Hiroshima

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by ohnoitsbonnie

Wasn't the US already air-raiding tons of small cities and towns? I don't know what to think, sleeper. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be in this anyway. Enjoy your little tiff.

yeah they were, and more people died in some conventional bombing runs than did from the atomic bombs (in the short term).

i agree with you that they shouldnt be used, but im just curious and want to examine where and why i draw the line at nuclear weapons. if i am ambivalent about conventional bombings that destroy/kill the same as nuclear, than its not the destruction per se that im against.

i think it has to do with the radiation, yeah, but also with the political implications -- a world where nuclear weapons are totally taboo is a much safer world than one where theyre "use at your own discretion." in other words id prefer if they were never invented, i really dont think mankind can handle it.

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by smurfing

im talking about just in japan. if it was armenians we were talking about, would you send 5kk to storm japanese positions and die, or bomb their cities away?

again: false choice.

and the soviet union was at war with japan for like 2 days dude

they bitched about the m-16 and napalm in vietnam. what the hell did they expect, that we should crawl through the jungle with m-1s and take the place foot by foot?

ok then why not nuclear bomb them? why not use poison gas? if a premium is placed on saving american lives and the lives of the enemies or civilians dont really matter, than why not do that stuff?

[smurfing]

what about it is false? that the japanese would have continued to resist as their cities were all a-bombed? the russians undoubtedly took huge casualties in japan and the top US guys told the president it would be 1.4-4 million americans if we had done the dirty work. i cant find how many people the russians lost in japan, but they killed 1 million japanese. i somehow doubt the russians broke their eternal streak and turned a positive kill loss ratio for once


as for poison gas, i would have been fine with america's using it. i dont know exactly what we would have nuked in vietnam. i guess macarthur did, but they canned him for saying so


no exploding bullets, no poison gas... i dont really see what the point is if they win the war quicker. it's not like driving down the road and hitting a landmine and getting blown to shit is one kind of bad and dying to mustard gas is another

[Kanan Road]

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/har...an-picture.jpg

if you fuck with the US, you will die like the rest

[Kanan Road]

lol imagine asians speaking russian

[aurel]

Has anyone here seen the film Threads?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by smurfing

what about it is false? that the japanese would have continued to resist as their cities were all a-bombed? the russians undoubtedly took huge casualties in japan and the top US guys told the president it would be 1.4-4 million americans if we had done the dirty work. i cant find how many people the russians lost in japan, but they killed 1 million japanese. i somehow doubt the russians broke their eternal streak and turned a positive kill loss ratio for once

where are you getting this shit? the russians joined the war with japan on the 7th and the war was over on the 14th. id be surprised if they lost more than 10,000. look up information on "august storm" if you want a number

as for poison gas, i would have been fine with america's using it. i dont know exactly what we would have nuked in vietnam. i guess macarthur did, but they canned him for saying so


no exploding bullets, no poison gas... i dont really see what the point is if they win the war quicker. it's not like driving down the road and hitting a landmine and getting blown to shit is one kind of bad and dying to mustard gas is another

i again cant tell if youre trolling or not

[Nimrod's Son]

I love whenever sleeper is confronted by his idiocy he just responds "false choice!" "straw man!" and then ignores everything said to him and doesn't offer his own solutions. in fact his MO is usually to condemn decisions others make and not offer his own solutions

also he's a raging anti-semite and reading him post about WWII is a bit of a joke

[smurfing]

i was wrong about the numbers. one page said the russians destroyed a force of over one million but after looking at the right page, i see actual casualties on both sides amounted to about 100,000 including wounded. and the large allied casualties estimate was for a mainland invasion which never happened and the 1.4-4 million number is debatable


i have to say after reading up a little more on it my opinion has come around some, re: the necessity of the bombings. i definitely wouldnt qualify them as reprehensible, though, even in the light of everything we know now

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by Nimrod's Son

I love whenever sleeper is confronted by his idiocy he just responds "false choice!" "straw man!" and then ignores everything said to him and doesn't offer his own solutions. in fact his MO is usually to condemn decisions others make and not offer his own solutions

also he's a raging anti-semite and reading him post about WWII is a bit of a joke

actually, in my very first post in this thread i explained why it was a false choice (war was over anyways, it wasnt a choice between total land invasion and killing a quarter million with nuclear weapons) and then offered a solution (allow them to keep the emperor and demonstrate the bomb if necessary). its this argument that wasnt addressed.

but regardless i dont have to offer solutions if i want to criticize something. merely negating something is a perfectly fine goal.

dont know what youre talking about with that last bit, im a philosemite if anything and i know about a million times more about WWII than you do, you clueless moron. but i like how you are so willing to speak authoritatively about things you know nothing about and then just disappear or snipe irrelevancies when challenged.

[sppunk]

Hey sleeper, what's worse: Hiroshima or Dresden?

[smurfing]

comparing dresden to hiroshima jumped the shark a couple years ago

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by smurfing

i was wrong about the numbers. one page said the russians destroyed a force of over one million but after looking at the right page, i see actual casualties on both sides amounted to about 100,000 including wounded. and the large allied casualties estimate was for a mainland invasion which never happened and the 1.4-4 million number is debatable


i have to say after reading up a little more on it my opinion has come around some, re: the necessity of the bombings. i definitely wouldnt qualify them as reprehensible, though, even in the light of everything we know now

word to the wise: normally you learn about something first and then speak confidently on it, not the other way around

[wHATcOLOR]

bang!! /\

largely why i have nothing to contribute to the discussion

[smurfing]

this debate is new business and it's in keeping with the trend of discounting what we once hailed as great and making our old heroes into villains and our enemies into moral superiors.

the tide is rising, though and i welcome it. the great many-faced nation of the human wave attack will devour the nation of underminers and contradictors

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by wHATcOLOR

bang!! /\

largely why i have nothing to contribute to the discussion

you dont have to speak confidently to speak at all, so i wouldnt be discouraged from posting your thoughts and whatever. its only when you act like you know it all but actually dont know anything (see: nimrod) that problems arise

[sleeper]

flattered by the custom data homage. this is one of the signs on netphoria that youve made it or something. im finally out of the c and into b-league

[Professor Fox]

It looks cool with Pumpkins put to it.

[relaxor!]

Originally Posted by smurfing

this debate is new business and it's in keeping with the trend of discounting what we once hailed as great and making our old heroes into villains and our enemies into moral superiors.

the tide is rising, though and i welcome it. the great many-faced nation of the human wave attack will devour the nation of underminers and contradictors

I think within the bounds of 20th century history we have the right to actively debate the heroes and villains, without the old Slave Owning Jefferson and Aristotle dynamic coming into play.
As for Hiroshima, I don't see the split in casualties from fire bombing and atomic bombing being very morally differentm as far as what their (incorrect) appreciation for Radiation was at the time, and thus I have to side on the Soviet example-example. It's not like we were cranking out bombs from factories or anything yet. Fat Man and Little Boy were two tests, and I agree with the now well known information that Sleeper is citing about the Japanese scrambling to surrender on acceptable terms.
Basically, to bring it down to people size, I think that the invasion plan was on the table but nobody really wanted to do it, because VE day was like three months ago and the world's a mess and we're pretty happy to just effortlessly bomb Japan from far away in B29s. But then the Russians declare war, gobble up enormous masses of land in Asia in days, and the Americans, knowing that the Japanese are scared of a Russian mainland invasion more than an American one, want to be in control of the situation and have Japan as a Western Ally in the obviously upcoming Cold War, takes sudden control of the situation with the A-Bomb. Simultaneously showing the Russians that we're not cowards when it comes to force (because Stalin knows it was developed for use on Germany, and thus knows that the US won't only consider dropping the weapon on sub-Humans (non-white Japanese)), and also showing off to the Japanese that our long range bombing isn't just bluffing or treading water, but that we had a PLAN, which is the systematic atomic destruction of Japan (which wasn't a reality for the US industry yet, but Japan didn't know that).
Too late, makes no sense.

[TuralyonW3]

hey man can you put parentheses inside parentheses like that? that's like irresponsible boarding

[mistle]

i can't believe sleeper keeps posting on this board

[mistle]

i mean wouldn't you enjoy threads like this more at a place where other people care enough to put effort into understanding things and discussing them rationally too? i enjoy reading this stuff, but what do you get out of it?

[mistle]

it's like watching an enthusiastic young high school history teacher endlessly trying to get his class excited about the topic it while most of them are sleeping or having paper fights or sending around notes and so on and the rest are trying to get laughs from them by making smartass remarks to make him look dumb. except he gets paid and gets to force the kids to try

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by relaxor!

Basically, to bring it down to people size, I think that the invasion plan was on the table but nobody really wanted to do it, because VE day was like three months ago and the world's a mess and we're pretty happy to just effortlessly bomb Japan from far away in B29s. But then the Russians declare war, gobble up enormous masses of land in Asia in days, and the Americans, knowing that the Japanese are scared of a Russian mainland invasion more than an American one, want to be in control of the situation and have Japan as a Western Ally in the obviously upcoming Cold War, takes sudden control of the situation with the A-Bomb. Simultaneously showing the Russians that we're not cowards when it comes to force (because Stalin knows it was developed for use on Germany, and thus knows that the US won't only consider dropping the weapon on sub-Humans (non-white Japanese)), and also showing off to the Japanese that our long range bombing isn't just bluffing or treading water, but that we had a PLAN, which is the systematic atomic destruction of Japan (which wasn't a reality for the US industry yet, but Japan didn't know that).
Too late, makes no sense.

thats basically exactly it, thats summarizes the most correct narrative of that period i think, especially with the bomb being more a cold war bargaining chip (especially vis a vis the situation in europe, where the US really needed to strengthen its hand) than a military necessity.

its been so long since ive discussed world war II and, damn, it feels good. im tempted to get back into it but thats pretty perilous.

ps: sendspace me your album!

[sleeper]

Originally Posted by mistle

i mean wouldn't you enjoy threads like this more at a place where other people care enough to put effort into understanding things and discussing them rationally too? i enjoy reading this stuff, but what do you get out of it?

i honestly just cant find anywhere else. its hard to find a board that is interested in this shit but not totally uptight about it. seriously if anyone wants me to leave this board and never come back, just find a good alternative board for me.