Sorry Japan. You did deserve the atom bomb after all...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveLeePrius @ Mar 6 2007, 05:12 PM) [snapback]401213[/snapback]</div>

what is the point - evil vs good?

i do not know enough about tibet/china so i will not opine
native americans get "their" land back - nope
europeans go back to europe - nope
should the jews get back their property and belongings from europe - too late baby so nope - should they have the right to return - nope.

who nominated you moderator
now your turn...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Mar 6 2007, 05:20 PM) [snapback]401217[/snapback]</div>

should Cabinda gain independence from Angola?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(maggieddd @ Mar 6 2007, 05:22 PM) [snapback]401218[/snapback]</div>

dont know enough

answer my question please.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Mar 6 2007, 05:25 PM) [snapback]401220[/snapback]</div>

don't know ANYTHING about what you are talking about so can't answer your question

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(maggieddd @ Mar 6 2007, 05:29 PM) [snapback]401222[/snapback]</div>

You don't know much, do you?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveLeePrius @ Mar 6 2007, 05:46 PM) [snapback]401229[/snapback]</div>

I know some stuff but nothing about the things dbermanmd is woofing about. I've never heard of that. Could you reiterate his agendas to me? English doesn't seem to be his strong point and my Hebrew is very weak. It's really hard to comprehend what he is saying. Could you perhaps help?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Mar 6 2007, 01:35 PM) [snapback]401194[/snapback]</div>

Good grief eagle, Iran has repeatedly said that Israel should be wiped out do you really need to flaunt your foolish statements about whether this is an evil thing to say or not? Maybe I'm reading you wrong or maybe you don't know how to express you ideas adequately but come on back to earth.

Also which way do you think is a better way to prevent Iran from getting nukes?

My reading of the last sentence in your post seems to be alluding to Iraq and our invasion. Iraq repeatedly tried to shoot down US Jets enforcing the UN mandated no-fly zone.

Wildkow

 

Do you know this for an un-biased fact? The version I know from living in Japan is that the Japanese people were fearful of the full-scale US invasion into the main islands, after what happened in Okinawa.

In my opinion, one of the reasons why people tend to talk more about the atomic bombs might be because it doesn't end when the bomb is dropped. I still hear about people suffering and dying from some disease caused by those atomic bombs being dropped in 1945. Also, I wonder people may be questioning the reason behind the use of those atomic bombs, which might not have been focused just around stopping the war and saving lives.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sean & Ian @ Mar 6 2007, 04:26 PM) [snapback]401280[/snapback]</div>

I don't doubt that the Japanese people were fearful of a full-scale US invasion. The question is whether the war cabinet had a strategy of drawing the US into an invasion to inflict massive casualties to win more favorable terms to end the war.

This Japanese strategy is mentioned in many places. One is this Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

under the heading "Operation Ketsugo". Also, please see the link posted by someone earlier in this thread to a page giving many original documents. Among those documents are a number of intercepted Japanese communications about their plans to fight off a US invasion of the home islands.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sean & Ian @ Mar 6 2007, 07:26 PM) [snapback]401280[/snapback]</div>

Yes. The Japanese Army (maybe not all the Japanese people) knew the US had no stomach for a long, drawn out bloody invasion or an even longer drawn out blockade. Their hope was to negotiate better terms so we could cut our losses. In fact, monetary support for the war was already lagging. The bond drive after the capture of Iwo Jima reinvigorated the effort.

There was absolutely no indication that the Japanese were going to surrender anything at any time. Can anyone name one instance where the Japanese surrendered before fighting to just about the last man?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(maggieddd @ Mar 6 2007, 08:27 AM) [snapback]400800[/snapback]</div>

Unfortunate or terrible things tend to happen when nations don't stand up to bullies and dictators.

In the 30's when Hitler reclaimed the Saar (I believe) the German army had orders to retreat across the bridge if the French put up any resistance. They didn't.

Germany invaded Poland with all of its military power. Only "home guard" reserve type units were left on the French border. If the French and British had honored their treaties with Poland in September 1939 by invading Germany they would have met token resistance until units were redeployed from Poland.

When the Russians first closed Berlin and barricaded the streets they would have backed down if the US forces interfered. We didn't.

How different would the world have been? I don't know. Maybe just as many people would have suffered and died but in a different way or at a different time.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ Mar 6 2007, 09:15 PM) [snapback]401325[/snapback]</div>

I concur.

Excellent observation of the initial stages of the WWII which could have been completly avoided in early September only if the British and French would have had stood up to their responsibility of invading Germany after Hitler crossed Polish borders. Instead they watched Poland bleed and it didn't help that the Soviets backstabbed Poles by invading from the East.

 

Here's a thought ... We taught imperialism / aggression to Japan, so Japan follows suit trying to conquer asia. The U.S.A. cuts off their supplies. They attack us. What if they HAD NOT attacked? Think about it. Germany had perfected their JET planes at the end of the war & were working on the A bomb and improving long range rockets. Had we NOT been attacked, we'd have likely remained on the sidelines as the U.S. were for the most part, isolationists / pacifists ... while Hitler ramped up production of Rockets w/ A bombs, and Jets that would of blown the s--t out of us ... with or without the help of Japan, which itself would have NOT been destroyed. But it didn't go down that way, because we DID get attacked, and thrown into war. You can always find a brighter way to look at things and I find that pretty bright.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hill @ Mar 7 2007, 12:35 PM) [snapback]401743[/snapback]</div>

Germany didn't have high temperature alloys so their jet engines didn't last very long. They also didn't have good adhesives so airplanes tended to become unglued at altitude. Sooner or later we would have been "attacked". Eventually the US would have become outraged over the sinking of commercial vessels by U-boats. Maybe 1942 or 1943. Who knows? Maybe the Soviet Union would have absorbed western Europe. Maybe the US wouldn't be so arrogant because DC or NYC was bombed by the Luftwaffe. "What if" is nice to debate and interesting to watch on The History Channel but the past can't be changed. For better or for worse our actions and inactions have brought us to where we are today. Man hasn't changed in the few thousand years we call ourselves "civilized". IMO we'll blow ourselves to Hell over some pretense within the next 50 years if natural forces don't wipe us out first.

 

I think the episode of Heroes, called "0.07%," really said it all.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveLeePrius @ Mar 1 2007, 02:41 PM) [snapback]398629[/snapback]</div>

Japan was totally defeated? The war was over? It is amazing how revisionism is working these days. I am sure the Japanese would have refrained from dropping one on LA or SF if the they would have possessed the technology to build a bomb. Some of you are really amazing.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ May 14 2007, 04:47 PM) [snapback]441945[/snapback]</div>

I agree with you. At the time, forecast American casualties from an invasion and occupation of Japan were staggering. Were they right or wrong? We'll never know.

But, based on the Japanese oft-demonstrated unwillingness to surrender, I'd say that dropping the bombs (deserved or not) was necessary.

They started it; we finished it.

Like it or not, WWII was a total war...where, for the first time, most people on Earth were either combattants or targets.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Mar 1 2007, 03:00 PM) [snapback]398607[/snapback]</div>

For anyone who thinks we had to drop atomic bombs on Japan to end the war and "save lives" you need to read Howard Zinn's article's on this subject:

The principal justification for obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that it "saved lives" because otherwise a planned US invasion of Japan would have been necessary, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. Truman at one point used the figure "a half million lives," and Churchill "a million lives," but these were figures pulled out of the air to calm troubled consciences; even official projections for the number of casualties in an invasion did not go beyond 46,000.

In fact, the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not forestall an invasion of Japan because no invasion was necessary. The Japanese were on the verge of surrender, and American military leaders knew that. General Eisenhower, briefed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the imminent use of the bomb, told him that "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary."

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."

...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."

For more see http://www.google.com/search?q=howard+zinn...lient=firefox-a

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jim0266 @ May 19 2007, 12:02 PM) [snapback]445706[/snapback]</div>

46,000 American casualties to invade Japan? What are you thinking? To conquer little old Iwo Jima(17 square miles) it took the lives of 28,000 american and Japanese soldiers and injured another 22,000 more. Some of you are just unbelievable. So 50,000 American and Japanese casualties from Iwo Jima but the invadion of the entire Japanese mainland would have produced less? Pathetic.