I do not think that the US has ever used nuclear weapons for mass murder. I think that the decision to use the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which I have extensively researched, were sound and ultimately saved lives, both American and Japanese........
that is a load of crap. evidently you must have executed such research with your head up your arse?
340,000 civilians killed in Japan to save an estimated 40,000 to 46,000 in case of an invasion on Japan ?
airpowermuseum.org
'The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.'
Adolf Hitler, 1939.
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'The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.'
Harry S. Truman - 1945
orwell.ru
"a military base" ?
orwell.ru
i wonder how much of the decision to nuke, the civilian population of those two cities was based from a feeling of....
...revenge for Pearl Harbor... [never you mind that the US knew of the attack before hand]
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Nuke two cities because of two words?
"undonditional surrender"
weisserman.com
However, no matter what modified story the leaders of the Manhattan Project and U.S. nuclear policy created for the American public to think, the cold, hard statistics and broad statements made by Truman, Stimson, James Byrnes, General Douglas MacArthur, General Dwight Eisenhower, and others involved with atomic and wartime policy reveal an inside logistical interplay of complex issues surrounding the decisions to ravage the cities. Though Truman repeatedly advertised his decision as incredibly efficient in the expenditure of casualities on both sides, sometimes blatantly claiming to have saved over half a million American lives, the fact remains that the predictions for the number of American casualties resulting from a Japanese land invasion made by the Department of War didn’t exceed 40,000; military planners informed President Truman that a land invasion of Japan to conquer the city of Kyushu, which was the next major battle plan, would be a “relatively inexpensive” loss of American casualties compared to other major Japanese battles.(30)
In addition, by July 1945, Japan’s military situation was extremely precarious, and the Joint War Plans Committee was certain of victory.(31) In a report on June 15, it described the dismantled state of the Japanese army: “Already we have eliminated practically all Japanese sea traffic between the main islands and points to the southward of Shanghai”.(32) Also, both General Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe, and General MacArthur confidently stated, on multiple occasions, that Japan’s surrender was imminent; General Eisenhower specifically told Stimson that Japan was “already defeated” and was “at that very moment” extending negotiations for surrender, attempting to do so with “a minimum loss of face”.(33) Both supreme commanders of the American army were advocating, gravely and strongly, against the use of the atomic bomb, saying that it was not a “military necessity”.(34) In addition, Chief of staff Admiral William D. Leahy even insisted that a land invasion of Japan was not necessary to end the war:(35)
I am unable to see any justification…for an invasion of an already thoroughly defeated Japan…It is my opinion at the present time that a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s defense against future trans-Pacific aggression.(36)
Indeed, the Japanese actually were, at that very moment, seeking to negotiate a conditional surrender. The Japanese government, realizing the inevitability of absolute military defeat, regarded the unconditional surrender terms of the Allied powers as the only obstacle to peace; in order for surrender negotiations to succeed, the Japanese military declared, they would have to be allowed to retain the emperor system:(37)
We cannot consent to unconditional surrender under any circumstances…as long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender, we will fight as one man against the enemy in accordance with the Emperor’s command.(38)
The term “unconditional” was never intended to be a substantial point in surrender considerations for the Allies; it was introduced haphazardly, perhaps inadvertently, into Allied stipulations as more of a propagandic war slogan than an actual policy.(39) After the Allies’ meeting at Casablanca, where wartime policy was negotiated and stipulated, President Roosevelt voiced his support for “unconditonal surrender”, saying that “we don’t think there should be any kind of negotiated armistice…there ought to be…unconditional surrender… practically all Germans deny the fact they surrendered in the last war, but this time they are going to know it. And so are the Japs”.(40) However, the statement’s value was purely rhetorical; it was part of a wartime propagandic program of arousing patriotic sentiment and support.(41) Winston Churchill, understanding the propagandic connotations of the original surrender terms, said that unconditional surrender would inflict a “tremendous cost in American and to a smaller extent in British life” and that the surrender terms should be expressed differently so that the Allies could leave the Japanese and other countries with “some show of saving their military honor”.(42) Truman, however, ignored Churchill’s recommendations and held steadfast to the legacy that had been passed to him from Roosevelt, posing an ultimatum of unconditional surrender or plenary destruction to the Japanese.(43)
weisserman.com
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or perhaps... 'local political reasons'?
how 'benevolent' you attempt to sound when you 'include' the Japanese, in your statement addressing the 'saving of lives' i do not think that the decision had anything to do with how many Japanese lives, [in your imagination] would have been saved had the US not dropped the nukes. particularly when there was NO Japanese invasion on US shores planned, and the US high command knew it.
oh and... yes, Iraq had WMD, yeah sure... another fucking lie by another scumbag politician sending people to die, just because he can.
there is no possible amount of research by you or anyone else where you can justify droping not one but two nukes on Japanese civilians.
Had Germany, Italy, or Japan used nuclear weapons, (and the allied forces survived them to go on to the Nuremberg trails), without doubt those responsible would have been fried by having done so and declared "war criminal"
the difference is who was the victor, as the victor gets to write history, and be the judge of who was the bad guy.
under the guidelines of your thinking... (as outlined by your opinion in this subject)
no doubt that the crusades and the inquisition were 'justified' methods to deal with the infidels.
"In the name of god, I shall cut off your head"
"In the name of the lord, I shall burn you to the stake"
and... your views also would tell us that...
* the 'discovery' * of an entire continent is celebrated as the *ignorant* flat-earth believers from Europe finally found yet another territory to come to loot...
...as proved by the caring the settlers showed us for the native red skinned populations of North America...
or the entire obliteration of several established civilizations in Mexico... by the all too kind missionary assisted conquistadores...
celebrate because they came to "civilize" the savages ?... yeah, another 'christian civilized European colonists'
how about this....
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progressive.org
After the bombing, Admiral William D. Leary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the atomic bomb "a barbarous weapon," also noting that: "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."
The Japanese had begun to move to end the war after the U.S. victory on Okinawa, in May of 1945, in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific War. After the middle of June, six members of the Japanese Supreme War Council authorized Foreign Minister Togo to approach the Soviet Union, which was not at war with Japan, to mediate an end to the war "if possible by September."
Togo sent Ambassador Sato to Moscow to feel out the possibility of a negotiated surrender. On July 13, four days before Truman, Churchill, and Stalin met in Potsdam to prepare for the end of the war (Germany had surrendered two months earlier), Togo sent a telegram to Sato: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. It is his Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war."
The United States knew about that telegram because it had broken the Japanese code early in the war. American officials knew also that the Japanese resistance to unconditional surrender was because they had one condition enormously important to them: the retention of the Emperor as symbolic leader. Former Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew and others who knew something about Japanese society had suggested that allowing Japan to keep its Emperor would save countless lives by bringing an early end to the war.
Yet Truman would not relent, and the Potsdam conference agreed to insist on "unconditional surrender." This ensured that the bombs would fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It seems that the United States government was determined to drop those bombs.
But why? Gar Alperovitz, whose research on that question is unmatched (The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Knopf, 1995), concluded, based on the papers of Truman, his chief adviser James Byrnes, and others, that the bomb was seen as a diplomatic weapon against the Soviet Union. Byrnes advised Truman that the bomb "could let us dictate the terms of ending the war." The British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill's advisers, wrote after the war that dropping the atomic bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia."
There is also evidence that domestic politics played an important role in the decision. In his recent book, Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999), David Kennedy quotes Secretary of State Cordell Hull advising Byrnes, before the Potsdam conference, that "terrible political repercussions would follow in the U.S." if the unconditional surrender principle would be abandoned. The President would be "crucified" if he did that, Byrnes said. Kennedy reports that "Byrnes accordingly repudiated the suggestions of Leahy, McCloy, Grew, and Stimson," all of whom were willing to relax the "unconditional surrender" demand just enough to permit the Japanese their face-saving requirement for ending the war.
Can we believe that our political leaders would consign hundreds of thousands of people to death or lifelong suffering because of "political repercussions" at home?
The idea is horrifying, yet we can see in history a pattern of Presidential behavior that placed personal ambition high above human life. The tapes of John F. Kennedy reveal him weighing withdrawal from Vietnam against the upcoming election. Transcripts of Lyndon Johnson's White House conversations show him agonizing over Vietnam ("I don't think it's worth fighting for. . . .") but deciding that he could not withdraw because: "They'd impeach a President--wouldn't they?"
Did millions die in Southeast Asia because American Presidents wanted to stay in office?
Just before the Gulf War, President Bush's aide John Sununu was reported "telling people that a short successful war would be pure political gold for the President and would guarantee his reelection." And is not the Clinton-Gore support for the "Star Wars" anti-missile program (against all scientific evidence or common sense) prompted by their desire to be seen by the voters as tough guys?
Of course, political ambition was not the only reason for Hiroshima, Vietnam, and the other horrors of our time. There was tin, rubber, oil, corporate profit, imperial arrogance. There was a cluster of factors, none of them, despite the claims of our leaders, having to do with human rights, human life.
The wars go on, even when they are over. Every day, British and U.S. warplanes bomb Iraq, and children die. Every day, children die in Iraq because of the U.S.-sponsored embargo. Every day, boys and girls in Afghanistan step on land mines and are killed or mutilated. The Russia of "the free market" brutalizes Chechnya, as the Russia of "socialism" sent an army into Afghanistan. In Africa, more wars.
The mine defuser in The English Patient was properly bitter about Western imperialism. But the problem is larger than even that 500-year assault on colored peoples of the world. It is a problem of the corruption of human intelligence, enabling our leaders to create plausible reasons for monstrous acts, and to exhort citizens to accept those reasons, and train soldiers to follow orders. So long as that continues, we will need to refute those reasons, resist those exhortations.
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wow...
amzing, how the power of self delution can influence someone's judgement...
how about the size of the leader's macho political ego, which tends to be bigger than their penis -not to mention their brain- and they want to impose it on anyone who does not agree with their views.... -regardless of the cost- both economic and human...
research, my arse. |
