You're wrong. I watched a special on Showtime just a few weeks ago showing archived footage of the Generals in their own words saying that the bomb was not needed.
Truman wanted to drop it to prove a point.

Do some research. Don't believe what we were taught in school about it.

Evidence of...just what exactly...Police Officers doing a job in the way they are trained to do?

Land of Laws? Laughable. US is a country of expediences and necessities these days.

The Japanese were showing zero signs of surrendering at the time the bomb was dropped and we were preparing to invade Japan and up to 1,000,000 casualties was predicted for us and millions more for the Japanese. The bomb saved lives and BTW the A Bomb did not kill as many people as our fire bombings had killed in Japan and in Germany.

We can always count on US leadership for one despicable act after another. And people wonder why we are the object of attacks for so long.

Russian ships have moved into Iranian southern ports. China has taken off the gloves. Obama has given Israel the greenlight for Iran. Night everyone.

If nukes can save lives and end wars, why were they never used again? Funny how that works.

"Saving" 1,000,000 blood thirsty American soldiers was not worth what was done to a few hundred thousand innocent civilians in Japan. You are completely delusional and totally propagandized to even try to justify that.

Dying is an occupational hazard when you're a soldier. It should not be when you're a civilian.

Some of you are honestly disgusting human beings, and I use the term "human beings" loosely.

lol, you watch a showtime special and tell me to do research?

please, i have a degree in military history from one of the top colleges on the planet and you're suggesting a showtime television show is more valid?

here, i don't read japanese and i am sure you don't either, but here's the emporer's words in english re: the bomb



russia THEN invaded manchuria day later

i can really go on & on with reams of facts on this.

a direct nuclear assault on the mainland v. an indirect assault on manchuria and showtime thinks the bomb didn't amount to anything-

don't let revisionist history shows on television try and change history for tv ratings.

also, read truman's autobiography, he goes into detail about his decision.

:)

that's not what happened. hindsight is 20-20, you are making the honest mistake junior historians make, you are looking at the past through rose colored glasses of the current.

proper recounting of history requires you look at the events in the light of the times of the event. and the fact is civilian targets were fair game in ww2. we tried it the other way when we 1st entered the war, but that didn't work. we didn't start it, we weren't the only ones, all sides did it.

I have to congratulate the US forces for their speedy apprehension of those two terrorists, that having surveillance cameras everywhere is a great thing, however intrusive it seems to be. To be able to identify those two within 24 hours was brilliant. Lessons have to be learnt each time anything like this happens, lots of good and bad things can be worked on. What saddened me after the final terrorist was captured, was the world news coverage showing thousands [of mainly youngsters] out on the street, shouting USA, USA, like it was a Ryder Cup victory (remember them?!), turning a grave situation into it a carnival atmosphere, police cars roaming, honking their horns in appreciation. This also seemed to be explained by the fact it was 420 day, they were all stoned ? cops too.

The American reaction to such events tends to be different from anywhere else around the world, the National Guard on the streets, a no-fly zone, that every senator claimed their post contained Ricin, Louisiana closed down highways and harbours because someone accidentally left a briefcase near a post office. Obama desperate to appear on tv to petrify a nation as if aliens had landed and nuked New York. After Twin Towers idiot Bush told the word America was at war. The whole point of terrorism is to terrify, and America is brilliant at being that. And having most of the population armed didn't do much good, that should shut a lot of pro-gunners up.

Those who read that British ex-Prime Minister Thatcher died the other week, should note how she reacted when the IRA attempted to kill her in 1994, they blew up the hotel, five died, many injured, and she was very lucky to escape the blast. Next morning, 9.30am, she strode out and acted as if nothing had happened. Again, when the IRA bombed the City of London, enormous destruction, yet 36 hours later the whole area was opened for business as usual. These things need to be played down when they can, or the terrorists really are winning [in America].

Treat Tsarnaev as a criminal, not a terrorist, throw him in with the rapists, killers and not very nice people, don't make him special, by putting him in a quasii-prisoner of war detention camp, or killing him and making him and his brother martyrs.

Robbie,

Stick to your arguments about the modern police state, I disagree with you about them but they do have some validity. Your arguments about how WWII ended are totally invalid (even if you saw them in a Showtime special), anyone who has done a fair amount of reading about the war, lived through it or spoken extensively with people who did has come away with the same conclusion.... The bombs were horrific weapons and that is precisely why they ended the war years before it would have ended otherwise.

Germany was in the process of developing equally sinister weapons including long range gas weapons, nukes and biological weapons. Japan had zero interest in surrender and Germany was using Japan as a buffer to buy time for their R&D. It almost worked. They made the tragic mistake of losing many of the worlds best scientists simply because they happened to be Jews and that is primarily the reason we reached the nuclear age before Germany did. That lead to the quick surrender of Japan, isolation of Germany and end of the war.

Killing 60,000 people at once in a big blast is much better than killing hundreds of thousands via hand to hand combat and drowning over the course of a few years. The same logic applies to Watertown. Inconveniencing a whole town for a day is far better than cleaning up body parts for the next several years. The message is simple. Bomb anything and we will capture or kill you in 48 hours. It's a much better message than the one we used to use, bomb something and we will invade a country that had nothing to do with it.

Just curious if you have seen the series by Nial Ferguson "war of the worlds"? its a 6 part series so is a little long but since you have a degree in military history and have an interest in it I wonder what you make of it, he goes over many of your points. If you haven't seen it It's a good watch on the nature of the 20th century conflicts.

heres a link to the youtube playlist if your looking for something to watch.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=q5AbQ...6CE7D51E1F77B5

I agree with this. Every news station was all over this for the next few days and still is. The UK had a ban on terrorist news. Sort of hurts that freedom of speech thing but overall it is a great idea. Why let the next nutbag get all jonesed over how he is going to be famous.

Robbie is right, I'm learning about it in history class right now. They knew Japan was going to fold but Truman wanted to bomb them anyway to send a message to Stalin.

I dont know, it really is the best way to handle the situation. Stop everything like after 911, they grounded all planes very quickly so nothing was in the sky.

Yes and yes

Good post, and really does explain the 'problem' I have with people here saying it's ok, it's just the police's job etc. I'm not from the US (UK here) so haven't experienced the environment that makes it natural for me to roll over and believe that patting down civilians and barking at them when they are clearly NOT the suspects the police are looking for is perfectly acceptable behaviour. 'rolling over' being my interpretation, based on what I'd put up with, not an insult to those with a different POV.

Maybe that's why I was called on being a keyboard 'tough guy' for stating how I see it, but yeah, environment sets your belief system, and having the police here in the UK act the way they do sometimes is bad enough that it gets my back right up, hence my 'shock' at seeing the procedure in that video, and inability to grasp why some people think it's acceptable.

Either way there's fuck all I can do about a past event, and I believe that everyone is free to believe what they choose to, so I'm gonna practice what I preach - or attempt to anyway, and read but not post :winkwink:

None of that makes it acceptable. Dropping atomic bombs on civilians is not acceptable no matter how someone tries to spin it or write it in the history books.

Man will always find a way to justify his horrific actions and senseless murder of others.

Solid post. :2 cents:

i will certainly tune in to this, thank you, no i have not seen it.

there is a lot of controversy right now surrounding this view on the surrender.

did you know who came up with this view? oliver stone.

as i pointed out above, the emperor DID react to the bomb, in fact, he said enough, we will sign the surrender

i am watching the video for the 1st time, it's has a very anti-american tone.

is oliver stone the new michael moore?


here is the "documentary" it has some fantastic clips from hollywood movies to anchor stone's perspective.

The moral choice is not to begin war. I'm all for not having a war and I'm especially against never-ending wars against concepts like the war on terror or the war on drugs. However, during a war of last resort (like WWII was) any weapon that ends the war with fewer casualties and less damage is a good thing. The atomic bombs saved many more lives than they ended and did horrific damage on tiny locations compared o the widespread horrific damage that was ongoing on a global scale before they were dropped. As a moral exercise, BEFORE entering a war one should ask if we are wiling to use nuclear weapons. If the situation is not dire enough to say yes, then don't enter the war.thats why I was against the Iraq invasion but feel differently about our mission to destroy terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Germany with another eighteen months of R&D would have been a much bigger threat to life than those two nukes.

As for intimidating Russia, that wasn't needed. They had just lost millions of people In a very bloody war and were not itching for a fight when the war ended. That friction started later and our use of the nukes is part of what caused it. The world dislikes a single nation having a huge militaristic advantage. It's another part of why cutting our military budget and spending more wisely would not hurt our national security. A narrower gap makes other nations feel more safe and less aggressive.

:thumbsup:thumbsup

ok, i watched the doc in its entirety, thanks for pointing me to it.

for me, i think stone is on to something, but hasn't quite got it sorted out.

as stone points out, truman was not in charge of dropping the bomb, groves was, groves is otr stating that truman didn't so much as say yes, he just didn't say no to already existing plans to drop the bomb(s). groves described truman as a boy on a toboggan.

next, he goes on that the japanese communicate to the russians that they are willing to surrender conditionally, if the emperor can be kept.

general kawabi says: we learned of hiroshima gradually, we learned of the manchurain invasion quickly.

stalin had rushed to invade manchuria after learning of the successful test of the bomb

for me, what stone is really trying to revise, is that truman blinked. truman backed off his requiring japan to surrender uncondtionally, at potsdam, he allows them to maintain the emperor. in that sense, yes, the bomb didn't have anything to do with it.

but i don't think that changes the fact that the bombs did shorten the war. that's not to say that russia's entry would not have shortened the war. but based on the doc, the plan to drop the bombs was in motion via groves, truman had no real say, as did any of the other generals.

I concur...the use of the A bomb shortened the war and saved lives for all involved.

WW2 and the 'Unconditional Surrender'

Some time during ww2, the allies started floating around this 'unconditional surrender' nonsense about how the war would end.

so instead of another european war blowing itself out.. you had this added caveat that your surrender would be 'unconditional', whatever that meant.

This meant you had no soldiers giving up, armies and governments fighting 'end game scenarios', cause for all they knew, everyone would end up dead

So you had a war being dragged out for YEARS, because of two words

same with Japan.

Anyone who says 'this saved millions of lives', not only has no clue what they're talking about, is probably suspect MIC supporter

i know you are just c&p'ing this comment but it truly lacks any real understanding of the aggression of germany and japan at that time.

that aggression prompted the unconditional surrender, certainly not the allies and some random bullshit, as the above gibberish suggests.

proof is the misunderstanding the unconditional surrender saved lives.

i've never read anything that claimed the requirement for unconditional surrender saved lives, that's pretty silly.

I do not understand why people comply so easily.

I am not talking about back chatting or taking any aggressive stance towards the police.

I am saying, I would NOT run around with my hands on my head or let them pat me down without questioning them. Yes they would likely get their back up, however if I am 100% innocent of any wrong doing and these clowns break into my house. I am not going to be cooperative at all.

Think about it, you are in your house and these idiots start hammering on the door then drag you out. For what?

These officers have on average an extremely shit job that attracts lesser intelligent and educated people. That video is simply an example of giving a tin of fuel to a kid and a match. THen saying it is ok to set it on fire.

The US should have brought Stalin to his knees when it had the upper hand with nuclear weapons. It would have spared hundreds of millions their freedom, no Iron Curtain, no Korean War, no Vietnam War.

Churchill wanted it, Patton wanted it - they were both branded kooks. History proved them right.

do you know that the bush family had very close ties to the nazi party?

and sorry, i was talking about the nukes that were dropped on Japan

it was a crime against humanity.

no, they didn't have very close ties to the nazi party. they invested in the recovery of germany in the 130s-ish like many wealthy americans and businesses did.

the slaughter of civilians caused by any war is a crime against humanity.

america didn't invent that, america does not hold a monopoly on that. you'll need to include all the other participants in war for your comment to be fair and accurate.

dyna_mo we are hijacking this thread...but I'd like to say something to you.

You're not the only educated person on here. And not the best educated either I would suspect. I'm sure there are much more educated folks on here than you or I.

Having said that...I graduated college in 1983.
And one thing that always stuck in my head was our Western Civ professor telling us at the end of the semester that pretty much everything he had taught us was complete bullshit and that "history is written by the victors of wars"

I'd keep that in mind before you get your thoughts set in stone on the subject of the United States dropping atomic bombs on highly populated cities. (not even military targets)

If ANY country ever did that we would immediately brand them a "terrorist nation" and all hell would break lose.
But WE are the only country that has ever done something so horrible.

It's just one of the many reasons that people around the world hate and fear the United States. Our goddamn govt. is a disgrace. :(

do i need to be fair and accurate when it comes to a subject of the needless deaths of countless women and children?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004...secondworldwar

can you read this and we can get back to the discussion? i don't want to type for awhile about shit that's already fact

lol. every generation tries to rewrite history and that's part of what i like about it. i'm not clinging to anything. you mentioned "do some research" in reply to me and in reference to a showtime show, that's assuming less than you know, i let you know i've done research on this via college. not showing off in the slightest, my history degree and a nickel = 1 nickel.

nevertheless, it's unfortunate you can't chat about it. hell, i watched your documentary and came back here with pertinent points to chat about. too bad.


ah, i'm done here.

dyna_mo my point is that history is written by the winners. Not by "every generation".

If the Axis Powers had won WW2 our history books would read a lot different. Different "heroes' and different "villains"

Watching that Oliver Stone documentary was eye opening for me. It's actually a series.

And despite the bias that he may have...one thing is for certain: His ability to do real research (money) with true historians trumps my knowledge and college degree as it does yours.

We learned in college what we were taught. Garbage in...garbage out (not everything, just saying that IF our history books aren't telling the real story then we didn't get taught the correct things).

30,000 pigs and they didn't even find him

If they didn't have martial law, then he would have been found hours earlier

[QUOTE=dyna mo;19593932




ah, i'm done here.[/QUOTE]

then you haven't been paying attention to anything that has happened in history. and now i know you have no interest changing that

:2 cents:

not correct, being a history buff to whatever degree i am, i do pay attention to what happens in history, in fact, my attempt at dialogue here was an effort towards discussing that- i'm not interested in being right, i'm interested in trying to find out a realistic view, that takes discussion and dialogue, that's why i took the time out to do what robbie suggested- more research, so i watched the exact show he referenced and came back here with thoughts on it trying to prompt discussion. that didn't go over, that's cool.

that's correct, i have no interest in changing history.

There were two components to last week's shelter-in-place request in Watertown, Massachusetts. The first was a request that people not to leave home. The second was a door-to-door search by heavily armed law enforcement officials. Those are two very different things, with different implications. But neither was illegal.

No one in Watertown had to stay at home. The shelter-in-place was optional, largely an effort to ensure public safety in the classic sense of such requests. Time explains the difference:

“The lockdown is really voluntary, to be honest with you,” says Scott Silliman, emeritus director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke Law School. “The governor said he wants to use sheltering in place. Sheltering in place is a practice normally used if you’re dealing with a pandemic, where you’re telling people, ‘You may have been exposed and we want you to stay exactly where you are so we can isolate everything and we’ll come to you.’”

The “shelter in place” request is legally different from a state of emergency, which Patrick declared earlier this year as winter storm Nemo descended on the Bay State.




The ACLU agreed.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/natio...s-legal/64461/


/end thread

i've never read 1 single "history book" on ww2.

the go to authority on the japanese surrender is a japanese citizen.

sorry this meant you read the article?

Anyone who defends this is 100% brainwashed :2 cents:

yes i read the article. :-) i am very much interested in ww2 and enjoy learning about it and the events surrounding it, thanks for linking it!

woo was worried

you have read this?

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

Wouldn't most of them be dead by now of old age?

I'd say the authority on it would be the generals who were in the war room and said that the Japanese had already asked to surrender. They said that Truman had no interest in that.

All the Japanese wanted was for the U.S. to guarantee the Emperor would not be harmed. Truman said "no" that wasn't "unconditional" so he killed tens of thousands of men, women, and children with 2 atomic bomb drops on 2 cities.

And then afterwards they completely left the Emperor in place (which was all the Japanese asked for)

I think the research that Stone's people did was pretty good. And I again say...I don't trust the govt. one bit. They will do ANYTHING they can get away with. Including instantly frying tens of thousands of innocent women and children with 2 atomic bombs and of course the millions who have died of cancer from the radiation in the aftermath.

No excuse for that. But just like you...I was taught from grade school on that we did an "honorable" thing and saved millions of lives.
I no longer think that. The evidence is overwhelming to the contrary to me.

the scholarly authority.


ftr, i've never once advocated nuclear weapons or war or ww2 or anything other than to point out in a post already that all civilian slaughter during war is a war crime- period. i simply tried to find the accurate view on that precise moment in history.

Oh man . . .

Bullshit; when you build a military complex among the citizens (pretty much what you are suggesting with your contention that all military installations should be on the coast and borders with other countries) means that civilians are subject to being harmed.


:1orglaugh Sure you would.

No facts please.

Maybe because there was no such thing as paramilitary in the 50's?

And if the cops had not found the suspects and more people were killed or injured, these same people would be complaining that not enough was done.

So, you recommend all countries be sure to embed their troops and military installations deeply in residential communities.

Well, then I am convinced.

Rhetorical question?

I think every Aussie I am friends with has a story about how they fought the law and the law won.

i had not heard of this, sounds fishy.