by Tim Reagan
Scientific Christian Monitor
January 18, 1944
A classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) contends that the war in Japan has increased Shinto radicalism, and has made the kamikaze threat around the world worse. Based on information from US government officials who had seen the document and spoke on condition of anyonymity, The New York Times reports that the NIE document, titled “Trends in Global Kamikaze attacks: Implications for the United States,” says the war plays a much more direct role in the spread of Shinto radicalism around the world than has previously been indicated by the White House, or in a recent report by the US House intelligence committee.The intelligence estimate, completed last October, is the first formal appraisal of Pacific kamikaze attacks by US intelligence agencies since the June 1942 Battle of Midway, and it represents a consensus view of the 16 different spy services inside government. The estimate asserts that Shinto radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the Pacific.
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An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Kamikaze Movement,” cites the Japanese war as a reason for the diffusion of kamikaze ideology. The report “says that the Japan war has made the overall kamikaze problem worse,” one US intelligence official said.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the White House, sensing the importance of the issue of Japan during an election year, moved quickly to counter the impact of the NIE report. White House spokesman Watkins Peterson said the Roosevelt administration “sharply disagreed” with the findings of the 16 intelligence agencies, saying “anti-American fervor in the Japan began long before the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
But The New York Times reports that some Democratic and Republican politicians felt the report was another indication of an already bad situation in the Pacific. Republican Sen. Jerry Kahn of Massachusetts said it showed that the Roosevelt administration policy towards Japan was acting as a “recruiting poster” for kamikaze pilots.
11 comments:
Wonderful perspective. Too bad more people can't apply perspective to the world today.
i posted the true history of kamikazis a few times over the last few years.
the truth is that the kamikazis didn't even begin in earnest until amrch 1945. that's just a few months before the end of the war.
it was the a result of japanese desperation.
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2005/06/are-we-winning-in-iraq-or-kamikazes.html
posted Thursday, June 23, 2005
linking to articles here:
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/LUTZ/okin.html
and here:
http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-air-support/ww2-enemy/kamikazi.htm
of course, in march 1945 no one knew the war would last just a few more months, and that japam wold surrender a week after the senceonf nuke was dropped on them.
in march 1945 most americans thought we would lose 500,000 men invading japan. and that 1,000,000 japanese would be killed in that effort.
but no one talked gloomily about how we were just making things worse by fighting them.
why were things different then?
well, the MSM was just a Left-wing dominated - as was the OSS and the State Department. (FDR depended on spies like Alger Hiss!)
The difference was that the Lefties liked the USA trhen as the USA was an ALLY of the USSR.
After WW2, when the Cold War began, then the MSM reverted, and openly took the USSR's side. They have basically ever since.
The MSDM and State and the CIA have remained largely Leftist dominated because they arre somewhat closed intitutions which allows those who are entrenched to recruit and advance their own kind - their FELLOW TRAVELLERS.
And these leftists are making our effort in the GWOT much tougher - by undermining Bush everyt chance they can - by leaking the NSA program, the NIE, and concocting the whole Plame-Wilson BS.
The Left is such an effective FIfth Column that I have long maintained that we will not defeat the enemy abroad until we have defeated the Left at home.
All the BEST!
Thanks, Baron, that's just what the doctor ordered.
Just think... if we hadn't fought back after Pearl Harbor, there never would have been ANY kamikazis.
(The fact that there wouldn't have been any America, either, of course, is irrelevant to the mindset of the "Surrender Now" set at State, the "No One Listens to me Anymore" retired generals at large, and the NY Times, ad nauseam)
The shameless pimping of vital national security secrets for mere gains of transitory party advantage should revolt even the most apolitical among us.
There should be a new circle in Dante's Inferno mapped to welcome this type of insidious, sell-out, suicidal weasel.
Named "Clintonera" perhaps (with apologies to "Antenora")?
the cia brought down nixon and they want to brng down bush.
This report says the War on Terrorism as fought mainly in Iraq is not effective. That is all. It DOES NOT SAY that running away and hiding would be more effective. It is not the property of the Left.
This is a straight up opportunity to anyone with a criticism of the war as practiced today to frame an alternative. And I thought that here I would see the best alternative analysis to the "run away and hide" - The war in Iraq is ineffective because it does not confront the evil that is Islamism.
Unfortunately all I got is this parody which, if I read correctly, opines that this War on a vague tactical concept fought solely in Iraq is the direct equivalent of the greatest victory in the annals of American warfare and that this report will prove to be as flawed as any fictional report that mocked the campaign in the Pacific.
PS - Perhaps if Roosevelt had captured Iwo Jima then sat there for five years trying to establish a democracy and suffering Kamikaze attacks whilst fighting a wider war on Kamikazeism and a report had come out and said "this is not really working", someone might have suggested attacking the Shinto God Emperor of Japan...
I'm with unaha-closp here. I'm always a parody fan, and its clever enough, but it misses the mark.
1. If Pearl happened under these conditions, the US would not have declared war on Japan, but they might have declared "war on aviation".
2. Its not the report that is the problem and needs lampooning, its the way the media presents it. I guess that was the intent, but it doesn't come across like that. Or imagine, if the US had declared "war on aviation", a report in 1944 tending towards suggesting that perhaps fighting Japan would be a better play then merely struggling with the kamikazes.
3. Hah! Todays politicos are more likely to have merely attacked Thailand (Thailand was an axis ally in WWII, seizing Laos from France and giving the Japanese access for the Malayan campaign), because well, its obviously easier than Japan or Nazi Germany, and though it didn't attack the US it certainly helped, and ....
4. Its a classified document. Let us rather imagine what would happen to the mass media if they had reported in clear classified intelligence during WWII. How about trials for treason and/or espionage, wholesale preventative investigations, media closures? Where in hell is the outcry about repeated leaking of sensitive war materials so some crap newspaper can make a scoop, and a sleazy politican earn some backstab points just before elections?
uhaha-closp and peacekeeper --
You both missed my point, at least to some extent. It has two parts:
1. Whatever went wrong during WW2, our leaders who fought it were not being undermined by a wide swath of their fellow countrymen, the press, and parts of their own governments. Not that there was no criticism, but that it stayed within a much tighter boundary. Right now, OUR LEADERS ARE PUTTING UP WITH TREASON. They have to, because they have been sabotaged by academics, the media, and popular culture.
2. In WW2 we didn't fight a tactic (kamikazes). We fought the ENEMY -- the Japs and the Krauts. That's one of the main reasons I built this post.
And this is NOT a parody -- it's a simulacrum. I took the original CS Monitor story, extracted several paragraphs, changed certain names and keywords, but left the rest as I found it.
Go look at the original. You'll see.
1. Right now, OUR LEADERS ARE PUTTING UP WITH TREASON. They have to, because they have been sabotaged by academics, the media, and popular culture.
Perhaps or maybe they have to put up with this sort of reporting because they are being sabotaged by the facts. These academics are employed specifically to make this sort of assessment, they might be correct. The reason there was no corresponding report produced in 1944 saying that you were losing the war had NOTHING to do with academics confining assessment to a much tighter boundary and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that you were winning the war.
2. I totally agree. In fact I would go as far as to say if the war is being lost it is because the enemy is not being fought. To my mind the enemy is any state that is Islamist, any state that practices sharia - I think you largely agree with this assessment of the enemy.
Now here is a report stating that the war is being lost and Republican Sen. Arlen Spectre of Pennsylvania said on CNN that "the war in Iraq has intensified Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism," although he added "that's a problem that nobody seems to have an answer to." The Senator is wrong, the Dems have a solution - withdraw from Iraq, remove the cause, problem mitigated - and in the absense of any other solution it may well be accepted as true. But that solution is untrue, because it leaves the Islamist enemy free to do whatever they choose.
My wish is that there is someone with access to mass media (say a blog perhaps) who is American (not me), a cultured wordsmith able to tell the difference between a parody & a simulacrum (not me) and respected in the wider media (again, not me) who is able to take a stance that this report is telling the truth. That America is losing the war on terrorism, because making war on a tactic is very stoopid. That the real enemies are the Islamist regimes that are smiling to your face and stabbing you in the back.
What I have just done is very rude, a rant against a host who deserves great respect. Apologies.
Report says, Vision needed Ok, well, the original current report may not say that, but I do. And I think your 1944 Kamikazi post, Baron, also suggests, between the lines. Desperation is an act by those who 'have no vision' of a future (or not one that can be had by living in a body; i.e., 'heaven bound').
This is the thing that these 'reports' may benignly omit, but that the media/cynics completely work against, and emphasize the 'blame game', which is so debilitating. It creates a filibuster in public opinion. I'm hoping to see more signs pointing towards solution, or simple evaluation. Instead, the cynical media (I know, I've been there), immediately go for the most sensational worst news (unless it's about the ACLU or other lefties parading as the voice of the people). They are a minority, and desperate, as were the Kamikazi's and as are the jihadists. Fear motivates them, and their superiors (for they must have them, as they are not independent thinkers) must point to some 'heavenly reward' or glorification of ancestors worship.
Great post, Baron, as ever. I'm so glad to have this community of thinkers, rational and really humorous folks, who are actively working (from behind our keyboards, yes), TO THE GOOD. That we criticise, yes, of course, satirize, yes, because it makes a point. Some things are just plain ridiculous and have no place in the world today. We have a vision. One of the future, and living it. That's the difference between the lost, (lower case) martyrs, thug dictators, psychopathic leaders, and the vast majority of men and women of goodwill. There is a silent majority, who are living a vision, and have no desire to fry themselves for a man-made god. Vision means something to 'look forward to'. If this can be provided to those who are lost, the wayward sons of islam, perhaps some can 'pull up'! Otherwise, their crash is assured, that much is certain.
MY POINT:
the msm did not undermine fdr in ww2 because we were allies of the ussr then.
as soon as the cold war began - and ever since - the msm has reverted to it's anti-american left-wing bias.
and this is why they commit treason.
the dept of state and the OSS were both inifiltrated by soviet agents. hiss was an agent of stalin's ad hiss led fdr to give uncle joe eastern europe.
the folks who run state today are direct descendents of hiss: traoined ast FS schools and hired by hiss acolytes - like kerry's father.
and the cia was a friggin nest of molesL SHI*: aldrich ames was CHIEF anti0USSR agent for the CIA and was really working for THEM! (DITTO the FBI - which was also compromised -- Hannsen was a Soviet mole...)
the MSM includes folks like hiss - who knowingly aid the enemy - and dupes.
POINT #2:
kamikazis were a late ESCALATION in WW2, which came in retaliation to Allied victories. but NOBODY blamed Truman, then. Because truman was allied with the USSR.
You can sub EU/UN/multilateralism for the USSR, as the EU/UN has replaced the USSR in the minds of the left.
they see/wish that the UN is the foil to US hegemony/hyperpower status.
As contemporary leftists are
post-modern moral relativists, they do not believe that US power should be used for any international intervention which they see as culturally relative, UNLESS there is a UN consensus.
of course this is amoral at best.
based on this approach, the USA would be wrong to intervene to stop slavery and genocide. AND: That's just what's happening in Darfur.
which is a crime against humanity.
which proves the utter moral bankruptcy of the UN - and the post moderni leftism which fuels it.
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