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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (625780)	8/25/2011 2:55:02 AM
From: Taro	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572773

I have never seen a good argument for the necessity of dropping the 2nd Nagasaki bomb, however. If you can tell me, that Sledge has a good argument for that, I'll get and read the book recommended by you. /Taro

To: i-node who wrote (625780)	8/25/2011 1:09:05 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1572773

>> Dropping the bomb on Japan may have been necessary or warranted because of war fatigue in the US....but righteous? Killing hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent people? I don't think so. We were going to be forced to invade Japan had the Bombs not been used. It would have been a bloodbath on both sides. You can argue about the meaning of "righteous" in the context. I recommend you break your long-standing history of non-reading and check out E.B. Sledge's excellent book, "With the New Breed". I believe you will understand the righteousness of using the Bombs on Japan. Dave, we can speculate from now until doomsday but with the facts that we currently have at our disposal, I can't attribute any righteousness to dropping the atomic bomb......twice. Distance may have made rationalizing the event more acceptable, but it doesn't change the fact that hundreds of thousands were killed........many of whom were innocents. It was a massacre of unprecedented proportions. May it never happen again. >> Losing another $200 billion is not likely but we have spent way too much money for too little reward. We don't know what the "reward" will be, but we don't know what the cost would have been to put off the the Iraq War. Just the no-fly zones alone would likely have run 150 Billion over this time period, and that doesn't count the other costs. It is doubtful the so-called "Arab Spring" would have occurred at all without the Iraq War, and we don't know what the benefits of THAT will have been over 20 years and longer. And of the 800B spend on the Iraq War a substantial portion of that has effectively served as economic stimulus at home (a fact that Stiglitz, et.al., conveniently overlooks). There may be long term benefits.......that's true. However, right now, the US has gained zilch when it comes to the Iraqi war. The Iraqis went out of their way to exclude American companies from participating in their oil fields. And the Libyans made very clear at their worse rag tag moment that they didn't want any American soldiers with boots on the ground in Libya. The US is still seen as an unwanted foreign invader in Iraq even as we deposed a hated dictator. As for the Arab Spring, it can be said that it is as much attributable to Obama being Obama than whatever Bush did in Iraq. Something I don't think white people in this country get very well............that the American look is the model for the rest of the world........and that American look is decidely a white look. That makes the US both hated and admired. Teens in other countries ape the American look even as conditions in their countries are not like the conditions in the US. The US was seen as a democracy but with a decidedly white slant. The fact that a black man could be elected president in the US took much of the world by surprise. It shed a whole new light on what democracy means in this country. It showed that American propaganda was not just a lot of self serving hyperbole. It showed how great the American democracy really was..........and it gave the average ME person.....esp. the average ME young person..........the hope that life could be better for them. I think that's why Obama is such a powerful symbol in the ME and that he can do no wrong. But whatever the reason for the Arab Spring.....may it have a very long life.......and lead to an Arab summer. >> I was in a hurry. My mistake That was not a mistake from being in a hurry. That was a mistake from not knowing the difference in a billion and a trillion. Oh nonsense. Let's not get silly. >> Iraq is still in chaos.........8 years later. If it is, and I don't know whether it is or not, that's Obama's fault. Obama inherited a stable situation in Iraq but has largely ignored it -- you know, it being the "bad" war. It should not surprise anyone that it is deteriorated. Dave, from the getgo, Bush and his cohort, including you, were told of the underlying divisions and instability that existed in Iraq. You were told that upsetting the apple cart would unleash a pandora's box. That did not stop Bush. You are now bearing the fruits of Bush's hubris.