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> Every single time that the United States has engaged in conflict with Asian countries, it has waged not war but programs of systematic and indiscriminate exte

> Every single time that the United States has engaged in conflict with Asian countries, it has waged not war but programs of systematic and indiscriminate extermination. No. There were no US Einsatzgruppen, there was no US equivalent to the nazi Backe-Plan. The US occupation of Japan was remarkably benign, for a country concerned with "systematic and indiscriminate extermination". You may wish to contrast this with, say, the behaviour of the Japanese Imperial Army within the Asian-Co-Prosperity sphere, which, while not really engaged in genocide, had a habit of large-scale massacres, gang rape, torture and enslaving the local Asian population which they considered as inferior, for all the propaganda about freeing Asia from the white man's rule. If you really want to see what a blueprint for genocide looks like, I invite you to read about the Nazi Hunger plan [1]. Nothing the US did was even remotely like this. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

eveningcoffee 9y ago
You can skin a cat in many ways. For one case where the architects of the genocide did not get away with it there are multiple where they did. I am not implying that what US did was a planned genocide. I am just pointing out that above is not a rebuttal of it.
- mercurial 9y ago
  > You can skin a cat in many ways. For one case where the architects of the genocide did not get away with it there are multiple where they did. Of course. The US genocide of Native Americans did not lead to the Nuremberg trials. > I am just pointing out that above is not a rebuttal of it. It is about giving an example of what a policy of genocide lead by a technologically equivalent power looks like, and contrasting it with the actual behaviour of the US in the same area. Shoplifting and murder are both against the law, but there is a marked difference between the two.
  - eveningcoffee 9y ago
    No, you are just giving a concrete example of one case of the well documented genocide. Here is one much more subtle example of genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrian_Finns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrian_Finns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportations_of_the_Ingrian_Finns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportations_of_the_Ingrian_Fi... The deportations led to the rapid ethnic assimilation of Ingrian Finns. After 1956, return to Ingria was officially allowed but made unfeasible in practice;
    - mercurial 9y ago
      That's not a genocide, that's a deportation followed by forced cultural assimilation. It's bad, too, but it's not the same thing as exterminating a population.
      - eveningcoffee 9y ago
        If we take into account how these deportations usually proceeded and what surrounded them then you can count also on murders, including torturing to death and dying due to extremely inhuman conditions. But this is not important because it would still be genocide without all of it. Genocide is not killing of people but killing a génos (nation, race, religious group etc). As the author of the term Raphael Lemkin put >Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. So yes, what happened to the Ingrian Finns was a genocide.
        grzm 9y ago
        Thanks for taking the time to include the quote. However, please don't use code blocks (indentation) for quoting blocks of text like this as it forces side scrolling, which is particularly difficult on mobile devices. It's common on HN to prefix paragraphs with > to indicate a long quote. I also like to italicize block quotes to further set them off. For example: > Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify…
coldtea 9y ago
>No. There were no US Einsatzgruppen, there was no US equivalent to the nazi Backe-Plan. Why bother when you can just drop some atomic bombs to test on them (to "make them surrender")? Or spray them with agent orange? Or just help Suharto get rid of some millions and let him do the footwork? >The US occupation of Japan was remarkably benign, for a country concerned with "systematic and indiscriminate extermination" Or course it was. As was their post-war dealings of West Germany. It helps that there was a large competitor eyeing both regions, so they had to make friends quickly...
- mercurial 9y ago
  > Why bother when you can just drop some atomic bombs to test on them (to "make them surrender")? Why the scare quotes? It is still debated, and the fanaticism of the Japanese resistance (for instance, in Okinawa) makes a fairly compelling case that a land-based invasion of Japan would be extremely costly for both the invaders and the civilian population. > Or spray them with agent orange? It's pretty terrible as a weapon of mass destruction. Don't you think that if the US had wanted to annihilate the population of North Vietnam, they would have employed something a bit more direct? Comparatively, I don't see the general disregard for civilian casualties exhibited by the Saudis in their ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen as a sign that they intend to wipe out the population wholesale. > Or just help Suharto get rid of some millions and let him do the footwork? Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely not condoning the US foreign policy. But I don't see the US involvement in the mass killings conducted by Suharto as something racially motivated against Asians. It was a case of "the only good communist/leftist sympathizer is a dead one".
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Why the scare quotes? It is still debated Only as much as needed to clean-up a predetermined decision for a show of power for the post-war era to fit the official narrative. (And even if it was "that a land-based invasion of Japan would be extremely costly for both the invaders and the civilian population" still wouldn't justify nuking civilians. War crimes are not excused when they make one win more cheaply). >It's pretty terrible as a weapon of mass destruction. Don't you think that if the US had wanted to annihilate the population of North Vietnam, they would have employed something a bit more direct? Why would they want to annihilate them? They wanted to win the war. So fucking their livelihood and health over AND still getting to use the hypocritical defense of "see, we weren't meaning to annihilate them" works even better when you need to maintain face. If anything of the kind was done on their own soil of course, they'll still be screaming bloody murder for all eternity (like Pearl Harbor, even though they purposefully provoked Japan for months before it acted).
kobeya 9y ago
Or the Rape of Nanking.

eveningcoffee 9y ago

You can skin a cat in many ways. For one case where the architects of the genocide did not get away with it there are multiple where they did. I am not implying that what US did was a planned genocide. I am just pointing out that above is not a rebuttal of it.

mercurial 9y ago
> You can skin a cat in many ways. For one case where the architects of the genocide did not get away with it there are multiple where they did. Of course. The US genocide of Native Americans did not lead to the Nuremberg trials. > I am just pointing out that above is not a rebuttal of it. It is about giving an example of what a policy of genocide lead by a technologically equivalent power looks like, and contrasting it with the actual behaviour of the US in the same area. Shoplifting and murder are both against the law, but there is a marked difference between the two.
- eveningcoffee 9y ago
  No, you are just giving a concrete example of one case of the well documented genocide. Here is one much more subtle example of genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrian_Finns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrian_Finns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportations_of_the_Ingrian_Finns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportations_of_the_Ingrian_Fi... The deportations led to the rapid ethnic assimilation of Ingrian Finns. After 1956, return to Ingria was officially allowed but made unfeasible in practice;
  - mercurial 9y ago
    That's not a genocide, that's a deportation followed by forced cultural assimilation. It's bad, too, but it's not the same thing as exterminating a population.
    - eveningcoffee 9y ago
      If we take into account how these deportations usually proceeded and what surrounded them then you can count also on murders, including torturing to death and dying due to extremely inhuman conditions. But this is not important because it would still be genocide without all of it. Genocide is not killing of people but killing a génos (nation, race, religious group etc). As the author of the term Raphael Lemkin put >Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. So yes, what happened to the Ingrian Finns was a genocide.
      - grzm 9y ago
        Thanks for taking the time to include the quote. However, please don't use code blocks (indentation) for quoting blocks of text like this as it forces side scrolling, which is particularly difficult on mobile devices. It's common on HN to prefix paragraphs with > to indicate a long quote. I also like to italicize block quotes to further set them off. For example: > Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify…

coldtea 9y ago

>No. There were no US Einsatzgruppen, there was no US equivalent to the nazi Backe-Plan. Why bother when you can just drop some atomic bombs to test on them (to "make them surrender")? Or spray them with agent orange? Or just help Suharto get rid of some millions and let him do the footwork? >The US occupation of Japan was remarkably benign, for a country concerned with "systematic and indiscriminate extermination" Or course it was. As was their post-war dealings of West Germany. It helps that there was a large competitor eyeing both regions, so they had to make friends quickly...

mercurial 9y ago
> Why bother when you can just drop some atomic bombs to test on them (to "make them surrender")? Why the scare quotes? It is still debated, and the fanaticism of the Japanese resistance (for instance, in Okinawa) makes a fairly compelling case that a land-based invasion of Japan would be extremely costly for both the invaders and the civilian population. > Or spray them with agent orange? It's pretty terrible as a weapon of mass destruction. Don't you think that if the US had wanted to annihilate the population of North Vietnam, they would have employed something a bit more direct? Comparatively, I don't see the general disregard for civilian casualties exhibited by the Saudis in their ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen as a sign that they intend to wipe out the population wholesale. > Or just help Suharto get rid of some millions and let him do the footwork? Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely not condoning the US foreign policy. But I don't see the US involvement in the mass killings conducted by Suharto as something racially motivated against Asians. It was a case of "the only good communist/leftist sympathizer is a dead one".
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Why the scare quotes? It is still debated Only as much as needed to clean-up a predetermined decision for a show of power for the post-war era to fit the official narrative. (And even if it was "that a land-based invasion of Japan would be extremely costly for both the invaders and the civilian population" still wouldn't justify nuking civilians. War crimes are not excused when they make one win more cheaply). >It's pretty terrible as a weapon of mass destruction. Don't you think that if the US had wanted to annihilate the population of North Vietnam, they would have employed something a bit more direct? Why would they want to annihilate them? They wanted to win the war. So fucking their livelihood and health over AND still getting to use the hypocritical defense of "see, we weren't meaning to annihilate them" works even better when you need to maintain face. If anything of the kind was done on their own soil of course, they'll still be screaming bloody murder for all eternity (like Pearl Harbor, even though they purposefully provoked Japan for months before it acted).

kobeya 9y ago

Or the Rape of Nanking.