"A" solution

Was the use of the Atomic Bomb the best way to close out WWII? Why or why not?

Knowing what we know today, would you make the same call if you were in Truman's shoes?

Could you ever envision a justifiable use of aggressive nuclear force today or in the future?

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Wolfgang says:

I could think of a million better things to do in Japan for a month besides jumping off of picnic tables. - x893

“	Originally Posted By: Unkotare Was the use of the Atomic Bomb the best way to close out WWII? Why or why not?	”

Yes it was, as bad as it was it brought a quick decisive end to a war that had gone on for years and cost many many lives, resources and would continue to do so otherwise.

“	Knowing what we know today, would you make the same call if you were in Truman's shoes?	”

No, I would find another method, sometimes though you have to take drastic measures to know the full extent of what it is you have.

“	Could you ever envision a justifiable use of aggressive nuclear force today or in the future?	”

Personally? Of course.

In all reallity? NEVER!!!

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Oh THAT'S how that works!

Yes, it was the rightest of the right things to do, as it wasn't me who died, nor do I know someone personally who did.


On a serious note: What the f*** is going on in a person who threw an H-bomb at a city massacring the whole inhabitants, doing it AGAIN before the common sense of the other party would set in to capitulate ? What about throwing an H-bomb at an uninhabited island of Japan, so they could look at it making a decision if they want that or not ? I don't think that someone looking at a nuclear explosion would want to take it, knowing that he doesn't have anything that could prevent it other than capitulation. All that means just a few weeks of negotiations, to let it sink in. It most probably had a lot more to do with Pearl Harbour than with being anywhere necessary. I don't know if the survivors of Pearl Harbour would have wanted that to happen to lots of innocent people and children.
The same goes for "weakening the moral" of "a country" bombing a 50,000 people pack of refugees allover the trees, weeks before end of WW2. Anyone who knew Adolf would know that he and his miserable attempt at a cabinet didn't care what happened to the cities, nor the people inside. Such atrocities didn't weaken moral, it strengthened anger so the guys who already had enough long before would continue. It's 3 years old's warfare.

Killing 250,000 people who didn't have a say in anything is okay, because it was cheaper ??? I would say there aren't enough pictures of those deaths shown in your schools, but too much talk. It hurt me the exact way hearing about Nanking, Hiroshima, 9/11 or the Tsunami last year, without needing to know them or be a party. It's time to stop argueing "me" and "someone else".

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"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

It wouldn't have been dropped had;

A.) Those countries involved not started an injust war, committed atrocities against millions of innocent people, commited an act of genocide, sought to conquer what they had no right to.
B.) Those innocent civilians not for the most part supported their government's war machine, helped to support and supply their military, had acted to stop any such from taking place.

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Oh THAT'S how that works!

There's it, the good ol' "them". You know that you personally are responsible (i.e. guilty) for the genocid towards the Indians ? I mean, hey, you have the same passport, that's what it takes. I'm at a current shortage of H-bombs, so I'll come back to it later.

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"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

“	Originally Posted By: Nik You know that you personally are responsible (i.e. guilty) for the genocid towards the Indians ? I mean, hey, you have the same passport, that's what it takes. I'm at a current shortage of H-bombs, so I'll come back to it later.	”

Please don't let your naïveté judge what you say, I have Cherokee in my blood line. My GGG Grandfather was married to and fought alongside and with Cherokee( This includes against white people trying to take and destroy what wasn't their's.)

Since I have the same passport which makes me responsible() for it, then you must be personally responsible for the mass murder and torture of millions of Jewish people and others, good work!

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Oh THAT'S how that works!

Easy fellas, easy now...........

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Wolfgang says:

I could think of a million better things to do in Japan for a month besides jumping off of picnic tables. - x893

“	Originally Posted By: Mei Hua Please don't let your naïveté judge what you say, I have Cherokee in my blood line. My GGG Grandfather was married to and fought alongside and with Cherokee( This includes against white people trying to take and destroy what wasn't their's.) Since I have the same passport which makes me responsible() for it, then you must be personally responsible for the mass murder and torture of millions of Jewish people and others, good work!	”

Hey, it's your theory, not mine. By your logic, the german jews need to kill themselves as they're guilty both ways. You know that literally, german speaking jews and gypsies who were freed from KZs and went back to their homes in eastern europe were horribly tortured to death by those righteous Czech partizans for being "germans" ? Good luck if you are a cherokee with a german and a white american grandfather, that much guilt must be unbearable, and you need to torture yourself for lots of things. I mean, if we apply your standards, that is.

My stance is there is NO right whatsoever to use an H-bomb, or anything else, against a "nation" rather than an army.

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"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

Theory?
No, it was fact, all I stated was and is historical fact.

Can a government and it's military succeed with it's plans if it has no or extremely little support from it's civilians and members of it's governing branches, it's law enforcement and military branches? Nope, but that wasn't the case was it? and thus the outcome was the dropping of the bomb.

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Oh THAT'S how that works!

Good luck fighting the Nazis with your bare hands. You know that HUNDREDTHOUSANDS of GERMANS were deported to KZs because they opposed the politics (christians, communists, socialists, liberals) ?

If you think that killing RANDOMLY people of an ethnicity or nation to "weaken the moral" and "reach your goals", then you are no different than those who would define their goals important enough to kill a few million europeans for it to "make room" for their "nation". "Them" vs. "us" was the plot that EVERY fascist state in the last 2000 years used to get someone behind the "politics". It's the plot that all those neofascist use to get teenagers into their group. Seeing the other soldier as a person, an individual, was fought toes and nails by the commanders allover history, because it kept people from killing.

__________________
"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

“	Originally Posted By: Nik If you think that killing RANDOMLY people of an ethnicity or nation to "weaken the moral" and "reach your goals", then you are no different than those who would define their goals important enough to kill a few million europeans for it to "make room" for their "nation". "Them" vs. "us" was the plot that EVERY fascist state in the last 2000 years used to get someone behind the "politics". It's the plot that all those neofascist use to get teenagers into their group. Seeing the other soldier as a person, an individual, was fought toes and nails by the commanders allover history, because it kept people from killing.	”

You may not like it, and I never said I did either, but it is a fact of war that if you destroy a population you demoralize the country, including the military and government branches, and thus those that once supported such turn against and act to stop further such actions. This is what was done, and as horrible as it was it did work. And through that action taking place the world learned the horrors of such and for the most part have worked hard to restrain such from ever taking place again...

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Oh THAT'S how that works!

You might want to stop being a spokesman of the justification trashtalk and think on your own - did HITLER think about the germans before he threw a whole army into Stalingrad just for the appeal of "dieing in pride" ? Do you think that the moral of a person in a basement had any bearing on a general pushing coloured flags over a desk in the Führerbunker ? When did you last time see a population successfully stop their government in doing something silly ? Did the protest of people stop the Juntas in Chile and Argentina ? It took what, 20 years ? Did the chinese stop their own government at Tiananmen ? This is exactly what drives horrible execution of stupid and amoral plans, people who just repeat the justification making it sound "logic", when in fact it's a balloon of crap.

It wasn't the moral that stopped the germans, it was their factories running out of material to build planes, tanks, and ammunition. It was running out of gas to drive material to the front. It was running out of grenades on the Ostfront, being cornered from quicker, more mobile armies with better support, because their support line was a 10th of that of all those german armies fighting allover europe with no plan, but lots of "moral". It was losing air control from the allied working with more, faster, better planes, so the air force could destroy supply factories. And, and, and. The war was won on behalf of destroying the armies and what they fought with, not the "moral" of people via distributing baby pieces over trees. But the latter surely made certain peoples hateful emotions cool down, because it was gross enough for their liking.

__________________
"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

“	Originally Posted By: Nik You might want to stop being a spokesman of the justification trashtalk and think on your own -	”

Whoa, come on now, this kind of personal baiting is not going to add to the discussion. Let's keep it civil.

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Wolfgang says:

I could think of a million better things to do in Japan for a month besides jumping off of picnic tables. - x893

Killing someone, let alone on a large scale, is not like playing a card, or throwing a dice.

The first step of each atrocity is dehumanization, and abstraction. People get numbers, lose a name. A school yard bully starts with calling someone with a variation of his family name or something derogatory instead of his forename, the Nazis with punching a number into the victims so they didn't need to kill Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. Everything starts with "them", "we", Miller, scarface, instead of Frank, Joe, or Mr. Miller. You cannot kill Joe, but you can kill "Smith", or number 20050. It starts in the image of what you do being a category, not action. You need to tell yourself you need to "weaken the moral of ze japanese", not "we need to kill Mr. Yamamoto, Mrs. Aoki and little Kouku in basement 34a". Because then it would sound as the bull*** it really is. When what you do cannot be justified calling it what it is, then it's wrong.

__________________
"Fawning, but proud!" - (at least sometimes, in rare cases)
"Killing them all didn't make it any better..." - "Are you a freak or something ???" - Max Payne
"Theft is a crime, even in Iraq." - Me.

Battlefront it is . . .

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Always fear the man with nothing to lose
- J