Okay, so in an attempt to get this thread back on track (almost certainly doomed to failure but I gotta try), what is the consensus on America bombing Japan? Needed? Unnecessary? A show of force rather than a means to an end? The only way to end the war? An attempt by Truman to show he wasn't just an accidental, placeholder president? Right? Wrong?

Unnecessary, barbaric, unethical, unforgivable, etc. etc.. The mantra that it saved more lives than it cost is 150% bullshit.

Do you believe that, had it not been dropped, Japan would not have surrendered and there would have been a land war, resulting in thousands more casualties and dragging the war on? It's never acceptable, in my opinion, to bomb civilians, and to be fair to the Japs, they never did (guess they never got the chance) but did Truman have a choice? Or was the whole idea of a "bitterly resistant Japanese force" merely a smokescreen to give him licence to go ahead and drop the bomb, which I guess has to have counted as a live testing ground?

Even with the atomic strikes Japan would not have surrendered unless instructed to by Hirohito. The Tokyo firebombing three day napalm raid killed more people than either atomic blast.

Dude, the war is over.

Japan’s infrastructure was so decimated at the time there wasn’t a clear understanding of the destructive force behind the Hiroshima strike before Nagasaki.

One argument goes like goddamn they didn’t surrender even after Hiroshima. And the other one is like I get Hiroshima but wtf was with Nagasaki.

If I had been an Allied soldier who suffered through that horrible **** in Okinawa and I heard they had some new super big stick weapon they weren’t using I would have felt like **** that.

If I were the mother of a child who drowned in the river he jumped in because he was on fire I would’ve thought the Americans were barbaric cowards that attacked civilian targets.

https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f....E18_10_cec.jpg

http://vfpuk.org/wp-content/uploads/...roshimaxxx.jpg

What confounds me is that people think it’s acceptable to continue building weapons even 1000 times more powerful. We must really hate ourselves.

Sorry, sorry. I meant of course to say Slants. Apologies. :D

Well of course you can look at it from both sides (you have to) but I'm talking more about the opinion of Americans, whose government (even if it was before they were born) made the decision to drop the bomb. Do you agree with it or not? You've sort of avoided the question there really. Do you, personally (never mind the Japanese mothers and children etc) agree it was the only thing to do?

It's hard of course to answer that question without being able to appreciate the situation America was in, facing a possible land invasion of Japan and all the subsequent carnage that would entail. And we have the benefit of hindsight, too, knowing what a first step to MAD those two attacks were. I just wondered, as Americans, are you proud, ashamed, or do you care about what happened? What (assuming there was a war and you had no choice as a country but to be in one) would you have done in Truman's shoes? And don't say take a shit in them... :D

I know it can be aggravating when someone is so dogmatic they see everything through certain political lenses so I did try to avoid my answer because yet again it’s a sanctimonious plea for anarchism and pacifism.

I think Truman should’ve been hanged along side Tojo for being a war criminal. The atomic bombings were just two obvious American war crimes he was guilty of.

The complicated part of my answer is that the war crimes should have just been an excuse to rid the world of Truman. He was stuck in a situation where he had to make an impossible decision as a result of his immoral lust for power. The end of WWII would have been a great time for all human kind to stand up against the idiocy of patriotism and political hierarchy by making all those ****s suffer. Churchill, Stalin, Truman, Hirohito- the generals - all of them.

I can’t give you an honest answer outside my politics. I can’t just look at the atomic strikes in a bubble. The entire disastrous situation was a result of people acting like stupid ****ing sheep and ****wad “leaders” making decisions.

That was certainly a factor. America definitely didn’t want to split the spoils with Stalin. Fortunately for the Japanese of today, I have to admit.

I'm intrigued. I know you think in absolutes, often esoteric absolutes - war should not exist, people shouldn't pay for goods, there should be no politicians etc - but man has been at war probably since one cave dissed another, or one tribe wanted the land of another. War is hard-coded into our genes, it would seem. So, while we all wish it wasn't, war is a part of the human makeup, and horrible, bloody wars have been fought down the centuries, and back as far as human history is recorded, and probably before.

So, given all that: World War II. You had a jumped-up little ****er thumbing his nose at the world and invading where he liked. The circumstances that drove him to this - or perhaps more accurate to say, gave him the excuse and the licence to do so - were of course already in place, and the Allies have that to deal with forever, so hardly blameless. Nevertheless, stepping outside of your box of absolutes for a moment, what would you have done, as Hitler annexed country after country, making a play for world domination? Do you not think, horrible as it was, that it was right and also necessary, even imperative, to stop him? And could that be achieved any other way? He lied through his teeth to get what he wanted, then turned on countries that were essentially defenceless. How would you have stopped the threat of the Nazis coming to power and taking Europe?

You can call FDR and Truman war criminals, and certainly they would have had cases to answer had the Germans won the war (as is always the case, the victors call the vanquished war criminals and dictators, and ignore the fact that they are, at bottom, as bad as them) but didn't they also have a duty to stand up to the evil of Nazi expansionism and take Hitler on?

Many wars can be described as unjustified, but WW II, to me, was not one of them. I hate war of course, but sometimes it's the only option, would you not agree?

No. King Sargon organized the first military well after the first civilizations in Mesopotamia.