ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
ATL Bear said:
Sam Lowry said:
We were preparing for an invasion because we were determined not to negotiate the peace. So if we "saved" the Japanese from anything, it was only from ourselves.
And fire-bombing is not a battle tactic any more than mass rape or any of the other atrocities committed by Japan. It's a terrorist tactic designed to demoralize and intimidate a population.
That's an extremely warped perspective and ignorant of the factual history. Negotiating for peace? Even after Nagasaki and the planned surrender, there was an attempt by some Senior Japanese officers to stop it in a coup. I'm sorry the people had to suffer under the extreme militaristic and fanatical leadership of Imperial Japan, who literally had a belief in invincibility. But what you call terror and intimidation tactics saved millions of lives. Every citizen of Japan was prepped as a warrior, including women and children, so every target was a military one.
So we used a nuclear bomb against women and children wielding bamboo spears...and we were doing them a favor.
Only in America, folks.
Only in Sam's warped logic does it get framed that way.
Your logic, not mine. All you're really saying is that Japan had a citizen militia. Horror of horrors, so did we. It brings to mind the quote about Japan invading America and finding a rifle behind every blade of grass. Apocryphal or not, there's a lot of truth to the observation. Plenty of Americans would fight to defend their homeland in the event of an invasion, and rightly so. Do you really think that makes us legitimate targets for a weapon of mass destruction? Take a step back and consider how warped that is.
All of the propaganda about Japanese fighting to the death overlooks one point. They were ordered, or at least believed it was their patriotic duty, to do so. When the emperor surrendered, so did they. Sure, there were a few holdouts and dead-enders hiding out in caves, isolated from news reports, living on bugs and rainwater, sharpening sticks and piling up pebbles sort of like Whiterock plotting the "liberation" of Crimea.
Everyone else acknowledged reality and got on with their lives. Our beef wasn't with them. It was with the emperor. We wanted him gone and didn't care how many people, including women and children, we had to kill to make that happen.
Yes, it does make us all legitimate targets of an invader. Which is why if the roles were reversed the Japanese would have done similar or likely worse. Maybe you think something different, but that's the reality of war.
If you really believe we're all legitimate targets for a nuclear attack, you're way more anti-American than I'll ever be.
Your boy Putin has them pointed at us right now, and vice versa. It has nothing to do with what you or I want or think, It has to do with the nature of enemies and war.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you and others seem to be arguing that we were morally justified in nuking Japan. So it kind of does matter what you think. If you're saying anything goes and morality doesn't matter, let's be clear about that.
Your "Just War" conversation is with someone else. The only moral conversation we've had is your attempt at moral equivalency for the bombing of Tokyo and/or Hiroshima and the rape and slaughter of captured civilians and POWs. Trying to equate morality with a battle objective is an exercise in futility. You follow rules and conventions that are in place to the best of your ability and the rest is the hell of war.
I'm not asking about the justice of the war, I'm asking about the justice of dropping nuclear bombs on half-trained civilians who would have been little more than speed bumps in the path of an invading army. It sounded like you had an opinion a while ago, or have you just lost interest?
You are asking about morality and justice. I'm dealing in justification and strategy. You're looking for retrospective guilt within the prism of modernity. I'm dealing with the realities of the war and era. If you want to noodle over the moral decision of killing 500,000 Japanese in order to save 500,000 American soldiers I can assure you of where I land. The fantasy you're entertaining is that neither was required, which is a pure revisionist hypothetical. So no, I have no interest in entertaining the latter.
You're talking about saving Japanese lives. It's quite a stretch to claim that was part of any war strategy. Sounds a lot more like a moral justification to me.
You and OldBear are wrong to suggest that moral questions weren't raised at the time. If there's any revisionism going on here, it's that.
Your blind spot is your disdain for America. I frankly could care less about the saving of Japanese lives. It was a strategy that saved hundreds of thousands of American lives, and by circumstance ended up saving millions of Japanese as well. I'm curious how you bend your disregard for American soldiers lives into your moral origami.
You don't know how my family might have been affected if our soldiers had been ordered to invade. It's a given that lives are at stake in any war. The question is how many civilians can you justify sacrificing to save those whose business is to fight. If your only answer is "what about grandpa," you've conceded the debate.
Soldiers who die have families just like civilians, and the impact of their sacrifice has an equal if not greater cascade effect. And where you concede the debate is that the blood of the civilians is on the enemy's hands and not their regime that put them in the situation.
In other words we're not responsible for anything because we're the good guys. That isn't how it works, especially not if you're interested in criticizing anyone else for war crimes. Like it or not, civilians are supposed to be protected.
Actually, that's mostly how it works, especially in a war of this scale. It starts first and foremost with crimes against peace levied on the invaders. But your response is even more absurd given the brutality of the regime on the civilians of the nations they invaded and conquered, and the nature of how they fight their wars. Civilians are taken into account to the level they can be. We dropped leaflets for months in Japan. But the regime was not honest with the people, and made them extra vulnerable to our necessary battle tactics. It was on full display in Saipan, Okinawa, etc. It was an inevitability on Japan proper. Fortunately it was expeditious enough to force surrender in short order.
The regime wasn't honest with the people? You're proving my point. If you were held accountable for half the lies you believe, the angels would weep.
You have no point or grasp of reality. Only a cowardly narrative of anti-Americanism built around revisionist guilt. Devoid of facts and only a warped perspective, it's no wonder you claim truths as lies.
With all due respect, I don't think an apologist for the mass murder of innocent civilians is in a position to call anyone else cowardly.
With all due respect, anyone calling Hiroshima and Nagasaki mass murder isn't dealing in reality.
Say WHAT ?
For the sake of my Father serving off the coast of Japan in 1945 I am glad the Bomb helped end the war.
For the sake of hundreds of thousands of US Marines I am glad the Bomb helped end the war.
But to much of the rest of the world the US certainly had other options.. To drop the first Bomb as a demonstration offshore , a naval blockade that would have ended the war within 90 days , a negotiated settlement which in part guaranteed the continued status of the Emperor.
To much of the rest of the world the Bomb droppings were an unnecessary slaughter of 300,000 Japanese. The vast majority of whom were old men, women and children.
To much of the rest of the world the use of the Atomic bombs were racist . That white Americans might have been slightly less anxious to drop such horrific weapons on Germans, Bulgarians or Italians.
Guess all these millions throughout the world aren't dealing with reality .
Lucky us .