“I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States,” General Jacob H. Smith said.
Since it was a popular belief among the Americans serving in the Philippines that native males were born with bolos in their hands, Major Littleton “Tony” Waller asked, “I would like to know the limit of age to respect, sir.”
“Ten years”, Smith said.
“Persons of ten years and older are those designated as being capable of bearing arms?”
“Yes.” Smith confirmed his instructions a second time.
Hm yes Trump saying dumb shit is worse than that time the US fucking nuked two cities.
Every American I’ve ever talked to defends the nukes as a moral and justifiable act. I just don’t ever bring it up anymore, I don’t want to know.
Whenever I ask people to justify the bombings, I invariably get some alternate reality narrative about tremendous violence ensuing if they hadn’t nuked the cities. I guess you can justify any action as long as you have the imagination to fantasize about an even worse alternative.
The aspect of the decision to us the Atomic bomb that is particularly grotesque and unjustifiable from any standpoint, is that they could have easily done what many of the Atomic scientists recommended. To detonate the first bomb in Tokyo Bay at noon, a safe distance away from the city’s inhabitants, but close enough for everybody there to see just how powerful a nuke is.
Wait, was that the recommended use by it’s engineers? Do you have a source for that? I need to add more sources to my collection
the fact that there were two still really fucks me up. like you do that shit once, kill like a hundred thousand innocent people, sleep like a baby for three fucking days, then do it again? absolutely fucking monsters
I just think the line “a million dead Iraqis” when I see shit like this
But then again, ceaseless killing in someone else’s homeland is “oops” while getting mocked in public is unacceptable
What really makes me roll my eyes with all of this is that I grew up in the Bush years when they made these exact same statements regarding Bush being an embarrassment and WORST. PRESIDENT. EVERRRRRRR.
There used to be websites dedicated to making fun of Bush’s quotes cause he sounded so dumb. Then as soon as he’s out of the white house, they whitewash him and talk about how goofy he was and that he really had America’s best interests in mind when he was letting people drown during hurricane Katrina and invading Iraq and Afghanistan. I can’t wait for them to whitewash Trump.
“he had amerikkkas best interests at heart! he drone striked that top antifa terrorist dictator soleimani and thus saved is all from isis!” -ellen, introducing her next guest
Political Historians remind me of Military Historians in that they both rigorously study individual battles/elections, and the like, without caring at all for the wider context around them, and deeply believe in Great Man Theory; just with politicians subbed in for Generals.
