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The problem with your thinking is no nation made the US fight them. Did Korea or Vietnam MAKES us fight them? We had no business getting involved in WWI or II either. Iraq?So because the Japanese and Germans were ruthless and prosecuted total war, the USA can too. Is that your point? Foolish!No doubt about this, if the Germans or Japanese did to us what we did to them, you would think differently. Try to overcome your statist brainwashing.It wasn't murder, it was war, and both sides did Strategic bombing if they had the aircraft to do it.
The massive aerial bombing of civilians by the American military in WWII, was a war crime. Histories greatest war crime was the A bombings.
And the Germans were just as guilty. The Japanese were guilty of the rape of Nanking and then there is that whole sneak attack on Pearl Harbor issue. The Japanese were also pretty vicious in how they conquered and ruled the Philippine Islands. So, basically, the Axis powers violated the rules of war, and you people, who have no clue of history other than what your buddy Zinn tells you, call every one else brainwashed.
The level of your ignorance is profound.
The USA should not make total war. We are better than that, or at least we like to think we are...sadly our political leadership is fully prepared to murder civilians on a vast scale, no matter what the American people want.
Yes. Total war can ONLY be fought with total war. That was the problem with Korea and Vietnam. The goal wasn't to win. I firmly believe that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. I truly do. However, if you MAKE me fight you. I am going to end you.
When we allow corrupt lying scumbag politicians to take the nation to war, we are doing their bidding not protecting the nation.
Secondly ending the lives of thousands of innocent people who have no control over their tyrannical government in an effort to win a war, is entirely evil and immoral.
The progressive policies of FDR was too not sell any more resources to Japan that were being used to invade and kill Chinese.The problem with your thinking is no nation made the US fight them. Did Korea or Vietnam MAKES us fight them? We had no business getting involved in WWI or II either. Iraq?So because the Japanese and Germans were ruthless and prosecuted total war, the USA can too. Is that your point? Foolish!No doubt about this, if the Germans or Japanese did to us what we did to them, you would think differently. Try to overcome your statist brainwashing.
The massive aerial bombing of civilians by the American military in WWII, was a war crime. Histories greatest war crime was the A bombings.
And the Germans were just as guilty. The Japanese were guilty of the rape of Nanking and then there is that whole sneak attack on Pearl Harbor issue. The Japanese were also pretty vicious in how they conquered and ruled the Philippine Islands. So, basically, the Axis powers violated the rules of war, and you people, who have no clue of history other than what your buddy Zinn tells you, call every one else brainwashed.
The level of your ignorance is profound.
The USA should not make total war. We are better than that, or at least we like to think we are...sadly our political leadership is fully prepared to murder civilians on a vast scale, no matter what the American people want.
Yes. Total war can ONLY be fought with total war. That was the problem with Korea and Vietnam. The goal wasn't to win. I firmly believe that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. I truly do. However, if you MAKE me fight you. I am going to end you.
When we allow corrupt lying scumbag politicians to take the nation to war, we are doing their bidding not protecting the nation.
Secondly ending the lives of thousands of innocent people who have no control over their tyrannical government in an effort to win a war, is entirely evil and immoral.
Where did I say we should have gone in to Korea or Vietnam? The problem with your logic stream is it is one dimensional. The US was forced into WW II (with some help from the progressive policies of FDR) and thus they deserved whatever the hell they got.
To ease the conscience, believing the nice story may be preferable.
No. I have no problems with the decision to use nukes. None.
Funny how the thought of killing 200000 people (mostly civilians) was once deemed a sound strategy
At least in those cases the wars ended, instead of the slow bleed we see now.
Since there have been no official declarations of war you can say we haven't fought any wars since WWII
you can say it.
it would not be true, of course.
words do not define reality.
if the words fail to accurately describe the reality that exists independently of them, then they are worthless bullshit.
The problem is that every "war" since WWII has been nothing but games of political brinksmanship on the part of our politicians
Our government has sent tens of thousands of our brave men and women to their deaths and has maimed and crippled tens of thousands more for no reason other than political maneuvering
Quite frankly we should be ashamed
MAD prevented Total War.
Oh, do the rules say that I was supposed to say something nice about the U.S.? Let's see, about 6,000 Marine heroes died taking a stinking little island that could have been bypassed about four months before they dropped the Bomb. The often stated reason that Iwo Jima was taken to provide a haven for crippled bombers is a myth. The stated purpose for taking Iwo Jima was to suppress Japanese fighters. My guess is that Marines were sacrificed to justify the argument by the blood thirsty eggheads that the Japanese would never surrender unless Japanese civilians were systematically anihiliated.The victors write the history books and life was cheap during the 2nd war to end all wars. The insanity that surfaced and prevailed among the Allies half way into the "world war" was that it was a legitimate concept that the mass killing of "enemy" civilians was a factor in winning the war. Was Paul Fussell aware that the Bushido Japanese holdouts were desperate to negotiate terms of surrender with the U.S. and desperate egghead scientists were pressuring the administration to test their monstrosity on real (sub human) people? Meanwhile president Harry Truman was under some sort of mystical pressure from his former dead boss to refuse to talk about terms of surrender with the Japanese other than unconditional surrender. Meanwhile the Japanese were trying desperately to negotiate terms of surrender with freaking Stalin. Ironically the most important term in Japanese surrender was the preservation of the Japanese emperor and the guarantee of not executing him and that happened anyway after the former clothing store owner who found himself president without a clue authorized the incineration of two Japanese cities.
And because of all that spin, you get to talk about WWII, without having to say something nice about the United States!
I'm listening. I just wanted you to be clear before I responded.
The point I was trying to make was that your conclusion is self serving to your anti-american bias.
Much like the Gipper's serves his anti-government bias.
Your belief that you, as opposed to the rest of US, have "yours eyes open" is just your telling yourself that you are smarter and better than the rest of US.
Like I said, it is nice you have a good self image.
But it really doesn't do a thing to support your position.
Imo. my eyes are open and yours are blinded by your anti-american bias.
Thanks for enjoying.
Now, you might want to accuse me of having a pro-american bias.
The difference between us is that I am aware of my biases.
Unlike you, my eyes are ACTUALLY open.
At least compared to you.
Anti-American bias? Really? So I disagree with you, therefore I have "anti-American bias", oh give me a break.
Am I smarter than the rest of the US? Not necessarily, however many people have the heads stuck up the proverbial ass of the US govt's media machine. However you're claiming I'm biased for no reason other than you are trying to chip away at me. I'm sorry, but many people are biased because they simply accept that the US is right. Cowboys 'n' Injuns syndrome. Cowboys are the good guys, committing genocide, and the Injuns are the bad guys who are receiving genocide and the destruction of their way of life and the taking of their land.
The same. Whatever the US does it must be good because we're the US and we only do good things. The Iranians and Iraqis and Libyans and Syrians and ISIS and everyone must be bad because they're our enemies and we fight for good. It's black and white, nothing else.
However I'm not looking at good v. evil. I see evil v. evil.
But then if you think i'm blinded by some "anti-American bias" when you have no freaking clue about me, then maybe this says more about you.
I'm here to discuss what I THINK. You're here to tell me that I'm this and that and the other. That's the difference.
It won't be long until the some start believing that the Japanese army treated enemy civilians with courtesy and care. Did the Japanese military ever bomb defenseless Chinese civilians, or at times use Chinese for bayonet practice or simple beheadings?
After the surrender it seemed essential to get American troops to Japan as quick as possible to prevent possible beheadings and mutilation of our prisoners.
With the surrender, however, it seems the Japanese become a different people, humble and apologetic, and maybe they always were? Maybe it was the military that was not the care- givers some posters believe. In fact, I wonder if Japanese civilians knew much about the war except what they were told and the bombings they experienced?
It was not a nice war, sort of uncivilized at times.
To ease the conscience, believing the nice story may be preferable.
No. I have no problems with the decision to use nukes. None.
At least in those cases the wars ended, instead of the slow bleed we see now.
Since there have been no official declarations of war you can say we haven't fought any wars since WWII
you can say it.
it would not be true, of course.
words do not define reality.
if the words fail to accurately describe the reality that exists independently of them, then they are worthless bullshit.
The problem is that every "war" since WWII has been nothing but games of political brinksmanship on the part of our politicians
Our government has sent tens of thousands of our brave men and women to their deaths and has maimed and crippled tens of thousands more for no reason other than political maneuvering
Quite frankly we should be ashamed
MAD prevented Total War.
What does MAD have to do with all the undeclared unnecessary "wars" we have fought?
Was Vietnam going to nuke us?
Korea?
Iraq in the first Gulf war?
The second war in Iraq?
How about Afghanistan?
Yeah all those piddly ass backwards countries were a real threat to America
Like I said we should be ashamed that our soldiers are nothing but game pieces to be wasted on brinksmanship rather than fighting in just and necessary wars
I think that without the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we would have had a nuclear WW3. The utter destruction of those cities demonstrated for all that in a nuclear war, one plane, one bomb, one city. No defense, because one can always get through.I tend to agree. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives, including many Americans.
The headline of this column is lifted from a 1981 essay by the late Paul Fussell, the cultural critic and war memoirist. In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. Army who had fought his way through Europe only to learn that he would soon be shipped to the Pacific to take part in Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin in November 1945.
Then the atom bomb intervened. Japan would not surrender after Hiroshima, but it did after Nagasaki.
I brought Fussell’s essay with me on my flight to Hiroshima and was stopped by this: “When we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.”
In all the cant that will pour forth this week to mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs—that the U.S. owes the victims of the bombings an apology; that nuclear weapons ought to be abolished; that Hiroshima is a monument to man’s inhumanity to man; that Japan could have been defeated in a slightly nicer way—I doubt much will be made of Fussell’s fundamental point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t just terrible war-ending events. They were also lifesaving. The bomb turned the empire of the sun into a nation of peace activists.
Thank God for the Atom Bomb - WSJ
What are your thoughts?
Fellow, the Nazis were already history.I think also the fear was the Nazis had made progress and were in bed with the Japanese. They were determined to fight to the last man too so as bad as it was it did shorten the war.
We provoked Japan and Germany? Damn, there are indeed some ignorant people in this world.I don't think we should have provoked Japan and Germany in the first place. That horrific war was easily avoidable.
We provoked Japan and Germany? Damn, there are indeed some ignorant people in this world.I don't think we should have provoked Japan and Germany in the first place. That horrific war was easily avoidable.
Brainwashed statist dribble.We provoked Japan and Germany? Damn, there are indeed some ignorant people in this world.I don't think we should have provoked Japan and Germany in the first place. That horrific war was easily avoidable.
Lordy, lordy, so now our 'Conservatives' apologists for Hitler and the Japanese Empire. Today, the acts they committed would be reason for an international force to invade their nations. Or are you denying that the Rape of Nanking occurred?[/QUOTE
I get it, I think. We incinerated Japanese civilians as punishment for "the rape of Nanking".
Today, the acts they committed would be reason for an international force to invade their nations.
I'm listening. I just wanted you to be clear before I responded.
The point I was trying to make was that your conclusion is self serving to your anti-american bias.
Much like the Gipper's serves his anti-government bias.
Your belief that you, as opposed to the rest of US, have "yours eyes open" is just your telling yourself that you are smarter and better than the rest of US.
Like I said, it is nice you have a good self image.
But it really doesn't do a thing to support your position.
Imo. my eyes are open and yours are blinded by your anti-american bias.
Thanks for enjoying.
Now, you might want to accuse me of having a pro-american bias.
The difference between us is that I am aware of my biases.
Unlike you, my eyes are ACTUALLY open.
At least compared to you.
Anti-American bias? Really? So I disagree with you, therefore I have "anti-American bias", oh give me a break.
Am I smarter than the rest of the US? Not necessarily, however many people have the heads stuck up the proverbial ass of the US govt's media machine. However you're claiming I'm biased for no reason other than you are trying to chip away at me. I'm sorry, but many people are biased because they simply accept that the US is right. Cowboys 'n' Injuns syndrome. Cowboys are the good guys, committing genocide, and the Injuns are the bad guys who are receiving genocide and the destruction of their way of life and the taking of their land.
The same. Whatever the US does it must be good because we're the US and we only do good things. The Iranians and Iraqis and Libyans and Syrians and ISIS and everyone must be bad because they're our enemies and we fight for good. It's black and white, nothing else.
However I'm not looking at good v. evil. I see evil v. evil.
But then if you think i'm blinded by some "anti-American bias" when you have no freaking clue about me, then maybe this says more about you.
I'm here to discuss what I THINK. You're here to tell me that I'm this and that and the other. That's the difference.
No, you disagree with me and insist on judging people in the middle of a world war in the middle of the last century by modern standards.
THe second is indefensible.
I think that without the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we would have had a nuclear WW3. The utter destruction of those cities demonstrated for all that in a nuclear war, one plane, one bomb, one city. No defense, because one can always get through.I tend to agree. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives, including many Americans.
The headline of this column is lifted from a 1981 essay by the late Paul Fussell, the cultural critic and war memoirist. In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. Army who had fought his way through Europe only to learn that he would soon be shipped to the Pacific to take part in Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin in November 1945.
Then the atom bomb intervened. Japan would not surrender after Hiroshima, but it did after Nagasaki.
I brought Fussell’s essay with me on my flight to Hiroshima and was stopped by this: “When we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.”
In all the cant that will pour forth this week to mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs—that the U.S. owes the victims of the bombings an apology; that nuclear weapons ought to be abolished; that Hiroshima is a monument to man’s inhumanity to man; that Japan could have been defeated in a slightly nicer way—I doubt much will be made of Fussell’s fundamental point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t just terrible war-ending events. They were also lifesaving. The bomb turned the empire of the sun into a nation of peace activists.
Thank God for the Atom Bomb - WSJ
What are your thoughts?
The nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities ended WW2, and, I believe, prevented WW3. MAD was and is the chief deterant to any major power using nuclear weopons.
