Happy Nuke Day

On this day 62 years ago, a single bomb dropped by a USAF plane killed 80,000 people in an instant, and inflicted radiation disease on thousands more, many of whom would die a nasty and lingering death.

The age of nuclear weaponry had dawned.

[yt=Looksee]8JGu__2h5Co[/yt]

Imagine what the world would be like today if we hadn't...

Today marks the day then that millions of Japanese were saved from death by starvation in the 1947 Rice famine (which the U.S. helped feed the Japanese during) and that millions of Japanese on the northern islands were saved from the horror of Soviet occupation.

Hiroshima / Nagasaki were extremely compassionate measures in a war that was already the ugliest, most brutal one ever fought. Thank God there were still some sane people in Japan who would surrender.

Here come the ends justify the means crowd. Would you also support medical research obtained by killing innocent "test subjects" if it saved thousands or millions more people?

Do I support Nazi medical testing? No. Those people wouldn't have died. The dead from the atomic bombings would probably have been killed in far, far worse ways for absolutely no gain. But they would have died either way.

We already kill millions of innocent "test subject" in medical research.

They aren't human generally, but they are living organisms who can feel pain.

No, the ends do not fully justify the means.

But, the means and the ends must be considered together and arguably there are situations where the "end" is so vital and important to the world as a whole that nearly any "means" to obtain it are acceptable.

the argument isn't whether the "means" (atomic bombs) justified the end (end of war with Japan).

The war with Japan was going to end one way or the other.

the argument is whether the "means" (atomic bombs) was better than the alternative "means" (starvation blockade and probable invasion of Japan).

Today marks the anniversary of the day when the Democratic Party showed Republicans how to deal with suicidal fanatics.

They even hit the right country.

Shall we play Year of Hell and eradicate all of Earth history's questionable "lesser of two evils" decisions one by one and witness the cumulative effect on the 2007 we know today?

Will there be a reset button at the end?!?

And today marks the day that POTN, disgusted with his choices among the current Democratic field, evokes the ghost of Harry Truman.

Yes, when everyone learns the moral of the story and wishes for it to be pressed

Remember Pearl Harbor!

To be fair, I'll allow you to evoke the ghost of Ronald Reagan so your side would have a chance against Zombie Truman.

It's funny that the (D) wisdom that POTN is recollecting is something that, somewhere along the line, they clearly opted to abandon in favor of Carter-Clinton syndrome

And August 9 is the 62nd anniversary of an event that directly saved my father's life, as well as eliminating the need for what would have been the most costly and brutal year of warfare in human history.

http://www.inpayne.com/dad/ickyandme.html

Gee, whats worse than an atom bomb up your ass?

Freaking Germans bombing battleship row!

How are we supposed to determine that you are not a dumb shit and that this is a joke?

If you really want to know the answer to that question, you could ask the same Japanese that we dropped a nuke on.

But then again, you're trying to apply subjective morality against a clear and definite solution to a war that worked.

Everyone dies, bock. Let's kill a few thousand now to solve AIDS and cancer. They'll die eventually, so let's make sure it is a meaningful and useful death.

Remember V for Vendetta!

On to the topic:

Given what was known at the time, it was without question the right choice. Given what we know today, still probably the right choice. Was it a terrible tragedy? Yes, very much, but then, so is war, especially that war.

I bet this is more fun for you than your birthday and Christmas combined.

Now go clean the spooge off the floor before you track it all over the house.

Interestingly, I'm reading a book called "MacArthur's War", an alternate history about the Manhattan Project accidentally blowing itself up and America being forced to invade Japan.

Let you know how that one turns out.

Another one I just read had the Japanese refusing to surrender after Nagasaki and the US being forced to invade anyway. In that one, after the third city, there wasn't anything left to nuke in Japan - Tokyo and Kyoto being off limits. All the other cities had been destroyed by conventional means. That was an interesting point nobody had thought about.

And I just read the last book in Turtledove's long series about the Confederacy winning the Civil War, the Second Civil War, losing WWI, and now fighting WWII...ouch, because both North and South get the bomb almost at the same time.

But saying that this is a "clear and definite solution to a war that worked" clearly legitimizes the deliberate targetting of civilians in war. Sorta throws the whole "Laws of Armed Conflict" out the window, doesn't it now? Who cares about blowing up hospitals and churches if it wins the war, right?

If I was Japanese, I would hate white Americans forever.

I'd say that a perpetual hatred for Germans from Jews, Russians, Poles, and any number of others would be at least as justifiable, and possibly much more.

I'm guessing you'd think one up yours?