Military Buffs I need your help.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by primitive:
While there are several good arguments for dropping the first bomb, can anybody come up with one single decent argument for the second.

There is only one argument that needs to be given for the second bombing. The war was not over. Japan had not surendered, even after the first bombing. All of the theories, opinions, and estimates about what the Japanese were planning to do or might do are just that, theories, opinions and estimates. The only thing that we knew for sure, and the only thing we know now for sure is that as of the time of the bombing of Nagasaki, they had not surendered.

Perhaps a case can be made that neither bombing was acceptable, that both were inhumane. That's an argument I won't attempt to make on either side because I have not truly decided for myself. But if you accept the first bombing, as you seem to do from your statement, then you must accept the second bombing as well. As we would have to accept every subsequent bombing after the first two if they had not surendered when they did.

Geoschmo

[Thermodyne]

Some of you people should really step back and listen to what you are saying. War is not a polite little game played between gentlemen. It is economic competition at its worst. And the idea that civilians should be immune is just pure stupidity. Anyone that contributes to the economic well being of the enemy is a viable target. In all out war, the idea is to kill them and theirs, before they kill you and yours. To say that the atomic bombs were any worse that the mass bombing of Tokyo or Dresden or Hamburg is pure nonsense. They biggest difference was a merely economics. It would have been cheaper and more efficient to use fission bombs than it was to use HE and incendiaries.

Often we hear that the next war will be fought over resources. Well if you bothered to study WWII, you would already know that it too was fought over resources. The Japanese went to war to secure the resources that their economy needed. Resources that the US had taken great lengths to deny to them. Resources that they had invaded China to secure. Germany went to war so that they could sustain an economic model that was only sustainable by war. And England, well once they allowed the Germans the time to face them; it was a war of economic survival. A point that is often lost in the texts of the war is what the major resource of the western Pacific is. In the late 1930’s it was rubber and oil. The rubber is not much of a resource these days, but there are still several billion barrels of oil under the South China Sea. Anyone ever notice what effect North Slope oil had on American foreign policy? Oil and Iron were the two most fought over resources in WWII. So if WWIII is fought over resources, we will just be repeating history once again.


Now about those civilians. In a war, there are no civilians. Every person that is able to contribute to the economy is a target. Every farm that produces food is a target. Every worker in a factory is a target. Every home that shelters a worker is a target. Every medical facility that contributes to the well being of these workers is a target. Every school that educates the next generation of workers will become a target if the war is allowed to continue long enough. To say that only combatants should be targeted is short sighted and naive. It should be noted that the four greatest slayers of civilians were Mao, Stalin, Polpot (sp) and Hitler in the order listed. It should also be noted that Japan lost less people in WWII than did China. What is a human life worth? There is no easy answer to that; it depends on the point of ones perspective. But to say that the taking of life with a fission devise is worse that the taking of lives with napalm is not supportable by reasonable logic. The same holds true for all forms of death that war provides. Starvation surly has to be several time more horrible. I would dare say that the soldiers that gave their lives at Stalingrad would have died kinder deaths had they been nuked. And what about Berlin, how many people died there? More than a million? Well, no one knows for sure, but Soviet casualties were in excess of that number after they crossed into Germany. And what of an invasion of Japan? Estimates ran from 400,000 to 800,000 Americans with 1/3 of these being fatalities. After the war this was revised to over a million based on the results of Sipan, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. From that just do the math. Use the numbers form the previous three battles, and use the low end American number. That gives you 4.5 million dead Japanese. Add in another half million for continuing the strategic bombardment for a year and at least another million who would have died from starvation and disease. Real quick it would appear that the bomb saved both American and Japanese lives. Sure, Japan might have surrendered based on the fact that the war was already lost, but that would have taken a reversal of the culture. And time was not a luxury that the allies had to waste. America has elections every two years, and England was in very bad shape. To have paused and then accepted less than total victory would have been political suicide on both sides of the Atlantic.


I for one have no pity for Japan. Japan could have avoided the war by removing its troops from China. But they chose to attack America, France, England, and the Dutch instead. They justified it based on the genetic purity and superiority of the Japanese race. And in the end they bit off more than they could chew. They started the war, and as a result, they became the target of the might of America. The two cities that were attacked had been forfeited long before the bombs fell. That fact that they both died as a result of single bombs is of little consequence. Dead from one bomb or dead from the bombs of a thousand B29s is no different. To die from radiation burns is little different than dieing from phosphorous burns. And when taken as a whole, I would think that the people of Dresden suffered a worse death, their torment Lasted a full night and much of the next day.

And as a Last point, I would offer this. Where does it say that a nation can not use a weapon of mass destruction in a declared war? Especially when the war was forced upon said nation by an aggressor? It must be remembered that the allies had been killing people on this scale for more than a year when the fission bombs were dropped. The morality of the times found little fault with it.

[ December 14, 2003, 03:36: Message edited by: Thermodyne ]

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
Now about those civilians. In a war, there are no civilians. Every person that is able to contribute to the economy is a target. Every farm that produces food is a target. Every worker in a factory is a target. Every home that shelters a worker is a target. Every medical facility that contributes to the well being of these workers is a target. Every school that educates the next generation of workers will become a target if the war is allowed to continue long enough. To say that only combatants should be targeted is short sighted and naive.

I don't get what you're trying to say here thermo; are you saying that any and every body who just happens to be a fellow citizen of the enemy nation should be wiped out?

[ December 14, 2003, 03:55: Message edited by: TerranC ]

[oleg]

Thermo' arguments are valid in the situation when the outcome of the war has not been decided yet. That was most certainly not true in the case of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Please read my older Posts with quotes of people intimately involved in the desision. I regard their opinions much higher than canonised official US history books.

[Thermodyne]

Originally posted by TerranC:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
Now about those civilians. In a war, there are no civilians. Every person that is able to contribute to the economy is a target. Every farm that produces food is a target. Every worker in a factory is a target. Every home that shelters a worker is a target. Every medical facility that contributes to the well being of these workers is a target. Every school that educates the next generation of workers will become a target if the war is allowed to continue long enough. To say that only combatants should be targeted is short sighted and naive.

I don't get what you're trying to say here thermo; are you saying that any and every body who just happens to be a fellow citizen of the enemy nation should be wiped out?

---

If I were forced to say it bluntly in one sentence, then yes. I would prefer to say that any and all aspects of a nation’s economy are subject to attack when at war. And this includes the people that give comfort and support to said economy. As a point of clarification, we are speaking of total war, the likes of WWI and WWII. These actions would not apply in the cases of police actions and interventions.

[rextorres]

Well the Germans used that same exact argument as they were rolling across the Soviet Union. The only difference was that instead of firebombing people (the firebombing was a terror weapon btw) they rounded them up and shot them. I don't think you believe this. So how is it OK in one instance and not the other?

[ December 14, 2003, 04:23: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[Thermodyne]

Originally posted by oleg:
Thermo' arguments are valid in the situation when the outcome of the war has not been decided yet. That was most certainly not true in the case of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Please read my older Posts with quotes of people intimately involved in the desision. I regard their opinions much higher than canonised official US history books.

That is too simplistic a point of view. To say that the war was won at that point is easy to say now. But at that time, Japan still had several million men fighting in the field. And based on the losses in the previous battles, the prospects of invading Japan were costly at best. Had we paused, there is little evidence that Japan would have surrendered and allowed an occupation. Had we continued to bomb and relied on a blockade, then how many would have died in the next six months? And with the way politics functioned in Japan, it could easily have taken six months to replace the military majority of Japans government. It should be remembered that the emperors hold on the nation was not so strong that he could defy the wishes of the majority of the military. A final point that is seldom mentioned is the need to limit the Soviet advances into the area. While the alliance was still in place at the time, Soviet intentions were known for what they were. And there was a recognized need to contain their expansion into the Pacific basin. Several of the gamed results showed the Americans holding only the southern Island at wars end, the rest having fallen to the Soviets. I think we can all agree that American occupation was a kinder result than Soviet occupation would have been.

[ December 14, 2003, 04:26: Message edited by: Thermodyne ]