Posted on 08/06/2013 7:48:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
August 6, 2013 marks the 68th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb, and August 9th the last. Japan did not surrender for five days after Nagasaki was bombed, during which time the Soviet Union declared war and the Americans conducted additional, conventional firebombing raids on a Japanese city. Emperor Hirohito was asked to break a deadlock in the imperial cabinet that had blocked an unconditional surrender up to that point.
To this day, Harry Truman is viewed by ardent critics as a war criminal and the United States is deemed as being stained by a sin as indelible as slavery. In fact, last November, a "documentary" on Hiroshima and its aftermath produced by Oliver Stone was shown on television and, as might be expected, it presented the standard apologist's take on the history surrounding Truman's decision to use nuclear bombs.
To quote Stone from an interview he gave to the Stanford Daily earlier this year, his production was intended to "cause Americans to rethink your history ... because you're not the indispensable, benevolent nation that we pretend to be." He might have gotten his facts straight before making such an arrogant and ignorant comment, but as we know from his past works, facts seem to get in the way of his agenda.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The Aioi Bridge is what I am reading.
Thanks
I love what Gen. Patton said, you don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win wars by making the other SOB die for his country.
The peacenics are upset because the USA got the upper hand with the nukes at that time in history and was on top of the world.... no one could touch the USA at that time.
LeMay covers it in depth.
Great read.
“If I’m attacked by a criminal, I may intend to shoot the criminal, but if I’m a poor shot, I may inadvertently hit an innocent bystander. That wasn’t my intention, but it was the outcome.”
Not your fault. The fault lies completely with the criminal as his actions caused collateral damage, as it were. Like a sniper in a hospital (or mosque). . .one can shoot back to defend and if innocents get hurt it is not the fault of the person shooting back, it is the fault of the sniper who is acting with evil because he is placing the innocent in a position to suffer. The sniper is not, in accordance with Just War, acting in a way aimed at minimizing the suffering of innocents. In fact, hje his bringing suffing down on them.
“It gets even trickier when you aim at a legitimate target, knowing that there will be collateral damage among innocent bystanders. The objection raised is, “How can you say you didn’t intend to kill those bystanders when you know it would happen?” The answer is, did the good effect of my attack (destroying a factory, blowing up a train, whatever) follow in any way from the deaths of the bystanders?”
A question of proportionality. Is the military gain worth the cost to the innocent? This is the question that is most difficult and the most politicized.
Many are not able to discern moral difference when it comes to civilian causalities.
Sad.
Oh. . .ref the 1930’s. . .shades of Giulio Dohet. . .I shall now fire off a few thoughts. . .
Douhet suggested that airpower could be a primary fire that would be key to a successful war effort. It took nearly seventy years before he was proved correct by the role airpower played in Gulf War I. In Gulf War I, airpower was the predominant force that ensured a quick and decisive victory. While airpower was not the sole reason for success, it was the first time in history that airpower truly functioned as a primary fire, with ground-based fires in a supporting role.
Airpower dominated the battlefield and ensured the ground campaign was virtually unopposed in any organized fashion. While it may be argued that airpower did not win Gulf War I, it certainly would have made things a lot more difficult if it had not performed well its strategic and operational mission.
For many military planners and strategic thinkers, use airpower correctly and victory may be achieved quickly, efficiently and with minimal damage and reduced loss of life for both sides. Indeed, the Gulf War I air campaign planners used the lessons of Vietnam to help produce an historic air campaign plan that for the first time—ever—resulted in a war where airpower was the primary fire and landpower played a supporting role. Gulf War I’s air campaign was called “Instant Thunder,” a direct and opposite reference to the failed tactical air campaign of Vietnam, “Rolling Thunder.” Unfortunately, some of the old school seem to ignore the strategic airpower lessons of Vietnam and Gulf War I.
For example, during the Kosovo air campaign in Kosovo, Gen Clark gave his staff a specific number of targets to hit. Period. “I want 2,000 targets,” he said. But to what end? What was the desired effect? What was the strategic aim?
Simply stated, with insightful intelligence, precise targeting and the ability of airpower to accurately deliver all sorts of weapons effects, we now have a new weapon in our quiver. Now when the time comes to shoot, we have the airpower arrow from which to choose. It is just as lethal, if not more so in some cases, than any other military instrument. Selecting which weapon to use is like deciding on which golf club to use. One doesn’t use a putter for driving, just as one wouldn’t use a Piper Cub for strategic strikes well behind enemy lines.
With the impressive ability of airpower, combined with exceptional intelligence and targeting, we now have a full golf bag. We can now break par.
the battle for Okinawa killed more people than both a-bombs combined.
I understand your “if it works” argument but I think it is misapplied when it comes to military plans. Remember, it is not a question of “if it works it’s okay,” it is a question of “Are we minimizing the suffering of the innocent if we do this?”
So, in a way, just war argues against abortion because abortion has as it’s singular purpose, killing the innocent, whereas “proportionality” does not allow for the deliberate destruction of the innocent. For example, our nuke targeting policy was counter-force (military targets), not counter-value (civilian targets).
“Population” can be a target in war. According to Col John Warden and his “Five Rings,” the population may be “attacked” in order to affect the enemies will and ability to fight and win. But this does not mean we are talking about slaughtering the innocent. No. We are talking about sophisticated psy-ops and other techniques to disrupt/make uncomfortable the civilian population and thereby affecting their war-making support/ability.
Take a moment to view (starting on page “298”): http://mercury.ethz.ch/serviceengine/Files/ISN/57408/ichaptersection_singledocument/65459c5f-da6c-440d-8d20-9c25ff8bfeec/en/Chapter_19.pdf
Consider the alternative to invasion: blockade. Cut them off from any oil and food imports; have planes drop poison on the rice fields; wait for 90% of the population to starve to death, and the rest to be too weak to resist.
If the target was military assets, why did they not target the submarine base?
And why did they target a few hundred thousand civilians in the cities, when they could have targeted 1 - 2,000,000 troops who were being massed on the shores of Kyushu to defend the southern islands from invasion?
These are things I wonder about.
I have no moral objection to "targeting" the civilians with psy-ops. If you can help them decide to give up, so much the better.
Obama even agrees that a right to abortion means a right not tjust to a terminated pregnancy, but also to a dead baby.
If the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and, by some crazy fluke, most of the military supply and logistics sites and arms factories were destroyed, but almost nobody else died, that ewouldn't have been considered a lucky break. No American military leader would have said, "Oh, thank God, we obliterated the army depot and the residential areas were miraculously shielded." On the contrary, it would have been considered weirdly unsuccessful. That's because utterly indiscriminate destruction wiping out the city together with its inhabitants, was the point. What do you think?
Obama even agrees that a right to abortion means a right not tjust to a terminated pregnancy, but also to a dead baby.
If the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and, by some crazy fluke, most of the military supply and logistics sites and arms factories were destroyed, but almost nobody else died, that wouldn't have been considered a lucky break. Truman would not have said, "Oh, thank God, we obliterated the army depot and the port facilities, and the residential areas were miraculously shielded." On the contrary, it would have been considered weirdly unsuccessful. That's because utterly indiscriminate destruction wiping out the city together with its inhabitants, was the point.
So, you would starve millions to death. Is that somehow more humane than a nuclear attack?
The bomb's purpose was to end the war... not prolong it!
This was 68 years ago...
...when men were still men and democrats were still patriotic Americans.
I believe it was the first book you referenced, "Downfall: The end of the Imperial Japanese Empire", that I remember. I read it so many years ago that I couldn't recall the title.
One of the points I was making was that the coup started when a number of field-grade (Majors and Lieutenant Colonels) officers took it upon themselves to "protect" the emperor, not depose him, by surrounding the imperial residence and cutting him off from any further traitorous advice. This shot my eyebrows upwards, because I would have thought that an adventure reserved for the highest level of general officers.
I don't believe that those officers, however, so steeped in Bushido, would have harmed the Emperor in any way, and wouldn't have dreamed of ousting the Imperial House. This transcended politics and was religion.
Their target was to destroy the rescript, the first actual recording of the emperor's voice ever played over the radio, not the emperor himself. He could be contained merely by throwing a protective "cordon" around the residence, and thereby eliminating all communication except what flowed through them.
It is amazing what depths people worldwide can fall to when they have convinced themselves that they are acting to "save the nation". And how no limits apply to them in their zeal and righteousness.
I don't recall anything about a counterfeited order from the emperor, but I have lost much through the aging process, so it was probably so.
The danger is in how determined, finatic groups, once they put the pieces in place, can seize control of a government, by controlling the flow of information.
My dad was training to fight in the mountains of Japan and he was told that it would be very difficult to survive.
One of the factors that they took into account was the ferocity of the Japanese forces in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Very few prisoners were taken as they chose to fight to the death and it would have been worse on the Japanese homeland.
It would have been truly awful if they had gone on with that plan.
bfl
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