Happy Nuke Day

If they know you won't, those will become the facilities from which they operate

Always knew you were one of those nasty liberal commies. Sounds like something Stalin would say.

Just taking your position to the logical conclusion. Am I in error? Can you restate?

Too easy. Supporting an end to a war doesn't equate to supporting killing innocents.

But you also can't support this:

You might be able to suggest that those who died on 8/6/45 died a horrible death to save many more from dying other horrible deaths. But you can't support that the same people would have died anyway.

Let me see... if Japan or Germany would've had it first in WWII, they would've not hesitated to use it.

But America used it and we're the one that gets the crap for a war we never wanted any part of.

Xerafin - both sides already were engaged in full, total warfare at the time.

What Japan did to American POW's, for example, was far and away beyond what we'd consider acceptable...and that wasn't just to soldiers, but to Allied civilians, as well. Look up Nanking sometime.

Point of fact, if you were an Allied soldier, by and large you'd have been far better off being captured by the Nazis than the Japanese. The Nazis at least paid lip service to the Geneva Convention; the Japanese outright didn't give a shit...if you surrendered to them, you were literally nothing.

People forget that Japan back then was nothing remotely like Japan as it is now. So they go on about the bomb being unnecessary. I think that's a mistake. Even after the bombs had been used, Hirohito literally risked his life when he ordered the surrender, because even THEN the Japanese military were horrified at the idea and would have gladly sacrificed every last Japanese, to completely die as a nation, than give up.

Even many of the scientists responsible for the bomb later felt sadness and regret and even some guilt afterwards, even if they felt what they did was ultimately necessary. And some even had later doubts that it was necessary, and regretted what they released on the world.

I'm glad they had doubts, it shows they were humans and not monsters like Hitler.

Can we at least all agree that it was a tragedy so many people on both sides, civilians and soldiers died?

War is a tragedy of the human race, and one that the bomb proved that we need to grow out of to survive as a species.

Days like today, and Pearl Harbor Day, and the anniversary of Dresden, and D-day, and Memorial Day, should be solemn occasions to reflect of the cost and horror and suffering of war, because even if necessary, it's a necessary evil. And any decision (to go to war) should be made with grave concern and deliberation and understanding of the full scope of what is about to happen.

If we all - all of Humanity - did that, there never would be any Pearl Harbor's, Hiroshima's, Nagasaki's, Dresden's, or even 911's...

I see. But the original implication equated Nazi medical testing and the atomic bombings. IMHO, the fault in your misunderstanding was not mine but in trying to equate the two things. I should've just hit with a two by four for making a bad comparison in the first place.

You're too funny bock. He was talking about embryonic stem cells, and you equated such research with Mengola.

By that reasoning, are "white Americans" justified in hating Japanese forever because of their sneak attack that started the war in the first place?

No.

White Americans must be held to a higher standard of morality because they claim the higher ground.

I had udon noodle soup for lunch.

I don't know if that's relevant or not but it was tasty.

Is the basic objection to the nukes the fact that one kaboom made a whole lot of Japanese go poofie? Would it have been better if that same number had gone poofie due to lots of smaller conventional bombs?

Maybe it would have been more "humane" to have invaded Japan with a million-plus soldiers, fought a fanatical enemy for every inch of his homeland, laid waste to the entire country and killed millions of Japanese civilians in the process.

Believe me, the nukes were a mercy. They shortened the war by at least a year (probably more like two or three years) and prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides. You want to imagine what an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have been like, think Okinawa x 10000. Ye gods, death would have walked the land like a titan.

So there should be no "Laws of Armed Conflict", Geneva Convention Accords, etc?

Only if both sides are party to them.

So if the Soviets had invented the A-bomb first and used it on German cities to stop their advance (thus saving 20 million Soviet lives), everyone would be rooting for the Soviets? Somehow, I imagine history being painted differently if that had occurred.

Hard to tell who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in that case, IMO!

Hard to win a war when only one side is bound by rules, IMO!

Why the hell are you bringing up a red herring?

Have I mentioned "Laws of Armed Conflict" anywhere? As far as I can tell the only people who really care about targetting civilians in times of war are civilians worried that they are going to be targetted.

You *win* wars by destroying your enemies ability to fight. Civilians more often than not supply that ability. As far as I can reasonably tell, supporting any sort of "Laws of Armed Conflict" especially in governments built on representative democracy, will only increase the likelihood of warfare. If we fought wars where it was known, upfront, that we'd be purposely targetting women, children, infirm, and anyone else who might give aid and comfort to our enemies methinks we (that is warmongering America, we're always fighting someone somewhere) would be fighting very few wars, and the ones that we did fight would scare the fuck out of anyone that diplomacy would be a much more viable option.

"Laws of Armed Conflict" only make it palatable to fight wars amoung a civilian populace; if you look at history, populations which were predominantly martial didn't respect "civilians" except as possible slaves or means of furthering their own ability to fight. They are an idiotic concept and have probably caused the US to be involved in more conflicts than we otherwise would have in the past century, especially post-WWII (we're the good guys, we don't hurt kids!).

Bullshit, we hurt kids, we kill grandmothers, and we blow cities to hell. As we should, but we should be much more selective about the whens and whys, and when politicians decide to commit our forces they should do so in the most ruthless and effective way to end the war and accomplish our objectives so that we can proceed to diplomacy.

So our mistake in Iraq is that we didn't target the civilian population?

You should change your username to Mr. Obtuse

Our mistake is that we don't take war seriously because we think we're the "good guys" and we aren't out to kill people.

Saddam would have been dead in '91 if we were actually fighting wars to you know, "win" them, Japan or Germany ever fucked with anyone since?

Our goal was to contain Iraq, not wipe it out.

Yep...leaving not only the same regime, but also the same individual in power afterwards was ridiculously untenable. Liberating the nations that Hitler annexed but leaving him in charge of Germany (if he'd lived) after WW2 would have been equally stupifying.

The fact of the matter is this. We made believers of Japan, we can make believers of Iraq and Afganistan.

The Republicans aren't doing any better.

They're both failed parties.

Fact is, Afghanistan pretty much liberated itself (the Northern Alliance, with a lot of logistical and tactical air support from us), whilst the justifications for leveling Baghdad and killing 100,000 Iraqis in a night's firebombing were never there to begin with.

Yep...Republicans seem to think you can fight a protracted war and still not raise taxes or otherwise sacrifice.

And then you have soldiers getting their military equipment via private donations

But not Kurdistan though.

Such betrayal