Your opinion about the Hiroshima And Nagasaki bombings

Miscellaneous History
41

Bloom, do you reflexively just buy all the government’s propaganda? Would you buy it someone killed a whole bunch of people but then said “I had to do it or else”, despite numerous witnesses to the contrary?–snowflake

Not all of the government’s “propaganda” is invalid.

For example, what do many rigid thinking and indoctrinated Austrians have against using the framework of a relatively free and decentralized government (the USA) to remove a far greater evil to economic and social freedom (fascist and communist states).

do the austrians advocate giving up/not fighting militarized statism on principle?

it seems that many adherents to the Austrian school do not have the subtlety to sway even an ideological inch from their convictions to understand the danger from despotic regimes throughout history.

For example, they are willing to suffer predation at the hands of an aggressive dictatorship whether fascist or communist by handcuffing the ability of a Federal COnstitutional Republic to defend itself and its interests because it is not 100% pure ?!

This kind of intellectual inflexibilty and rigidity I see frequently among the automatons on Leftwing blogs and forums. It is all or nothing with them. government is great, free markets all bad.

In summary, working to promote economic and social freedom from within is admirable, however it is insanity to undermine the United States while we are fighting survival level threats from fascism, religious autocracy,and marxism abroad.

both are threats that need to be addressed equally vigorously or the benefits of a free society along the austrian model will not be realized.

42

There was no reason to demand of Japan to “surrender”. Unconditional surrender is a something pulled out of thin air by the USA specifically for this war. No one in their right mind ever went around demanding “uncondition surrender”. You had actual demands that the enemy was supposed to fullfil, you did not demand carte blanche (and then did not even exercise it once the enemy submitted).–Marko

Unconditional surrender is the most preferred outcome of war and most effective tool to a lasting and prosperous peace. Note that if it was used at the end of WWI then we would not have had a second world war. Without unconditional surrender and capitulation of the enemy, the seeds for conflict remain.

as opposed to the first world war, the end of the 2nd world war by removing the previous power structures in italy, germany,and japan with unconditional surrender we have effectively neutered these once warlike nations. Indeed, they are harmless, peaceful to a fault, prosperous and free thanks to the overwhelming beating they took in 1945.

I understand that rigid austrians believe in coddling threats or putting their heads in the sand and pretending that unrestricted commerce alone will protect them, however history and tens of millions of tortured and murdered innocents suggest otherwise.

despots and empires will overrun free anarchist societies for plunder or simply to “see the funny look on your face” when they march naive pacifists up the steps to the hangman’s noose.

it is unrealistic to put your faith in the intentions of imperialistic despots, their brainwashed minions, and their “benevolent” geopolitical goals.

have both the will and means to deliver the fatal blow to a potential enemy — this tenet will insure the safety of innocents far more than naive well-intentioned humanitarianism and pacifism offered by many austrian theorists.

43

You should not throw around words for which you do not know what they mean. Look up “defence” in the dictionary, will you.

44

all conflict is defensive in nature whether it is initiated by our enemies or ourselves.

particularily in today’s world, when many threats can kill tens of millions of innocents in a second.

by your definition, we are supposed to continually absorb survival level surprise attacks before we can retaliate ?!

Moreover, who other than brainwashed socialists and austrians on each extreme of the ideological spectrum believe that mankind is not warlike and predatory irrespective of what economic system he operates.

wake up, human nature dictates – peace, through strength — especially for Western democracies that have never waged war against one another.

thats a fact for austrians to consider before railing like drones against US military force in the 20th century.

NEVER IN HISTORY HAVE HIGHER ORDER DEMOCRACIES WAGED WAR AGAINST EACH OTHER.

no doubt, in a completely free world envisioned by austrian theory, war will be virtually eliminated. However, we have not yet reached that era, and we wont if we dont address continued threats from religious extremists and autocratic regimes.

45

No, what it did is it made them a part of American Empire. So just say so. Empire is more valuable to you than peace or 240,000 people. There is no need to pretend.

46

There you go. Isn’t it better when masks are done away with?

If Americans shoot someone, then it was defence. Simples.

47

Japanese eventually de facto accepted to unconditionaly surrender but there is no doubt they would have accepted a normal peace settlement (which in terms of territory would not have left the with any more than what they were left with as it was) before that. It would have pre-empted a Soviet intervention in China and instead of the Soviets arming Mao from the captured Japanese stock, you would have the Japanese with orders to surrender to Chiang - a much more preferable outcome for America.

But I guess in the minds of brilliant power players loosing China and wasting tens of thousands of Americans lives is worth ensuring the surrender-phobic Japanese not save face? – marko

Your point is valid and thoughtful.

However, throughout history we have always had to balance the long term threats with the “clear and present dangers” In the case of 1945, Germany and Japan were the clear and present dangers, not the soviet union and certaintly not china.

moreover, the struggle in china was unpredictable and not a guaranteed victory for mao.

48

Lol you don’t know anything about austrian econ. We don’t have to believe anything about the essential nature of man. He may be warlike, he may like potato salad. Doesn’t matter to praxeology.

Hah you have to call them “higher order democracies”, so that if a democracy ever waged war on another you could just say “well its not a high order democracy”. In contrast, democracy frequently wages wars against innocent brown people, so I don’t see why its such a great thing just because they’re not attacking eachother.

Bwahah maybe they’d hate us a little less if we didn’t kill half a million of them with the medical embargo of iraq, or if we didn’t help iran/iraq kill millions of drafted (innocent) people, or if we didn’t sponsor isreal for no reason. Its their culture to say a lot of religious things. That doesn’t mean they are motivated religiously. Inshallah there can be peace.

49

Whaaaat? If they SAY they attacked for economic reasons, then maybe economics is the answer? Im not relying on their goodwill. Its a person’s self interest that keeps them peaceful. So long as we can engage in trade and division of labor, the optimal path for humanity is peace.

There, now YOU do some economic/game theory/political philosophy.

Citation or die. Remember i’ve already cited links to the treaty of versailes explaining how economic rape translated into the second world war.

I have no faith. Some governments are worse than others. But they’re all evil.

50

Since you willfully suck at geopolitics, stop invoking it.

51

I bet you are a real weakling when it comes to fights in RL.

52

We don’t have to believe anything about the essential nature of man. He may be warlike, he may like potato salad. Doesn’t matter to praxeology.-- snowflake

then your opinion has no practical value to anyone. You would be better served to ponder “why is there air?”

Hah you have to call them “higher order democracies”, so that if a democracy ever waged war on another you could just say “well its not a high order democracy”. In contrast, democracy frequently wages wars against innocent brown people, so I don’t see why its such a great thing just because they’re not attacking eachother.-- snowflake

it has already been defined from many different sources and I will leave it to you (if you live long enough) to determine if I am proved right. There are dozens of higher order representative governments on the planet – largely thanks to the efforts and example of the United States and its “evil” military

here is one source to describe “higher order democracies”:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=21&year=2010 (nations rated “1” in both civil liberities and political score are higher order)

snowflake, I challenge you to cite a reasonable hypothetical scenario where any of these higher order democracies would engage in war!

Bwahah maybe they’d hate us a little less if we didn’t kill half a million of them with the medical embargo of iraq, or if we didn’t help iran/iraq kill millions of drafted (innocent) people, or if we didn’t sponsor isreal for no reason. Its their culture to say a lot of religious things. That doesn’t mean they are motivated religiously. Inshallah there can be peace.-- snowflake

absurd rant unsupported by any facts. produce an objective and independent source for 500, 000 dead iraqis from the sanctions. moreover,if this number is correct, it alone is justification for operation iraqi freedom .

From a moral standpoint, empirical evidence shows that the removal of Saddam has resulted in a net savings of over 250,000 lives:

Citing casualty figures of 95,000 Iraqi deaths during the 5.5 year war that equates to 17,300 deaths per year during the US occupation. Note that these numbers are dropping significantly since the Surge and they are likely to drop to a latent level before the US withdrawal in victory in 2011 provided the Obama/Biden administration does not screw things up (Washington Post, February 2009).

During Saddam’s reign over 1,600,000 Iraqis died violently as a result of his policies over a 24 year period that equates to 67,000 deaths per year! I’ll do the math for you. 67,000 – 17,300 = 49,700 x 5.5 = 273,350 lives saves as a result of the US action to liberate Iraq (http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/hussein.html

Indeed, wherever there is violence and instability in the world it is primarily the result of islamic extremism. MOreover, if your a diehard adherent of the austrian school, why the hypocrisy of making excuses for a religion that is the definition of political, social, and economic submission to higher authority or sharia law?!

I will eagerly await your invective and ad hominen attacks devoid of fact and logic and respond after my bike ride, assalamu alaikum.

53

Chrispy: “I’ve never understood why we didn’t drop the bomb on Iwo Jima or some other relatively unpopulated military target. We could have demonstrated to Japan that we had the bomb while destroying an important military base, killing very few civilians, and sparing the lives of about 7,000 Americans.”

Iwo Jima ended March 26, 1945. Okinawa ended June 21 1945. The U.S. had just received the worst casualties of the war at Okinawa. The first bomb was tested on July 16, 1945.

54

Err no… you must not understand what the word “praxeology” means. It means that we get to engage in rational economic analysis. It doesn’t matter what the agents want.

I bet if they ever waged war on another higher order democracy, their score would be lowered into the regular-democracy bracket. Its just qualitative. There’s nothing rigorous or scientific about it.

Its better

Well, there aren’t any poor white countries sitting on top of massive natural resources. We also have a lot invested in the positive image of our european bretheren… hmm.

There have been plenty of instances where a rated 1 nation will attack a rated 2 nation. So this is “highest democracy” attacking “slightly less high but still “free” democracy”. Good job making the world safe. Whether we attack someone is better correlated with what their skin color is, not how democratic their government is.

haha you thought i was blowing hot air. How ignorant are you? Credibility fail. Here’s the source. Its from wikipedia. Derp. Using-modern-technology-fail.

OH you think that the Iraq government is doing this to the iraqi people? Nooo no no. Its the higher order democratic countries who think children should die.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA snort BWAHAHAH. I just linked you the wiki article with the number of deaths from the iraq war on it! And fyi, the washington post isn’t a reputable source on these forums. They’re just apologists for the state. That’s their agenda.

They took the LOWEST BOUND of the LOWEST ESTIMATE from the body count survey. Aside from the lack of accuracy (how are you going to find every body? How will you know when you have found the majority of bodies?).

Ahh no now that’s not completely fair. The United States has to take some credit for about 300k of those 1600k deaths during the American Sponsored Iraq-Iran war, which also killed 1000k Iranians.

So, lets revise it: The average here is around 108k/yr (have to make a spreadsheet), even including the stupid body count survey. Then you take 1600k-300k deaths for the amount that Saddam was solely responsible for, and you get 54.7k/yr.

Don’t just pick statistics that prove your case. That’s for cowards and idealogues.

55

Chrispy: “I’ve never understood why we didn’t drop the bomb on Iwo Jima or some other relatively unpopulated military target. We could have demonstrated to Japan that we had the bomb while destroying an important military base, killing very few civilians, and sparing the lives of about 7,000 Americans.”

Also, we only had three bombs. We test one in the USA, and hiroshima and nagasaki were military targets, albeit with civilians.

MOre importantly, it was necessary to demonstrate that the US had both the will and the means to use the bomb on civilians to end the war.

even the most effective weapon in the hands of a self-aggrandizing “humanitarian” handwringing cupcakes is useless.

for example, if a naive cupcake pacifist like snowflake or marko had to make the decision to drop the bomb, 1 million Americans would have died taking Honshu or the militaristic Japanese leadership would still be in power.

in summary, we cant have leaders too afraid to make substantivedecisions regarding foreign policy and national defense. leaders who adhere to a utopian fantasy that " if we extend an open hand, our enemies will unclinch theirs." Unless your dealing with representative democracies this polyannish lunacy will embolden our enemies to attack us without threat of retaliation. Or they will slowly erode our defensive capability by endless attacks on our periphery that will soon enough render us subject to their coercion and our loss of freedom.

of course, you could adopt an equally unrealistic plan to educate despots like ahmedinajad, chavez, stalin, castro, pol pot, et al on the merits of the austrian school and watch them hand over power to the people without a struggle, and we can all have a group hug in auburn at the local starbucks and laugh about the misunderstanding.

useful idiots.

56

WIkipedia!

galloway!

the baathists!

iraqi foreign minister!

are you friggin kidding snowflake.

i said cite and objective source, moreover even objective data is highly invalid and unreliable as acknowledged by academia.

also, the sanctions were indeed destructive, all the more justification for the invasion.

note the following:

Within this environment, the following options were available to the US:

(1) Continued use of sanctions and diplomacy against Iraq despite the fact that this action was causing great suffering to the most vulnerable and innocent in Iraq while having virtually no effect at moderating Saddam’s behavior. Equally important was the animus created in the Islamic and Arab world from the sanctions that were a recruiting boom for regional terrorist organizations. Note that one of the primary motives for bin Laden’s attack on the US in 2001 was in protest of sanctions against Iraq and its impact on Iraqi women and children.

(2) Resumption of hostilities against Iraq for violating the ceasefire of 1991 with a goal of removing Saddam and installing a Western ally and representative government in its place.

(3)Do nothing and allow Saddam to reconstitute his WMD program as he stated was his intention while incarcerated by the US military after his capture in 2003.

Lastly, by any objective, rational, and independent thinking measure – the removal of the sanctions, saddam, and the installation of a nominal US ally in Iraq is a human rights victory.

Get over it.

We tragically lost over 4000 heroes in 7 years (less than died fighting at Iwo jima in 1 month for 10 sq miles of questionable real estate) freeing 25 million enslaved souls within scud missile range of over 70% of the worlds most accessible oil reserves from a despot who who was responsible for the following:

  • Murdered over 600,000 of his own people,
  • used WMD to murder tens of thousand of his own people,
  • lobbed ballistic missiles into the population centers of non-combatant nations,
  • committed the worse case of environmental terrorism in history,
  • started two unprovoked wars, resulting in the violent death of over 1 million,
  • funded Palestinian youth suicide bombers in order to murder Israeli children,
  • conspired to obtained WMD,
  • maintained high level ties with numerous anti-Western groups, including al Qaeda,
  • repeatedly attempted to shoot down our airmen enforcing a humanitarian “no-fly” zone,
  • undermined U.S. credibility and Western security by continually disregarding U.N. brokered 1991 cease fire accords.
57

From Saddam’s first day as despot to his last day in power, how many people was he responsible for killing? I’m quite sure the US is responsible for many, many more deaths over that same period. Hell, in the 1990s I wouldn’t be surprised if the US killed more Iraqis than Saddam did.

58

Because Iraqis are killing Iraqis, this then gives Americans the right to also kill Iraqis.

59

From Saddam’s first day as despot to his last day in power, how many people was he responsible for killing? I’m quite sure the US is responsible for many, many more deaths over that same period. Hell, in the 1990s I wouldn’t be surprised if the US killed more Iraqis than Saddam did.-- mtn dew

this is the casualty figures from an objective source on the deaths after the invasion – the world health organization of the UN. Last I checked they were not big cheney and bush fans.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr02/en/index.html

today it is saferfor US military personnel in iraq than a young person living in chicago.

note that I am not citing sources that are more favorable to my argument like snowflake has done by citing galloway, saddam’s ministers, et al for the deaths during the sanctions.

moreover, the argument that the world is a worse off place as a result of the invasion is manifestly absurd.

also, while “humanitarians” like snowflake and mtn dew lament the war in iraq as “evil”.

they have offered no alternative to the suffering caused by sanctions after all these years.

perhaps snowflake would offer the ridiculously naive “solution” of vague “more humane utilitarian methods” for dealing with saddam. Or perhaps, remove the sanctions and allow him to reconstitute his nuclear weaponry program as he stated was his intention if the sanctions were removed.

fantasyland

60

I doubt most kids in Chicago have Humvees, body armor, and air support. What a poor argument.