12/7/07

[homedawg]

God, Grant us the Serenity
To accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
and Wisdom to know the difference

:beer2:

[FlyersFan]

I'll say this before hand, if people start to jump all over me then I'll just edit all the posts out.

And this will be stream of consciousness and sort of jumbled together.

The imminent declaration of war from the Soviets, and subsequent invasion that would follow, were believed to be the main driving factors in a Japanese surrender. It was not necessary to drop atomic bombs on two cities in Japan. The Soviets even moved up their declaration from September to August to speed up the process and save lives. If you read over Truman's diaries that a few years ago were donated to the Harry Truman Library, he states in there that there were some sorts of ulterior motives involved with the use of the atomic bomb. Those being the imminent post-WWII conflict with communism and Russia. He says a few times that the United States, "Has a weapon that will strike fear in the Soviets" or something along those lines. The US had already dumped millions upon millions of dollar in to the Manhattan project and the testing phases had just been completed when the war was about to end, but Truman wanted to test out his new toy as well. He found it hard to justify spending so much on developing a weapon intended to be used in the war and just letting it sit idle. The majority of Japanese buildings were made from wood and firebombing was much more effective, and killed far less civilians during WWII. The US knew of the majority of dangers in using an atomic bomb, in theory, but wanted a real life 'guinea pig' to test it on. Which is why there were scientists ready to go in to Hiroshima right after the attack and collect body parts of dead people to do thorough tests on.

There is tons of literature on the subject. I suggest Gar Alperovitz's "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: And the Architecture of an American Myth." Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial." And "A Postwar Myth: 500,000 Lives Saved" by Barton J. Bernstein. If you want further reading on the topic as I just threw together an extremely brief and sloppy outline.

i wouldn't jump on your for your points of view.....:thumbs:... i am getting sick of one thing in this country and if i were a soldier i would almost just say **** it to the american people and they can all stick it up their asses (but no soldier would say that which makes the US soldier one of the best and certainly most unappreciated things this country has).....and that is this........the US govt./army gets **** on no matter what they do or don't do in this country when it comes to defending our freedom or against a perceived enemy. If we are invaded and fight back, then we ALWAYS fought back the wrong way (shouldn't have dropped the bomb...never mind we were invaded...and on and on and on). If we are invaded and don't fight back, then our government let us down. If we get bombed and don't do anything about it and it happens again, our govt let us down (like the fact that clinton did nothing about bin laden or the rest of that group and knew about them for years. i remember in 1997 getting an email about the guy and the only reason i remember is i made fun of his name)....if we go out and try and take care of the problem, our govt did the wrong thing......it's a fking joke. I am probably the biggest proponent of less government, but in this case i am with the govt. I really wish a good portion of our population could go live under some other govt's in this world and see how good we have it. Somebody will always come out with some conspiracy or negative against what we did or didn't do..........some of it may be true, i wouldn't hold it as complete gospel.....think the guy may have gotten paid to write that book?


but the whole point of the thread was to recognize 12/7......:thumbs:

[NittanyLions94]

i wouldn't jump on your for your points of view.....:thumbs:... i am getting sick of one thing in this country and if i were a soldier i would almost just say **** it to the american people and they can all stick it up their asses (but no soldier would say that which makes the US soldier one of the best and certainly most unappreciated things this country has).....and that is this........the US govt./army gets **** on no matter what they do or don't do in this country when it comes to defending our freedom or against a perceived enemy. If we are invaded and fight back, then we ALWAYS fought back the wrong way (shouldn't have dropped the bomb...never mind we were invaded...and on and on and on). If we are invaded and don't fight back, then our government let us down. If we get bombed and don't do anything about it and it happens again, our govt let us down (like the fact that clinton did nothing about bin laden or the rest of that group and knew about them for years. i remember in 1997 getting an email about the guy and the only reason i remember is i made fun of his name)....if we go out and try and take care of the problem, our govt did the wrong thing......it's a fking joke. I am probably the biggest proponent of less government, but in this case i am with the govt. I really wish a good portion of our population could go live under some other govt's in this world and see how good we have it. Somebody will always come out with some conspiracy or negative against what we did or didn't do..........some of it may be true, i wouldn't hold it as complete gospel.....think the guy may have gotten paid to write that book?


but the whole point of the thread was to recognize 12/7......:thumbs:

I agree that there is some unjustified heat, especially when it comes to Vietnam. But the reason for the a-bomb stuff is the fact that Truman acknowledged that he was sacrificing Japanese civilians in order to scare the Soviets(in not so many words). But one could argue that is what let us keep the upper-hand in the Cold War as well, so it's a double edge sword. When you strive to be, and obtain the the level of, the "World's dominant super power" criticism will come with the territory. We're held to a higher moral standard than other nations, which is fine by me. I love studying and reading about WWII, as much as you can read there is no way to know it all which is why it is such a great field.

[yomonte]

Japan did not surrender after the first bomb because they thought the USA could only have one bomb of that magnitude. When the second bomb was delivered, they had no choice to stop their empire from being destroyed from a third or more.

I'm closing this thread