of the kamikazes could reverse the literal firestorm that descended upon Japan in 1945. Additionally, nature’s cyclonic winds figured in the Western Pacific, most notably with “Halsey’s Hurricane” which ravaged the Third Fleet in December 1944.
But a biblical reference struck me as particularly significant. Hosea 8:7 says, “They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Certainly that statement applied to Imperial Japan, which received immensely more violence than it perpetrated. Therefore, I took Whirlwind as the title of my current book, the first one-volume study of all allied air operations over the Japanese home islands. It’s due next month from Simon & Schuster.
Aside from the fact that it hadn’t been done before, I wanted to address the multi-faceted operations of the U.S. Army Air Forces, the Navy and Marine Corps, plus the British Royal Navy. The complexity of the subject was daunting, but I had been interviewing veterans since the 1970s and had a stack of references from previous projects. Nearly half of the men who contributed their recollections are now deceased, which was all the more reason to gather additional material while still possible. About 2,000 American WW II veterans die every day, and I was acutely aware that Whirlwind would be among the last volumes written with significant contributions from those who lived the story.
Today it’s hard for some people to grasp the magnitude of the capacity for destruction in the era before nuclear weapons. Yet on the night of March 9-10 1945—five months before Hiroshima--325 B-29s burned down one-sixth of Tokyo and killed at least 85,000 people. Major General Curtis LeMay’s bombers flew—literally—in the face of airpower orthodoxy by dropping incendiaries instead of explosives over an enemy capital, at low level, at night. Here’s a description of the results, excerpted from Whirlwind:
“As the sky over the city became superheated, huge amounts of air were sucked upward through multi-story buildings in the ‘stack effect,’ draining the cool air from ground level to feed the insatiable stack. As more and more ground-level air was drawn into the conflagration from farther afield, the storm naturally spread of its own predatory accord.
“A fully-developed firestorm is a horrifically mesmerizing sight. It seems a living, malicious creature that feeds upon itself, generating ever higher winds that whirl cyclonically, breeding updrafts that suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere even while the flames consume the fuel—buildings—that feed the monster’s ravenous appetite. Most firestorm victims do not burn to death. Rather, as carbon monoxide quickly reaches lethal levels, people suffocate from lack of oxygen and excessive smoke inhalation.
“In Tokyo that night some citizens felt that hell had slipped its nether bounds and raised itself through the earth’s crust to feed on the surface. People fled panic-stricken from searing heat amid the demonic roar of flames, the crash of collapsing buildings, and the milling congestion of terrified human beings. Some survivors found themselves suddenly naked, the clothes burned off their bodies, leaving the skin largely intact.
“In those frightful hours humans watched things happen that probably had never been seen on earth. The superheated ambient air boiled the water out of ponds and canals while rains of liquid glass flew, propelled by cyclonic winds. Temperatures reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the frames of emergency vehicles and causing some people to erupt in spontaneous combustion.”
Excepting the two atom bombs, the fiery destruction of Japan’s urban-industrial areas is the best known aspect of the multi-service air campaign. (For a look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see my August 2009 entry, “The Nuke Season.”) But there was far more. After the daring innovation of the Doolittle raid in April 1942, metropolitan Japan was immune to air attack until November 1944—a precious two and a half years squandered by Tokyo’s warlords. Meanwhile, U.S. Army and Navy fliers began the long-range “Empire Express” missions from the Aleutians to the Kurile Islands in 1943.
Three months after China-based B-29s began flying, U.S. Navy carrier aviators launched against Tokyo and environs in February 1945. They returned frequently, not only attacking factories and airfields, but shipping. Ironically, their repeated strikes against immobile Imperial Navy warships produced far less benefit than two days’ attacks on lowly coal ferries, without which Japanese industry was further starved. Then in the last four weeks of hostilities, British carriers joined Task Force 38, completing the allies’ dominance of Japanese airspace.
Meanwhile, some B-29s diverted from strategic bombing to drop mines in coastal waterways—a tremendously successful campaign that enhanced the submarine war by choking off more vital imports.
In March 1945 the B-29s gained fighter escort as 7th Air Force P-51s began long-range missions from newly-captured Iwo Jima. Flying single-engine aircraft on 1,500-mile round trips, almost entirely over water, marked a new dimension in military aviation. Some fighter pilots were then on their second or third combat tours. Said one ace, “I fought the Germans for patriotism and the Japanese for fun. Next time I’m fighting for money.”
Nor was that all. With the conquest of Okinawa that summer, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps squadrons routinely attacked targets on Kyushu and Honshu. From nearly every direction, Japan was beset by an unstoppable destructive machine, from the sea and the sky—America’s patented way of war.
Yet Tokyo’s doom-focused war cabinet refused to yield. In fact, some hardliners insisted the killing would continue into 1948. So finally, the specter of a radioactive cloud cast its ghastly shadow over a national ash heap, and Japan’s living god finally exercised his imperial option, ending the dying. Thus, the ravenous beast called the Second World War-- which had scoured three continents and claimed more than 50 million lives--succumbed to the ultimate violence, and at length the monster was slain.
Imperial Japan, which had sown the wind, truly reaped the whirlwind.
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