Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • September 11, 2013 Bombing and threats: Remember the last time? The horror of using poison gas on civilians in Syria has prompted the usual American response: The Syrians are told to behave like civilized people or get bombed. As a way of showing compassion to people otherwise not much esteemed in an American public forum -- Muslims were involved on both sides of this outrage, both as villains and as victims -- this may have been a concession to some sort of lingering humanitarian impulse. As a way of running for- eign policy, it was plumb stupid. The second dumbest thing in the world is to bomb areas full of civilians to avenge the killing of some of those same civilians. The dumbest thing of all, especially in the Middle East, is to make a threat and fail to carry it out. Once upon a time, the United States took the sort of inter- est in China that we now take in the Middle East. One spe- cial interest group wanted to defend the Christian missions in China and another special interest group wanted to keep China open to Anglo-Saxon commercial interests, vitally concerned with a huge market where people understood the concept of money – the word “cash” is Chinese for small copper coins -- but were, in those days, notoriously bad at mechanical applications of technology. British schoolboys smugly told one another, “Japanese make machinery; Chi- nese break machinery.” Japan had been Britain’s official ally in keeping the Russians out of China where the British had both missionaries and business operations, and, above all, keeping the Russians out of India where the finances of the British Empire were intimately entangled with keeping the Asian Indians from developing mechanical skills. Those Chinese who were not devoted Christians dis- liked the “white faces” (the British) and the “red beards” (the Russians) about equally, but were far less hostile to the Americans and -- prior to the seizure of Manchuria for crass economic needs -- to the Japanese, seen as the most progressive people in Asia once you got past their arro- gance. Herbert Hoover, who had survived the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 and who spoke Chinese, dubbed the Japanese a nation of “70 million egotists,” but admired their courage and relative honesty. Hoover also recognized that the Japa- nese lacked the numbers to colonize China as Britain had colonized India and Burma and coastal parts of China such as Hong Kong and Shanghai. Hoover’s advice was: Hands off on both sides. Support peace if possible, but do not send troops. No conquest of China is ever permanent. The Mongols and the Manchus married, emulated, drank, and doped their way into political impotence, and the Arab and Jewish merchants in the medieval silk trade were totally absorbed by their Chinese business partners and employees. The wild card was the Soviet Union and the Soviet sympathizers in Roosevelt’s administration. Nobody much cared what the Chinese did to one another according to Han Suyin, a Eurasian author who said more Chinese girls were assaulted by other Chinese at Nanking in 1926 after Chiang Kai-shek consolidated his power than by the Japanese in 1937. More Chinese soldiers fell in battle against Japan in 1937 but more Chinese heads were probably lopped off by Chiang’s executioners in 1926. The executions were photographed. The U.S. kept right on selling weapons to both sides. So did the Germans and the Russians. The oil embargo that started the U.S.-Japan war came only after the Japanese took over a French colony in Indochina, where patriots had been opposing French rule for decades. United States News, since defunct, ran a global map with simple drawings showing just how easy it would be for the United States to bomb Japan off the map in case of trouble. The piece ran on Oct. 31 and read, in part: “Japan is today within range of bomber attacks from seven major points. Bases at these points are being kept at wartime strength and readiness by the United States, Britain, China and Russia.... “In airline miles, distance from the bases to Tokyo are as follows: Unalaska, -- 2,700; Guam -- 1,575; Cavite (in the Philippines) -- 1,860; Singapore -- 3,250; Hongkong (sic) -- 1,825; Chungking - 2,000; Vladivostock -- 440... “Tokyo, city of rice-paper and wooden houses...Osaka... hastily expanded during the last three years, the arms fac- tories are built of wood. Acres upon acres of these wooden buildings in and near the city present a highly vulnerable target for incendiary bombs...” Simply put: Blow them up, burn them up, and do not worry that we might ever have to fight them in a war on the ground where American kids could get hurt. The day after the war began at Pearl Harbor, the Japa- nese blew up most of the American bombers at Clark Field (near Cavite) and then diverted a whole army from their strategic goal -- the Dutch East Indies and its oil and rubber -- to destroy the U.S. Luzon Army based in the Philippines and the U.S. Marines on Guam. Hong Kong and Singapore were conquered after much less memorable fights. Nobody after that took the British seriously in Asia. The Japanese and the Americans fought over the Aleutians for more than a year, but the weather made air strikes on Japan inadvis- able. Attempts to bomb Japan from China flopped when the Japanese routed the Chinese Nationalist Army with the support of angry Chinese peasants who hated the white faces and the red beards. The Soviets never let us use Vladi- vostok. They were happy to let the United States and Japan, both anti-communist nations, slug it out so they could pick up the pieces after the war, which they did. North Korea, where the president reportedly just executed his girlfriend and the musicians in her band for singing about sex, is a monument to the Soviet system in north Asia. Readers who think I am making this up can find a two- page copy of the United States News piece in Professor Michael Sherry’s superb book, “The Rise of American Air Power and the Creation of Armageddon,” which churns up nightmares for flag-wavers who dote on the bombing and burning of huge numbers of German and Japanese women and children as a way to get at Hitler and Hirohito. Oddly enough, American aircraft never targeted the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, and the Royal Air Force never targeted Heidelberg, just as the Luftwaffe never targeted Oxford. By mid-1943, once the Axis defeat was certain after Stalin- grad and Kursk in Russia and Midway and Guadalcanal in the Pacific, planning already envisioned postwar coopera- tion. The 650,000 German civilians and 800,000 Japanese civilians who were blown up or burned alive were simply expendable for political reasons. Hitler, like the paranoid coward and murderer he was, ordered V-1 and V-2 attacks on London civilians even after the D-Day Landings of June 6, 1944 meant his defeat was certain. The bombs killed 3,000 Londoners. Winston Churchill then ordered increased area bombing of German cities and 200,000 Germans were killed. This cheered up the British, but Churchill lost the post-war election after he compared the British Labour party to the German Nazi Party. The multiple officers’ plots to kill Hitler and Japan’s offers of a negotiated peace were shrugged off. Do not expect to hear about them from Stephen Ambrose or Tom Brokaw. Just wave that flag really hard and look for some- body else to blow up now that we need the Germans and the Japanese to stabilize regional economies. In the end, the Japanese responded against overwhelm- ing industrial and military force, first with as attack at Pearl Harbor and then with suicide pilots. Remember who else used suicide pilots in a sneak attack some of us could see from our neighborhoods? Remember who then attacked Iraq, which was not involved in the Sept. 11 outrage? Once you get involved in ground invasions, you soon find out that the kind of people who join the present vol- unteer army, though often brave to a fault, are not suited to constructive peace-making or the understanding of other cultures. A number of them murdered women and children at point-blank range. You do not make friends that way. Today, even the American Legion, whose members are genuinely patriotic and love America, urges that the United States proceed with caution. Not one of the first dozen members who responded to the official Legion position urging caution favored any American involvement in Syria on either side. We see our deployment of woman and homosexuals as examples of how progressive our society has become. The people on the other side see us as morally bankrupt. Some Canadians are said to fear an American annexation, and you are more popular in Eastern Europe if you travel with a German passport than with an American passport. Since last count, 11 nations have some sort of nuclear weapon option, and places like Iran and North Korea are said to be working toward that point. We would be well disposed to return to the role of the world’s best friend sending food and medicine instead of the biggest bully in the schoolyard. Letters to the Editor Supports roof project Dear Editor: I am writing in support of the Northern Highlands roof replacement project. I am a mother of three children and have been a member of the Northern Highlands community for the past six years. As the treasurer for the Home & School Associa- tion for the past year, I have visited the school countless times. There is one fact that we can all agree on: Northern Highlands is an impeccable school. From the landscaping in the front to the spotless floors down to the sinks in the bathrooms, this school shines. The fact that there are leaks from the roof that have caused significant damage to the rugs, ceiling tiles, and floors is sad. The buckets that are regularly set out during rainstorms to catch the leaks do not belong in this beautiful school. Now is the time to act before more money is wasted trying to fix the old roof and before more damage occurs, which will be more costly to fix in the long run. The board of education is fiscally responsible, look- ing only to replace the roof and not adding any bells or whistles. The cost to replace the roof is well beyond the school budget. The school needs help from the community. The cost to each household to replace the entire roof is less than the cost of one gallon of gas, or less than two iTunes songs per month. By voting “yes” on the bond referendum, Northern Highlands will receive $1.1 million in state aid to offset the balance of the roof cost. Please vote “yes” to the Northern Highlands roof proj- ect on Sept. 24. Lisa Tantillo, Treasurer Northern Highlands Home & School Association Upper Saddle River