National Space Policy: NSDD-42 (issued on July 4th, 1982)

From Scott Kozel:
(Stuf4) wrote:

From Scott Kozel:

Police work in the U.S. avoids killing suspects in all but the
rarest of instances. "Good police work" generally means taking the
suspects into custody without injuring the suspects.

I seem to remember a quote from Sun Tzu about the best war being one
that is won without fighting (or something to that effect).

If there is no fighting, there is no war.

The point made was that both police and military use deliberate
homicide as a method of dealing with problems. I see this as a simple
fact.

Sure the police will often avoid killing. Sun Tzu's point is that the
military does too.

Sure, I would agree with that. Of course, the Japanese has the power to
stop the war, or to have never started it the first place.

And I would point out that the US had the power to prevent war as
well. The concept is known as pacifism. As captured in the popular
1960s koan:

What if they gave a war and no one came?

Pearl Harbor was an attack. It was the violent response from the US
that turned the conflict into a war.

You're sick. Japan had been fighting a war of conquest in China since
1932, and in 1941 they decided to expand it to taking over the
territories and countries in the western half of the Pacific, and
beyond. At the same time that Pearl Harbor was attacked, Japan launched
attacks and invasions all over Southeast Asia and the western Pacific,
including invading the U.S. territories and the allies of the U.S.

Your "pacifism" is called "suicide".

The term 'suicide' negates the responsibility of the aggressor in the
killing.


But I do agree with your points about how violent the Japanese were
prior to Pearl Harbor.

....and a balanced view of history would recognize how violent the
United States was as well. That is, after all, how the country
expanded from Atlantic coastal states across to the Pacific and over
to Hawaii and the Philippines (a US territory when bombed by the
Japanese at the same time as Pearl).


So who is the enemy? Someone like John Lennon might say that violence
itself is the enemy.

This brand of Lennonism challenges us to "imagine there's no country".


The U.S. did not "conquer" the British, the U.S. colonies declared
independence from Britain in 1776, and Britain started a war in an
effort to bring the colonies back into Britain.

Losing a war is otherwise known as being conquered.

That's nonsense. Britain attacked the U.S. colonies, the U.S. colonies
defeated the attack. Britain was not "conquered", they still had their
nation, and the U.S. colonies did not attempt to invade Britain.

A war takes place. Those who submit are called the conquered. Those
who are submitted to are called the victors. Basic terminology here.

The territory that Britain lost was those 13 colonies. This was
conquered territory (formerly part of the British Empire, subsequently
the United States).


Notice how after the war, droves of citizens from those former British
colonies packed up and moved from their homes in Connecticut,
Virginia, etc, to places like Canada. They left because the British
had been conquered.

_They_ had been conquered.


Much fewer bases than 15 years ago. It is also hilarious that you
mention Britain, without any mention of their centuries of empire
building.

The British Empire is so widely known that I consider it cliche. I'm
not sure what you see as so amusing here.

It is the US Empire that goes so under-noticed, and I choose to
highlight it as an effort toward a balanced view of history.

Your revisionist view of history, you mean. There is no "US Empire".

A country that starts as a coastal nation and then kills off its
neighbors as it expands to become a continental nation and then
expands some more after that by nationalizing far away lands is what
is typically known as an empire.

Consider those humble beginnings as a coastal sliver of a nation.
Even then places like New York were boasting of reign over adjacent
nations like the Iroquois.

What name does New York boast? The Empire State.

American buildings in Manhattan are seen by those outside the United
States as symbols of imperial tyranny. In the 18th century, those
symbols of empire were built of wood and stone. By the beginning of
the 21st century, those symbols of empire had been built high enough
to scrape the sky.

Your complaints about the prosecution of WWII, would indicate that your
method of the U.S. fighting the war would have led to vastly higher
casualties on both sides, and you seem unconcerned about that.

I have not been complaining about the targeting of civilians. It is a
simple fact of history.

It's a lie. The U.S. did not target civilians, they targeted military
targets. The fact that Japan had civilians intermingled with military
targets, made Japan responsible for any harm that came to their
civilians.

(Points previously made about indiscriminate weapons such as
incindiaries and nukes.)


~ CT