# WW I, Korea, WW II and Israel; Heads You Win Should Not be Tails I Lose **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 8, 2018, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094 "2018-01-08T01:17:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/81 "2018-01-10T04:47:47Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I agree with the sentiment, but it doesn’t really apply to the conflicts you mentioned. Those conflicts ended in less than complete victory because complete victory was impossible at a reasonable cost, so ending the war was just better. But I do agree in general that if we are forced into war, rather than choosing it, that we should finish it and the nation that started it should never be in a position to threaten us again. That doesn’t mean destruction or subjugation, which is all the unimaginitive Europeans could come up with after WWI, but forced secularization and democratization and modernization should definitely be on the table. Well sure, but what are you go going to impose on the loser? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/82 "2018-01-10T05:10:06Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Okay we can agree destruction would have been a bad idea. But how are you going to impose things like secularization and democratization and modernization unless you start with subjugation? You have to take over a country and run it in order to make those kind of fundamental changes. Subjugation as part of warmaking, yes, but the peace leads to independence and basically a totally new nation. The old European model of subjugation of the defeated was basically conquest, annexation, or at the very least permanent demilitirization, which is very difficult to enforce and humiliates the defeated nation. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/83 "2018-01-10T08:07:36Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > More Catholic than the Pope and all that. I call these people “Armchair Zionists”. Americans willing to fight to the last Israeli. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/84 "2018-01-10T16:39:27Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I call these people “Armchair Zionists”. Americans willing to fight to the last Israeli. “Could you guys please build a nice, big, prosperous, secure country? I’m going to want to retire there someday.” ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/85 "2018-01-10T20:07:05Z")
Any statement that WWI was purely a German/Germanic land grab or that the Vietnamese war was one of solely North Vietnamese aggression indicates an author that is so ill informed regarding history as to make further discussion pointless. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/86 "2018-01-10T20:45:21Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I call these people “Armchair Zionists”. Americans willing to fight to the last Israeli. I am truly sorry that there are these kinds of people out there imagining that they are on your ‘side’. It doesn’t help that he imbues the IDF with magical powers in his head. After all, why didn’t the US win the Korean War? My bolding: > [@JBGUSA](#): > > That was when Macarthur was firedd. **We could have proceeded with Israel-like overwhelming strength**. North Korea and China could not fight the full force of the U.S. armed forces. They didn’t have a navy or air force to speak of. In the nature of full disclosure my father was in the Navy in Korea. > [@adaher](#): > > That doesn’t mean destruction or subjugation, which is all the unimaginitive Europeans could come up with after WWI, but forced secularization and democratization and modernization should definitely be on the table. How do you reconcile both forced secularization and democratization though? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/87 "2018-01-11T03:40:01Z")
If the religious beliefs of the populace make democracy difficult or impossible or are a top cause of the war in the first place then it is justified to impose constitutional restrictions on religion in governance. If the “religion” is mostly secular, like Nazism, then you ban that, and sure enough, Germany has bans on Nazism that would violate free speech freedoms in most other places. Japan had to stop regarding the emperor as sacred and Shintoism could no longer be the basis of governance. > **[State Shinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Shinto)** > > State Shintō (国家神道 or 國家神道, Kokka Shintō) was Imperial Japan's ideological use of the Japanese folk religion and traditions of Shinto.: 547  The state exercised control of shrine finances and training regimes for priests: 59 : 120  to strongly encourage Shinto practices that emphasized the Emperor as a divine being.: 8  > The State Shinto ideology emerged at the start of the Meiji era, after government officials defined freedom of religion within the Meiji Constitution.: 115  Imperial scholars b... Any country we go to war with that has a state religion motivating people to hate foreigners is probably going to have to be eliminated from their government. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/88 "2018-01-11T10:57:58Z")
So the American dream of the rerun of the unique WWII experience as the impossible model to apply to circumstances and societies completely different… Because WWII. Of course not in either of those cases is there the ‘secularization’ of the society. There is simply a banning of a particular political ideology from the explicit inclusion in the legal political framework. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/89 "2018-01-11T10:59:53Z")
And that tends to lead to the secularization of society. Once you remove the complusion from citizens to believe in the state religion, you solve a lot of problems and make future war less likely. Don’t worry, we’ll be getting to your country soon enough I’m sure. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/90 "2018-01-11T12:26:43Z")
no you won’t, but that is of no concern to me Your assertion is simply a bald faced assertion - I know of zero scientific evidence of a relationship between the existence of a “state religion” and “future of war” - and the mixing as you did of Nazi ideology with State Shinto is so ad hoc as to be able to sweep in any state ideological movement as ‘religion’ which makes the statement completely empty and merely a facile declaration of propaganda and the usual american dreaming extrapolation of a superficial idea of their WWII experience to a generalized approach to all foreign challenges. This defect has posioned your international engagements like the Viet Nam (or your disaster in the Iraq and its fallacious importing of the idea of the denaizifation to a compeltely different social and political case) etc. again and again. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/91 "2018-01-11T17:45:53Z")
And it’s especially silly when we consider that the aftermath of WWII was not sunshine and roses as liberalism and western values triumphed everywhere. There was famously another winner of WWII, and that was the Soviet Union, and the aftermath of WWII for millions and millions of people was not liberation and freedom but an Iron Curtain descending across Europe. So why didn’t the freedom-loving Americans declare that only total victory was worthwhile, and keep marching until everyone was free from Moscow to Vladivostok? Why did we, after total and complete victory in WWII, allow Stalin to enslave Eastern Europe? I mean, wasn’t the point of WWII, the Good War, the liberation of people from totalitarian rule? And wasn’t WWII a spectacular victory? And didn’t we tear down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and remake them into liberal democracies? Yes, and all the while ignoring the people on the other side of that Iron Curtain. Why didn’t we remake Poland, and Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and Romania, and Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, and China, and Russia into liberal democracies? I mean, all it takes is moral clarity and toughness and one freedom-loving American being able to kick the ass of ten foreign slaves. But somehow we quit with the job half done. I guess that’s liberals like Roosevelt for you, always stabbing American greatness in the back. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/92 "2018-01-11T22:20:05Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > If the religious beliefs of the populace make democracy difficult or impossible or are a top cause of the war in the first place then it is justified to impose constitutional restrictions on religion in governance. If the “religion” is mostly secular, like Nazism, then you ban that, and sure enough, Germany has bans on Nazism that would violate free speech freedoms in most other places. Japan had to stop regarding the emperor as sacred and Shintoism could no longer be the basis of governance. > > [State Shinto - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Shinto) > > Any country we go to war with that has a state religion motivating people to hate foreigners is probably going to have to be eliminated from their government. If you’re going to dilute the term “religion” to include Nazism, you’ve reduced it to meaninglessness. The word you’re looking for is ideology, not religion. Further, Shinto was neither the cause of Japans wars nor was it the basis of the government. The government of Japan in the 1930s and during WWII was run by the military and assassination (or the fear and threat of assassination). The emperor had limited real power and State Shinto was the state’s use of Shinto to further intense nationalism. You should probably read the wiki article you linked to in its entirety. For examples, bolding mine: > [@](#): > > The 1945 “Shinto Directive” of the United States General Headquarters introduced the “State Shinto” distinction when it began governing Japan after the second world war. The Shinto Directive, (officially the “Abolition of Governmental Sponsorship, Support, Perpetuation, Control and Dissemination of State Shinto”) defined State Shinto as “that branch of Shinto (Kokka Shinto or Jinja Shinto) which, by official acts of the Japanese government, has been differentiated from the religion of Sect Shinto (Shuha Shinto or Kyoha Shinto)\*\* and has been classified a non-religious national cult\*\*.”[2]:41–42 > > **The “State Shinto” term was thus used to categorize, and abolish, Imperial Japanese practices that relied on Shinto to support nationalistic ideology**.[6]:133[7]:97 By refusing to ban Shinto practices outright, Japan’s post-war constitution was thus able to preserve full Freedom of Religion.[6]:133 > > “State Shinto” was not an official designation for any practice or belief in Imperial Japan during this period. Instead, it was developed at the end of the war to describe the mixture of state support for non-religious shrine activities and immersive ideological support for the Kokutai policy in education, including the training of all shrine priests. > > “Religious” practice, in its Western sense, was unknown in Japan prior to the Meiji restoration.[15] “Religion” was understood to encompass a series of beliefs about faith and the afterlife, but also closely associated with Western power.[4]:55–56 The Meiji restoration had re-established the Emperor, a “religious” figure, as the head of the Japanese state.[2]:8 > > **The “State Shinto” ideology presented Shinto as something beyond religion, "a unity of government and teaching … not a religion.** “[6]:66 **Rather than a religious practice, Shinto was understood as a form of education, which "consists of the traditions of the imperial house, beginning in the age of gods and continuing through history**.”[6]:66 You also still haven’t reconciled forced secularization with democratization simply by saying “If religious beliefs of the populace make democracy difficult or impossible”. If the majority of people want a religious party to lead their government and vote for it, that’s democracy in action. When the people then decide that the government they have elected isn’t doing what they want and support the military overthrowing the elected (but now unpopular) government, that’s a coup. I’m obviously using Egypt in this example. ---
**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/93 "2018-01-14T20:41:56Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > You also still haven’t reconciled forced secularization with democratization simply by saying “If religious beliefs of the populace make democracy difficult or impossible”. If the majority of people want a religious party to lead their government and vote for it, that’s democracy in action. When the people then decide that the government they have elected isn’t doing what they want and support the military overthrowing the elected (but now unpopular) government, that’s a coup. I’m obviously using Egypt in this example. If the country can’t function economically and becomes an international basket case, is it inhumane to withhold aid because they choose a superstition-based religious model upon which to govern their country? ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/94 "2018-01-14T23:59:16Z")
The thread has spent a lot of time down in the weeds. Much of the debate has been more about the relevance of four specific cherry-picked incidents from the totality of conflict. There’s another focus on consequences/costs that would be associated with adopting the OP’s strategic framework. I want to take a step back and look at teh bigger picture of nations developing national security strategies. The [intellectual framework](http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army-usawc/natinte.htm) taught at the Army War College gives a good idea of how the US, and much of the world, thinks about the place of Military Strategy. While a little vague, because it’s not taking that high level approach, the OP seems to advocate for Military Strategy being fixed once an attack has happened. If the military strategy is fixed, it effectively overrides everything else in that linked methodology. Overall national strategy and even national interests have to give way if they are in conflict with that single fixed military strategy. Risk management, becomes meaningless. No matter how risky or unfeasible the fixed military strategy is in a given siutation it’s already decided upon. A methodology where military strategy can divorce itself from pursuing national interests, seems like a pretty bad idea. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/95 "2018-01-15T13:32:54Z")
> [@JBGUSA](#): > > is it inhumane to withhold aid because they choose a superstition-based religious model upon which to govern their country? I’m actually curious to learn which specific countries that description applies to. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/96 "2018-01-15T15:37:17Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > I’m actually curious to learn which specific countries that description applies to. I’m curious about what on Earth it has to do with reconciling democratization with forced secularization. No, wait, actually I’m not. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/97 "2018-01-15T16:52:41Z")
> [@JBGUSA](#): > > Has the money been used to benefit the people, or only for corruption, war and terror? I don’t know, but I strongly doubt you do either. Do you have any data on Iranian economic or social development that you could point to to justify your claims? Because generally when people make vague hand-waving claims about “corruption, war and terror” or “sh\*tholes” they don’t actually have any data to hand, just vague impressions. Iran’s literacy rate has nearly doubled since 1980 and their fertility rate (which typically correlates with social development) has gone from 6.2 to 1.68, so clearly they’re doing _something_ productive with their government revenues, and those were just the first two statistics that came to hand in five seconds of Googling. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/98 "2018-01-17T08:34:07Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > I’m actually curious to learn which specific countries that description applies to. I’m guessing it’s not the one whose ultimate political and cultural justification for its existence as a nation-state in the territory it presently occupies is the allegation that a supernatural entity formally bestowed that territory on a legendary ancestor of the socio-ethnic group with which it identifies some three thousand years ago. A “superstition-based religious model” underlying national self-definition is one of those things that are only bad when Muslims do them. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/99 "2018-01-17T13:23:11Z")
Well, yeah, but I was wondering if _he’d_ say so. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094/100 "2018-01-17T14:40:31Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Any statement that WWI was purely a German/Germanic land grab or that the Vietnamese war was one of solely North Vietnamese aggression indicates an author that is so ill informed regarding history as to make further discussion pointless. I don’t think that couching the start of WWI as a Germanic (Austrian, specifically) land grab is actually unreasonable. While we’re all familiar with the series of alliances that caused the war to expand into a World War that can’t be placed on the backs of the Austrians, the 10 Point Ultimatum wasn’t merely a demand for the Kingdom of Serbia to make reparations for the death of Uncle Ferdy, but a requirement for the nation to be absorbed into the Empire at worst, or to be a puppet state at best. The Austrians didn’t expect Serbia to comply, and were intent on conquest from the get-go. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ww-i-korea-ww-ii-and-israel-heads-you-win-should-not-be-tails-i-lose/806094.md?page=6)