From Hiroshima to Fukushima, Vietnam to Fallujah

Started by drunkenshoe, March 12, 2014, 11:40:50 AM

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Moriarty

Shoe, already knowing what kind of work you do, and now adding in the obvious that you have special talent for fiction........have you ever considered writing!?

 =D>  :lol:  :-k  :oops:  I kid, I kid.
<Insert witty remark>

"Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he wouldn\'t have stood for Russian aggression in the Ukraine. He\'d have invaded New Zealand by now."--Donald O\'Keeffe.

Jmpty

In the documentary The Fog of War, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara recalls General Curtis LeMay, who relayed the Presidential order to drop nuclear bombs on Japan,said:
"If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
???  ??

The Skeletal Atheist

Losers are war criminals; winners are righteous victors.
Some people need to be beaten with a smart stick.

Kein Mehrheit Fur Die Mitleid!

Kein Mitlied F�r Die Mehrheit!

Plu

QuoteBut what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

Having enough guns left to back up your opinion that what you did isn't immoral.

josephpalazzo

#49
Quote from: drunkenshoe on March 12, 2014, 08:14:38 PM
The fairy tale of justification of nuking Japan is something belongs to the post war period and it is a fucking propaganda served by arguments created backwards from the conclusion at hand. Do you understand this right? The series of justification made later. Filled in the blanks.

Sorry but that's absolutely wrong. Just take the landing in Normandy (D-Day), the US lost 29,000 men in a matter of just a few days. Compare that to the 4,000+ casualties in the Iraq War that lasted 7 years to get a grip of that reality. Take into consideration that during the invasion at Normandy, Germany was also occupied in fighting two fronts - on the West, the Allies; on the East, Russia which was moving in quite fast - an invasion of Japan would be met with a full force of the Japanese army. Factor in the fanaticism of the Japanese soldiers - Kamikaze came decades before the jihadist suicide bombers, and what you have there is a recipe for a huge number of deaths on both sides.

Now, lets take a different scenario: suppose that the US had no nukes and had to invade Japan with foot soldiers. What do you think would have happened? Take the invasion at Normandy and what took place to move from Normandy to Berlin and apply the same scenario for the US invading Japan at any point and march all the way to Tokyo: every bridge would have to be fought over, ditto for every street of every town along the way, notwithstanding the massive aerial bombings that would have taken place a la Dresden. This would have taken weeks if not months, and the killing would have been horrendous. If you think that the number of casualties would have been lowered than what actually happened then think again.


Gawdzilla Sama

The fire bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more people than either atomic bomb. The invasion of Kyushu was planned with the expectation of facing ~500,000 Japanese troops. There were actually around 750,000. The Japanese military was conscripting EVERYBODY between 13 and 65 into "Volunteer Fighting Units. The fighting in China and elsewhere went on unabated. Truman's job was to end the war as fast a possible and he used everything in the box to do it.

People forget that we didn't know much about the full effects of the bombs back then. Gen. Marshall was to be given control of eight atomic bombs to be used during the invasion, and the plan was to march the troops through "ground zero" thirty minutes after the drop when they were used. Those are Allied troops, and many of them would have died. So if you hear someone tell you we used the bombs because of the "force multiplier" effect of radiation you can safely ignore them.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Jmpty

"everything must be put to fire and sword; men, women and children and old men must be slaughtered and not a tree or house be left standing."
Kaiser Wilhelm, on his duty to end WW1 as quickly as possible.This policy of indiscriminate murder to shorten the war was considered to be a crime. In the Pacific war under our consideration, if there was anything approaching what is indicated in the above quote from the German Emperor, it is the decision coming from the Allied powers to use the bomb. Future generations will judge this dire decision... If any indiscriminate destruction of civilian life and property is still illegal in warfare, then, in the Pacific War, this decision to use the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of the German Emperor during the first World War and of the Nazi leaders during the second World War. On 11 August 1945, the Japanese government filed an official protest over the atomic bombing to the U.S. State Department through the Swiss Legation in Tokyo, observing:"Combatant and noncombatant men and women, old and young, are massacred without discrimination by the atmospheric pressure of the explosion, as well as by the radiating heat which result therefrom. Consequently there is involved a bomb having the most cruel effects humanity has ever known ... The bombs in question, used by the Americans, by their cruelty and by their terrorizing effects, surpass by far gas or any other arm, the use of which is prohibited. Japanese protests against U.S. desecration of international principles of war paired the use of the atomic bomb with the earlier firebombing, which massacred old people, women and children, destroying and burning down Shinto and Buddhist temples, schools, hospitals, living quarters, etc... They now use this new bomb, having an uncontrollable and cruel effect much greater than any other arms or projectiles ever used to date. This constitutes a new crime against humanity and civilization."
???  ??

Gawdzilla Sama

It's a pity Japan was engaged in indiscriminate murder well before the US got into the war.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Plu

All countries are. That's what makes it so sad, that people are easy to point out the horrors the losers commit without realising that all sides are equally terrible at everything they do.
You either accept that horrors are a part of a life and stop bashing on the losers, or you condemn all forms of war and "peace through superior firepower"

Or you remain a hypocrite who says that "war is horrible, but thank god for the us military trying to put an end to it". That's also a common option.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Plu on March 13, 2014, 11:39:43 AM
Or you remain a hypocrite who says that "war is horrible, but thank god for the us military trying to put an end to it". That's also a common option.
Cute. I think the 170,000 Allied POWs who were slated for execution when the first invasion forces landed on Kyushu appreciated that the Allies didn't hold back when it came to forcing an end to the war.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Plu

Of course. The winners are always happy that it ended and the losers are generally dead so they can't really complain. I'm sure that while the 170,000 allies are happy, the dead japanese civilians were less amused. But hey, we don't hear them complain.

When you take the outsider perspective, it's shit all around.

Moriarty

But there would have been a lot more dead Japanese had an invasion taken place. I've seen more than a few interviews of Japanese, who while not happy about the bomb, understood their nation was never going to surrender otherwise~
<Insert witty remark>

"Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he wouldn\'t have stood for Russian aggression in the Ukraine. He\'d have invaded New Zealand by now."--Donald O\'Keeffe.

Moriarty

You typed all that, which I didn't even read because I probably wouldn't like what it said btw, for something I clearly said I was joking about? Relax my friend.
<Insert witty remark>

"Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he wouldn\'t have stood for Russian aggression in the Ukraine. He\'d have invaded New Zealand by now."--Donald O\'Keeffe.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Moriarty on March 13, 2014, 11:47:53 AM
But there would have been a lot more dead Japanese had an invasion taken place. I've seen more than a few interviews of Japanese, who while not happy about the bomb, understood their nation was never going to surrender otherwise~

I like to ask people who don't like the way the war ended to say how they would have ended it. The Japanese have estimated that 5-20,000,000 people would have died if the full invasion scenario had been played out.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Plu on March 13, 2014, 11:45:36 AM
Of course. The winners are always happy that it ended and the losers are generally dead so they can't really complain. I'm sure that while the 170,000 allies are happy, the dead japanese civilians were less amused. But hey, we don't hear them complain.

When you take the outsider perspective, it's shit all around.

I've studied this matter since 1965. Still waiting for a better end to the war.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers