T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
There was no OSHA. That came during the Nixon administration.
America committed the worst terrorist acts in world history
- Thread starter BartenderElite
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There was no OSHA. That came during the Nixon administration.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Ah, before the Republicans became anti-worker and anti-government.
IBDaMann
Well-known member
You weren't paying attention. Most people today hold to a different standard. We have the Geneva Conventions that caused a paradigm shift in warfare. We don't target civilians.
Now I will say that the United States has gone a little bit overboard in its attempt to virtue-signal to the rest of the world. Democrat Congresses have imposed unilateral restriction on the DoD and whittled away at their ability to wage war in any way that a Marxist could argue is "cruel." For example, a US soldier can blast an enemy fighter jet into a cloud of smoke and debris, but he is strictly prohibited from blinding the pilot with a laser, forcing him to eject and remain alive, because that would be cruel. A soldier who is actively trying to kill his adversary on the battlefield must limit his ammunition to standard "humane" rounds that will minimize any suffering, and will typically leave a surviving, injured casualty, rather than use a dum-dum bullet that "tumbles," that will rip through the enemy's body ensuring he is dead. Suppose an adversary is mobilizing on a large scale. In that case, US forces have to essentially let them complete their maneuvers rather than let the Air Force cluster bomb them in one quick pass, take them all out in one drop and enable everyone to just go home with an instant victory. The list is long.
In a forum discussing the law of armed conflict (LOAC), several Dominican officers asked if any of the above could be forgone if they really aren't trying to be nice to their enemies. They were told that it would be appreciated if they were to sign up for the US's voluntary "extensions." They declined at first, but were offered $$ in aid if they were to coalesce.
How about the Geneva Conventions? What do you think about that standard? What do you think about the prohibition against targeting civilians?
Who is making that claim?
To what "immoral thing" are you referring? Using a bomb? Ending a war that we didn't start? You are terribly unclear.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
He also instituted the EPA...
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Another agency the Republicans seek to dismantle. I guess Nixon wasn't so bad after all. LOL
christiefan915
Catalyst
So, smashing them into rubble then setting it on fire creating fire storms that wipe out everything is somehow better?
You are making a fallacy of presentism. That is, you are projecting current values back on those making decisions at the time in the past. Given the rape of Nanking, bombing of Rotterdam, bombing of London et al., by the Germans and Japanese, the US and allies had little compunction to not return the favor tenfold on their enemies.
Even then, the US was less likely than the Russians or British to just indiscriminately bomb cities. USAAF policy in most, not all but most, cases was to target legitimate military related targets and try to hit those with only misses causing collateral damage. Of course, given the state-of-the-art in the 1940's there were a lot of misses.
But when things went very right, the USAAF did what they advertised as they did here:
That's a shot of the USAAF in late 1943 bombing an about to open aircraft factory in Marienburg Germany. They smashed the factory with nearly 100% hits as the conditions for bombing were perfect. The factory never opened, and Hermann Göring who was scheduled to give a speech at the factory's opening the next day never got to...
The Luftwaffe extracted a heavy price shooting down over 80 bombers (800 + kia, wia, pow) between the four raids on the factory, but the factory was finished.
The only thing nuclear weapons did different was they did it in one shot at far less cost to the attacking side. Own losses were minimized, enemy losses were maximized. Seems like a good idea to me. In 1945, nuclear weapons were just a bigger, better, bomb.
Here's an interesting one. In early 1944, the US tried out for the first time using the GB-1 glide bomb against the German city of Cologne.
Over 100 were dropped miles from the city. The idea was to allow the bombers to evade being shot down by flak defending the city. The results of the attack proved so indiscriminate that the USAAF dropped the use of the weapon entirely for the rest of the war.
Your fallacy is starting with the premise that the bombings were justified and then working backwards to support that premise.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
If you are referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'm siding with Harry Truman on this one. There's a lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on about ending a war from almost 80 years ago, but I think President Truman made the correct call at the time.
Let's be honest; if the Germans hadn't started WWII in Europe and the Japanese hadn't put the US 7th Fleet on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, along with murdering over 2400 Americans in the process, the US would never have built the weapon.
Additionally, if Hitler hadn't been such a fascist antisemitic fuckwit, Jewish physicists and mathematicians wouldn't have fled to the US to help build the damn thing.
With all of that in mind, putting the blame on the US is ludicrous.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
Both started out as needed things. What has happened is they have gone beyond their mandates and adopted a "zero tolerance" set of values rather than setting reasonable standards and maintaining those.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
Wrong. My premise was the USAAF wanted to bomb enemy targets as efficiently as possible. They also didn't want to just indiscriminately bomb cities or anything else. Thus, they chose to employ weapons that minimized own casualties while doing maximum damage to enemy targets. In bombing Japan it wasn't practical to target just a factory as much of the production in that nation was decentralized simply by the nature of society there. Unlike in the US or Germany, factories in Japan relied on a vast number of small shops making often a single part that went into something the factory made. All the factory did was assemble the parts. Factories themselves were smaller and often crammed into residential areas or mixed in with other use structures.
Thus, to take out production, the US had to flatten the city rather than bomb a small group of buildings within it. That made atomic bombs the perfect weapon for the job. One plane, one bomb, one city.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Yes, that's the excuse the Republicans are now using to dismantle them.
Geeko Sportivo
Verified User
Japan was one of the most Brutal regimes the world has ever known.
8 million Chinese civilian deaths alone, were attributable directly to Japanese aggression during the war, as they marched through China killing and destroying everything in sight!
So, they deserved what they got!
I would have made this call without a 2nd thought!
Japan should consider themselves lucky, as the US didn't quite have the Hydrogen Bomb ready as of yet.
A couple of those would have wiped Japan off the map!
8 million Chinese civilian deaths alone, were attributable directly to Japanese aggression during the war, as they marched through China killing and destroying everything in sight!
So, they deserved what they got!
I would have made this call without a 2nd thought!
Japan should consider themselves lucky, as the US didn't quite have the Hydrogen Bomb ready as of yet.
A couple of those would have wiped Japan off the map!
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christiefan915
Catalyst
If you are referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'm siding with Harry Truman on this one. There's a lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on about ending a war from almost 80 years ago, but I think President Truman made the correct call at the time.
Let's be honest; if the Germans hadn't started WWII in Europe and the Japanese hadn't put the US 7th Fleet on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, along with murdering over 2400 Americans in the process, the US would never have built the weapon.
Additionally, if Hitler hadn't been such a fascist antisemitic fuckwit, Jewish physicists and mathematicians wouldn't have fled to the US to help build the damn thing.
With all of that in mind, putting the blame on the US is ludicrous.
Keeping in mind that I'm anti-war, I don't agree with Truman's rationale of obliterating the citizens of two cities as an expression of American strength.
christiefan915
Catalyst
^Yes, this is true. So the rationale was that the citizens were collateral damage.
SmarterthanYou
rebel
I've read through some or your arguments, and they are understandable, yet come across as virtue signaling. Almost everybody talks a good game about war, morals, ethics, etc. when it comes to violent acts. The people using this propaganda to sway support for unavoidable atrocities in war, are also the same people willing to attempt to shame their enemies for using those very tactics. As bidenpresident stated in post #2....'war is war, morals do not apply'.
That attitude is a double edged sword. It can become a very bright and solid line to not cross in some circumstances, while at others it isn't. The rape of Nanking, for example, showed that the Japanese government/military threw away morals and ethics in war in order to destroy their enemy completely. That act, and the support of the government, left the entire japanese population subject to the legitimate use of nuclear weapons. The german military support of the holocaust left it's civilian population open to retaliation in kind. There are countless examples scattered throughout history of this kind of conduct and consequences, even though very few episodes actually ended with any accountability.
When you tell the world that 'we are the government', you must also be willing to accept consequences for your governments actions.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
I'd disagree with dismantling them. I do however think they need to be reigned in and put on a very short leash.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
I'm anti-war too, as most senior military personnel are. That said, I'm rational enough to know that self-defense is an unalienable right. Just like the Ukrainians, whom you've defended, have a right of self-defense, so did the United States when attacked by Japan and when Germany declared war upon us.
Reality isn't Hollywood. The best way to end a fight is to put down the aggressor as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Neutered then.
christiefan915
Catalyst
Vietnam managed to make us lose that war without going nuclear.
I just disagree with the whole concept of nuclear weapons.
Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
We didn't lose militarily. We never really fought it militarily. If we did, the United States Marine Corps would have planted a US flag on top of Hanoi Hilton.
Politicians in Washington, DC lost that war. I don't have to tell you which political party they were associated. They sent over 56,000 Americans to their deaths in a war they didn't want to win and couldn't win due to fears of WWIII.
Yes, it was part of the Cold War's Proxy Wars. Afghanistan in the 1980s was the flip-side of Vietnam. It lasted about the same length of time but the Soviets lost a fraction of US deaths in Vietnam, about 15,000. OTOH, they committed more war crimes than the US. Some things never change, eh? LOL
No one wins a nuclear war unless only one side has them. Now that the Nuclear Genie is out of the bottle, we need to learn how to live with it or die trying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War#War_crimes
It's possible the real reason the Japanese surrendered is because they feared a Soviet invasion more than an American occupation.
If America had waited to muster an invasion force capable of subduing Honshu, the Red Army might have beat us to the punch and already occupied Tokyo. In August 1945, the Soviets were at war with Japan and already had millions of soldiers in Manchuria, North Korea, and the Russian Far East. It would have just been a hop, skip, and jump for them to cross the Korean straits and Sea of Japan. The atomic bombs might have just hastened Japan's decision to submit to Americans.
The world would have been a lot different if Japan had been in the Soviet bloc.
If America had waited to muster an invasion force capable of subduing Honshu, the Red Army might have beat us to the punch and already occupied Tokyo. In August 1945, the Soviets were at war with Japan and already had millions of soldiers in Manchuria, North Korea, and the Russian Far East. It would have just been a hop, skip, and jump for them to cross the Korean straits and Sea of Japan. The atomic bombs might have just hastened Japan's decision to submit to Americans.
The world would have been a lot different if Japan had been in the Soviet bloc.