Let's tap the celebratory keg!

Here, use mine. It's pretty clean.

Kids... They blow up so fast!

I hope they fry in hell.

That Uday was one of the creepiest looking Gomers I think I have come across. I hope his last few days were filled with hardship and despair

Damn, I'm disappointed!

And here I had that shredding machine all polished up for The Boys, too... :)

Casey;

Dead or alive, pal, dead or alive. The machines work either way. Heh.

IT will be interesting to see how this plays out in the media. Already some pundits are pooh-poohing the importance of this victory.

At some point in time, the media is going to wake up and be forced to realize things are going well in Iraq, or at least, the average American will see it and the broad negative media will continue to lose credibility.

I'm glad these two bastards, who helped their father sow the wind of terror among their own people in Iraq, have reaped the whirlwind of violent death.

I understand from listening to one of the key US people there that about 85% of the attacks on American occupation troops in Iraq take place in an isolated strip of land south of Tikrit and north of Baghdad, the old Baath heartland. The fact is, the saddamite guerillas there can be ground down through proper application of carrot and stick tactics. So we ought to stay the course.

But our key goals in that country should be focused on making certain Iraq is not again in position to threaten peace, and stabilizing the supply of oil from the big fields around Kirkuk and Mosul in the north and Basra in the south.

As for a new Iraqi government, that is for the people there to work out on their own. I don't expect it to be anything close to what we have in the west, and that is not necessary for the purposes described above. Just so they cause no further trouble of a scale requiring dispatching of hundreds of thousands of American military personnel to the Persian Gulf as was needed twice in a dozen years.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I think this is a major catch and will lead to getting their daddy soon.
I just toasted to their death with a glass of Anchor Steam which I obtained today. Good stuff, thanks for the tip.

I remember soon after 9/11, toasting to Osama's death, or the prospect thereof. It's no fun toasting to someone's death after they actually die.

Good riddance, to be sure. However, if this report is really true, I'm disappointed that they couldn't be tried publicly and made to answer for their horrific governance of Iraq and their crimes against its people. I would much rather have seen them forced to watch the rebirth of Iraq through the bars of a cage. It's a better bet at retribution and justice than whatever hell may or may not await them.

John: If we locked them up in an Iraqi jail and put them on trial, the frequency of attacks on US troops would only increase. They're hardly martyrs in death, but the kind of violence a trial would inspire has to weigh heavily on the choice to attack the house rather than try and capture them alive. (That and the fact that a raid would've caused more American casualties.)

This may be a bit stupid but how do we know that they weren't doubles. Saddam has several running around. Why wouldn't his son's?

Just think, if I wasn't a "bright" I could enjoy the thought of them roasting in hell. But alas, I'll have to settle for their death by massive lead poisoning.

Tim the Soldier

This is great news. I think the 4 hours it took was partly in an attempt to capture them, live. But at some point, the "honor" the SOBs get by surviving (really, some idiotarians are criticizing the US for taking so long!), overweighs the desire to take them alive.

I suspect attacks will be lessened, and fear, much reduced.

"Well, hello Beelzebub, I'm Uday, and this is my brother Qusay. Say, don't you have air conditioning down here?"

It's good news if its true. However there is the chance of the deaths being mere US propaganda. Remember the 'fall of Basra' a week before british troops reached it, could be another trick to stop the people of Iraq worrying about a return to the regime, and encourage them to cooperate with the US administration.

Hope Uday fries, he looks like the arab michael jackson, ugggh.

arnorld harris: The problem is, it is not up to the Iraqi people to decide their government. So far no attempt at government restructure has occured, and the country has slipped formt he regime of Sadam to an unwanted Administration regime, unwanted by the people of Iraq, and forcing its will, and the philosophies of the Unites States, not to mention their oil companies, upon them.

Bob,

In the end, everybody gets what's coming to them, and that includes Iraqis and Americans. So the Iraqis will get the sort of government that fits their history, their national temperament, and, above all, their islamic culture.

You know as well as I do that a bunch of foreign troops occupying any faraway country will make no permanent mark on the people there or their institutions. For sure, we can conquer them, and probably even kill the guerillas who have been shootng at our troops and killing 1-2 per day.

But in time, our troops will be pulled out, and the Iraqis will revert to control by some updated version of the saddamites, or Iraq will break up into its natural segments of Kurds in the far north, shia Arabs in the south and sunni Arabs in the center. The culture of a nation also defines its political destiny, and I doubt that all the foreign troops in the world could change the culture, or multiple cultures, of a society such as Iraq.

Because islam itself (the very word "islam" means submission) is a refined system of slavery that teaches its adherents to love their chains and their bondage. People raised under such a system cannot and will not change, with the exception of those who make their way to non-islamic societies and may therefore raise their children in freedom.

As for the oil companies and the Iraqi oil supply, they are just about the sole reason I supported the invasion of Iraq a few months ago. If you had been reading any of my other comments on Dean's World, you would understand that I think the concept of democracy is ridiculous, and that I believe solely in the viability of constitutional republics, for populations willing to abide by the strict limitations of such constitutions. You would understand further that I think the property rights of those who originally developoed the oilfields are of greater value than the vaguely described human rights of the colonial populations who rode by these oilfields on camelback, staring dumbly at the white men who made untold wealth come out of the ground.

So yes, I am pro-imperialist, but with a difference. I have never fooled myself into imagining that we sent expeditions into these places for the benefits of the natives.

I am not a politically correct individual, as this expression is presently defined in western culture, and I make no apologies for this whatsoever, to any person, for any reason.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

You know as well as I do that a bunch of foreign troops occupying any faraway country will make no permanent mark on the people there or their institutions.

Ya think? So you don't believe we had a measurable impact on Germany or Japan? Or you allow that we do, but only as viewed by puny mortals who can't view all of history in Geologic Time and who see mass murder as beyond "icky."

At least 8% of the living inhabitants of lands formerly occupied by the Mongols are genetic descendants of Ghengis Khan. How's that for a permanent mark?

Jonathan,

The armed force of the United States occupied Japan in an utterly peaceful manner immediately upon that country's formal surrender on Sep 2, 1945.

They did so with the cooperation of Japan's unsurrendered army, part of which lined up along the roads facing outward on each side of the roads, so the American forces could pass freely with no threat of attack from vengeful civilians. Nor were there any vengeful civilians or military personnel.

The armed forces and government of Japan surrendered as it did solely because the emperor of Japan, Hirohito, who was regarded as divine under by all elements of society under their unique Shinto religion, ordered them to do so in a radio broadcast which was probably listened to by nearly all adult Japanese, following the two attacks on their cities by the United States with nuclear weapons.

Up to that point, the armed forces of Japan had resisted the United States and its allies more strongly than any armed foe we had ever faced. This resistance included enemy officers, enlisted men and civilians committing suicide rather than facing the societally-enforced ignominy of surrender.

On the major Japanese-defended islands that our forces had to invade in World War II, there was one American casualty for every two Japanese on the island. One of my late older cousins was a US Marine who served on Guadalcanal island in the southern Solomon island chain in the southwest Pacific.

Without Hirohito's clearly understood order to his own people, they would have fought us to the death, which we were prepared to mete out. Had the United States fought its way into Tokyo in 1945 or 1946 the same way we got into Baghdad earlier this year, our government had realistically estimated the probability of as many as a half-million American casualties and many millions of Japanese who would have been killed in the terrible process of grinding down these people and their country, cave after cave, bunker after bunker. Read some time about the day to day events on Tarawa, Saipan, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Pelelieu, New Britain, New Guineau, Guadalcanal, Manila city and virtually every other location in the Pacific war defended by these probably toughest and most well-ordered of all warriors, past or present.

We got into their country because their emperor ordered them to allow us in with no further bloodshed. Their culture changed because their governmental elites desired and sought out such change, as the Japanese have done on a selective basis at various times in the history.

If you want to discuss or debate this matter at length, begin by making the most obvious comparisons between the histories, national temperaments, and cultures of the peoples of Iraq and the people of Japan.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb

a bunch of foreign troops occupying any faraway country will make no permanent mark on the people there or their institutions.

Yeah, that's why the Philipines aren't largely Catholic and why so many Filipinos don't have Spanish surnames.

Arnold: and why do you imagine that the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, had what I interpret as a change of heart, electing to order everyone to roll out the red carpet for the occupational forces? Either:

1) He really didn't support the concept of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, but had been napping since the early 30s, and had just then gotten around to making his pro-American policy recommendations known, or;

2) Two successive very bright American-engineered glows on the horizon materially influenced his decision.

We did it. And I couldn't care less about the mechanism through which our action was transmitted to the Japanese people, radically affecting their culture.

We are arguably even responsible for the Godzilla movies.

Here's a question for you:

If Saddam is still alive and has any means (like that massive albeit well-hidden WMD stockpile) to propagate an attack against the United States or its troops, have we just given him two more reasons to refrain or two reasons not to?

I just don't know. Up until now we've carefully steered clear of doing anything which might upset Saddam. I share your concern that this could potentially reverse all of the progress Bush has made towards strengthening the ties between the US and his regime.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully he turns out to be a magnanimous and forgiving man.

I share your uncertainty. No administration jobs for us, I suppose.

Never give up hope! Keep sending the resume.

Jonathan,

Emperor Hirohito obviously surrendered his country because his government and army had lost the most disastrous war in Japanese history. (But you already knew that before you rhetorically asked me about it.)

I once again remind you that culture determines how any specific people will respond to conquest, the outright decision of a recognized national leader to force a complete sea change in the nation's future, and much else. And above all, I remind you that Japanese and Iraqi sunna and shia Arabs and Kurds are totally different kinds of people with cultures as different as it is possible to have.

Jerry Kindall,

The Spanish empire took control of the Philippine islands in the middle of the 16th century, exercized uninterrupted colonial rule over them for 350 years. Many -- not all -- the Filipinos therefore have Spanish surnames, and most of them are Roman Catholic. All this is more or less the same as happened to the Indians all over south and central America during the same time period. The Inquisition and an absolutist colonial government saw to that.

So what's your point? You possibly think we are going to occupy Iraq for 350 years, along with Christian missionaries backed up by police powers that will permit us to burn down their mosques and burn to death their imams?

(I've tangled with the best on Dean's World, and I say you have not argued this thread very well.)

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

"Never give up hope! Keep sending the resume."

I think the resume's OK. Perhaps I'm lacking the right business references.

Hey Arnold:

Your observation that there are cultural differences between the Japanese and Iraqis, while certainly true, bears no relevance to the accuracy of your generalization:

You know as well as I do that a bunch of foreign troops occupying any faraway country will make no permanent mark on the people there or their institutions.

I choose to concentrate on the Japanese example because it most obviously disproves this generalization. We can set Iraq aside for the moment, Japan should be sufficient.

If I understand you correctly, you allow that:

Emperor Hirohito obviously surrendered his country because his government and army had lost the most disastrous war in Japanese history.

and believe one of the following things:

1) The American defeat of Japan (which precipitated Hirohito's surrender) left no permanent mark on the development of Japan's culture and institutions;

2) The American defeat of Japan did leave permanent marks on the development of Japan's culture and institutions, but the US troops themselves had no influence on the outcome of the war, or;

3) The American defeat of Japan did leave permanent marks on the development of Japan's culture and institutions and the US troops did influence the outcome of the war, but their subsequent seven-year occupation of Japan had no influence.

#3 seems a little the most defensible, if overly legalistic, and you could always claim with technical accuracy that it was MacArthur and his yellow legal pad that actually made the major occupation-era changes. But I have a personal theory regarding where that yellow legal pad would've gotten jammed if the troops weren't there to back him.

Is there an option #4 that I've overlooked?

Sure, Jonathan.

Option #4 that you overlooked is that as soon as the emperor ordered the Japanese government and military forces to surrender, the US occupation army hardly was needed. Yes, there were US troops around Japan. But it was the easiest of military occupations, and most of the military forces we had there were sent into battle in Korea after the communist invasion in June 1950.

It may sound strange to you, and sometimes it surely does so to me, almost 60 years after General of the Army Douglas MacArthur lined up scores of allied officers on one side of a big table holding the documents of formal surrender, aboard the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo bay, then lined up a handful of Japanese military and civil officials on the other side of that table, then spoke out in a loud, clear icy voice to his chief of staff,

"Sutherland... show him where to sign."

But incredible or not, that was the very moment at which MacArthur became the actual ruler of Japan. There was not another such military figure ever in the history of the United States -- certainly not Washington, Grant, Pershing, Eisenhower, nor anyone else -- who could have pulled this off merely by the ambience generated by his very presence. As author William Manchester once described him, MacArthur truly was the closest that any officer of the United States ever came to becoming the essence of an American Caesar.

So he really did not need an occupation force. He was the steel fist in the velvet glove, who radiated raw power in every step he took. Far better than almost anyone else who held serious diplomatic or military power in the United States government, he understood the social psychology of both the elites and masses of Japan and virtually every other major country of the Orient.

His first night in Japan, before there were almost any American troops ashore, he had himself driven to one of the great hotels that had survived the terrible incindiery and high-explosives raids of the 20th United States Army Air Force. Accompanied solely by a couple of his staff officers. The hotel manager and his staff greeted him at the door in the same manner as the staff of a great English estate would have greeted the return of their lord. He ordered, and received, a finely prepared steak dinner, exactly as it would have been prepared for him back in the United States -- a land he had not even set foot in since the mid-1930's, and which we would actually fly back to until the end of his career in 1951. As evening approached, there was concern of his staff officers that he should have a bodyguard for the night. He replied that his host would not violate the decorum of Japanese hospitality. He spent the night alone, and in refreshing comfort, correct in his appraisals of friends and enemies alike, and rested to begin his six years as the American proconsul and Shogun of Japan.

He took up headquarters in the Dai-Ichi office building in the heart of Tokyo. The day came when he should meet the Emperor Hirohito. That day, the Emperor came to MacArthur. At the Dai-Ichi building. Not the other way around. The two great men treated each other with exactly the kind of formalized and pleasant dignities needed for this special moment in Japanese history. You see, Hirohito too understood the importance of what MacArthur needed to accomplish in Japan, and was determined to play his historic role. And besides, the two men respected each other. From what I have studied, I have come to believe that almost any Japanese of all social classes -- and especially the power elite -- would be fully sensitive to the nuance of power relationships inherent in what had happened that fateful year.

They all were determined to make a new Japan built upon the basis of a close relationship with the West and especially with the United States. They no longer were dreaming of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere dominated by Japanese military might. The Zaibatsu -- the great trading companies of Japan -- even then were thinking of the rebuilding of their country, and investment opportunities in the greatest single market in the world -- the United States of America. And is this not precisely what they accomplished within a single generation?

Most of you reading this probably have never heard of W Edward Deming, who was an American mathematical physicist, but he and his principles of industrial manufacturing management were sought out and studied by the postwar Zaibatsu. This -- and much else they undertook to reorganize under the majestic and benevolent gaze of their new Shogun -- laid the basis for the postwar international industrial and financial power of Japan.

The fact is, the moment their Emperor -- and God -- ordered the Japanese nation to lay down their arms and submit, that was precisely the form of total obedience to authority that virtually every person on the Japanese home islands had been trained to offer, more or less from birth until death. MacArthur understood this as well as the Japanese, because in such a country, force rarely is needed to compel such unity of behavior. And unlike any other great society in the world, Japan is almost totally monoracial, monocultural, monolinguistic. A monolith of nations, a characteristic which has been one of the keystones of the remarkable greatness of their society.

I write about Japan occasionally, partly because my admiration for them surpasses that for almost all other societies. But I have never been there, and I neither read nor speak their language.

But I think I understand their national imperative. A small country with few natural resources, surrounded by much larger, more powerful countries which have from time to time threatened their independence. The United States, China and Russia all have done just that.

So they must perform a precarious balancing act amidst these very real tigers, lest they be devoured.

The Japanese way of doing this is to be able to reformat their society, their economy, the military, even to no small degree their culture. More times than most westerners would imagine. The arrogant and ethnocentric leadership cadres of our country that dealt with Japan in the 1920s and 1930s saw them as a militaristic and fascistic upstart. They read them wrong. Japan was a frightened society lashing out to obtain raw materials and markets that without which, their industries would languish and their independence evaporate.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

"The Japanese way of doing this is to be able to reformat their society, their economy, the military, even to no small degree their culture"

So Japanese culture supercedes cultural determinism relative to Iraqi culture?

Shep, I would argue that a culture that has the capability of restructuring itself, simply on the self-evident nature of the patterns of power they perceive in their environment, has advantages available to none who lack this unique ability.

It is not Japanese culture that supercedes cultural determinism relative to Iraqi culture, the society-wide adaptabilit that makes Japan an infinitely greater society than Iraq, and possibly the greatest of all world cultures. Because America sadly lacks this particular trait.

In any case, you dare to compare Japan -- with its spotless, productive, well-organized people, their students striving for excellence almost from their earliest childhoods -- to a pack of shouting, gesticulating, squalid, dirty middle easterners?

My contempt for any such comparison is endless.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

What gives Japanese culture this superior ability to transform itself?

And meanwhile over at Indymedia, here's a nauseating but risible little piece which provides further evidence that there was ne'er a tyrannical thug who didn't have his cry-me-a-river apologists on the anti-American Left. Or at least that for some people, any stick is good enough to beat the US with.

Yeah. Piece is entitled The US executed Saddams sons. Here you will learn strange new, hitherto unrevealed "facts" about the death of Uday and Qusay, to rank right up there along with Elvis and JFK.

Read it and weep. Or read it and laugh. Whichever.

Hey Arnold:

Thanks for the clarification of your thinking. The two questions that immediately spring to mind after having read it are:

1) If the US troops truly took no part ("left no mark") in the total reformulation of Japanese culture and institutions which took place during the occupation--and were in fact unnecessary to support MacArthur's efforts there--why did it take 1950-1945=5 ("five") long years for the bulk of those troops to be pulled out? In fact, why were they sent in the first place? Is there any record of evidence that they were forced on MacArthur by Truman?

2) If the Japanese truly have such an amazing ability to reinvent themselves in the face of changing times, why have they endured at least 15 years of economic constipation and still appear unlikely to break out of their current deflationary trend (last I checked)?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Back to the origin of this thread:
death of U & Q.

Saw the pix. Not sure why everyone is so upset about the release.

I remember a similar pic of Che Guevara back in the late 60s early 70s.

As for Iraqis not believing it until they see it...seems natural to me.

But what if they don't believe it even then? Can't say. I mean, they both used body doubles did they not? I suppose people will believe what they want to believe.

Shep, that's an interesting question, about what gives Japanese culture this superior ability to transform itself. And although I admire them greatly, and have made an effort to get to know their story better than most Americans ever do, I don't have enough knowledge to answer it.

So I asked my wife, Stefi (Stefanija), a Croatian girl educated in archaeology and anthropology who has spent a lifetime studying pre-historic, historic and contemporary cultures and their interactions with each other and their physical and economic environments. Here's what she thinks:

The Japanese nation is defined primarily by the fact of its nature as an island empire located comparatively close to the Asian mainland, but far enough away from all other powerful nations so as never to have been successfully invaded, overrun and colonized. This is what has enabled Japan to maintain such an almost total degree of racial, linguistic and cultural homogeneity.

The Japanese islands, although not necessarily small, have only limited space for agriculture and few mineral resources. An expanding population on these islands has no neighboring lands it can expand into, as is the case for most of the neighboring Asian peoples. When foreign or domestic economic, military or cultural pressures are brought upon them, they frequently have found it easier to make an effort to adapt themselves to the new circumstances they estimated they could not resist, and to make the best of the new situation. Other major changes in their way of life they adopted for convenience, or for simple opportunism, or to provide some useful that they previously had not possessed. For example, an alphabet.

According to Richard Hooker, in "Japanese Writing", the Japanese acquired their first writing system from China in the 6th and 7th centuries of the current era. Because the Japanese language and the Chinese group of languages are totally unlike, the Japanese first tried to adapt the Chinese ideogrammatic and syllabic writing system to a phonetic system based on Chinese words. Then they began using the Chinese characters ideogrammatically, in a system still known as kanji.

In the 7th and 8th centuries, the Japanese invented kana (borrowed words), also based on Chinese characters. Hiragana, one of its offshoots, was introduced by a Japanese Buddhist who while in India had studied the phonetically alpabetical Sanskrit. Hirigana therefore is totally syllabic, is faster and easier to write, and presupposes no foreknowledge of the Chinese alphabet. Still later, the Buddhists of Japan simplified into the katakana alphabet, a sort of shorthand which uses only a part of the original Chinese letter.

A major cultural threat came to Japan late in the 16th and early in the 17th centuries, in the form of Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish and English overseas traders and missionaries. The presence at first amused then later irritated the Japanese authorities, especially as these shortly began to interfere demonstrably by taking sides in various internal conflicts in Japan, and by feuding with one another.

The Japanese response was to boot them all out, kill any Japanese Christians they had left behind, and have nothing further to do with the outside world except for a single trading post from which no gaijin (foreigner) mix with Japanese society.

Some 250 years later, Japan was more or less a medieval society into which an unanswerable American fleet sailed uninvited, with demands for commerce and social intercourse. A couple of minor military skirmishes was all it took to convinced the Japanese government they must adapt to the new world or become a colonial plaything of the Americans from the east, the Russians from the north, or the Europeans from the far west.

Adapt they did, in the most far reaching, speedy and thorough social, cultural, economic, industrial, governmental, military and scientific revolution in human history. Within a single 40 year period, Japan emerged from medieval backwardness and international solitude to the status of a world power.

(One of them wistfully told a westerner that Europe and the Americans never learned to appreciate them for the exquisite beauty of their woodcut art or their gardens, but only for the fact they had learned to build better battleships and had revolutionized long range naval gunnery by 1904, when they destroyed the Russian fleet in one of history's most significant naval battles.)

The Japanese were by now an up-and-coming and even a leading imperialist power, in full emulation of the Americans, British, French, Dutch, Germans and Russians whose policies they emulated to the fullest extent. After taking Taiwan from China in a brief war in 1894, followed by taking control of Korea following another brief war in 1904, Japan joined the allies against Germany in 1914, for the explicit purpose of taking control of Germany's numerous cetral Pacific island possessions.

By the early 1930s, Japanese militarists openly had chosen the route of planned military conquest in Manchuria and were planning future armed expansion into the Chinese mainland and further southward into French Indochina, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines. All these plans were effectuated between 1937 and early 1942, as the German Nazi threats and conquests in Europe threatened or rendered ineffective the controls that the various west European countries previously held over their colonies in the lands and seas north of Australia. The purpose of their destruction of the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was to render the United States incapable of interfering with these conquests until Japan should have time to erect impregnable naval, air and land defenses. The history of our war in the southwest Pacific during 1942-1945 was essentially the story of how this country contradicted those otherwise well-planned Japanese moves.

I think the record clearly shows the Japanese nation has knowingly changed significant elements of its culture yet again since the MacArthur era that ended more than 50 years ago. So to has culture changed in the United States and Europe. But nowhere is cultural change more accomplished by design and forethought than in Japan.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Jonathan,

1) The US troops in Japan from 1945-1950 were there mostly to protect Japan and American interests in the far western Pacific from encroachments by Josef Stalin's malevolent red empire, not to keep the Japanese from misbehaving. Kim Il-Sung's North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, and the unpleasant aspect of great China united under communist domination. US thoughts of "occupying" Japan and Germany as well began evaporating as soon as the iron curtain clanged down across central Europe from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, and as the Soviet Union and its communist system became the main perceived enemy of the United States within bare months of the end of World War II. Even before, actually. Truman in the spring of 1945 determined the Soviets would be allowed no role in the administration and reconstruction of Japan.

In addition, US bases in Japan were easier and less expensive to acquire and maintain than anywere else in the region, and right from the get-go, Japanese civilian workers proved far more adept, willing and competent at any and all tasks assigned by their new American employers. If you examine the record of the "occupation" more closely than I think you have, you will learn the Japanese astonished the Americans for the degree of cooperation they freely offered in all aspects of life so soon following one of the most bitter military struggles in history.

2) The major sectors of the Japanese economy right up to the present has been dominated by more or less the same zaibatsu (trading companies) that came to power and riches in the Meiji era, always with state assistance to guarantee them functional monopolies.

But the experiences of the 20th century have shown that state capitalism leads to stagnant economic conditions for much the same reason that state socialism leads to a modern form of slavery. The Japanese, above all, are great pragmatists. And other than in shinto, the Japanese family household religion, or the buddhism that they also practice, they are little characterized by ideology. I expect they will shortly reform their present mixed economy by breaking the connections between the state, the great industries and the banks. If they were smart enough to discover W E Deming, they are equally smart enough to discover Ludwig von Mises.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Hi Arnold:

So for my understanding, please advise if I can paraphrase you accurately as follows:

1) the reason American troops stayed past the five minutes it took to discover their total irrelevance to the postwar reshaping of Japan was to be a forward-staged bulwark against the incipient Red Horde.

2) because of the Japanese' alleged superior adaptability, and because they even as we speak show no sign of dismantling their outmoded banking/corporate/government incestocracy, we must assume that they want their economy to remain in the doldrums. Possibly to create the Spartan conditions ideal for strengthen their national character?

As an aside, the crowning irony of this entire discussion is your willingness to defend a culture so committed to "face" and etiquette that they border on devious. You have always struck me as the kind of man who looks other people in the eye and honestly speaks his mind. Can you imagine what kind of reaction such behavior would provoke in a Japanese boardroom, where the very word "no" (or its Japanese equivalent) is culturally forbidden?

Just an observation.

Arnold & Jonathan:

The back-and-forth between the two of you here on this thread is one of the more interesting things I've read in some time. I mean, I find the content of it fascinating. And at the very same time, I'm fascinated by the dynamics of it all.

I repeat, I'm fascinated by the dynamics of your conversation, as well as by its content.

And by happy coincidence, this comes just as I've been re-reading Philip K. Dick's science-fiction novel, The Man in the High Castle-- wherein one can find plenty of detailed attention to matters of "face" and etiquette in postwar Japanese-occupied California [sic].

"And now... Arnold... Jonathan... back to you!" :)

Jonathan,

I am an American. I am not a Japanese. But I can recognize a superior product when I see one, even if I personally am one of the inferior products of a rapidly failing society. (That is true ojbectivity in its highest form.)

And comparing all the world cultures, more or less in the context of Professor Samuel Huntington's world cultural map, I give highest all-around points to Japan's. This does not mean that anyone in a society such as ours can truly emulate them or their attributes.

I will go farther and say that in the fullness of time, I think they will have more longevity than the United States or even western Europe. I say this because I believe a monoracial, monolinguistic, monocultural society characterized by buddhism, shintoism, capitalism, constitutional government and a social order dominated by a fierce desire to work and save money, and that accepts little or no immigration always has built-in superiorities over societies such as ours and those of western Europe whose values strongly have diverged into other directions.

Here in America, I am a Jacksonian, a gun-owner, a Republican functionary, and a businessman. But I recognize that had it been my fate to be born Japanese and in Japan, I would have far different values and expectations.

It would be of great value to the world if all peoples operated under the rule of laissez-faire capitalism, reason, and a philosophy practiced for the support of these, in place of faith and altruism, both of which I disdain. But until then, there will be superior cultures and inferior cultures, and I will judge Japan as among the most superior. And until then, I will never mistakenly imagine there is some sort of universal set of values that can take their place. The ultimate role of mankind is trade and self-fulfillment, which presupposes the victory of reason over faith.

And no, I am not at all rendered speechless by the thought of Japanese school children committing suicide because they could not achieve good grades. If that was to be your next retort in this conversation. The fact is, just don't give a damn.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb

Arnold,

I liked your comments until I saw this:

"The arrogant and ethnocentric leadership cadres of our country that dealt with Japan in the 1920s and 1930s saw them as a militaristic and fascistic upstart. They read them wrong. Japan was a frightened society lashing out to obtain raw materials and markets that without which, their industries would languish and their independence evaporate."

This is simply not accurate and indeed contradicted by your later comment "By the early 1930s, Japanese militarists openly had chosen the route of planned military conquest in Manchuria and were planning future armed expansion into the Chinese mainland and further southward into French Indochina, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines."

Japan could have attained the raw materials they needed through peaceful means had they not intended those materials for war. Japan was an imperial power whose primary goal was increasing her sphere of influence and international power. Japan can certainly point at other nations as role models, but that doesn't equate to "Japan was just misunderstood.

Your admiration for their incredible modernizing accomplishment is certainly warranted, but I think you let it blind you in this case.

Arnold & Jonathan:

I repeat once again, I'm fascinated by the dynamics of your conversation, as well as by its content. ;)

MJ,

The United States, as well as Japan is an imperial power whose primary goal is increasing her sphere of influence and international power. So too is any other country that has the muscle to achieve that goal. Which is fine by me, because I am an American, and I think imperialism, to no small degree was a good idea and probably still would be.

And the fact was, nobody in the leadership cadres either of the United States, Britain, France or the Netherlands made any effort to assess Japanese potentials and needs, or for that matter, the seriousness of the Japanese threat to their colonial possessions in southeast Asia. The root of the matter was that most people in western societies treated the Japanese as a sort of inferior race, not unlike pet monkeys that the generous west had taught how to run railways and build steel naval vessels. Officers and sailors of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, the very morning of the big attack, were reading popular magazine articles describing why Japanese made inferior pilots, why Japanese air and naval forces were not up to American standards, and all the rest of the pre-war propaganda that even I remembered as a young boy.

And we hated them all the more for it during the war, in a way that few Americans hated the Germans. Because they damaged our dignity by beating the crap out of us in just about every action in the Pacific until our preponderance of war materiel enabled us to overwhelm them.

I had no problem with the concept of burning hundreds of thousands of them to death in a single low-level bomber raid on Tokyo, or in the use of the first nuclear weapons against them. Because I believe neither in giving nor receiving pity in wartime. But yes, I admire them for their ruthlessness, and I am sorry that Americans do not exhibit more of the same characteristic. It might help us understand why the French and Germans are treacherous, and teach us not to expect help that is not forthcoming.

But the war has been over for a long time, and I support the idea of turning enemies into productive trading partners once the killings stop. And I also support the idea of learning from everybody. We may have to pull a Pearl Harbor on some other country some day. And if so, I hope we do so with equal ruthlessness.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Gentlemen:

Paul: I suspect you may be finding the conversation between Arnold and myself interesting more from an anthropological/psychological perspective than for the content itself (“Yes, friends, they are idiots, but the question remains: what kind of idiots are they?” – Gary Larson), but am happy to provide such entertainment as I can.

Arnold:

(…)But I can recognize a superior product when I see one, even if I personally am one of the inferior products of a rapidly failing society.(…)

You sell yourself short. I see you as one of the inferior products of a highly successful society. : ) (I kid you. I am a kidder).

I think I need to find one really solid quote, perhaps from an occupation-era geisha (“I’ll never forget the first GI I had. He was like a . . . how do you say, the horse with stripes? A zebra. Yes. Very much like a zebra, and none of the girls were interested in the local men any longer . . . “) to ultimately disprove your central thesis about the impact of the US troops on Japanese culture and customs. But this will probably take actual library research. I’ll see what I can do.

Meanwhile, I continue to take issue with your Oswald Spengler-esque adoration of The Other Master Race. I concede that we Americans routinely let the rest of the world (including the American South) beat us to the bunch militarily, the present Iraqi conflict notwithstanding. But your affection for Japan’s panoramic homogeneity is at odds with all the values you appear to hold most dear. You extol the Japanese insulation from immigration and consequent gene pool contamination, while discounting the longer-nosed, more hemophiliac of European monarchs and the non-Hollywood cast members of “Deliverance.” You applaud laissez-faire capitalism (practiced to a decreasing though still-strong degree in the US) while apologizing for Japanese overplanned rigidity and ongoing failure to even pretend to economically adapt. You worship Reason while blithely overlooking the Japanese unwillingness to have honest, direct, from-the-hip public debates of the kind you so clearly relish. You hold Japan’s conduct in WWII as an ideal antithesis to America’s loathsome altruism, ignoring the touching patience and compassion shown to Daniel-san by Mr. Myagi in “The Karate Kid.”

But I belabor the point. Japanese culture appears to be inferior to America’s untidy, mongrelized, sentimental, wrong-fork-using culture by practically every metric you appear to hold dear.

What up with that?

Jonathan,

1) I never wrote that I thought the culture of one country is fully transferable to another, but only that one people may find a way to adapt much or all the culture from another. That is true of Japan as well as the United States. What I hold in such high regard is the proven ability of the Japanese nation (I think they refer to themselves as the Yamato family) to adapt expertly to an existence on four big islands off the north Asian Pacific coast, island comprising mostly uncultivatable land with few mineral resources. I hold in higher regard their proven ability -- especially in the Meiji era -- to forcefully change their own way of life as they did, in order to avoid colonialization by the Americans and Europeans.

I would never be so foolish as to imagine that Americans could, would or should adopt Japanese character traits for use in this society, or that they should try acting and living as Americans do. (Without conquering someone else's land to give them the kind of expansion room that we have here on this continent.)

2) About the Spengleresque comparisons to which you alluded. I have never thought the Germans particularly superior to any of their neighboring peoples. In fact, I thought their master-race pretenses were laughable, especially in view of the fact that the Russians, man for man, proved tougher and more durable in combat and far more adaptable in the way they designed and used their weapons, organized their armies, and so forth. From what I have studied, the Germans of the Wilhelmian and Hitlerian era spent far too much of their time envying the British, whom, apparently, they could never overcome in war, and probably never would, regardless of the circumstances.

3) Back to the Japanese. It probably has become obvious to their entire business and industrial establishment that the Zaibatsu concept, which worked so well to help jack them from medievalism to great power status in the course of 40 or 50 years in the late 19th century, no longer fits their economic needs. They either will adapt or perish, but that is for them to work out. I admire them more than just about any other people, but I am not their ditto-head, and nobody else's, for that matter. I would if necessary, have seen them all killed during the big war, but I am glad peace brought them together with us in mighty industrial expansions.

How can I strongly admire a society that I would be prepared to see the armed forces of my country obliterate without mercy in wartime? You cannot successfully prosecute a war unless you wage it with such ruthlessness. (In any case, that is precisely what we came close to doing to them during World War II, and our people of that era never gave it a passing glance.)

4) Among the concepts in which I have no faith are multi-cultural societies. They call such places "Canada", "Jugoslavija", "Iraq", "British Empire", "Ireland", "Holy Roman Empire", and "Austria-Hungary". In essence, they have no long-term future, even though some of them stay together for a while. Already in this country we have a white American nation, a black American nation, a latin-American nation, and an asian-American nation. The seeds of ultimate dissolution were sown here long ago, when the founders thoughtlessly brought large numbers of African slaves here. The grim reaper of civilizations comes calling infrequently, but when he does, it is finished. I sometimes have this thought, that the reaper will come for America, be it a century or a millenium from now, because we will lack the homogeneity and steadfastness of purpose of a leadership class of the type that built this country, and because we will have hundreds of millions of mouths being fed by a productive class of decreasing size and increasing tiredness. Just like Rome. Can we do something about all this? Let us hope so, and work for it. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Incredible! How incredible this conversation is!

I feel terribly isolated from the rest of the world. I live in a small town in Australia, on the verge of being overrun with Sydney's expanding suberbs. I long for the suburbs to reach my small town though, as they will undoubtedly bring a greater number beliefs and more people like those seen in this conversation.

I am only sixteen and see only the opinions of unintelligent school children, but the naivete ( hope I spelt that correctly) is unbelievable. Somehow, all my peers believe that all Arabs are nasty, and America is idealised for the military action in Iraq. I am very relieved to see that there are a few more open-minded people out there. Thankyou

Well, Conabere,

If you are complimenting me as well as Jonathan, I can only tell you that most people regard me as a closed-minded old guy who locked everything he knows into his head, then zipped it shut, years earlier. An invisible mask is not a bad persona with which to fend off a mostly vapid collective set of universal opinions and those who propagate them, so I just smile when they say it.

But the truth is, a long time ago, I learned to question everything before forming an opinion, and in recent decades I have learned to substitute active research, reason and logic for faith and the conventional wisdomes of all types.

I was a 16-year-old 53 years ago, living in a great American city at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a titanic and worldwide struggle for the domination of the earth. Fear, zenophobia and outright hostility characterized their actions, and ours, with the relentless and enforced judgement on both sides of the confrontation lines that there was "no salvation outside the church", as one author of the Cold War described it. Nevertheless, the peoples of Russia, the United States and the whole world survived what we almost came to.

So you think there is no culture in your small town, and you're waiting for Sydney's suburbs to envelope you in urban development? Well, you're wrong. The fact is, with your computer, your access to the world-wide web (a well-named phenomenom) and your participation in conversations with people across this planet -- most of whom you will never meet face to face -- you have in fact opened a window into your own personal cultural domain. And in so doing, you have provided yourself the mechanism by which you can expand that domain to encompass knowledge and sift the opinions of countless people on countless topics. I would say, based on this perspective, that your parents are raising a 16 year old who is getting an unexpectedly fine education, and is making use of it.

Dean's World, the blogsite on which we are now corresponding, is one of the better examples of an entirely new and vibrant form of contemporary journalism that has developed in the wake of the introduction of the internet some years ago, and equally important, the ubiquitous access of large numbers of people to computers with high-speed data communications links. It is almost certain that the numerous active blogsites aleady are beginning to supplant the opinions posing as news of the now old-fashioned television news broadcasts. The news gathering agencies (such as United Press International, which I once worked for over a six-month period), have lost their key function, to no small degree because of the internet and its unique capabilities of broadcast and narrowcast news, opinions and a wealth of instantly locatable background information.

Make use of all this, and above all, have a good, productive and useful life, kid.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

"I sometimes have this thought, that the reaper will come for America, be it a century or a millenium from now, because we will lack the homogeneity and steadfastness of purpose of a leadership class of the type that built this country, and because we will have hundreds of millions of mouths being fed by a productive class of decreasing size and increasing tiredness. Just like Rome. Can we do something about all this? Let us hope so, and work for it."

Perhaps developing a cuture of altruism (like the Japanese) would help.

To bring the discussion back to Iraq (and yes, it has been fascinating), it seems that you are saying cuture can overcome culture. If that is true, and since culture is little more than the memory of one generation, what prevents the Iraqis from evolving theirs?

So, if the forces that allow for cultural change are merely cultural and culture is little more than the memory of one generation, what prevents the Iraqis from transforming theirs?

"I sometimes have this thought, that the reaper will come for America, be it a century or a millenium from now, because we will lack the homogeneity and steadfastness of purpose of a leadership class of the type that built this country, and because we will have hundreds of millions of mouths being fed by a productive class of decreasing size and increasing tiredness. Just like Rome. Can we do something about all this? Let us hope so, and work for it. But I wouldn't hold my breath."

Perhaps developing a culture of altruism (like the Japanese) would help.

Sorry for the 2nd (and 3rd) post.

Hey Guys:

I’ve been on the road. I apologize for my absence. I have not been to a library and have no new ammunition for the central debate. Or, more precisely, Arnold’s and my mutation of it.

Conabere: Thanks so much for the compliment, regardless of whom it was directed towards. What a very decent thing of you to say. I’m glad someone enjoys this blog half so much as I do.

There was a short story I read in high school entitled “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” and though I remember little about the story, the title always stuck with me, because I’ve seen versions of it play out at every new stage of life I’ve entered. If you are ever frustrated where you are, my recommendation (which you haven’t asked for) is to push yourself hard and punch through to the next level. The people you meet there are almost always more intelligent and at least as interesting as the ones you are accustomed to. Arnold’s comments about weblogs are very valid, also.

Arnold: if you’ll permit me to parse a response from your response: “I recognize that the US economy operates more efficiently and adapts more readily (except for a brief period during the 80s) than that of Japan, Japan’s patterns of social discourse hinder open debate and the intellectual clarity which only comes from the marketplace of ideas, and my own social habits are largely incompatible with the Japanese culture as a consequence of my upbringing, but I deeply respect what they accomplished with very limited resources, back when they were accomplishing a lot with very limited resources.”

Is that putting too fine a point on it?

Re: multiculturalism. Where is your faith in the American Melting Centrifuge? I think the US reflexively selects the best from among all cultural options arrayed. Italians, French, Indians, Japanese and Chinese are ahead of the Brits in cuisine, which is why the “McBangers” restaurant concept never quite caught on. Japan made us its girlfriend (in the federal penitentiary sense of the term) in the boardroom and on the shop floor using various quality-maximizing and team-building production methodologies, so we threw out the three-martini golfing ass-pinch and recast our entire business culture. Black Americans are consistently ten years ahead of the curve musically (a fact you’ll deny if your views on multiculturalism were shaped—as I suspect—by an incident involving a long traffic light and a pair of tricked-out Civics) so we see an overrepresentation of Black music artists and artistic ideas. Billy Ray Cyrus and Pauly Shore notwithstanding, the system almost always works as advertised.

So long as the bad ideas are allowed to fail miserably, their purveyors will have little effect on the course of the country. If multiculturalism has a role in bringing about your apocalyptic vision, it will be because talented and ambitious immigrants hasten us down our current path, on which the owners of capital need fewer and fewer brilliant entrepreneurs to manage their assets and maximize the return on their investments.