> By "out of their depth" do we mean "dumber than six pounds of gravel"?
There's no excuse for the Japanese militarists' infliction of millions of deaths and untold suffering, but please keep in mind that they were doing the best they knew how at the time with the hand they were dealt (genetics, education, training, experience, social pressures, etc.), in a situation with enormous risks for their nation, which they believed to be on their shoulders. I'm curious what if anything you know of such pressures.
There's no excuse for Adolf Hitler's infliction of millions of deaths and untold suffering, but please keep in mind that he was doing the best he knew how at the time with the hand he was dealt (genetics, education, training, experience, social pressures, etc.), in a situation with enormous risks for his nation, which he believed to be on his shoulders. I'm curious what if anything you know of such pressures.
Seems like you can plug just about any name you want into this paragraph. What are you trying to say?
1. it's better to understand who and what you're dealing with, especially when it's a mortal adversary whom you might have to fight to the death;
2. the older I get, the less judgmental I get about other people personally, because I really do believe everybody does the best they know how --- and that's true even though very often I don't accept (and might be more than willing to fight against) what they regard as "the best"; and
3. I'm mindful of the words of a very wise, first-century Middle Eastern sage [1] who urged us to love our enemies [2].
Certainly the situation as a whole was quite complex, but when you get down to the details, dctoedt specifically asserts that there were people who thought the US would roll over and cower if attacked once, and if that is true, then those people were bloody great idiots.
If it's not literally true, then perhaps they were something else.
> dctoedt specifically asserts that there were people who thought the US would roll over and cower if attacked once
For the record, that overstates what I said, which I hope was a bit more nuanced than that.
Certainly the Japanese militarists, as a whole, decided to roll the dice that the outcome would not be "An enraged U.S. will counterattack us until our way of life is destroyed." It doesn't necessarily follow that there were those among them who thought, "The US will roll over and cower if we can just take out their battleships at Pearl Harbor."
(Of course, some Japanese militarists had an overly-exalted regard for Japanese military virtue and prowess. So it does seem likely that there were indeed some militarists, especially junior officers, who held the latter view, and yes, that view proved fatally naïve.)
There's no excuse for the Japanese militarists' infliction of millions of deaths and untold suffering, but please keep in mind that they were doing the best they knew how at the time with the hand they were dealt (genetics, education, training, experience, social pressures, etc.), in a situation with enormous risks for their nation, which they believed to be on their shoulders. I'm curious what if anything you know of such pressures.