08-18-2021, 01:14 AM
(08-17-2021, 02:28 PM)Sled21 Wrote: It really irks me when I hear people say this. You absolutely CAN defeat an ideology like this, you just have to be willing to do it and not ***** foot around fighting a clean war. Pre war Japan was about as fanatical an ideology as they came, believing their emperor was a living God. They were all about fighting to the death and surrender was shameful, until we lowered the hammer on them. Their "ideology" came around very quickly. Now they're normal people. Of course, to do this you have to fight a war and not have battlefields run by lawyers in DC. There's a reason we haven't won a war since WWII, and we will probably lose to China in the near future.
People who "fight to the death" get that reputation precisely because they don't "come around."
When someone "lowers the hammer on them," they fight to the death.
The "ideology: you refer to, one which scorned fighting "clean wars," was contested by Japanese democrats and socialists throughout the 30s, not held by all Japanese. And the majority of the civilian population did not want to go down fighting for authoritarian, militarist leaders who had brought their country to unnecessary ruin--the kind which "lawyers" can often forsee and prevent.
Wars are not like basketball games. One of the most difficult lessons to learn from US wars since WWII is that "lowering the hammer" generates and expands insurgencies.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)