Cedarford plays the weak sister’s advocate:
1. Marxist labor theory – VDs point is only true if you look at classic Marxism and believe no thinking on the subject has occured in the last 125 years. For we all know that CEOs will rip off the value of worker productivity as much as possible and seek to devalue labor as much as possible by use of illegal labor and wiping out debts owed to labor through planned bankruptcies. In Latin America, today, we are seeing the collapse of Crony Capitalism after it’s failure there – and it’s replacement by socialist, even quasi-marxist governments.
From whence comes value? If value does not come from labor, (as is increasingly obvious to all and admitted by most economists), then on what grounds does the Marxian -note the term, it reflects an awareness of post-Marxist thought- defend forced distribution? Turning more central power over to a state already demonstrably willing to engage in crony capitalism is a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
2. VD kills me with his insistence that “because the outcome of the war was certain” internment or relocation was wrong because the dependents of enemy nationals lost a few “precious rights”. If nothing had been done, and several troop ships had been torpedo’d with the help of disloyal Japs here, thousands of dead soldiers washing ashore on the California coast – there would have been a bloodbath of Japs and their little born in the USA de-facto citizens. Led by Chinese and Koreans. As for their “precious rights” – 9 million Americans had their “precious freedoms” stripped away completely by the Draft. The whole country sacrificed and jobs were assigned by War Production Boards. War sucks, VD, fact of life.
What does this have to do with the military necessity, or the question of invasion raised by Malkin and revived here by Chuck and others? The Japanese military leaders didn’t plan an invasion of Hawaii because they knew it was impossible. The American military leaders didn’t plan for an invasion of Hawaii by the Japanese because they knew it was impossible. They not only planned for an invasion of the Phillipines, they planned for its fall in War Plan Orange.
They did, however, plan for the invasion of both Hawaii and the West Coast by the only power in the world capable of doing so. War Plan Red was the plan prepared in the event of an attack on the United States by England.
The baseless arrogance of clueless cretins who think they know more than the highest-ranking military leaders of both the past – on both sides – and present, despite knowing absolutely nothing about depth and scope of the historical military preparations astonishes me.
Since the glaringly obvious point seems to have somehow escaped these strategic geniuses, let me underline it for them. Even we ignore for the moment that the logistics were impossible, even if we lay aside the small fact that the entire Japanese carrier force couldn’t provide one-tenth of the air power required, even if we it pretend that the Japanese troop transport capability was so small that the Aleutian islands invasion required a substantial part of it, it would never, ever have happened, even if the Japanese had been the buck-toothed morons they were then portrayed as being.
Japan is going to invade America WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY OCCUPYING CHINA? Are you insane? 1.4 million Japanese soldiers – 67 percent of its total military strength – were fighting in China. They only had another 700,000 total to defend the home islands and the entire Pacific theatre. Furthermore, it took the Japanese THREE WEEKS just to complete their main landings on the Phillipines, and five months to successfully conclude their conquest.
3. Alterman is mostly wrong, but corporate ownership has meant the drive for profit has more and more supplanted serious news with tabloid fluff. 30% of cable “news” is hard news, 70% is now “cases” presented by infotainment lawyers about the latest pretty missing white girl.
Yes, I agree. However, this says nothing about the media’s bias with regards to the political spectrum, as Alterman would have it.