So let me get this straight - All military developments have been refined, copied and used repeatedly in several wars except nuclear weapons (easily one of the most advanced military developments) which has been used only by one country against another country on an entirely different continent? Where can I get more of this Kool-Aid?
I like the way you think.
- Statsbro, demanding a statistical explanation in great detail of what this guy said.
ITT: Russian chest-thumpers try to recapture supposed past glory. Sorry, Ivan, but your people were just cannon fodder and did little to affect the Asia theater.Lmao you ameritrash are f**king hopeless in understanding world affairs. Most Americans criticize sensible u.s. interventions like Nicaragua or Vietnam while defending atrocious war crimes in WWII.
How was Vietnam was a sensible intervention?
The massacres and genocide of minorities after North Vietnam won might be a sufficient answer to that.
But obviously you didn't learn that in u.s. history textbooks because Americans don't want to feel guilty about leaving millions of people behind to die.
This is BS. Even after the bombs, many members of the Japanese war council didn't want to surrender. They only did because the emperor intervene.
lol just lol at american history textbooks
You realize both Eisenhower and Truman stated on record that they realized the nukes weren't necessary for Japan's surrender, that the emperor and cabinet both endorsed surrendering before both nukes, and that post-war analysis showed that Japan already decided to unconditionally surrender after the 1st nuke and Russian invasion?
American pre-college education is such a joke.Japan bombed by USA. Ended worst war in history.
Are you trying to make a point?
ITT: Russian chest-thumpers try to recapture supposed past glory. Sorry, Ivan, but your people were just cannon fodder and did little to affect the Asia theater.
Lmao you ameritrash are f**king hopeless in understanding world affairs. Most Americans criticize sensible u.s. interventions like Nicaragua or Vietnam while defending atrocious war crimes in WWII.
How was Vietnam was a sensible intervention?
The massacres and genocide of minorities after North Vietnam won might be a sufficient answer to that.
But obviously you didn't learn that in u.s. history textbooks because Americans don't want to feel guilty about leaving millions of people behind to die.
You're not even being coherent. We never should have intervened in Vietnam to begin with.
You're not even being coherent. We never should have intervened in Vietnam to begin with.
Ah yes, the intervention that was supported by both Democratic and Republican presidents, and by intellectual across the aisle except for those with open loyalty to the soviet union, was in retrospect an *obvious* strategic mistake. And it's not because you lost the war and was uncomfortable with the humanitarian disaster that followed and it's responsibilities. "hurr durr we shouldn't have gone to Vietnam in the first place." Why? Not because it isn't strategically valuable to stop communist intervention in southeast Asia. Not because it is inconsistent with democracy or humanitarianism; south Vietnam, for all it's flaws, was decisively more humanist. Not because such a war wasn't winnable - Korea was a massive strategic and humanitarian success at little cost, and the U.S. sacrificed many more in WWII. You can't provide a coherent explanation for why you think it's an obvious bad idea. You literally believe these arguments because enough of your teachers told you the same thing. You can't even cute one academic that supports your "belief". That's why your historical education was garbage and you are a pathetic academic for not being able to recognize it. The emotional investment that you frauds have for logically inconsistent historical narratives you bought into during childhood is hilarious. Economists mock non econ people for having dumb beliefs about the economy, but look at your own sad critical reasoning skills when your job doesn't depend on being right.
It's fun to take a bunch of quotes out of context and rewrite history. However, it's not true that they dropped the bomb after they decided it wouldn't be necessary. That's a straight up lie.
None of those quotes were out of context - you're being intentionally disingenuous. Eisenhower literally stated that the bombs were not necessary for teh surrender of Japan, as did McArthur. In complete consistency with the post-war report that actual academics worked on. Calling those quotes "out of context" is a plain lie.
The American public's willful delusion about the strategic value of those nukes, in contrary to every other country's beliefs and all of academic consensus, is one of the weirdest thing I ever came across in the U.S.
How are you going to help them $$\Huge{blow}$$ away this delusion?
I don’t see why the US was required to accept a conditional surrender. Japan failed to surrender unconditionally during the three days the US waited after the first bomb.
If you think it was tenable for a democratically elected president to either accept a partial surrender in 1945 or invade and sacrifice tons of lives when a means to end the war cheaply (especially, but not only, in terms of American lives), then congratulations on your fine right-wing Japanese high school education.
None of the quotes above address this directly. The US certainly had many reasons for dropping the bomb, including scaring the Russians. I don’t see how that makes the bombing an immoral act.
Okinawa cost about as many lives, mostly Japanese civilians, as the two bombs combined. Should the US have accepted a partial surrender to avoid Okinawa?
War is hell. If you think the atomic bombs even matter on the scale of WWII questionable decisions, go back to your linear regressions.
What a load of crap. Where to begin?
And it's not because you lost the war and was uncomfortable with the humanitarian disaster that followed and it's responsibilities.
No, it's not. The first mistake was we shouldn't have supported the French after WWII. They had completely lost all their legitimacy in Vietnam, and they were desperately trying to maintain the facade that they were still a power to be reckoned with. Even taking as given that we had supported the French, after they were beaten and kicked out of Vietnam, we shouldn't have gone in ourselves.
Not because it isn't strategically valuable to stop communist intervention in southeast Asia.
What an idiot. Have you never heard of the Pentagon Papers? In March 1965, Assistant Secretary John McNaughton wrote that the dominant aim of the US in Vietnam (70%) was "To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor)."
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon3/doc253.htm
What you think was the most obvious reason was given only 20% weight.
Not because it is inconsistent with democracy or humanitarianism; south Vietnam, for all it's flaws, was decisively more humanist.
Yeah, a whopping 10% of the US aim was devoted to this.
Not because such a war wasn't winnable - Korea was a massive strategic and humanitarian success at little cost, and the U.S. sacrificed many more in WWII.
Winnable in what way? Two Vietnams like two Koreas? A unified, non-Communist Vietnam? Actually this question is irrelevant because either way, Vietnam was not winnable.
By drawing a parallel between Korea and Vietnam, you reveal without any doubt that you are utterly clueless. Korea is geographically very different from Vietnam. Korea is a peninsula. After the Communists were kicked out of the South, there was no "Ho Chi Minh trail" equivalent where the Communists could enter the South. In contrast, South Vietnam was filled with North Vietnamese infiltrators all the time. To "win" in Vietnam would've meant spilling over into Cambodia and Laos. Incidentally, one time when we tried that, Operation Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese military failed miserably.
By drawing a parallel between WWII and Vietnam, you further reveal what a dumb foreign idiot you are. We were willing to sacrifice many in WWII because we were attacked! Of course in that situation, we would stop at nothing to win. Why on Earth would you think WWII would have any connection to Vietnam? North Vietnam did not attack us. Fighting "against Communism" is far more arbitrary than fighting "against Japan, the country that bombed us."
If you actually have a bachelor's degree, I feel sorry for whatever institution let you graduate.
lol just lol at american history textbooks
You realize both Eisenhower and Truman stated on record that they realized the nukes weren't necessary for Japan's surrender, that the emperor and cabinet both endorsed surrendering before both nukes, and that post-war analysis showed that Japan already decided to unconditionally surrender after the 1st nuke and Russian invasion?
American pre-college education is such a joke.Japan bombed by USA. Ended worst war in history.
Are you trying to make a point?
You should be embarrassed if this is what you believe.
Moron detected. US had almost no chance to invade Japan's mainland. They could hardly capture tiny islands without losing a large amount of troops. They tried to streamline the process to get it rolling but the issue is the tech at the time and the geography (i.e. the US had no close land bases where it could amass a big army and lots of ships and have lots of airstrips where short range fighters could take off from) made it impossible.
Russia on the other hand blitzed through Japan's China line destroying all japanese tech and were on a mad dash to take the whole coast. With this Russia
had lots of areas for amassing an invasion force and invade any part of Japan's west coast. Heck from Russia's east strip its maybe 20 miles to Japan's mainland if they wanted to start the invasion there.
Japan feared most being invaded and annexed by Russia. Stalin's Russia. The same Russia that that decided to take a bunch of liberated eastern european countries and force them into the USSR.
The US has also dropped a nuclear bomb on at least Canada, Denmark, and Spain. All by accident, and none of them detonated, fortunately.
With the aim of ending the hegemony of two-piece swimwear, the US has also dropped nuclear bombs on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, all (most?) of which detonated. Meanwhile the British have detonated several nuclear weapons in Australia and the French have bombed themselves, albeit in Polynesia rather than metropolitan Paris.
I don't understand the point of what Japanbro and Russiabro are saying.
Suppose the US doesn't drop the bombs in August 1945. Then
(a) US accepts a partial surrender from Japan before Russia comes in. The Emperor stays and there is no occupation. His clique can present the war as something other than a complete defeat.
Of course the US did let the emperor stay on later as a figurehead, but there is a big difference between taking over the country and letting him stay as a figurehead versus negotiating his staying on.
(b) Russia comes in and has troops die, and demands a piece of the occupation like in Germany.
(c) Russia doesn't come in, because of war-weariness, and the US invades the main islands to obtain a full surrender.
Is any of these a better outcome morally, or for Japan, than what actually happened? The only people who think so are lefty revisionist historians (Alperovitz et al.) who think a bombless surrender to Stalin and the US jointly would have been awesome because Communism is so much fun.