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With all that we know now, was the right decision made? I'm not looking to judge. They did what they thought they had to do. It was a complicated decision to make. In the end, many American lives were spared, but at what cost?
Anyone?
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what bomb? you mean Gigli? I think it was a mistake. I know lots of Americans who went into that and came out with puke in their popcorn, fruit punch dripping out their nostrils and pale as death. It was a terrible terrible sight, and one that I will relive every night as long as I live. No, Gigli never should have been released.
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Affleck was da bomb in Phantoms, yo!
And that's terrible.
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Remembering Nagasaki
I seem to recall sharing this site a while back with you guys.
I think I commented back then that 9/11 made me re-evaluate the way i viewed the dropping of the Atomic bomb(s).
For a long time I studied history and was pretty content to take historians sterile matter-of-factly words that dropping the bomb was necessary and what-not. BUT.
9/11 happened. Innocents died horribly. 3000. People who undoubtedly didn't give a feck about Islam, geopolitics, or even U.S. foreign policy. Just people doing the mundane things people do as they live. They wearn't soldiers. They wearn't politicians. They were just people. Or rather, they were simply civilians.
Now, i can't stop thinking about how much of a crime it is to drag innocents. Women, children, old men and women and men who just were going about their daily lives, into your wars, real or imagined.
3000 people died at the WTC. Here's the breakdown on the atom bomb:
Quote:
Hiroshima: August 6, 1945, Little Boy, exploded at 8:16 a.m. (Hiroshima time), almost 2,000 feet above the ground. It had a yield equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. Everything within four square miles was destroyed.
Instantly Killed:
70,000
Instantly Injured:
70,000
December 1945 total death toll:
140,000
1950 total death toll:
200,000
Nagasaki: August 9, 1945, Fat Man, exploded 1,650 feet above Nagasaki at 11:01 a.m. It had a force of 21,000 tons of TNT. Everything within three square miles was destroyed.
Instantly Killed:
40,000
Instantly Injured:
60,000
January 1946 total death toll:
70,000
1950 total death toll:
140,000
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused just a fraction of the casualties of WW II. *The March 1945 fire bomb raid on Tokyo killed nearly 100,000 people and injured over 1,000,000, and the May 1945 fire bomb raid killed another 83,000.
They say dropping the bomb saved lives. Others say Truman dropped it to scare the Soviets. Still, innocent people died. Horribly.
I was thinking these thoughts again after finding that Chernobly site. 125,000 are dead because of that accident. Millions more are infected by radiation. When you stop to think about it, we as Americans really don't know disaster of that scale. So I think it's hard for us to wrap our minds around that kind of carnage. Like I said, before 9/11, I couldn't grasp the immense scope of something like a Hiroshima or a Chernobyl. It was all just statistics. Nice and safe and unfathomable.
9/11 really did a number on our collective psyches. Can you even begin to imagine what the effects of 2 entire cities and it's inhabitants being vaporized did to the Japaneese?
In wartime, we insulate ourselves against that mindset by dismissing them as "the enemy", no different than the kamakazi trying to kill us. You don't think of the mother holding her infant daughter in her arms.
As with the Holoucast, 6 million is just a statistic. *yawn* when's recess coming? When you stop to think about 1 life and how it was snuffed out or 1000 lives as in the film Schindler's List, then it becomes something personal, human, something you can stop and think about happening to you and then you feel it.
Last edited by whomod; 2004-03-31 4:06 AM.
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The way I've heard it, the only other way to end the war would have been an invasion ten times the size of Normandy that would have most definitely taken hundreds of thousands of lives before the end. It may seem like six of one, half dozen of the other, but isn't the whole point of running a country being concerned about your own people's lives before worrying about everyone else's? After all, at that point in history we still weren't quite yet in the role we're forced to play today - underappreciated policeman to the free world.  Also, the night-after-night fire-bombings of just about every other major city in Japan claimed a comparable number of civilian casualties.
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Japanese psych was different. They were evaluating what Americans and Brits were doing over course of century, with imperialism... taking over land that belonged to others... Saw it as the way of surviving, way of the future. They wanted in. But they brought their mindset, which had that strong honor code--still does. You know, dishonor was synonomous with death, and a great noble character tried to inflict as much damage on his enemy. Being taken alive was not an option to speak of.
Americans had a problem understanding this. It went against any kind of convential warfare, because it could be so brutal. To them, it meant death of the many was better than anything. Even losing. No compromise. Frustrating. In a way, we saw the same thing in Vietnam and also see it in Afghanistan and Iraq. People fight with different belief systems than Westerners, stems from the way they were raised, and how dying for their God or their leader is honorable and sends them to a better place than this wretched life.
To put this into perspective:remember how the Brits came to America for the Revolutionary War? They wore red uniforms. They would sit down at tables and discuss strategies with opposing generals over tea while men shot each other on the battlefield. The men marched forward and shot. Civilised fighting. Stupid. Washington and his men developed used guerilla warfare, and the British cried foul, but we won Independence... fast forward 200 years...
Japanese pilots are flying their explosive-packed planes into ships, doing kamikazee runs. What the fuck? This is so uncalled for! What kind of man kills himself to... ummm. kill a couple hundred or even a thousand men? Hmmm... the ship is sinking. Wow, that was successful. Still, seems kind of nutty. Are those sharks?
So much of Japan was like this. When the older soldiers were off dying, younger boys, teens were recruited. It would never end. The bomb was there, and it was an agonizing decision. Let them know that we had the capabilities to end this all by any means necessary. If they wished to continue this, it would only get uglier.
Two bombs dropped, many lives lost. We have not dropped a bomb on anyone since. People are aware of what it can do. It is intimidation. A frightful object that kills more indiscriminately than a knife, sword, or gun. With those, you have to direct them at a person. This, well, you know.
It ended the war. The Indianapolis is an indication that all things did not run smooth. Can't remember final count, but good 1000 naval officers eaten by sharks or drowned.
Words not violence, break the silence. Maybe.
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I have issues with the nature of the bomb, but I think it's just too big, and the alternatives too uncertain, to judge.
I do find it odd that in the light of how our side won the war, that some people still have such a problem with German bombings of Britain. Not only the blitz suffered by London, but of other coties in the country. I'm not suggesting they should be happy, but it's not like it's anything we didn't do.
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Quote:
Captain Sammitch said:
After all, at that point in history we still weren't quite yet in the role we're forced to play today - underappreciated policeman to the free world.
I always wonder why the government even bothers helping other countries out when they cry for help. Everyone hates America because of our status at "World Police", but whenever some serious shit goes down in a country one of the first things I read is, "_______ asking United States for military aid to halt _______." If they don't want our fucking help, how come they always ask for aid?
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Quote:
Steve T said:
I do find it odd that in the light of how our side won the war, that some people still have such a problem with German bombings of Britain. Not only the blitz suffered by London, but of other coties in the country. I'm not suggesting they should be happy, but it's not like it's anything we didn't do.
Uh, yeah, but we did AFTER we were attacked.
Germany and Japan were the agressors, remember?
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Quote:
the G-man said:
Quote:
Steve T said:
I do find it odd that in the light of how our side won the war, that some people still have such a problem with German bombings of Britain. Not only the blitz suffered by London, but of other coties in the country. I'm not suggesting they should be happy, but it's not like it's anything we didn't do.
Uh, yeah, but we did AFTER we were attacked.
Germany and Japan were the agressors, remember?
That doesn't make it right!
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We were right to drop the bomb.......many lives were saved on both sides.......the Japanese would've fought until there was no one left........oh and Chant......grow a set.
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from chants posts here and in the israel thread, it seems his opinion is no matter how many of your people are killed a nation should never respond. maybe he believes magic pixies will appear and make the aggressors stop with shiney glitter......
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Quote:
PJP said:
We were right to drop the bomb.......many lives were saved on both sides.......the Japanese would've fought until there was no one left........
I assume all those periods represent the pause where you hopped inside your alternate history time machine and found out what happened, right?
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Quote:
the G-man said:
Uh, yeah, but we did AFTER we were attacked.
Germany and Japan were the agressors, remember?
My issue with that argument is thart the Japaneese specifically bombed a MILITARY target.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are both cities where all manner of people, both young and old, female and male, infant and adult, lived.
I can concede that it was necessary, but it still doesn't make it right.
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Quote:
britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
from chants posts here and in the israel thread, it seems his opinion is no matter how many of your people are killed a nation should never respond. maybe he believes magic pixies will appear and make the aggressors stop with shiney glitter......
hmmm....
obviously, such mockery is completely uncalled for.
I do not see any wrong in winning a war by bombing the enemy back to the stone age.
I do, however, see wrong in bombing civilian cities for the specific purpose of winning a war. No matter how much you argue, killing civilians ain't right.
No wonder today it's called a warcrime!
Of course, back then it was a different time, but that still doesn't make it right!
Racks be to MisterJLA
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Quote:
whomod said:
I can concede that it was necessary, but it still doesn't make it right.
I agree with that point Whomod
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Quote:
Chant said:
Quote:
britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
from chants posts here and in the israel thread, it seems his opinion is no matter how many of your people are killed a nation should never respond. maybe he believes magic pixies will appear and make the aggressors stop with shiney glitter......
hmmm....
obviously, such mockery is completely uncalled for.
I do not see any wrong in winning a war by bombing the enemy back to the stone age.
I do, however, see wrong in bombing civilian cities for the specific purpose of winning a war. No matter how much you argue, killing civilians ain't right.
this is completely counter to your Israel stance, you say the Palestinians are provoked when they attack civilians, but Israel is in the wrong when they attack the leader of Hamas?
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I never said that it was wrong to kill Yassin, I said that they should have considered the consequences, or at least, that's what I meant
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Quote:
Chant said:
I never said that it was wrong to kill Yassin, I said that they should have considered the consequences, or at least, that's what I meant
ARRRGGHH....Crap, I DID say that 
My mistake, as mentioned above, what I MEANT was that they should have considered the censequences 
hope that clears my intentions up a bit
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Quote:
Animalman said:
Quote:
PJP said:
We were right to drop the bomb.......many lives were saved on both sides.......the Japanese would've fought until there was no one left........
I assume all those periods represent the pause where you hopped inside your alternate history time machine and found out what happened, right?
Dude I was a History major like you are now and spent many hundreds more hours studying WWII than you ever will.........so If you don't like my opinion too bad........Don't hate the player... hate the game.
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Truman had no problem with dropping it. And the US refuses to apologize even though Japan has hinted we should.
"You kind of get tired giving the other team credit. At some point you've got to look in the mirror and say 'I sucked.'"
Alex Rodriguez, after the NY Yankees were eliminated from the 2006 ALDS by the Detroit Tigers.
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Quote:
PJP said:
Dude I was a History major like you are now and spent many hundreds more hours studying WWII than you ever will.........
So you've used the same time machine to familiarize yourself with my study habits?
Quote:
so If you don't like my opinion too bad........Don't hate the player... hate the game.
If making general assumptions about historical events without presenting the slightest bit of proof was a game, you would certainly be it's champion.
MisterJLA is RACKing awesome.
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It's difficult to judge with complete accuracy, since most of the commentary on the bomb since the issue was dredged back up in the mid-90s has been one part history, two parts politics. Which of course sets it apart from every other historical dialogue touched on in the past decade.
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History.com: - The United States becomes the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War.
Since 1940, the United States had been working on developing an atomic weapon, after having been warned by Albert Einstein that Nazi Germany was already conducting research into nuclear weapons. By the time the United States conducted the first successful test (an atomic bomb was exploded in the desert in New Mexico in July 1945), Germany had already been defeated.
The war against Japan in the Pacific, however, continued to rage. President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end. On August 6, 1945, the American bomber Enola Gay dropped a five-ton bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to the power of 15,000 tons of TNT reduced four square miles of the city to ruins and immediately killed 80,000 people. Tens of thousands more died in the following weeks from wounds and radiation poisoning. Three days later, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing nearly 40,000 more people. A few days later, Japan announced its surrender.
In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective. First, of course, was to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end and spare American lives.
It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S. President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe.
Truman and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of the Cold War. If U.S. officials truly believed that they could use their atomic monopoly for diplomatic advantage, they had little time to put their plan into action. By 1949, the Soviets had developed their own atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race began.
Not only was it the right decision, but I think we should commemorate it by dropping another one on Mecca.
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" I Learned a new word today - "Atomic Bomb. "
From the movie, Empire Of The Sun.
"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your death bring you the peace you never found in life." - Tuvok. 
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I think we should kill hundreds of thousands of people in an instant and spread radiation across a region, as well as ensure the entire world sees us as evil to get at some terrorists who may or may not be there.
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I know he's not gonna answer, but just seeing it makes me have to reply to it:
I seem to recall sharing this site a while back with you guys.
I think I commented back then that 9/11 made me re-evaluate the way i viewed the dropping of the Atomic bomb(s).
For a long time I studied history and was pretty content to take historians sterile matter-of-factly words that dropping the bomb was necessary and what-not. BUT.
9/11 happened. Innocents died horribly. 3000. People who undoubtedly didn't give a feck about Islam, geopolitics, or even U.S. foreign policy. Just people doing the mundane things people do as they live. They wearn't soldiers. They wearn't politicians. They were just people. Or rather, they were simply civilians.
Now, i can't stop thinking about how much of a crime it is to drag innocents. Women, children, old men and women and men who just were going about their daily lives, into your wars, real or imagined.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of war. 9/11 was a terrorist incident. Two different natures.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of war. 9/11 was a terrorist incident. Two different natures.
It's all murder because one side believes the other has no right to live. And many see 9/11 as an act of war.
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Attacking the Pentagon was an act of war, attacking the World Trade Center was an act of terrorism.
November 6th, 2012: Americas new Independence Day.
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Its still calculated human death on a grand scale. How were kids in Hiroshima guilty and deserving of death? (and I agree that 9/11 was not an act of war, but the Bush Administration might not since it apparently regard it as the satart of the war on terror.)
I have read a lot about this. It is a hard call. I fully understand why FDR's and Truman's administration did it based upon the defective intelligence it had at the time. It was quite a different thing from General Curtis LeMay's systematic and brutal razing of Tokyo, which was based upon the cruel premise that Japan's industrial capability was indivisible from civilian homes.
Use of A-bombs followed from
1. a brutal Pacific war, and the bleak prospects of a long term blockade of Japan and the even bleaker prospects of an invasion;
2. Imperial Army control of the Japanese government and the Emperor, and Imperial Army entrenched poicy of no surrender or capitulation;
3. intelligence of Communist activity in Japan (a groundswell of anti-imperialism, since the Emperor was perceived as the cause of the war).
A major benefit from the unconditional surrender was the complete recasting of Japan into a benign democracy, but that wasn't something that could have been anticipated.
My view on it is that the US should have first bombed Mt Fuji and utterly destroyed it. By obliterating the symbolic Fuji-san instead of two minor cities, it would have served as a shot across the bows. If the Japanese government had not surrendered then (remembering that it refused to surrender following the bombing of Hiroshima), then and only then given the exigent circumstances should a city have been destroyed.
But these things were nightmarishly expensive to manufacture and there wasn't a massive arsenal of them like there is now, and Truman had the additional message to end to Stalin to back off from an invasion of Hokkaido (Japan could easily have been divided like Germany). At least it wasnt used on Tokyo and Osaka, two massive cities with large civilian populations, and instead was used on relatively small cities.... little consolation to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Incidentally, Kyoto was the first target but was obscured by low clouds. Kyoto has remained untouched during the war because an influential government official who had been there argued successfully that the place was irreplaceable. The idea was to bomb it to see the effect an A-bomb would have upon an intact city (all other cities in Japan had been badly scarred). Kyoto is a beautiful ciy where I have spent a lot of time, which has some of the world's oldest wooden structures. I'm personally very grateful for the low cloud.
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It's all murder because one side believes the other has no right to live. And many see 9/11 as an act of war.
Then they have skewered definitions of the term. If you're in a country that's at war with another, the entire country is at war. Not just the soldiers, not just the government, it's the ENTIRE country. The civilians are a part of it and they all form the infrastructure that helps power the military machine. It doesn't matter if you don't agree with the war, if you still consider yourself apart of the country and you don't leave it, you still add to its overall mass. These governments represent us; if one disagrees that, they need to leave. The 9/11 attack was carried out by a group of individuals who are simply well sponsored by outside elements that could have declared war but instead decided to hide behind the Osama figure-head. They are terrorists, not soldiers.
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Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts
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Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618 |
Attacking the Pentagon was an act of war, attacking the World Trade Center was an act of terrorism. Only because you're on the receiving end.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 14,203
1 Millionth Customer 10000+ posts
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1 Millionth Customer 10000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 14,203 |
Then they have skewered definitions of the term.
If you're in a country that's at war with another, the entire country is at war. Not just the soldiers, not just the government, it's the ENTIRE country. The civilians are a part of it and they all form the infrastructure that helps power the military machine. It doesn't matter if you don't agree with the war, if you still consider yourself apart of the country and you don't leave it, you still add to its overall mass. These governments represent us; if one disagrees that, they need to leave.
The 9/11 attack was carried out by a group of individuals who are simply well sponsored by outside elements that could have declared war but instead decided to hide behind the Osama figure-head. They are terrorists, not soldiers.
Aside from your semantics in terms of definition, what do you consider the difference between soldiers and militarily-trained terrorists? As for the bomb, people always look at is a yes/no type of decision. Why no "warning shot?" We could've dropped it onto a more remote region where the destructive power could be seen without killing many (even a small military post). The Japanese were already considering a surrender before we dropped the bomb, just showing the power of it without killing all those people would've had the same effect.
Bow ties are coool.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951 Likes: 6 |
Why no "warning shot?" We could've dropped it onto a more remote region where the destructive power could be seen without killing many (even a small military post). The Japanese were already considering a surrender before we dropped the bomb, just showing the power of it without killing all those people would've had the same effect. We've had the bomb for over sixty years. We've used it on one country (twice). We've openly tested the bombs many more times. No one is unaware of its effects. Despite all of that, in every war since WWII we have seen our troops attacked, often by "insurgents", "guerillas" or terrorists. In none of these wars has there been a surrender simply because we have the bomb. Therefore, there is little, if any, basis to conclude that Japan would have surrendered just because they saw a demonstration of the A-bomb. If anything, they would have been less likely than more modern opponents to surrender, given their then-unfamiliarity with the weapon. As a result, had we followed "your" advice, we would have likely had our troops invading the country and suffering massive casualities. Furthermore, once our troops were there, recourse to the Atomic bomb would have been impossible without killing our own soldiers.
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Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7
The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
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The conscience of the rkmbs! 15000+ posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 30,833 Likes: 7 |
Aside from your semantics in terms of definition, what do you consider the difference between soldiers and militarily-trained terrorists? One officially represents the will and prerogative of a nation and the other is a radical force. If anything, they would have been less likely than more modern opponents to surrender, given their then-unfamiliarity with the weapon. Not to mention they invented the Kamikaze.
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