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Old 04-24-2008, 10:45 AM   #24 (permalink)
astralis
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lwarmonger,

Quote:
That negotiation was for their surrender.... a little different than the negotiation between Israel and Hamas that I see described here.
the point is, it was STILL talking to the enemy. at the time, doing this was a highly unpopular move- the american populace didn't WANT japan to surrender, they wanted japan destroyed. this became even worse as it became clear that the american high command (read MacArthur in this case) tacitly agreed to keeping the Emperor on board.

Quote:
As I recall, the original plans for Germany and Japan had us forcibly de-industrializing them, and keeping them poor agricultural nations. It was only because of the growing fear of the communist threat that we began building them both up economically.
this isn't quite on-topic, but, those original plans had been considered and then discarded by the time of the surrender, even before the communist threat became apparent. however, the communist threat did speed up impetus for greater economic/industrial aid.

anyways, the point is, not all talking is an evil. there are some groups whom simply cannot be bargained with, because they don't believe in it the first place, and because their demands aren't limited to the physical (al-qaeda). there are some groups whom can. hamas strikes me as the bigger equivalent to some of the religious-nationalist insurgent sunni groups which the US had to deal with to create the Awakening movement.
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