I suggest a great book on this subject, ‘Flags of Our Fathers’, for anyone who interested in learning more about this important, epic US Marine Corps battle.

http://www.amazon.com/Flags-Our-Fathers-James-Bradley/dp/0553589083

Forget the movie, Clint Eastwood absolutely did a complete disservice to the book.

Semper Fidelis

This is one of the things that people don't remember about the Pacific War, it was basically a one for one trade in casualties--although it's true that Japanese casualties are almost all dead, whereas American casualties are dead + wounded.

Like I said in the Sidelines a few moments ago, why anyone would be surprised by how cheap life is is beyond me. Seriously. Human dignity has never been the number one priority for many, but if there was ever a time that should have opened people's eyes to just how much brutality human beings can deliver to each other, it should have been post-WWII, when final body counts were tallied AND the manner in which the bodies were killed was itemized--sure, it keeps it impersonal when you just say body or the bodies. All bets were off by, what, 1947, 1948, when people could really start to get their heads around the cheapness that wiped away tens of millions of people...just like that.

Armed to the teeth, those men/boys on those islands still didn't stand a chance. Every last one who survived, on both sides, should have been able to live tax-free for the rest of their lives, just for showing up. That kind of debt can never be repaid.

Well, that's my lousy two cents on this Tuesday evening. I can't even watch vids like that without wanting to tear my my hair out, contemplating all the suffering that led to that flag being raised. Can't take it. Can't take knowing how many are alive today who don't give a damn about all that was lost during those years and all that will never, ever be recovered.

The lives lost and blood shed for the island turned out to be for mostly for naught. The Marines suffered and died mainly because of the ineptitude and ignorance of the Air Corps and Navy high command. Iwo Jima turned out be to an objective not worth taking for even a fraction of the blood shed for it.

See my essay, "Iwo Jima Deconstructionism."

Sensing, you're an utter jerk.

It's so easy isn't it, to second-guess at a distance of what, almost 70 years?

Like you would have done better, had you been making the decisions.

Jerk.

What a glorious battle was Iwo Jima! Thank God we still have battlefields upon which to prove those who would be our warriors.

Many will not understand, but there are those among us who yearn to test steel against steel. While I may not be one of them, I know them when I meet them and am indebted to them. For they are the ones who stand at the ramparts while I raise my children and plow my field.

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