Posted on 08/05/2005 5:08:42 AM PDT by OESY
Would you believe anyone named Gar Alperovitz ? How about Gar Anything ?
nope
I got into this early and haven't read all the posts in the middle but has anybody said IT WAS 60 YEARS AGO!!!!!!??????? Let's debate nuking Mecca instead.
Where were you when we did what had to be done to convince >>the Japs to quit? (If you didn't live through the experience, then STHU!!!)"
One doesn't have to live through the experience to advocate a position. That's like saying I cannot speak out against slavery...
>>"As the grandson of a Pacific War Veteran, let me be the first to say: you're an [expletive deleted] idiot."
Well, sorry you feel that way..
Try as I might I do not feel somber or guilty over the use of the aromic weapons. I feel that should we be hit, as we were on 9-11, then all is fair in response. Tancredo was correct...to a point. He didn't go far enough. Take out Mecca, Medina, Tehran and Damascus.
Ahem...
You're missing two essential points.
1. Absolutely NO ONE disputes that the war was shortened by nuking Japan.
2. Absolutely NO ONE disputes that people would have kept on dying as long as the war went on.
If your belief is that fewer people would have died under some other alternative, then say so. That's a point that can be discussed. But if your belief is simply that people dying was bad, hence a crime against humanity, then you have overlooked the facts I just pointed out. If that is the case, then you have allowed a commendable desire to avoid human suffering to cloud your ability to see the big picture.
Yes, people died. But that is not relevant. The odds are very high that fewer people died, overall, because we shortened the war.
I would like to point out that this was a war, and lots of people die in a war. I should also like to point out that it is better to win a war than to lose it. Finally, it seems to me that it is better if the people who die are on the other side.
Don't you agree?
"No excuse for using the bomb or for Dresden"
Sure there is, we wanted the war over. We needed to win and win in a fashion to told the losers that there was no doubt they had lost. We needed to know we would not have to fight the Japanese again. Ever. Fatman and Little Boy did that. Do I agree with deliberately targeting civilians? Only when it is practically guaranteed to save AMERICAN lives, in the end the only lives I truly care about.
After reading your posts on this issue, I think I finally get where you are coming from, America bad, everyone else good.
I can get that at lie-beral websites too.
>>After reading your posts on this issue, I think I finally get where you are coming from, America bad, everyone else good.
So this is an all or nothing proposition? Agree with the use of the Abomb or else be "unamerican?" That is one example of the true definition of being closed minded.
Never did I say America was bad. I did say war crimes were committed. America like most countries (if not all) has committed crimes against humanity. (Slavery is just one example)
Does that mean America is bad? Nope. It just means we have made mistakes and hopefully have learned from them.
My point isn't to simply trash America, but rather, to shine a light on truth while people are "thanking god for the bomb". The use of the bomb is the issue here, not whether America is an evil empire. (As the left often accuses it of being).
So, I guess you are for surrendering to the Japanese Empire?
Still pumping bilge into this thread, I see.
"Using the atomic bomb to destroy a place that had far fewer people but huge psychological value (e.g. the top of Mt. Fuji..."
You silly.
Let's say you're a Japanese, then watch a flash, look around and your mountain god (that, by the way, is considered a god by its ability to spew fire) has a big, sun like ball of fire atop (did I mention they're from a sun cult?). Now tell me you wouldn't interpret that as the mount saying "Go and kill more foreigners".
So, I backed off, signed out, and went on. It was the right thing to do: such anonymous know-nothings, which they are, on the other side of a computer screen should never be allowed to ruin even one hour of an otherwise excellent life.
After reading through the thread again it occurs to me that your post here nails it, from stem to stern: "1stFreedom" is constantly probing here, poking there, disappearing for long stretches in thread, yet always needling back ugliness and distorted half-truths just enough at certain moments to keep the outrage swirling. Always looking for the maximum amount of anger he/she/it can stir up among legitimate FReepers with any given post. An accomplished liar and troll extraordinaire, indeed ("Mrs. Don-o," in contrast, simply seems to be as stupid as the day is long, and proud of it).
At the end of the day, "1stFreedom" is, no doubt, just another pathetic intellectual eunuch of the sort one often encounters among the ranks of the slick, too-clever-by-half denizens of DUmmyland; and your post here puts he/she/it's pitiful offerings in perspective and context.
Your analysis is quite correct. Thanks for posting it.
However, people can find themselves faced with a horrifying choice: either commit a terrible act or by omission commit an even more terrible act.
Such was the choice to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and commit a terrible act, or not to bomb them, and, by omission, commit an even more terrible act, i.e. prolong the war, invade Japan and commit even more carnage, or not invade Japan and allow the Japanese Empire to re-expand and commit even more horrible carnage.
Considering all options, bombing these two cities, as hideous and horrible as it was, was the least horrible of the choices and therefore the right thing to do--the most honorable thing to do-- and the only real choice.
On a global scale, it is comparable to killing in self-defense and defense of the innocent. Sometimes not to do so is a greater evil than to do so.
It is possible--in hindsite--that it would have been wiser to demonstrate, to the Japanese, the effectiveness of the bomb, by dropping it on Mount Fuji. However it is highly unlikely that this would have caused the Japanese warlords to surrender. They didn't surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima, necessitating the bombing of Nagasaki, and many of them wanted to continue the war until every Japanese man, woman, and child was dead.
Considering such intransigence and fanaticism, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the only option.
I agree with you that it is one of the most horrible events in all history, and I pray that such never occurs again.
However, even considering this, American forbearance, then and now, is magnificent. These cities were bombed only after the most careful consideration and with the utmost reluctance, and after her unconditional surrender the Americans were magnificently magnanimous in victory, treated the defeated and helpless Japanese with the greatest kindness, and rebuilt Japan into the miracle of modernity, prosperity, and democracy that it is today.
Such kindness and magnanimity astonished the Japanese after their defeat. They knew that if they had defeated the Americans, instead of magnanimity and kindness, the cruelty to which the conquering Japanese would have subjected the defeated Americans would have dwarfed the Roman destruction of Carthage.
War is always horrible. It is one of the greatest evils ever to afflict mankind and the world.
However, capitulation to aggression and tyrrany in order to avoid the evil of war is the commission of an even greater evil.
Such would have been the greater evil committed by the U.S. if she had refused to fight Japan after Pearl Harbor. Once committed to fighting, the U.S. had no choice but to defeat Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to winning the war, and therefore, to bomb them, as horrible as it was, was also necessary.
Pearl Harbor made Hiroshima and Nagasaki inevitable.
The Japanese warlords awakened the sleeping--and benevolent--American giant and forced it to commit to a terrible resolve. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the inevitable and unavoidable result of that terrible resolve.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragic victims of World War II, but they were not the only victims. Count among them the men who died in the war in the Pacific; the countless civilians in the Phillipines, in China--remember Nanking?--in Burma et al.; the American POWs who sufferred hideous torture, who were subjected to horrifying "medical experiments"; the Phillipine children in whose ears Japanese soldiers crammed sharp sticks for sport; the Korean women and other women forced into prostitution to provide "comfort" for Japanese soldiers; the Bataan Death March; the American families whose sons and husbands were never to return home. Do you think the Japanese would have behaved more kindly to conquered Americans???
Let's pray that such a necessity never again arises.
Let's also pray that if it should, we will have the courage and clarity to do what we must.
The real lesson of Hiromishima and Nagasaki is that the United States--the greatest and most benevolent nation the world has ever known--must remain benevolent and must remain powerful enough to deter--and to defeat if necessary--anyone who should seek to destroy her.
What did happen to Poland? Oh, yes, FDR gave it to Stalin. Never mind!
WWII was fought why again ... Oh, freedom and democrary ... Please, share that to the Poles.
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