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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Little Joe who wrote (202533)	11/14/2001 3:39:40 AM
From: Walkingshadow	Respond to of 769670

Little Joe, << A very harsh judgment through the retrospectroscope. >> Fair enough, sir. Point well taken, my hindsight also is 20/20. I forget, it is almost impossible to put yourself in the shoes of those who were there. The case for avoiding casualties in Japan was, I think, a compelling one. For Germany, that is not the case. I really don't believe for a minute that the incisive minds that were orchestrating the European theater believed for one second that destroying civilians in Dresden would affect the battle for Berlin one bit. They were not that naive. They had their reasons for what they did; they were certainly great leaders, and as you imply, it is not fair to second guess and judge them. I suspect the primary reason for their actions was pure human emotion, and I am certainly no better than they, and I suspect I would have firebombed a dozen Dresdens and showed even less restraint than they did. <<...although the A Bomb was not carpet bombing, it certainly did end the war. >> Well, the end of the war followed shortly thereafter. But I don't think any historian really believes that two bombs caused the end of the war. The fact is the Japanese had simply come to the end of the line so far as waging war was concerned; they no longer were able to manufacture the goods of war. All that was left was defense of the homeland, probably to nearly the last man. The bombing may have hastened the end of the war and avoided an invasion of Japan, but the war was actually won long before August 1945. The question at that point was no longer who would win, it was when. And, very probably, the atomic bombing hastened the end of the war, though it is difficult to say by how much. Personally, I think the Japanese leadership was already preparing to surrender; I really don't think they wanted to become involved in a bloody battle for their homeland that they were certain they would lose. They might have been ambitious and somewhat fanatical, but they were certainly not stupid and were rather pragmatic as well. But all that is just speculation with the old retrospectroscope again.....<ggg> Certainly, the perception of the allies was not the same as my speculation. I think they probably made the best decision possible under the circumstances. JMVHO..... Walkingshadow

To: Little Joe who wrote (202533)	11/14/2001 12:05:28 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769670

The basic difference between past mass bombing and todays precision bombing is quite simple. In past wars a false assumption was made that mass destruction of cities would destroy an enemies ability to fight. The lack of being able to hit exact targets caused lots of destruction and death but did not have the desired effect of stopping the ability of the enemy to work, manufacture and fight. Today precision and the ability to find and target leadership and critical infrastructure makes all the difference. For example it is my believe that if all the bombing raids simply concentrated on fuel production in WW II it would have been far more effective. But military analysts did not see the connection clearly. I believe in the current tally route that more tons of explosives were laid upon the bad guys than in WW II by a large margin. The simotaneous destruction out of nowhere of all armor scared the crap out of the tallies. tom watson tosiwmee