Comments on The Belmont Club,"The foundations of our world"

One of the many things that infuriates about the preening transnational administrative class and their support base is the presumption that they know and care more about the mass of humanity while the bitter clingers of America are ignorant provincial rubes. We are the people who time after time have gone forth and saved the world. We are bound to distant lands with chains of blood. It is the Americans who escaped from the prisons of the Old World and then repeatedly have spent of ourselves to rescue our fallen cousins.

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El Jefe Maximo,
The plans for operations Olympic and Coronet are both covered in The West Point Atlas of American Wars. The maps are beautifully done and every student of history or the military arts should get the two volume set. The most striking thing about the invasion plans was that the code names for the beaches were drawn from American automobile marks. There were Cadillac beach, Pontiac beach, Nash beach, etc. The irony is to thick to do more then acknowledge it.

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The 8th Air Force was a death sentence. The Japanese couldn't do to the B-29s of 1945 what the Germans did to the B-17s of 1943-44. From the Air Force history fact page:

From May 1942 to July 1945, the Eighth planned and precisely executed America's daylight strategic bombing campaign against Nazi-occupied Europe, and in doing so the organization compiled an impressive war record. That record, however, carried a high price. For instance, the Eighth suffered about half of the U.S. Army Air Force's casualties (47,483 out of 115,332), including more than 26,000 dead. The Eighth's brave men earned 17 Medals of Honor, 220 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 442,000 Air Medals. The Eighth's combat record also shows 566 aces (261 fighter pilots with 31 having 15 or more victories and 305 enlisted gunners), over 440,000 bomber sorties to drop 697,000 tons of bombs, and over 5,100 aircraft losses and 11,200 aerial victories.

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Mark Framness,
(who linked to a photo of Corregidor)
Think about Tiny URL http://tunyurl.com, reduces the risk of being tossed into PJM/WordPress moderation.
I have walked along the ruins of the Mile Long Barracks and entered the hospital cave.

The fellow I relieved as Deck Division officer on the USS England told me that his father had gone from trading shots with the IJN across the River Shit that borders the old Subic Bay Naval Base to grabbing a meal at the Chuck Wagon O-Club dining facility, when it was a Quonset Hut. I got the Chuck Wagon polo shirt and remember seeing the wives of Commanders and Captains on the main club veranda, wearing Summer dresses and gloves. It was like the ghost of the Raj two generations after the British gave it up.

Aug 19, 2009 - 8:25 pm

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Fletcher Christian,
(who asked about the cost of a millennial conflict)
The only true costs are opportunity costs.
Measure in the songs not sung, the books not written, the inventions not devised, the crops not planted, the lives and hopes blighted.

Aug 20, 2009 - 3:31 am