Dower comes near to a truth but blunders past it. Indeed, Japan surrendered unconditionally, after their armies were decimated and millions of civilians dead in leveled cities. Well, Professor, we could easily have done that to Iraq, but chose not to. And as a result of our concern for Iraqi casualties, civilian and military, we are now taking casualties during the occupation.

Still, if you add up all our losses, during and after the war, we still took Iraq with stunningly low casualties, far lower than even the most optimistic predictions.

So get off Bush's case, you Ivory Tower nitwit.

Good point, Papaya. Dower's "War Without Mercy" was also a book that should have been a slam dunk -- it was fought without much mercy -- but Dower never quite explained it.

Also, in his essay he makes serious misstatements of fact. Japanese were executing Allied prisoners as late as Sept. 20, 1945.

They didn't have any food or clothes or fuel, so they were likely to be cringingly beholden to the occupiers, who did.

Furthermore, the Japanese psyche was an odd construct. Never has a country been such a bully. Notoriously, bullies quiver when overpowered and faced down. When my Dad took the surrender of a Japanese garrison, the commander gave him his sword because, in Dad's words, "he wanted us to be nice to him."

Not only wanted but expected, despite the fact that the sword had been used to chop off the heads of Australian prisoners.

I could go on.