Story Comments
Posted by: alakazam 1 year, 4 months ago
This page is a permanent archive of the comment below and its replies.
To view this comment in the context of the full discussion for the story, use this link.
-
75%
alakazam1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The deliberate assault on civilians wasn't started by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings - it was ended by them.
Reply
A subtle difference but a very important one.
Have you ever seen a picture of London taken before World War II?
Do you have any idea of the atrocities that were committed in Asia by the Nipponese armed forces? It had to be stopped by any means necessary. It was a REAL threat that had to be countered. You can deny it until the cows come home but the US was not the aggressor in WWII.
Do I approve of it...no not really. Do you have a viable alternative that could have been used then? Please share it with the group.
Vietnam was quite a different story and so is Iraq. One thing I have noticed about Vietnam is that apparently not enough people learned anything from it.
If they had we would not be in the same damn mess all over again.-
55%
Jaydee401 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Nuking Japan was an act of terrorism and nothing more and the records are there to prove it. It is well recorded that Japan had no more ability to bring war to anyone but the US had to end it before Russia was able to bring their own resources against the Japanese and then demand spoils of war like they did in Europe. Russia had much more to do with the Nuke being uses than amy fear of Japan. The rest of what you say is very true, history is a lesson very often ignored.
Reply-
-
JoseMadreComment removed: Hard Banned
-
-
-
75%
skeek1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"The deliberate assault on civilians wasn't started by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings - it was ended by them. A subtle difference but a very important one."
Reply
I hadn't said either and I don't agree with either. What I said was:
"America's nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a deliberate assault on civilians."
A not so subtle difference and not only more important but more factual as well.-
25%
alakazam1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
So we did in an afternoon what would otherwise have taken weeks?
Reply
It would have been far more bloody.
I do not approve of the "surgical strike" nonsense myself. Waking up to a nearby 5 megaton blast would be a hell of a way to start the day.
Should we have just walked away?
What were the actual alternative results of NOT using it?-
-
0%
skeek1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Read on McDuff...
Reply
"Since the late 1940s the common justifications for President Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have consisted of five basic assertions: 1) that the bombs saved more lives than they took by eliminating the need for a US ground invasion of Japan, 2) that the bombs were dropped on military targets essential to the Japanese war machine, 3) that the bombs were dropped only after a process of careful deliberation by US leaders, 4) that those leaders were forced into dropping the bombs because of the Japanese leadership's refusal to surrender, and 5) that the bombings effectively ended the Pacific war by convincing Japan's leaders to surrender. These five assertions had their origins in the public statements of Truman, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and others in the years 1945-47, and constitute the core of what might be labeled the "official narrative" concerning the use of the atomic bombs [1].
Historical scholarship in recent decades has completely refuted the first three assertions. Most scholars who have studied the use of the atomic bombs agree that Truman and his advisers knew a mainland invasion of Japan to have been "an unlikely possibility" given Japan's dire military situation in late-July 1945 [2]. Even in the event of a US mainland invasion, the highest projected casualty estimates for US forces were not "over a million" like Stimson and Truman later claimed, but between 30,000 and 50,000 [3]. More importantly, prior to August 1945 Truman and his advisers had considered it possible that the war would end without either the atomic bombs or a mainland invasion by US forces [4].
The claims that Truman and advisers used the bombs on military bases, and after careful consideration of alternatives, have both been proven false; Hiroshima and Nagasaki were major population centers, not military targets, and high-level officials later admitted that the bombs had been used hastily [5]. US officials clearly knew beforehand that the bombings would result in massive civilian deaths in both cities, but as J. Samuel Walker notes, that realization made little impact on US leaders given the long-established strategy of targeting civilian populations [6]. In fact, very little deliberation occurred as to whether or not the bombs should be dropped; according to historian Barton Bernstein, "it was not a carefully weighed decision but the implementation of an assumption" [7]. Once the bombs were developed, it was assumed they would be used."
http://www.propeller.com/story/2008/08/06/kevin-young-the-atomic-bombing-of-japan/-
Neutral
alakazam1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
1) An invasion of the Japanese homeland was unlikely because they were weakened militarily ? This makes no sense at all.
Reply
2) So 30 to 50 thousand American dead in a conventional invasion..How many Japanese dead?
3) The Japanese refused to cease aggression...What in your mind would have put an end to it? You say yourself the possibility it could be ended without invasion or bombing was considered. Why was that route discarded? Do you honestly believe they just wanted to "nuke" someone? Why not as many as possible?
4)I think a port which was a major military shipyard qualifies as a military target. They could have just as easily chosen Tokyo if it was only about killing people.
5)You mean like the Rape of Nanking?
6)So you consider Barton Bernstein an unassailable authority on the mental state of the people making the decision? What exactly does "They implemented an assumption" mean?
7) Are you aware of a weapon ever developed that has NOT been used.
I will cede that there are SOME bioweapons that obviously have not.
I am not and have not defended the use of the bombs. I have asked several times for someone to explain a viable alternative.
So what was the alternative and why would it have been better?-
0%
skeek1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I've cut&paste three paragraphs from the article whose link I provided. I recommend you read it.
Reply
The main focus of it is the views of Japanese historian, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, who refutes, firstly, your third point, which makes the others moot. "Hasegawa observes that no one in the Japanese government ever formally rejected the terms of the Potsdam Proclamation...
...Hasegawa's strongest supporting evidence for this claim is a detail of supreme importance, though one which is usually neglected in the standard histories: Stimson, Chief of Staff George Marshall, and General Thomas Handy had, prior to July 26, already approved a directive (circulated on July 24-25) that ordered the use of multiple atomic bombs against Japan "as soon as weather will permit" [19]. In addition, Hasegawa notes that US officials had not sent the ultimatum through normal diplomatic channels and cites passages from the diaries of Truman and Department of State adviser Walter Brown that suggest the ultimatum was merely a "prelude" to the use of the bombs [20]."
...Hasegawa's second major challenge to what has become the official scholarly version of the bombs' use is that the Soviet declaration of war rather than the atomic bombs was the major factor compelling Japan to surrender. The direct role of the bombs in bringing about Japan's surrender has always been part of the official narrative, for obvious reasons [21]. Yet that argument has also gone virtually unchallenged among revisionist historians and those who criticize the bombs' use [22]."
I have always believed there has been much more to the official narrative that has never, to my thinking, proven either complete or satisfactory. What has always bothered me most is how something so abhorrent has been portrayed as morally virtuous, how black has been made white, and how, in the end, Machiavellian thinking is not only justified but reigns supreme -- America's historical version of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki morally validates how the end justifies the means. That, itself, is reprehensible.
Which brings me back to the two points I have made repeatedly throughout this thread. Why were the bombs used? The newest world empire had arrived -- the USA. Does their use constitute war crimes? Yes.-
Neutral
alakazam1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
So you wanna talk about War crimes?
Reply
An opinion...not mine, on the work of Hasegawa.
"Hasegawa's bias is too blatant. In his Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, he sets out to prove that the Pacific War just happened; it "is a story with no heroes, but no real villains, either." So he can ignore the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the hundreds of thousands of Asian slave laborers who died building the Burma railway and starving in Japanese mines and factories. Not to mention beheadings, endless other atrocities, forcing native populations to jump off cliffs rather than be captured by the Americans.
UN and other figures put the number of civilians killed by the Japanese Empire at 10 to 25 million. Some Chinese historians claim 30 million Chinese alone perished. General Ishii and his chemical warfare operations were not villains, just guys doing a job." -Robert Newman
I am still looking for that alternative. -
-
-
-
0%
DropkickaLib1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Definitely not true. A military coup almost derailed the Emperor's surrender decision. There were many hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in mainland Asia and the Japanese military was hording suicide boats and aircraft. Your post is a pack of lies written by your PRC handlers.
Reply-
Neutral
alakazam1 year, 4 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
I dunno who his handlers may or not be.
Reply
He would do better by accepting the broader facts of this analysis by Josette Williams.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v46i3a07p.htm
The revisionist crap he has been extolling all over the page is ridiculous and woefully obvious as nothing but a vehicle to promote anti-American sentiment.
-
-
-
-
-
loading ...
david_nwpa
miklkit
oldgringo
fsev41
DeadXXXManXXXTalkin
Progressive
Ciera-Marie
skeek
Post Reply
You are not signed in to Propeller.com. Please sign in to post a reply.