If someone decided to drop a big one on Mecca, I wouldn't mind.
Its also interesting to note that a huge storm hit at about approx the same time we planned our alternative "Normandy" landing for Japan. The losses on our side would have been catastrophic.
> Hope of victory kept the Japanese cause alive ...
They may also have had the bomb. They tested something
in what is now North Korea a few days after Nagasaki.
If the PRK ever collapses, we may find out if background
rad levels on that island are above normal.
Exactly.
The moral lesson of Hiroshima:
BIG BOMBS END WARS!
Using the WWII analogy to today, its as if its now the eve prior to Hitler having his own atomic weapon to use as he sees fit.
A better-than-average analysis of the situation, but I do have to take issue with the author on one or two small points;
1. The Japanese surrender was hardly unconditional.
2. While it is true that you must inflict horrible suffering upon your enemy to degrade his capacity for resistance, one of the most horrible results of the Second World War (and the years immediately preceeding it) was in bringing the horrors of war to sectors where it had previously hardly ever gone before; i.e. the deliberate and indiscriminate bombing of civilians (as practiced by both sides) as a military necessity.
While the bombs certainly speeded up the decision process, it can be argued they were hardly decisive in a military sense; Japan was finished in 1945, except for the occupation of the Home Islands, and had been seeking to negotiate a surrender through various methods and channels for months prior to the dropping of the bombs.
I take issue with the concept that incinerating hundreds of thousands with one bomb was more "humane" or "moral" than incinerating hundreds of thousands with an entire fleet of bombers. But maybe that's just me.
Definitely NOT what happened when SADDAM surrendered in 1991!!
I continued to be astonished by our government's REFUSAL to explain to our nation that the resumption of WAR against IRAQ, in 2003, was a result of Saddam NOT LIVING UP TO HIS UNCONDITIONAL surrender in 1991.
excellent presentation supporting a srong face vis a vis the islamic sickies.
In the case of war, one could argue that diplomacy is immoral.
To truly win a war you must inflict much more damage than the enemy is willing to endure. Smart bombs are great at eliminating precise targets, but terrible at causing the awful devastation that ends wars. Seeing your cities destroyed one by one, and knowing that the enemy will not stop until you surrender completely, is what ends wars. Contrast that to the current US strategy; only destroy military targets, bend over backwards to minimize civilian casualties, persecute your own troops for politically incorrect killing of the enemy, treat enemy prisoners better than your own troops, tolerate subversive behavior from politicians and the press, demonstrate a lack of will, and be unwiling to take casualties. The bottom line is that you cannot win a war using politically correct tactics.
And an ever greater number of Japanese lives were also saved.
The Battle of Okinawa resulted in an estimated 50,000–150,000 Japanese and Okinawan civilian deaths and 100,000–125,000 Japanese military deaths and Okinawa was a small Japanese home island. Extrapolate those numbers to every other Japanese home island, both large and small, and the numbers stagger the mind.
In World War II, both Germany and Japan were totally defeated. The Germans were overrun, but it was only after their cities had been bombed to rubble and they were starving and suffering. The Japanese were beginning to feel the pain of the bombing raids, but most of their cities were intact and the population still had food and necessities. They would've fought indefinitely had they not witnessed the possibility of total nuclear annihilation. In the end, neither the German populous, nor the Japanese populous wanted to incur any further wrath.
The last several wars we have engaged in have not enjoyed the willingness of the American public to make the general populous of the enemy countries suffer. We end up only doing the minimum necessary to end the major fighting in our favor. Anything more is met by condemnation by the bystander countries, the UN, bodies calling themselves "World Courts", "World Tribunals", etc. and oh yes, the liberals. The result is that we win wars "half way".
Nuclear weapons are no longer a deterrent, because people like Kim, Saddam, Osama and that clown in Iran are convinced that we don't have the will to use them. They threaten us and even attack and kill thousands, because they don't fear retribution. Suicide bombers are willing to sacrifice themselves, but I wonder what their attitude would be if they knew that a suicide attack would mean that their entire family would be rounded up and executed as accomplices. I think the number of suicide volunteers would shrink immediately. But here again, that is deemed too brutal and we won't make them suffer. Heck we wouldn't even embalm al Zaquiri's body in pig fat as a warning - a la Black Jack Pershing!
Superb - thank you.
"President Truman demonstrated his willingness to the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: "The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan . . . Following are our terms.
We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay . . . We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
Harry, we could sure use ya' now. This speech should be made to the Islamic regimes, before thousands of lives are wasted in the meatgrinder.
Some have said we only should have dropped one. However, even after both were dropped a significant faction of the Japanese military wanted to continue the war. When the Emperor agreed to surrender, a coup against him ensued. It's hard to convincingly argue that one would have worked when two barely did.
Besides the Allied military casualties, the Japanese military and civlian casualties and invasion would have caused, roughly 50-60,000 innocents were being killed each month in territories occupied by the Japanese.
Some have suggested we blockade Japan and starve them into submission. It's hard to imagine how this could have resulted in less suffering and death. It would have taken years if the war-weary world had enough guts to see it through. They most likely would not have and the result would have been incomplete victory and incomplete tranformation of Japan.
IIRC, When MacArthur was installed as ruler over Japan he said the decision to keep or boot the Emperor would be up to the Japanese people.
The anticipated carnage from an invasion was massive. The Purple Hearts printed for were enough to last through the Korean & Vietnam wars and right through Desert Storm.
Regarding the Japanese government surrendering vs. the military, I thought the Japanese Foreign Minister was on the deck of the Missouri and signed the instrument of surrender. Picture
one of the best reads i have read. thanks.
But Truman forgot the lesson described in this article when the Korean War came along. Truman fired MacArthur for demanding the same sort of total victory over North Korea that we achieved over Japan in WW2 and then settled for a tie. And the result is: North Korea exports rockets, missiles and technology to enemies that we are fighting today and threatens Japan, South Korea and the U.S. mainland with nuclear weapons.
Thank you very much (NOT) President Truman.
"Had the United States negotiated in 1945, Japanese troops would have returned to a homeland free of foreign control, met by civilians who had not confronted defeat, under the same leaders who had taken them to war. A negotiated peace would have failed to discredit the ideology of war, and would have left the motivations for the next war intact. We might have fought the Japanese Empire again, twenty years later. Fortunately, the Americans were in no mind to compromise."
History shows that we WOULD have had to fight them again, for the reasons stated above. And chances are excellent that others around the world would have determined that the U.S. was composed of a bunch of whimpering cowards. So, other countries would have attacked us, too. JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD...
Some sobering wisdom in the piece.
