The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

PBS had an interesting documentary on last night about the last few days of WWII and Harry Truman's decision to drop the bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki.Horrible loss of life,tragic.But,as bad as it was,it was better than sending our troops into Japan for a house to house war that would've resulted in years of wasted tax payers money and thousands of American lives lost.Our leaders today should take notes......

That's one of the historical things that I have trouble with.  Sure, it ended a war, but bombing civilians just seems really, really fucked up.  Isn't that kinda considered a crime against humanity?

just like the civilians in New York city in '01.

And dropping the bomb on a remote military base wouldn't have accomplished the same thing? Was it really necessary to bomb both Hiroshima AND Nagasaki?

Yes.  Exactly.

What point are you trying to make?

One thing is for sure....... the unveiling of the bomb dropping sure opened the eyes of a lot of people.  Imagine what will happen if there is ever a World War III.

I guess I am saying that anytime anyone attacks the U.S. we should use every weapon at our disposal to show the world that,uh-unh,it ain't gonna fly.My mind goes back to right after 9-11,the news footage showing the Iraqi people celebrating and handing out candy to their kids as the trade centers collapsed.I can't help but wonder what the reaction in the arab world woulda been if like 20 minutes later,the city of Bagdad woulda been leveled by our nuclear missiles......complete and total destruction.How many American lives would we have saved?It sickens me to hear people talk about the "rights" of terrorists.

NUKEM ALL LET GOD SORT IT OUT!!! >:D

You would want to shoot missles at Baghdad because of 9/11?  Iraq didn't have anything to do with that.  It was Al-Queda, specifically based out of Afghanistan, most of the people involved being from Saudi Arabia.

Nobody said anything about the rights of terrorists, either.  You're the one comparing 9.11 to the Hiroshima bombs, yet you're saying one is good and one is bad.  You're being very contradictory.

I'm not saying that we should've have dropped the A-bomb...I'm just saying that I think that bombing civilians is pretty fucked up.

Not really.  The Japanese would have surrender by the end of August without the bombing of Nagasaki.

And bombing a military base would have prove the power of the new bomb without needing to kills so many civilians.

As for the comparison of 9/11 and Hiroshima many would agree, both were the killing of innocents. 

So is attacking a base on a peaceful Sunday morning that isn't even at war with you at the time.

I agree.

So had Japan dropped the bomb on us it would be ok too?

And by your logic, 9/11 was ok.  I mean what is the difference?  Besides the number of innocents killed.

I find it amusing anytime anyone says we just need to drop a bomb on the Middle East. WWII was the last time a bomb of that nature is going to be used without major consequences (other bombs coming right at us). The whole we should just nuke people theory just shows ignorance.

Normally  I would agree to just drop the big one on our enemy, but as far as Iraq it would be insane to do.It is mostly Al-Queda and terrorist from other middle eastern states blending in with peaceful Iraqis that is causing all the problems.
As far as Iraq not being involved in 911 it depends on who you believe, as there are reports Saddam Hussein was connected, mined you the liberal media disagrees.
Heck theres even reports Iraq was involved with Tim McVeigh, I am just telling there are reports out there no matter if you believe it or not.

I agree with you.  It is ultimately who or what you want to believe.  The truth or the lies.  Reality or propaganda.

I wouldn't believe them since Mcvey was basically a white supremest. Involving Iraq would go agaisnt his nature. Blaming Iraq on everything is propoganda at its finest.

Several eye witnesses saw McVeigh with Middle eastern men and saw them run from the scene. But here is a news article I found.

A few top Defense officials believe Timothy McVeigh, executed for his role in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, was an Iraqi agent, reports U.S. News in the Oct. 29 issue.

The stunning news item is buried in the "Washington Whispers" column of the magazine under the byline of Paul Bedard.

"Some dismiss it as being akin to Elvis sightings, but a few top Defense officials think Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh was an Iraqi agent," Bedard writes. "The theory stems from a never-before-reported allegation that McVeigh had allegedly collected Iraqi telephone numbers. Why haven't we heard this before about the case of the executed McVeigh? Conspiracy theorists in the Pentagon think it's part of a cover-up."

Those unnamed Defense Department officials are not alone.

Last week, House impeachment counsel David Schippers told WorldNetDaily Radio host Geoff Metcalf's audience that he is convinced of a Mideast connection in the bombing. Schippers represents Jayna Davis, the former Oklahoma City television reporter who attempted to follow up the Mideast connection story until her bosses told her to let it go.

"I am thoroughly convinced that there was a dead-bang Middle Eastern connection in the Oklahoma City bombing," said Schippers. "I think bin Laden was behind it. I think that there were Middle Eastern people on the scene running away."

There would not necessarily be a contradiction between an Iraqi connection and a bin Laden connection. According to terror expert Yossef Bodansky, author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America," bin Laden worked closely with Iraq for years.

See related stories:

Oklahoma City blast linked to bin Laden

Bin Laden link remains elusive

It is just propaganda.  But the Iraqi-Bin Ladin connection is just as much so.  Bin Ladin hates the secularist just as much as the West.  Yes, Alqadi is NOW in Iraqi, but they don't want a secular Sadam-type gov't back they want a religious based on like Afganstan under the Talban. 

All right everyone, google this name.
 Hussain al-Hussaini

You're judging 1945 actions with 2008 morality.  It doesn't work.

Dropping the bomb off-shore as a show of force was debated.

It would have indicated that we don't have the fortitude to drop the bomb on a city ... so dropping the bomb on a city would have been necessary anyways.

Had the Japanese military not prevented the Emperor from surrendering after Hiroshima then Nagasaki would not have been necessary.

That's easy!

You're comparing 1945 with 2001.  Societies evolve ... well, some do anyways.  What we wouldn't consider in 2001 our enemies had no problem with.

Based on what? 


That's really simplifying it.

Hiroshima was the attacked country ending a war.  9/11 was the start of a war.  In this respect it would be more applicable to compare 9/11 to Pearl Harbor. 

Another difference is that one was 63 years ago and the other was 7 years ago.  What is and is not acceptable in war has changed.

^ Wasn't it your boy who kept comparing the "war" on terror to WWII?

And I'm not sure but Dave isn't the one who brought up 9/11 as a comparison  to the A-bombs. 

Edited to take away the infallible run-to-win's only countering argument. 

It seems you've closed your mind to anything that doesn't fit your agenda.  The rest of us can't be 100% sure which is truth and which is propaganda.  

What does "operational cooperation" mean and to what extent did it go?  Was there a "third terrorist"?  (link (http://www.jaynadavis.com/))  Since it's impossible to prove a negative ...

(http://209.85.62.23/55/133/emo/shrug.gif)

So Jesus getting crucified was fine since it happened way back then?  

Just sad...

Riiiiiight...this coming from the guy whose "favorite" president is Bush.   ::)

You are judging what was prophesied and needed to be done.
Jesus said no man including the Romans had power over His life.

From sad to pathetic in 2 posts...

Wow.  Well said, Runz.  And you're supposed to be the smart one in your group of "friends". 

We specifically targeted cities and civilians to try and break the will of both the Nazi's and the Jap's. Germany got it worst because it was hit by more countries and we had large airbases close enough to saturate bomb the crap out of it. What the Allies did at Dresden was a small scale attempted genocide and a massive warcrime. The city was specifically trageted not for its military value, but its "shock" value. Once the city was fully in flames Allied command kept sending in bombers loaded with incinderary bombs to keep the firestorm going. The column of flame could be see by the crews not long after they took off from England it was that big.
We did the same thing to Tokyo. We repeatedly firebombed a city to try and inflict as much pain on the people as possible. Lucky for them we did not have closer bases where we could send in larger bomber raids as the B-17's, 24's, and 25's could not make the trip which left it to a much smalled B-29 fleet.
That is the problem with history, the victors write it. There is no way a country can enngage in warfare with another country and not commit war crimes. It is the nature of the beast.
RTW you cannot compare the two, not because society has changed, but the type of warfare is different. Which is why those of us who have been over have more in common with the Vietnam vets than the WWII and Korea ones. They do not understand this type of warfare. It would be great if we could have had clearly indentifiable lines, battlegrounds, and enemy troops like they did, but alas it is not to be.
Dave is right. Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, etc, were all chosen and armaments were selected to inflict the most amount of damage upon the civilian populace as opposed to just trying to destroy of cripple military infrastructure, in the hopes of breaking the will of the people. The masterminds of 9-11 did the same thing when planning their attack.

Dropping the bomb was messed up and it should not have been done.

It was more than WWII that led to that happening. For years, the US was trying to get into Japan and manipulate their production and economy starting with Commodore Peary showing up unexpected threatning to bomb Japan into the next stratosphere about 100 years before that. That was a bully move for the US to do.

And what the history books won't tell you (the books are American of course) is that before and during WWI and WWII, the Japanese had a problem with US spies in the region trying to blow up factories and also general businesses. The goal was to use covert operations to get a foothold into Japan.

And not to derail the thread, think about this. How could the Seventh Fleet, who patrolled the Pacific Ocean miss the Japanese on their way to Pearl Harbor? A fleet consists of various ships and submarines and that's not even considering the communication outposts at certain atolls that the US OWNED in the South Pacific that had communications security personnel stationed there. I don't even want to get into that.

The US wanted Japan as a strategic outpost and the Japanese objected so they became bitter enemies. Even at the League of Nations conference, Japan got shafted as far as a military treaty on weapons and walked out.

I was in the Pacific Air Forces Command that covers that area and in talking to many elderly locals, there were still hostilities.

But after the bomb hit, the US government actually thought they had finally made "inroads" to Japan and could control what was happenning. Japan recovered and within ten years and started being major movers and shakers as far as product development and economics.

The fact about Japan is that they didn't launch one missle to get back at the US. They hurt the US where it counted the most...in the economy. They started building better products than the US and wouldn't let cheaply US made products in the country. Then they started buying up tresured US corporations and landmarks, such as the Sears Tower in Chicago.

When the American Auto Industry were putting out cheap ass cars (especially Cryshler) in the late 1970's and 1980's, the big three had to deal with Japan where the engineering of items is damn near perfect. They had to make deals with Mitsubishi, Yamaha, etc. American engines and car products became inferior to the Japanese.

I saw a Datsun B 210 the other day humming along better than an American made new car.

So yeah, dropping the bomb was terrible but the Japanese were smart. The Americans may have won the battle but the Japanese in a sense, ended up winning that war without firing a shot.

They did it with brains.

I worked in intel for years and you won't beleive how certain things are "manufactured" to make it appear that one side is more evil than the other. I hate the thought of nuclear weapons being dropped on any country. There is always a way to do things other than destroy people.

We?

What military power involved in WWII didn't?  You explained this yourself when you said, "the type of warfare is different."


Which ethnic, racial, religious, or national group were we attempting to systematically destroy?

Mass murder?  Sure.  Genocide?  No.  


By today's standards?  Yes.  By 1945 standards though?


Not that it's important, but the 29 had between 2 and 5 times the bomb load of the other bombers you listed.


It depends on how broad your definition of "war crimes" is, and how long you wait.  Not only are we looking at the agressor nations as the victims and totally ignoring the facts that their actions caused all the events we're discussing, but we're also judging 1945 actions by 2008 standards.  

Tell that to the millions of soldiers and Japanese civilians it saved.

^ So if the Japanese dropped an atomic bomb on us and you survived you would be thankful that at least the war was over?  That's a pretty optimistic view of an extraordinarily fucked up event.

Dude thats messed up !!!!!!!
It happened and it saved lives, case closed.

Man, I hate to get into this kind of stuff.

Terrorism is based on the highest bidder, not a culture, not a country. Terrorists are high paid mercenaries that go to the highest bidder.

If you look up what Al-Quieda means, you will find out that it was an operative word for actions in the Soviet-Afghan conflict and that it is a CIA funded operation...

"These terrorist cells, namely al-Qaeda, are invariably linked to the CIA. They have been consistently supported by U.S. intelligence. What we are dealing with is a process, which consists in fabricating an enemy. The creation of Al-Qaeda is an intelligence operation used as a pretext to justify a war of conquest. "

John F. Kennedy signed his death certificate when he did two things:

1.    When he failed to get Cuba back for the Mafia and get Castro out of power.
2.    When he went about to dismantle the CIA.

When those two items came up, it was determined that he had to die and his brother, who as Attorney General, had the right to call investigations into various agencies had to go too.

Think Iran-Contra, Air America and operations in Germany.

My previous roommate went to training camp with McVeigh and said that everyone hated him. He came across as an aloof klutz. The government HAS certain people in the military and in government that they do condition to carry out certain assignments. The most BASIC level of that condition is of course BASIC military training but there are other levels higher than that.

When I was in the force, we had to wear dress blues and sit at attention for five minutes in the dark. This was a part of our "training" and then they would roll a "propaganda" film on our enemies during horrible things and showing anti-American stuff. I only realize in looking back that some of the footage seemed like it was shot from a script.

The Oklahoma City bombings show that the blast came from INSIDE of the building. I'll leave it to you to figure out the rest.

And I don't want to get into the 911 stuff.

The CIA has a payroll which includes White Supremacists, Black Panthers, Russians, Middle Eastern people and just about everyone who can be bought. Other countries do too. These people work as double agents. It's part of the game of life. We are the pawns that can be sacrificed at any time.

Let me see, if I'm hearing you correctly.

If Cuba dropped an A-bomb and destroyed South Florida, is that justified when there could have been other alternatives instead of just anihilating people? Is that what I'm hearing?

Cmon run_to_win! The US could have used other means to topple Japan instead of dropping the bomb. The US at that time had all the military might in the world and had stuff already sitting in the Pacific and at Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Japan was basically surrounded during that time by US military might. I'm not for any country destroying people.

The Japanese back then were Ruthless. The question I ask is if they had the Bomb would they have dropped it on us? You betcha.

As far as using Nukes in Iraq and Iran as well as North Korea..........this is a different world now. We start doing that then we had better be prepared to lose a few cities ourselves.

That doesn't justify it.  I am not saying that the bombing can not be justified on the basis of military options, but your line of reasoning absolutely fails.

A war crime is a war crime regardless of what the other side did or is doing. 

So the CIA named gave Al-Qaeda their name and Osama kept it?


Where'd you get this circa 1980 tidbit from?

All would have prolonged the war and increased the number of casualties on both sides.


An invasion would have destroyed more than two cities.

This is revisionist history.

Was anyone involved with dropping the bomb or the firebombings charged with a war crime? 

You make things seriously annoying to read when you back up pages with 4 posts in a row, either consolidate the posts to begin with, or edit them in.

----
Another instance:





I'm not trying to be a prick. Sorry if this offended you.

Nope the victors only try the defeated. 

Not one Allied soldier was charged with a war crime during WWII?

What about the "world court" of public opinion, etc?  Where was the outcry THEN?

You're using your 2008 perspective to revise the legality of 1945 actions.

First of all, I hate to burst any bubble but Osama Bin Laden is a character whose family had dealings with the Bush family even when Papa Bush was head of the CIA. As far as we know, this all could be staged. I find it interesting that a country cannot find weapons of mass destruction or a terrorist with all the advanced intelligence stuff that they have.

Look at these so called "timed" video tapes. It's almost comical. Bin Laden is fat in one picture, slim in the other, looks like Rock Hudson in another and Charles Manson in another video and mysteriously, these videos find their way to the networks. You would think the news outlets would ask for a post office tracking number to catch him but they don't.

I'm not trying to convince you as to whether this exists or not but if you think the United States of America is justified in ALL of it's covert operations, I can tell you from experience that you need to recheck that. Even from the time of the Pilgrims landing and creating a holiday called "Thanksgiving" right after they tricked and murdered countless of Indians, this country has used covert operations against other countries in an unfavorable and sometimes shocking manner.

Some operations ARE justified but it's usually the smaller ones. And if the people of the US knew as to what level of involvement our government has in covert operations around the world, it would cause panic amongst the American People. Americans entrust the government to protect them from "foreign enemies" not to explain how you play the game of control.

Secondly, if it is from the 80's that means that it did exist and the CIA created the monster. Where did it come from? Out of the blue? All you have to do is go to the Congressional Record and read on the hearing involving the CIA.

So you really think that the CIA's job is to pass out flower baskets while there are present in other countries?

How do you figure an invasion would have meant more casualties and dropping a bomb didn't? For your information, there are two categories that the military use to define casualties...those that died during battle and those that didn't die but suffered wounds that were bad enough to cause dismemberment or change their way of life. The bomb accomplished BOTH.

Now here's the question...have you ever been in the military and have you ever worked in a government office? And if you were in the military, did you belong to a tactical command or a strategic command group. I worked at the highest level which is NORAD and we were responsible for creating what you see today as far as Space Command, and the Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, CO. We were the pioneers that set up the operational procedures as far as deterrence, intelligence and warning systems working with high level government agencies and officers from other countries.

I said that to mention that I'm not talking off the top of my head. I'm telling you what has been declassified and what I personally know. I'm also a military and world history major that had to study Constitutional Law. The CIA, because of my background, wanted me to cross over and work at various hot spots but I thought about my daughter and how if I got in, I wouldn't be able to get out.

So I got out all together and became a poster at TDMMC. It's safer (I think).

And the only way to be a fair judge of history is to look from the view of those who lived it day to day. No matter what the era is, when a man kills another man, either by club, poison or sending a woman to have sex with him knowing that he has a weak heart is a crime not only against that man but a crime against humanity because a human life is taken.

I never study American history from an American point of view. I never study African-American history from an African point of view because historians are trained to be pro (insert whatever culture or country they are writing about) nationalists in most cases.

I just don't see your argument that a ground assault would have led to more lives being sacrificed. I'm trying to see it but I just can't at this moment. I love the military and I was an Air Force veteran who fully believed in our program of deterrence from war for the right reasons.

Good information but I didn't see any answers the questions I posed.

That's fair enough.  You could be right.  We'll never know.


http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/giangrec.htm



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

Hey Run,

Don't quote me on the 9/11 to Hiroshima/Nagasaki comparisons.  I wasn't the one who made them.

I didn't even say we shouldn't have dropped the bomb.  I just said that I have an uncomfortable feeling about it.

???

Sorry, I thought I was directly responding to your questions/comments regarding the topic.  (http://209.85.62.23/55/133/emo/shrug.gif)

That's true, but events that were not war crimes when they happened should not be redefined 60+ years later.

Some would make the claim that not doing everything you can to stop the war immediately and prolonging the suffering is itself a crime against humanity.

You see, this is what I was talking about. Historians making guestimations. Some of this stuff is common sense.

Japan would have been in a two front battle in Manchuria and in the Pacific.  The U.S. Forces already had Japan surrounded. Even if it was an assault, it would have favored the US more heavily than Japan. Japan would have probably wilted at the thought of being attacked on all fronts.

What history doesn't tell you is that the US had battle stations in Mongolia because of a Soviet Pact with Stalin at that time, troops sitting in Guam (which is a US territory), communications stations at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and contact points at the Marshall Island atoll.

Now, Run, it sounds to me like Japan was surrounded even before the infamous Pearl Harbor bombing. Japan KNEW that they were surrounded.

The US already had them trapped without dropping the bomb.

If history was written about the Iraq War today, it would talk about "insurgents". I haven't seen any "insurgents" on television. Nothing but citizens getting killed.

The Vietnam War was the only fair account of history being revealed on television real time which helped people understand the horrors of war. For the first time, cameras were at the battlefield, the Pentagon, The White House and Congress and what Americans got was a different story on all accounts because no one really had time to filter things from the American people.

That will never happen again even in this day of CNN, Fox and all these networks.

So I guess it would have been right to drop the bomb on the North Vietnamese too?

I think you're underestimating the will of the Japanese military and the importance of honor in their culture.


More reporters on the battlefield with satellite technology reduce the chances of a fair account of history? 

Excuse me for being stupid on the subject,and late to the Party to boot....

I agree with RTW,that we're trying to apply 2008 logic to what was going on in 1945..Very few,if any of us here were alive,so we don't really know the fears,news of the day,day to day living...

I know the few things I remember seeing was that A large portion of America didn't want to have anything to do with the war in Europe,till we were attacked. (Pearl harbor)

Germany was bombing London,France was being occupied,Poland was occupied..The South Pacific we were fighting in the Philippines,to every little no name island in the Pacific ocean....(and we talk about being spread too thin now)

I remember seeing a special on how we treated our own Asian citizens,people that had never been to Japan...So I think the Average American,didn't really oppose the decision like they would now....like it or not,a lot of our parents/grandparents were bigots

Ok,ok..I'll answer the question....
I think it did save lives ultimately based on the information that Truman had at the time....I remember seeing in Truman's Biography,and he agonized over the decision,and really didn't want to do it....Another special I saw it talked about how some of the Japanese army were starving,turning to cannibalism,but continued to fight on...I know the technology wasn't good enough to know exactly what was happening, alot of stuff took many years after the war to come out....

Although I do see what positives came as a result, I think its awful.  I just picture school children, mothers and the old and defenseless getting massacred in an instant.  And those were the "lucky" ones.  "Survivors" can be hardly labeled as such as they had to live a lifetime with life-long physical effects as well as emotional ones.  Horrible.

So the fact that Dresden had over 100 factories (and during WWII German factories were war machines), Hiroshima was a base for the military, and Nagasaki was manufacturing the Japanese Navy had nothing to do with the decision?

Maybe because it did not exist at that time. It was formed March 15th, 1945. Peral harbor happened December 7, 1941.

I would say typically yes, but white supremacists are a different breed of terrorist. I am going to guess that you have never intimately known many of them so it would be easy to lump them into the general thinking of "terrorist", but they are a completely different breed.

Sorry That President was elected to protect us.  The Japanese elected to sneak attack us at dawn in one of the most cowardly events in US History. If they had the Power to get closer to the mainland they would have done it. What it comes down to is a Million of our civilians or a Million of theirs?  Not an east decision for sure but the right one was made.

Several errors in your post.

At the time of the bombing the president had came into office as a VP.   

The Japanese surprise attack was an attack on a military installation, not a civilian target. 

Nor would an invasion of Japan resulted in million of American civilian casualties.

That aside, the point of my post was not to say whether the  bombing was the right move or not.  The point of my post is you can not justify a wrongful act by saying someone else would have committed the same wrongful act.  Maybe the bombing was the right decision, maybe it wasn't but, the argument that japan would have used the bomb if they had it, adds nothing to the discussion of whether it was a war crime or not. 

Good catch!   Everyone knows that VPs have a different set of rules to follow once they take over for the President.  ::)   

Well, if you consider all the extra civilians drafted into the military as the war drug on for another year or so then it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Here's an error you missed: Japan would have suffered way more than a million casualties.

Due to the importance of honor in their culture, most experts agree that Japan would have fought to the last man.  Out of a population of 71,000,000, Japan suffered 2,000,000 military deaths and "only" 500,000 civilian deaths - INCLUDING the atomic bombs.  An invasion may have greatly increased those numbers, by as much as 2000% by some estimates.  That's 10,000,000 civilian casualties.

For comparison, Germany, with a similar population (70,000,000) suffered 5,500,000 military deaths and 1,600,000 civilian deaths - 3 times as many civilian deaths as Japan without the use of atomic bombs.  Fighting a war on your home turf is costly.


Agreed.  However, if it saved ~10,000,000 lives can it be considered a war crime?  What other single even in recorded history has saved that many lives?  Couldn't we be talking about whether or not dropping the bombs is the single greatest humanitarian act in human history?  (http://209.85.62.23/55/133/emo/shrug.gif)

Wow, late to the party!  Here's what I think (like anyone cares)...

If we learned anything fighting in the South Pacific, it's that the Japanese would fight to the end, even if the fight was hopeless.  Case in point:  the Battle of Iwo Jima, where approximately 70,000 US troops, hundreds of bombers, and dozens of battleships were needed to fight 22,000 entrenched Japanese soldiers. 

http://www.japan-101.com/history/battle_of_iwo_jima.htm (http://www.japan-101.com/history/battle_of_iwo_jima.htm)

Japanese soldiers would carry out suicide missions in order to take out American GIs.  Invasion of Japan would have been so very costly to the US in terms of lives lost, and the US would've probably needed to go it alone, since Europe was devastated.  This was a numbers game.  Lose 100K + soldiers to a very long war (1 M by some estimates), or strike at the heart of Japan (civilians, sadly) so that the Emperor would see his kingdom could be attacked anywhere, anytime, and surrender quickly.  We should also remember that the Axis had been trying to develop atomic weapons, too, and that had the Axis developed them before the allies, history would have read that New York, or LA, not Hiroshima, was the site of the first nuclear attack.

As for striking at civilians, London was nearly bombed to dust.  so were many other large European cities (less famously, perhaps).  The allies responded by carpet bombing Berlin and other German cities.  This was the way early airborne warfare was done.  Only in the eighties did "smart bombs" exist; only recently did we move away from carpet bombing and into precision.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki had less to do with what was right or wrong and more to do with how it was done back then.

Now HERE'S someone who understands the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (or MAD for the initiated).  Absolutely right, Phishphan.  With all the lost Russian missiles and warheads we hear / read about, I am pretty sure that the next nuclear attack is followed by retaliation, and not necessarily by a nation-state, either.

Ethurst, I think the argument is that the bombing of 2 smaller cities with limited populations is less costly than invading a nation (putting boots on sand, if you will) with all the heavy machinery that entails (armor, artillery, etc...) and conducting a city-by-city urban war.  Those civilians without the means to escape (1945 Japan wasn't car-heavy) would have been stuck between invaders and defenders, and I know the term "caught in the crossfire" carries weight for a reason, right?  I full well believe that 1M US troops fighting the Japanese in Japan would have resulted in more casualties, spread out over all of Japan, that what occurred.  One source estimates that "only" 105,000 people died between the two attacks, whereas an all out military blitz  would have cost nearly 10 times that many US lives, based on tentative US figures. 

Article:
http://home.kc.rr.com/casualties/ (http://home.kc.rr.com/casualties/)

This article further goes on to point out that during comparable operations against fortified Japanese positions, the ratio of US to Japanese casualties was approximately 1 to 3.10 (109,700 US lost to 340,000 Japanese) soldiers.  Extrapolating:  Assume the US lost 500,000 men in combat in Japan (somewhere between 0 and the 1 M estimate).  The historical ratio would indicate that Japanese casualties would be on the order of 1,550,000 SOLDIERS, plus whatever civilians ended up in the fight.  Given the information available, I can't fault what was done.  From our perspective, it saved the most lives all around, and civilian casualties were less than our own military ones were expected to be, never mind what theirs would have been.

As for the emotional side of me, of course flaming civvies is reprehensible, as the thoughts of my daughter and wife combusting makes me want to ralph on my desktop.  Presidents are paid (meagerly) to make these calls, and must make cold, rational decisions.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki may not have been necessary, but they expedited the peace process and probably saved lives in the endgame.

What makes you think that I don't know people that are and have been in the KKK or Skinheads?

Yes, I know KKK people and skinheads and basically when it comes to money, they can be bought. When I lived in Germany, skinheads would roam the streets ogf Kaiserslautern at night looking to be the hell out of arrogant American GI's but if you were cool, they never messed with you and I'm black.

My thought is this. People may think it's dangerous for a black guy to go up to a skinhead or KKK guy and say, let's talk about fishing instead of why you hate me. I learn to take the most weird path with people. They are already going to be defensive about what you are bringing to the table so why not switch it. I've sat down with racists that hate black people and some of it is legitimate and some of it isn't. Does that make me hate the person? No. It's for them to figure out but I've won because I've established dialogue.

The first year I was in Arkansas, I had to travel all over the state and meet with bankers. I had to be in a different town every week. Arkansas is the hub of the Bible belt and KKK activities. I've even went on the road with white examiners who were scared to go into some of those towns. Instead of stay in town, they would rather get a hotel 30 miles outside of the place that we were doing the examination.

Some of these old Arkansas bankers had ties to the KKK. The difference was that I wasn't scared and I knew who I was. My philosophy is this...if you can identify with what a person LIKES then your chances of establishing communication with that individual is good.

I had some of these guys tell me about their meetings and how, since I was black, that I acted differently. I even had one guy ask me why all blacks were on welfare. Many of these guys thought that I was a Yankee from New York but I'm proud of where I'm from. Miami---Liberty City.

But here's the twist. Back in the early 90's, I had to help banks establish disaster recovery plans in case of DOMESTIC TERRIORISM. The FDIC was getting warnings from the FBI of bankers being targeted by white supremacists to fund domestic terrorist operations. I had to go to school for white collar crime concerning financial institutions and covert stuff.

You actually had guys running around off of I-30 training and shooting guns that had changed their mission from a race war to a war against facism and tyranny and for the first time, it was open TO ALL PEOPLE.

And low and behold, the Oklahoma City bombing happened which was a joint operation headed by a white supremacist, Timothy McVeigh, who my last roommate went to basic training with. He wasn't the only guy in on that bombing. Information is being leaked now that it was a joint effort and I don't want to get into that on this forum.

Now money talks. The point that I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter if you're a white Supremacist, Black panther, skinhead, motor head or chicken head, some people can be bought for a price.

I've even had some of these guys tell me of their disgust of the government and feeling like they were "stabbed" in the back by government. So instead of training for the "race war" they turned their attention to government. The FBI has changed their mission concerning these guys and they are now labeled as "TERRORISTS". Read the Patriot Act and you'll see that they fit the definition.

What makes a terrorist network so hard to defend is that it can include many different groups, cultures and people. It's harder to fight that an established government or country because sides shift. There isn't a hub or headquarters at all.

So yes, to answer your question, I've had intimate dealings with KKK, skinheads, hell-evangelists that you see on T.V. , sports people, governors and even a former President.

I couldn't take any more of it so I chose music as therapy and as a career.

You must don't know military history. The US since the end of the 1890's were all over the world establishing outposts. Of course they are not going to tell you about it. Take it from me...there is probably stuff in your backyard that you don't even know about that's been there for 70 years plus.

For example. When Hurricane Andrew hit Homestead Air Force Base, people lamented the closing and were trying to figure out why would Congress close a base that is so close to Cuba used for montoring the Carribean. The lame excuse was given that it would cost more to rebuild.

That was 1992.

But check this out, outside of Doral, the US Government has always had a command post. Go down NW 36 Street past the Turnpike and you'll see radar equipment. That stuff has been there for over 40 years and now, they are going to put the US Southern Command and a full blown operational base there which had already existed.

Now the question is...DID YOU KNOW THAT STUFF was out there or did you read in an American history book that it never existed.

The government isn't going to tell you what's in your backyard.

Okay Fish...let me see if I hear you correctly. You said that there was no 7th Fleet or no presence of any kind of military operation in the Pacific prior to WWII. Well, let me just post what President Rooselvelt did to pave the way for fleets and communications to be staged out in Pacific as early as 1903.

"In 1903, workers for the Commercial Pacific Cable Company took up residence on the island as part of the effort to lay a trans-Pacific telegraph cable. These workers introduced many non-native species to the island, including the canary, cycad palm, Norfolk Island pine, ironwood, coconut, and various deciduous trees, along with ants, cockroaches, termites, centipedes, and countless others.

Later that year, President Theodore Roosevelt placed the atoll under the control of the U.S. Navy, which on 20 January 1903 opened a radio station,

(Believe me, I don't think that they mean Y-100 with your drive-time weather every 30 minutes)

 in response to complaints from cable company workers about Japanese squatters and poachers. In 1904 - 1908 Roosevelt sent 21 U.S. Marines to stop the wanton destruction of bird life by Japanese poachers, and to keep Midway safe as a U.S. possession, protecting the cable station."

Hmm, now why would the US Government spend all that money and Marines just to save some birds?

So since 1903, the US was building up a military presence on the ATOLL's and had possession of many of the islands in that region. The dumbest thing that they did (and I think that it was the Marshall Atoll) was sell some land back to the Japanese.

Well, Teddy did like the fauna...

I think what lured Rooselvelt to the island was bushels of Mary Jane and he had to find an excuse. So he set up a communications station there.

The one thing that I do know is that there are some fine women in the South Pacific!

I'm gonna have to go ahead and second that one...

ethurst, did I ever say you DIDN'T know any racists/supremicists? No I didn't. I said I was going to guess you didn't. There is a difference. Did I ever say the US had NO military presence in the Pacific? No I didn't. I said the 7th fleet didn't exist during Pearl Harbor (although I do see differing dates of formation, they are all still after the attack).

If you worried more about factual information and less about how your argument sounded you could be taken with a bit more credibility in my book. Leave the conspiracy Hurricane Andrew shit out of a discussion like this. We all know there are things we don't know, but the date the 7th fleet being formed is such a government secret that they still lie about it to this day. Please forgive my while I chuckle.

I also see you left out this quote since the information you pulled was directly from Wikipedia

Midway's importance to the U.S. was brought into focus on December 7, 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Six months later, on June 4, 1942, a naval battle near Midway resulted in the U.S. Navy exacting a devastating defeat of the Japanese Navy. This Battle of Midway was, by most accounts, the beginning of the end of the Japanese Navy's control of the Pacific Ocean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll)

The VP part of your argument shows how badly your grabbing at straws to make your argument.  ??? ::)


The rest is clearly subjective and proves nothing. We can all assume a million different other scenarios but The Facts are the bombs were dropped and the war ended shortly thereafter. End of story.

You know what they say about guessing. If ya ain't sure, don't guess. If I said "fish" I'm going to guess that you don't know Michael Vick, then I would be taking a chance. I don't know who you know. I wouldn't make that guess because I just don't know at all.

I had a German professor that taught me a valuable lesson about history. he said to me to never pick up history from a standpoint of an ultimate conflict because that's just the climax of the situation. Go back years and years before the event happened and that's what I did. If you want a correct assessment on Vietnam, you don't go to the 60's or the 40's when the US sent the first advisors in but back at least to the 12th century and you'll find out that the same thing has been going on for centuries, countries make treaties and they break them, countries fall out with each other, countries bear secrets from their own citizens and countries create enemies to justify stuff.

It's some of the stuff that we mastered on the playground as children.

I never mentioned conspiracy in anything. I was making a statement on how there is military stuff in peoples backyards and they don't even know about it and it's been there for years. Same here in Denver... You have people that don't even have a clue that if this nation gets attacked that Denver, Colorado is number 1 on the hit list. That's the point I was coming from as far as Homestead Air Force Base and why Congress decided to close it. It was because they had a base outside of Doral Country Club that they ran Carribean operations from. Not many people from Miami (or is it Miami-Dade County) even know it exists and it's been there for over 40 years.

So there's no conspiracy to what I said, it's public record. I did not say that the government created a hurricane in the Atlantic and geared the Hurricane towards Homestead.

A conspiracy is a slice of pizza disappearing out of my refrigerator in the middle of the night. That's a conspiracy.

I was focusing on what was in the Pacific BEFORE World War I and II. We all know about Midway during the war but what was there BEFORE the war. You told me that there wasn't a US "Presence" in the Pacific and I said yes, there was and I went to the 1903 reference on Roosevelt "establishing" a presence by putting in a communications system at Midway and not only at Midway but at other atolls and territories.

And as far as the Japanese control of the Pacific, that's propaganda. If several sources confirm that there was a US Presence in the Pacific before WWI (including military history books), then it's viable. Remember, it was Commodore Peary that forced the opening of Japan in the mid 1800's. The US, British and the Germans had more of a presence in the Pacific than the Japanese did.

Look, this is military strategy. If I want to justify a conflict or war, then I have to make my adversary look like the biggest, baddest, meanest dude on the planet. So I have to market it as such to get it to be believable to the common guy so that they will throw support behind it. I was just looking at some Warner Brothers cartoons in which the Department of Defense commission them to do cartoons in support of the war and maybe I will post one of those here because some are really blatant and in your face.

In the military, command numbers (if you're technical about it) change all the time but the command stays the same. You can commission a fleet and give it a classified name and decommission a fleet, squadron or platoon.

So if you want me to use some military sources to prove that the military had stuff in the Pacific since the late 1800's then, I can do that, no problem.

Now the one thing about your post that I did take consideration to was the changing of view on how many casualties it could have been if we didn't drop the bomb. I'm trying to see that in a different light.

No, it was not grasping at straws.  It was pointing out how little the poster knows of history. 

The facts are also the Japs surrendered upon the Russians entering the war giving the Japs an additional front.  This is not proof that the Russians entering the war was the only reason the Japs surrendered. But the fact that the Japs were begging the Russians to ignore the agreement they made with UK and USA to enter the war 3 months after the fall of Germany shows that the Japs were worried about the consequences of needing to fight the Russians too. 

To say that bombing civilian cities saved civilian lives is BS.     

But I am not trying to prove anything.  I am simply refuting the two wrongs make a right argument.   

Hey Phishfan,

I want to know what you think about this.

During the Gulf War, you had Gen. Schwarztkoff on CNN telling the nation where troops were located and where they were moving.

Did you believe anything that he said? Just give me your take on that.

I'll take this one!  I think telling us where the 1st Armored was hanging out and going was OK, because he wasn't telling you what the 75th Ranger Regiment was up to...know what I mean?


That's not necessarily BS, given that the alternative would have been to systematically invade and lay siege to city after city after city in order to occupy the country.  The casualties from fighting a dug in enemy on its soil, with civilians in the way, could have easily exceeded the estimated 105,000 dead Hiroshima / Nagasaki civvies (through fighting, starvation, illness from bad conditions, displacement, walking into a mine, etc...).  Also, remember, no President is going to say "on one hand, I invade and lose 1 Million soldiers" (the estimate for which I provided a link in an earlier post)..."on the other, I drop this here bomb and lose no soldiers, and overall casualties on both sides are less than the casualties I'm expecting on MY side alone...Hmmm....let's invade".  I mean, who would do that?

Again revisionism at its finest. You are missing the meat and potatoes of my argument. I never said any of these things. Again you are more concerned with the way you post reads and sounds rather than factual information. I said the 7th fleet did not exist at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. I never said there was no US presence in the Pacific prior to that time. I also never said anything about casualties dropping the bomb versus not dropping the bomb.

Do I believe anything? That is a tough question. Do I beleive they were giving us current information or forward looking statements that could cause harm to our troops or their mission, probably not. Do I believe that some information was accurate if it was not classified or not in danger of releasing information that would not have been already knowledgeable to the enemy or anyone who could physically see it, probably so.

Okay, my mistake, I got the bomb drop deal from someone else. i realized that after I wrote it but I didn't have a chance to get back to it. My apologies to you Fish.

What information IS NOT factual? Is it the 7th Fleet deal (which is basically a number of a joint operation command that existed anyway). Tell me what's not factual so that I can clear it up and we can move out of this thing and go on to other stuff like talking about the Dolphins Cheerleader Calendar ;D

Now here's what I did and I really don't want to post it here. I went back to at least 1841 to view American activity in the Pacific and I do have the scenarios in which civilians and military where involved in strife. The list in long and I cut it in half but can e-mail it to you.

Now I agree with you there. Total agreement!

Here is my point. You mentioned something about the 7th Fleet not detecting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and how they could miss it. You say you are a military historian (or at least have studied military history). It is impossible for the 7th Fleet to have detected the attack because it did not exist. Prior to the formation of the 7th Fleet it was simply known as the Pacific Fleet I believe and was smaller and responsible for more ground (we also have the 3rd Fleet responsible for the Pacific currently) than the current 7th Fleet. Until Japanese expansion started occurring (roughly WWII) it was based in the West Coast (pointless except to back up my mention of Pacific naval dominance by the Japanese) and then moved to Pearl Harbor.

Long story short, the 7th Fleet did not exist at the time of the attack. It was a smaller Fleet who was responsible for more ground.

How does how the president got into office prove anything?  I don't get your point in pointing that out unless you are just trying desperately to look smarter then you actually are.  ???

I have a list of US Operations in the Pacific since 1850 and US "interests" in that area as far as fleets but time won't permit me to post it here. I can email it to you.

The most important US Presence that ever occured was in 1989 when the Thurstmeister arrived in Guam at Agana Beach and dropped a DJ set of funk that the Chamarro people had never heard. Everybody was there, Japanese tourists, sailors, airmen, chinese tourists and even a couple of drag queens.

The funk was my weapon of choice. A universal feeling to make up for centuries of tension!