Living with Kryptonite

2022-05-28

模倣子 Turkish-Iranian Reunification

I got a reply to my post

@adamnesico I'm afraid I don't understand your religion comment. Iran is Shi'ite, kind of an island of Shia'ism, while Turkey is 90%/10% in favor of Sunni? Both are Islam. Catholicism, Baptism, and Methodism may be more different, but somehow the USA sticks together. My main problem would be that Iran is theocratic. I'm not saying they WILL join, but that they are the two (only) stable countries in the region, surrounded by failed states over which they have or have historically had strong influence. Turkic culture and language (and religion) stretch from Istanbul to Western China, with Iran kind of an island of Sunni/Farsi in the middle, but historically sometimes involved. "Farsi" of course being the Arabic word for "Persian" and Urdu (major regional language, national language of Pakistan) originally a lingua franca of Farsi and Hindi languages. So I'd say that the languages, cultures, and religious of the region are pretty intertwined and the same in many cases. My thought is that IF and I mean IF those two countries somehow joined forces, and had some support from the world community, they could dominate and stabilize all the dumpster fires going on from Iraq to Central Asia to Western China. If there could be some agreement to safeguard Russian security and provide safe pipeline pathways through Afghanistan and such, it could be very stabilizing for the whole region. A "Greater Turkistan" that included Iran could even exert pressure on China to ease up on the Uighurs, for example. So I'm not so much interested in the "how" but the results of some kind of union or cooperation could produce. And I don't feel that the cultural, language, and religious differences are a show-stopper, of course, or I wouldn't've brought it up. East and West Germany reunited, and nobody thought that would happen. The Koreas may reunite soon and everybody will be surprised then (I won't). The EU happened, and I watched a lot of change take place during that process. Germany and the USSR signed the Ribbentropf-Malatov Accord during WWII and that was a shock to everybody. The US Civil War? That it happened? That it ended with the Union victory? These kinds of things happen all the time, and it's hard if not impossible to predict. That is NOT MY POINT. My point is that a lot of interesting things could happen over a very wide region that people have been wringing hands over for a very long time if these two very large, very powerful, only-stable-ones-in-the-region, historically sympathetic powers were to assert themselves in a way that was palatable to the rest of the international community.

2022-05-26

模倣子 Lord Save Me From Truman

YouTube conversation

@Buckhorn Cortez Please don't freak out, or tell me (and others) what I think is clever or not. Personal mockery is uncalled for. I'm just repeating what I've read elsewhere, including what I heard from my late father, who grew up during the Truman administration. The Lucky Strike cigarette catch cry was LSMFT ("Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco") which was made into a joke AT THE TIME: "Lord Save Me From Truman". My dad repeated this phrase often. Sorry if his words and recollections put you out. It's also well known that when MacArthur came back from Korea he campaigned against Truman and the slogan then was "The General versus the Haberdasher" (c.f. "American Caesar" MacArthur bio). Truman was a political last-minute swap-in for FDR VP Wallace, and Truman himself admitted to not feeling prepared for the job, while Wallace knew all the details of the war. Truman supposedly hinted to Stalin that the US had the atom bomb, and Stalin supposedly immediately asked Beria "Why aren't you the one telling me about this?". Stalin already had agents (moles) in the Manhattan Project, so he probably knew plenty already, but it was still a dumb idea to try to frighten the Russians by casually dropping this information. NEVER try to intimidate the Russians. The Russians HAD agreed to attack the Japanese, who were also at the time trying to negotiate a peace with the allies through the Russians, even to the point of considering sending Prince Fumimaro Konoe to talk to Stalin. I read through the Emperor's radio address and he therein refers to a 残虐なる爆彈 (cruel bomb/bullet). 昭和天皇独白録と言うのは戦後に書かれただるうから戦争の終る所の途端にの決定や現核爆弾等には関係がある物かね。Thank for the reference, by the way. I'm referring to sources (documentaries, etc.) which say that the Japanese General Staff regarded the Soviet invasion of Manchuria as the death knell, and that the atomic bombings were "just another bombing" (at the time--the scientific inquiry into the actual impact came later), and that they advised the Emperor accordingly. What the Emperor actually SAID or WROTE about that later is another thing. The invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings happened at the same time. Since a million-man invasion requires mobilization and the bombings were kept secret, it's reasonable to suppose that the Japanese knew about both at the same time, the invasion perhaps considerably earlier. I'm not an historian--I just read what historians come up with, and that's what I'm giving you.

I have a question of sorts. My understanding was that after VE Day Stalin had the troops to invade Manchuria and not before, and that was the substance of his agreement with FDR (later Truman) and Churchill. You say the Japanese were aware of east Asian Soviet troop movements in February 1945, Stalin let the non-aggression pact expire on April 13 (thanks for that reference, by the way), VE Day was May 8, effectively freeing up Soviet troops for the eastern front, and the Soviets finally declared war and invaded on August 8. Between the first of May and the first of August 1945, the Soviets were effectively moving all their extra troops towards Vladivostok, no? This could not be lost on the Japanese, right? Especially with the scrapping of the non-aggression pact? They had basically been trying to surrender to the Americans THROUGH the Soviets already, so if a million fresh Soviet troops pouring into Manchuria, and "pouring" is more of a three-month-long process, it doesn't change their previous objective, i.e., to surrender to the Americans (and NOT the Soviets), regardless of any atomic bombings. If the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was what turned the Japanese General Staff (and the Emperor) against the war, they were still not going to resist an American landing. It may be true that blaming a "cruel bomb" American "magic trick" as the reason for surrender could serve as a face-saving flourish, i.e., not having to say "The Russians beat us," but that doesn't change anything vis-à-vis the American landing. My understanding is that it was all about surrendering to the Americans before the Russians took Hokkaido (they still managed to take the Kiril Islands, those dang Ruskies! 畜生) or part of Honshu. I've often pondered what influence General Leslie Groves had in swaying the decision to drop the atomic bombs rather than hushing up the whole project and keeping it as much a secret as possible (which I wonder if Truman could've done instead). Again, Stalin may have already known enough and had enough motivation to build his own bomb even without Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I've always believed that the bombings are what ended the war, but I've learned more facts and opinions of late. I come from a nuclear background--half the adults I grew up with were nuclear scientists and engineers--so that's always been my focus. Who knows what it would've been like if the Democratic Party leadership hadn't hated Henry Wallace and let him be President? Maybe there wouldn't have been a Berlin Airlift. Maybe we wouldn't have needed one. I did not know Harry Truman. He was a Senator from the State I'm from. I can't help thinking that without his sabre-rattling we wouldn't have dropped two atom bombs on my adoptive homeland of Japan, and maybe not had to have a Cold War, which I also had to live through, and which maybe you had to live through, too. So are we closer to "maybe true" as opposed to "not true"?