Ever hear of Pearl Harbor? Ever hear of Japan’s numerous atrocities during WWII, like Unit 731 (which conducted Mengele-like experiments on humans), “Comfort Women” (who were foreign women forced into sex slavery), and the Bataan Death March?

Sometimes, death and destruction are a country’s just desserts. And you know what else? Sometimes, America isn’t in the wrong for causing death and destruction. (I’d say almost never, but that’s just me.)

Really?

This is ultimately what I find troubling about this blog (which, nonetheless, is a great big guilty pleasure) and the million-odd others like it — it is impossible to really look at these images on purely aesthetic grounds, and for good reason. They have historic importance and meaning. Those are real people, not models posing for our pure, disassociated aesthetic pleasure.

And I don’t really understand the snappy tone these comments so often take (both directed toward, and returned by Mr. Williams). I found the historical context interesting in all comments that brought elements of it up, and if anything adding richness to the experience of looking at the photos.

I didn’t really mean to delve too much into the fact. I have nothing really against your blog and your posts are usually pretty interesting and entertaining, despite the differences.

I guess the main focus should be the aesthetic quality of the photos, I was more or less reacting to the comments following the them.

I did see “The Fog of War”, and have read “Promise and Power” as well. While I understand McNamara quasi-confessed to his Tonkin miscalculation in his later writings and in the film, it does not take away from the fact that he deliberately withheld information regarding the falsity of the incident to Johnson at the onset of the crisis. He essentially manipulated the truth to push ahead his own strategic war plan he developed during the Cuban missile crisis. Should I then change my opinion due to his own admittance of error confessed decades later? I think that’s a question left to be answered by almost 2 million lives.

On another note, this whole “Love it or Leave it” rhetoric is interpreted in so many ways that it constitutes as utter bullshit. Where is freedom when there is no dissent? Since when did that sort of groupthink crap enter the individualistic spirit we always call home about? And what does the term “love” extend to beyond the nationalistic approach?