Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "The Front"
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@Front-Toward-Enemy Again, this is largely nonsense. Yes, the Army was at these places. However, they did not pull their own weight compared to the Marines. On Okinawa, for instance, the Army's 77th division ran into the Japanese buzzsaw and had to be relieved by the First Marine Division, who took the fight to the enemy and won.
Then again, compare and contrast Army fights in places like the Philippines to Marine Corps fights in places like Tarawa. I don't think you can reasonably say that those were battles of similar intensity.
Yes, the Army can field more men than the Corps can. In WWII, the Marine Corps topped out at six divisions, with 6th MarDiv only active for one battle (Okinawa). The Army had dozens. It is undeniably true that a vastly larger force can be more places at once than a smaller one.
It is also undeniably true that wherever the fighting was toughest in the Pacific, you would find United States Marines. Often alone, as on Tarawa and Iwo Jima.
Yeah, some of this has to do with MacArthur's....um...less desirable qualities (the man was a turd who was promoted vastly beyond his ability, as well as being a coward). But part of it also has to do with what the Marine Corps is. There's a reason that America's enemies fear US Marines and spread wild rumors about us - in Iraq, they believed that to join the Corps, we had to kill our parents, in WWII, the Japanese believed we were recruited from insane asylums, etc. Every enemy has a different wild rumor. The Army may be a professional force of well trained soldiers, but the Marine Corps is a warrior cult with training at least as good as the Army's but with a killer ethos that is unmatched. There's a reason you rarely see a pickup truck covered in Army bumper stickers.
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@redaug4212 You're specifically mentioning Guadalcanal and Peleliu as fights where the Army "carried a significant load of the fighting". This is outright false. On Guadalcanal, the brunt of the fighting was carried out by the 1st Marine Division. Then the 2nd Marine Division came in. By the time the Army got there, major resistance was essentially over, and the Army cleaned up after the Marines.
On Peleliu, the Army saw more fighting than on Guadalcanal, but one cannot honestly make the case that they fought like the Marines did.
Okinawa, the Army saw much more fighting than they ever did on Guadalcanal or Peleliu, but again, that battle was won by Marines. The Army got the first real combat there, but then the Corps had to come in and beat the Japanese where the Army could not.
Where was the Army's Tarawa? The Japanese commander there said that a million men in a hundred years couldn't take his atoll from him. It took 10,000 Marines three days. Where was the Army's Iwo Jima? Japanese commander on Iwo, General Kuribayashi, had organized a brilliant defense in depth with heavy fortifications and a network of tunnels, had artillery and machine guns registered on every potential landing zone, and was still destroyed by the Marines.
Yes, it is true that the Army had more troops in the Pacific than the Corps did. This is the very nature of the two branches. But there's a reason that Army lore focuses on Normandy and Bastogne, with hardly a mention of the Pacific. The fact is that the Army fought relatively easy campaigns in the Pacific behind Douglass MacArthur (who famously said in Korea that the safest place to be was behind a battalion of Marines), while the Marines fought absolutely brutal campaigns and performed feats of arms that we are still in awe of today.
Yes, I'm a Marine. I fought in Fallujah with The Old Breed. I'm immensely proud of that. I can't claim that I'm unbiased. But the facts speak for themselves. It was the Marine Corps that ripped the empire from the Japanese grasp.
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@redaug4212 Okay, several issues here.
On Guadalcanal, you're claiming that the Army did what the Corps did, because both defended Henderson Field at various times. I say that this is a false comparison. At the Tenaru, the Corps was working with zero naval support against a strong Japanese army. By the time the Army fought for Henderson Field, we had naval superiority and a broken Japanese army. There's a reason my Old Breed blaze says GUADALCANAL down that red one.
If your main point is that the Pacific Theater was not deadlier than the European Theater, well, I have a couple things to say about that. First is "for who". If you were a pilot or aircrew at all, yeah, the European theater was WAY worse - shot down German pilots would climb into another plane and fight again, shot down Japanese pilots were almost always killed.
If you were fighting on the ground, and this includes the Army, the fight was objectively worse in the Pacific. In Europe, if Allied and German forces surrendered to each other, they could, for the most part, expect halfway decent treatment. Hence, you saw surrenders on both sides when a position became untenable.
In the Pacific, it was a "no quarter" fight. As I routinely tell my Army friend, you surround 100,000 Germans, they surrender. You surround a single Jap, he's gonna try and take as many of you with him as possible.
I salute the accomplishments of the US Army in Europe. I'll even admit they didn't show their ass in the Pacific. But claiming that the Army approached what the Corps did in the Pacific? That's just false.
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@intreuefestundlachen1883 Unlike in France, there were no persecutions of former loyalists in the US. After the Revolution, many of them set sail for England because they either feared persecution or didn't want to have anything to do with the new United States, but there wasn't any mass persecution.
As for how he was oppressive?
I'll let Thomas Jefferson answer that:
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
"He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
"He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
"He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
"He has dissolvedRepresentative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
"He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
"For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
"For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
"For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
"For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
"For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
"For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
"For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
"He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging Waragainst us.
"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
"He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
"In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people"
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"One of the few wrong decisions".
Yeah, Roosevelt was easily our worst president ever, with Woodrow Wilson being the only one to come even close.
Besides the internment of the Japanese Americans, his worst offense, he prolonged the depression, threatened the courts into submission, abandoned any pretense of Constitutional principles like limited government and checks and balances, refused to step down after two terms (it's a good thing he died when he did. It's highly doubtful that he would have stepped down voluntarily), behaved in a sycophantic and overly conciliatory manner towards Stalin - abandoning Eastern Europe to 45 years of slavery....
Roosevelt made two good decisions in his presidency. He (1) signed the repeal of Prohibition, though by that time it was a bipartisan consensus, and anyone in office would have done the same, and (2) let Churchill, a man of infinitely superior intellect and character, set wartime strategic goals.
Roosevelt gets a lot of undeserved credit for being president during a time of crisis. He exacerbated one crisis (the depression) while using it as an excuse to ignore the Constitution, and handled the other (the war) well by not meddling, for the most part, though his attitude towards Stalin was naive and foolish. He should've listened to Churchill on that as well.
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@beninwarrior4579 You are taking a naive and myopic viewpoint and using an absurdly broad definition of "war crimes" that has nothing to do with reality.
The reality of the matter is that the Empire of Japan needed to be stopped at all costs. They were busy raping and murdering their way through Asia and the Pacific, committing atrocities that appalled the Nazis. Destroying a city like Tokyo, which had significant military, political, and industrial value, was an entirely legitimate strategic aim regardless of the collateral damage.
There was no way with the technology of the era to destroy all the legitimate strategic targets in Tokyo without causing collateral damage. This wasn't like it is today, where one B-2 can fly over and drop a handful of bombs which will all be guided precisely onto preselected targets. That technology didn't exist. If you wanted to destroy all the legitimate targets, you had to destroy everything around them as well.
Your emotional response is misplaced and stems from a lack of understanding of the realities of the war. It isn't "war crimes", it isn't "genocide", it's nowhere even remotely close to equivalent to actual atrocities like the rape of Nanking. It was strategic bombing of a legitimate military target, with a legitimate strategic goal in mind. Stop being willfully stupid.
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