Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

You've accidentally put "US bombs Baltimore house" in the headline for Berlin. Unless, that is, you meant to add a fourth scenario...

This is an unfair characterization. When the President as Commander-in-Chief orders something during a time of war, irrespective of what it is, it's legal, moral, proper, and appropriate.

Just ask Sam Alito.

Brent, actually the error was in the body of the text, not the headline. The third case was supposed to be Baltimore, not Berlin. I've corrected it. Thanks for letting me know.

You'll notice that the Pakistani protest was pro-forma, and involves no call for the US to get out of the region. Meaning, the Pakistani government doesn't actually care. The people being targeted are enemies of that country as well.

A couple of observations... my initial reaction was "whodunnit?" I wondered if this attack on Pakistan soil was the responsibility of the US Joint Command (Lance Smith) or the US Central Command (John Abizaid). Reports now indicate that it was a CIA operation and outside the command and control of US military forces. Yet a US military weapons system, the Predator, was used so maybe it was Lance's responsibility after all. Or maybe the CIA owns their own version of the Predator system outside the command and control of the US military, which - if true - would make me wonder if they also have tactical nukes. Okay, that's the first thing... long windedly enough.

The second thing... I'm reminded of Southeast Asia in the sixties and early seventies when Mr. Nixon authorized the invasion of Laos and Cambodia, though we were not strictly speaking at war with those countries. The Ho Chi Minh trail and the Pakistani villages near the Afghanistan border have a lot in common.

The USA is the only country in the history of the world to have used nuclear WMD against the population of another country. It has demonstrated again and again a complete lack of respect for the national sovereignty of others, a complete disregard of international law and human rights. (1, 2, 3)

The USA is about as trustworthy and predictable as a pathological lying psychopath with delusions of grander and a machine gun. The USA is the State of Terror: Afraid of themselves and projecting this fear onto the world around them. Believing that it has a separate manifest destiny.

gmlk says:

"The USA is the only country in the history of the world to have used nuclear WMD against the population of another country. It has demonstrated again and again a complete lack of respect for the national sovereignty of others, a complete disregard of international law and human rights."

On the WWII bombings - you have to understand the mindset of the military and the administration by early 1945, especially after the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The human toll of those invasions - especially the latter - were appalling. The use of Kamikazis, and the the reaction of the civilian population of Okinawa gave everyone pause - the military and the administration.

Operation Olympic (the proposed invasion of Japan) was going to be horrific. Probably worse than they thought, because they presumed a 3-1 advantage in troops at the point of invasion; it turns out that Japan had enough soldiers in the home islands to make it more like 1-1. Meaning, it would have been a bloodbath, and not necessarily successful.

Which left the US few choices in summer, 1945. Japan was not going to surrender without an invasion, and an invasion looked increasingly horrific. Leaving the existing government of Japan in charge was not an option, and - revisionist history aside - there were no serious peace feelers from that government.

Heck, after the second a-bomb fell, there was an attempted military coup - an attempt to stop the emperor from surrendering. It came close to succeeding, and it's a good thing it failed - it was going to be months before more nukes came into the arsenal, and we were looking at an invasion that would have had the USSR trying to join from the north. That's just what the world could have used - a north and south Japan to join Vietnam and Korea.

The only thing that stopped that war as fast as it stopped was the horror of the a-bomb, which at least got Hirohito's attention. Nothing else had.

Pakistan admits that we whacked a bunch of terrorists, and that Zawahiri had been invited to the site:

http://breakingnews.nypost.com/dynamic/stories/P/PAKISTAN_AL_QAIDA_ATTACK?SITE=NYNYP&SECTION=HOME

"Four or five foreign terrorists have been killed in this missile attack whose dead bodies have been taken away by their companions to hide the real reason of the attack," says a local official.
Doesn't exactly impress me as the indisputable last word on the matter.

ABC News now reporting:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1517986