Feelings Toward Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[WingsToDiscovery]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

The Americans get guilted into being the bad guys?

Whether that is true or not.. the answer is not to falsely portray them as the "good guys".

They don't have to be seen as the "good guys" either. Just as long as claims are made that are justifiable and aren't blown out of proportion in an obviously lopsided argument where people (such as in this forum) will defend a smaller proportion of civilian deaths for no legitimate reasoning.

[GoNative]

Originally Posted by Ronin4hire

The Americans get guilted into being the bad guys?

Whether that is true or not.. the answer is not to falsely portray them as the "good guys".

Good or bad I hate to think how many more lives would have been lost throughout Asia and beyond had the US not got involved. No other country in the world at the time had the capability to stop the Japanese. Or those that possibly did were completely embroiled in battles in Europe. The Japanese were definitely not benevolent occupiers of the countries they invaded!

[WingsToDiscovery]

Originally Posted by termogard

The key word - If



More correctly - 4 years of intense and bloody fighting between armed forces, naval forces of Allies and Axis. I believe that the dropping of the bombs weren't purely in retaliation. It was a demonstration of American military power to Soviets as well as a field experiment.
Something like "how many civilians you can effectively kill and how many buildings you can effectively destroy on certain area."

And this is of course all speculation.

[Ronin4hire]

John Pilger: The lessons that should be learnt from Hiroshima | Comment is free | The Guardian

John Pilger is a world reknowned investigative journalist and the guardian is a reputable publication.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".

Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus "war on terror", the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current "threat". But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.

The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America's Defence Intelligence Estimate says "with high confidence" that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media "fact" that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.

This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.

In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country's political and military establishment, threatened "an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland". This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.

The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that "we did not know"? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence"? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by WingsToDiscovery

They don't have to be seen as the "good guys" either. Just as long as claims are made that are justifiable and aren't blown out of proportion in an obviously lopsided argument where people (such as in this forum) will defend a smaller proportion of civilian deaths for no legitimate reasoning.

Which I believe is the position I've taken

[termogard]

Originally Posted by GoNative

No other country in the world at the time had the capability to stop the Japanese. !

Whoa! It was a JF member, who used to ask about my historical knowledges here?!
What about Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation?

[Ronin4hire]

Originally Posted by GoNative

Good or bad I hate to think how many more lives would have been lost throughout Asia and beyond had the US not got involved. No other country in the world at the time had the capability to stop the Japanese. Or those that possibly did were completely embroiled in battles in Europe. The Japanese were definitely not benevolent occupiers of the countries they invaded!

Had Japan not undertook WW2 Europeans might still be in charge of much of Asia and the Pacific.

If we are going to credit the US with consequences they didn't intend then lets be fair and credit the Japanese too.

[termogard]

Originally Posted by WingsToDiscovery

And this is of course all speculation.

Have you ever tried to back your brave statements by some valid sources?

[WingsToDiscovery]

Originally Posted by termogard

Whoa! It was you, who used to ask about my historical knowledges here?!
What about Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation?

I think he was referring to the actual war machine, not a campaign.

[WingsToDiscovery]

Originally Posted by termogard

Have you ever tried to back your brave statements by some valid sources?

Can you?
I've never had to use "I believe" in my arguments so far, but you have. Because I post facts.