You really can't comprehend an actual disagreement, can you? You really think that by deluging me with pre-selected definitions, and wrapping them into targeted premises, I won't notice what you're doing. And as for your cheap insults, why bother writing so much if I'm too stupid to understand you? Well, put your wagging finger down. I know your position clearly, and it is wrong.
You deify Stimpson, but you don't go into why he was overruled. On the one hand, he wanted to seek a way to avoid the use of the bomb by allowing the emperor to stay on the throne. On the other hand, this same peacenik ordered the bomb to be used with utmost savagery when it was used. But you cite him as merely being overruled.
How convenient. But the fact is that Stimson went along with his overruling willingly, and only sought to distance himself from the decision when he wrote about it after the war, when people were horrified by the bomb. But Stimpson wanted to win the war with the least possible American deaths, and as you acknowledged fought like hell to accomplish this task. So is it too much to ask that you use your big brain to wonder, just a little bit, what the argument was that got him to so enthusiastically get behind using the bomb?
Your juvenile invocation of good and bad faith might ring appropriate for a civil suit (but only if you've never met a lawyer). However in cases of what amounted to total war, it is the height of naivete'. You invoke the total war of Nazi Germany, but despite all of your verbosity leave out the firebombing of Tokyo and virtually all of the big cities in Japan, or the Japanese slaughter in China or the Phillipines, or their notorious sadism everywhere they went. How convenient for you to forget such extremities, especially since it allows you to invoke "negotiating in bad faith" during such a total war as not being up front with the enemy by being plain about your goals during discussions?
What a puppy you are - at least I hope you are. Otherwise you are clearly aware of your own lack of foundation, and are disingenuously scrambling to hide it. For these are people who, at that point in their history, would cut off your head, and those of your family, rather than talk with you at all - and tell you you were beneath humanity if you didn't die fighting them, because you wanted to negotiate rather than fight to the death! Hello? Do you get that?
That's why I invoked Bushido, but apparently it was "too simple a concept for you to understand." What was explained to Simpson, and what he not only went along with, but helped with it's savagery, was that the Japanese people of the time needed to be broken. Otherwise there would never be genuine peace with them, because they were driven by delusion.
That was why their fighting spirit itself, their belief in themselves as superior masters of the human race, their divine justifications for all of their rape and slaughter - in other words, the driving force behind their fighting - must be utterly destroyed. And the only way to do this was precisely to force their unqualified surrender with their own offering of their emperor. Nothing less would do, by their own value system.
You mock our allowing the emperor to remain after our use of the bombs and their resulting unqualified surrender, as if it brands us as hypocrites. But you just show your own ignorance - it was the offering of their emperor that was their moment of true collapse. Our offering of their emperor back to them was compassion on our part, as the issue was no longer a threat to us. Ask any Japanese person about the shame of having to offer their emperor to sue for peace - the offer was the key thing. that was what finally broke their arrogance.
You say Stimpson "knew how futile it was to threaten them with a destruction they gloried in accepting, compared to appealing to a point of honor ...that a clause saying the emperor could remain if Japan laid down arms, would materially increase the chances of the ultimatum being accepted."
Yet history shows you to be dead wrong - the two bombs broke these supposed "people of honor," who were actually delusional sadistic cowards, and had them groveling so hard they offered their emperor in order to escape the total destruction they loved to bray they would gladly accept. And that was why the bombs had to be dropped - to show the Japanese people themselves that they were self-deluded liars, that they were human beings like all of the other human beings on the planet, and that their reliance on sadistic brutality, force and murder was not something they lived above, but which could and would crush them just as they crushed others.
And most importantly, that they had no "divine protection" from such complete destruction, and so any belief in such protection was false. that was what Stimpson was told must be done to get "peace" from the Japanese, because - as Simpson well knew - that was the invincibility Japanese believed about their inner strength that allowed them to pursue war so savagely, and without any remorse whatever.
And that is what Stimpson finally agreed with, and why he then not only advocated using the bomb, but using it as savagely as possible. Because though the Japanese might have agreed to a surrender without the bomb, they still would believe that they had fought with honor - and they had not. Do you understand? Your equivalent morality does not apply - it is wrong. The Japanese did not fight with honor, or for honor. They were depraved. And because of that, they could never be trusted in any qualified surrender, and would have inevitably rebelled against America again. Their demented definition "honor" would have required it.
Stimpson came to understand this, and that's why he agreed with his overruling, and enthusiastically supported the most savage use of the bomb as possible - to save millions of American and Japanese lives.
And it worked. Japan has completely rejected their murderous, militaristic arrogance, and instead channeled their energies into peaceful, truly admirable world-class business concerns. And why? Because at that time, and for the correct reasons, breaking them to themselves was the right thing to do.
Sure. But when you say things like "muster the implacable violence necessary to destroy" and "found to be the cause of inciting self-defense aggression in poor, misunderstood totalitarians", I see a child playing with a machinegun without the slightest idea what it is or does.
"I won't notice what you're doing."
It no doubt shocks you, given how alien good faith is to your entire life and mind, but in fact getting you to notice what I am doing is the sole point in explaining a rational argument to you.
"why bother writing so much if I'm too stupid to understand you?"
Good point. If there were no one else here, I would. I haven't the slightest respect for either your judgment or your morals, so what you think is utterly unimportant to me. The true assessment of the historical issue is my only concern.
"You deify Stimpson"
Actually I man-ify him. The tendency to deification is part and parcel of all the errors involved, both sides, and in practice deification of mortal men is demonization of those serving them.
"why he was overruled"
Actually I spent quite a few words on condemning that "why", which is obvious to all concerned, even yourself. You speak of a need to "break" a people, when the actual political goal of the war was to get Japan to cease hostilities, to occupy it and demilitarize it.
"this same peacenik"
Why are you deliberately idiotic? Do you think it good rhetoric?
"only sought to distance himself from the decision"
Quite false, he never did. I laid out his own position at the time and he never ducked any of his role in a particle of it. As usual, you are reduced to slandering a man whose shoes you are not fit to shine.
"Stimpson wanted to win the war with the least possible American deaths"
Plenty of people wanted that, he also wanted to end it with the least possible loss of all human life. Which is why he was a civilized man and you are a barbarian.
"in cases of what amounted to total war, it is the height of naivete"
On the contrary, that is where it matters most. Clausewitz described the entire tendency and also the need for political direction of war to remain paramount. No one involved is naive in the slightest. You merely confuse your bloodthirsty cynical barbarism for wisdom, when it is mere drift with the current of human folly.
"forget such extremities"
I forget nothing, and know as much about the war as any man alive. You seem to thinks lots of atrocity makes atrocity wonderful and choiceworthy. It has no such effect.
"not being up front with the enemy by being plain about your goals during discussions?"
Yes exactly. If you are busy trying to plan a military operation and want to surprise someone, by all means surprise them. When instead you are delivering an ultimatum they can accept to end the war, or reject to continue the war, then lying about what you want has remarkably less point to it. Especially when you lie in the direction calculated to not end it.
"rather than talk with you at all"
I really pay remarkably little attention to what impotent defeated barbarians want, except to get their compliance. I don't care what you think or want for the same reason - it is of no moral weight whatsoever. You on the other hand think emulating barbarity is just cheeky, because I suppose the best thing about atrocity is the excuse it gives you to indulge your own taste for it.
"had them groveling so hard they offered their emperor"
Except, whoops, the military staged a coup instead. It was the emperor who intervened and changed the country's policy, not the Bushido code warriors. He did so as a civilized man and not as your cartoon. A man as civilized as Stimson, and vastly more civilized than those generals, or Truman, or you.
"their reliance on sadistic brutality, force and murder"
Behold, the beam is in thine own eye.
"they still would believe that they had fought with honor - and they had not."
Many of them did, some did not. The same is true on the US side. Your principles for example - and it is charity to call them that - are without honor.
Fortunately men like MacArthur and Stimson were wiser by far than you are.