The Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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This provides a good overview of the debate, if you want to see what has been the major arguments on both sides:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_ov ... d_Nagasaki

A lot of the "oppose" arguments I have never seen before, while I've seen all of the "support" arguments, except for the last one. It's interesting that where I'm at, having grown up in the U.S., I never saw very many of those "oppose" arguments.

I find this argument from Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal, one of the judges at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, to be compelling. In this argument, he references a letter written by Kaiser Wilhelm II in World War I, where the Kaiser justifies the slaughter of civilians to pressure the Allies to surrender:

Economic warfare was justified against Imperial Japan as they were attempting to enslave all of east Asia, they killed millions and millions of civilians. Was war against Nazi Germany justified?

This is a pretty compelling analysis:

The neutrality of The United States involvement with Asia is also put to question when there are Professors who have made mention about how The United States sold armament-resources to China when they and Japan were in conflict (actually there are still several members of both China and Japan whom are in cultural-conflict with one another on the level of ethnicism or something similar to racism just as there is between Koreans and Japanese and probably also all other manners of factions).

The thing about war-fare is that you can always find a reason for justification against any particular group or target unless the target(s) happen(s) to be Absolute-Pacifists. Surely you are not trying to tell us that nobody can come up with a reason or find a justification to do things like take you to court or black-mail you or other such war-fare activities if they were to dig through everything about your history to find any potential skeletons-in-the-closet ? Nobody existing on earth right now is innocent of history that gives others reasons to attack in some way (even The Messiah was arrested and jailed multiple times already, but at least he owns up to his complicity to having subjected others to the same in his past, due to once having worked as a Police-Officer).

Was Nazi-Germany's war against its oppressors justified ? Speaking of justifying war, I can tell you for a fact, that Vladimir Putin has a LOT that he can say about war-mongering aggressions, were you to actually listen to a number of his speeches... I will include a handful of comments that viewers have made in response to talks from the current Russian-President, but there are also others, with even upwards of even more than 1000 thumbs-ups, especially when Putin lays out a ton of verifiable facts and evidence which shows the The U.S. is a major aggressor right now (and if not an aggressor then just extremely incompetent at war-fare).

'Tis also not very uncommon to find comments about how Putin plays Geo-Political Chess whilst the Americans are fumbling around with checkers... anyway, for a more shortened version of my long-winded analysis on justification, just about anything can be justified when you go out of your way looking for reason to justify any particular aggressive-action. Get an abusive alcoholic intoxicated and he'll justify plenty of reason to be an ass.

"Obviously. Wars are not won by defensive measures. Wars are won by pressing the offensive and moving the lines of battle right up to the enemy's doorstep. Japan and Germany lost because the Allies brought the war to the Axis' homes, factories, and farms.

Offensive measures win wars."

That implies whoever is on the offense does not require vast armies and recourses to invade another nation, when it's actually quite the contrary.

Even now the U.S. has been in the middle east for over a decade, and has brought very little positive results for all the money, time and effort the United States has put into its military.

54% of the United States entire budget goes into their military (https://www.nationalpriorities.org/camp ... ed-states/), and what results in modern times have shown for it?

Almost nothing.

The United States were on the offense in the Vietnam War, again another failure. The United States evacuated, things became far too expensive, disorganized and it was pointless to continue.

It may typically result in the enemy actually making it to your home nations soil and causing some destruction, but if your defense truly is strong enough (and the United States defense indeed would be if the soldiers were called back home), they could at the very least hold-off the enemy for long enough until the enemy has used up too much of its recourses, so that even if the enemy did win, it would be a pyrric victory that exceeded the effort.

The Soviets successfully defended themselves from Nazi Germany. They did attack, but the fact they successfully defended themselves a first time is proof enough they could have held their shields up until Nazi Germany ran out of bullets (metaphor).

Like I said, I'm no military strategist, but I'd love it if they could question these things themselves and calculate if a theoretical pure defense technique can work.

Otherwise, they'll just keep this petty rubbish going.

"It's not an act of vengeance if it's done to protect. Killing enemies over there before they're killing us over here is protecting. Person B attacking Person A on sight or even hunting down Person A wouldn't be vengeance it would be to protect himself."

Person A's group tries to kill me. I try to kill person B's group in revenge/payback instead of strenghtening my defense (buying a legal gun, actually starting to carry my phone with me, going out around town with friends more often, not walking alone at night).

I could have done all these things to improve my chances of not being hurt if I run into person B's group, but instead I decided to get a group of my friends and home invade their house.

They home invade my house.

I do it back.

They fight me in the streets.

I fight them in the streets.

If you're going to reduce the example to petty gang wars, my family has criminals/gangsters in it and this is the sh*t they do all the time. They have a rivalry with a family of criminals right now and it's just back and forth 'an eye for an eye' rubbish.

There is no ending it...it's their own fault niether side will take responsibility of ignoring/ending the conflict/being more cautious about ending up in situations where they'll fight each other.

"History is indeed reported by the victors, but in the case of these bombings the fact that they are so controversial shows that it if the bombings were a lie then it may have not been the best one to tell."

And they told said lie 2 decades after it actually happened, when the public would not only have been desensitived to such a thing, but also in a different time.

If I broke your $2,000 computer but you didn't know, and then finally told you I did it over 20 years later, would you honestly be just as mad at me as if I told you straight after I broke it?

Pretty sure that was the government's goal.

I'm sure we'd hate the government if they told us right now they created ISIS, but what about 25 years later when ISIS has already been crushed to the ground and destroyed?

I'd still be angry, but would it really matter as much? No.

The 1940s, tv had more censoring and hiding government information than tv and media of the 1960s.

The 1960s things were different. It was the late 60s, man, the time of the hippies and such.

Only about 13% of Americans even at the time thought genocide/bombing the Japanese was morally right.

"Being the first and only nation to use atomic bombs in war is not great for America's reputation,"

Not at all. At least the Russian's never used theirs.

"and it's not striking fear into anyone now after treaties have been signed to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons in war. Right now there are pushes to dismantle nuclear weapons to reduce the probability and impact of a global nuclear war which is something that many people are scared of but not in a way that benefits anyone."

I'm gonna pull a Ban-Doger here and say I don't always believe such things to be true.

I'm sure both the U.S. and Russia haven't gotten rid of anywhere near as much nuclear weapons as they say they have, if any at all.

The media is riddled with lies and conspiracies.

Besides, I'm more afraid of ISIS and other middle east terrorist organizations that have been created because the U.S. being in the middle east has only IGNITED the flame and made the war on terror even worse, typically extending to nations that have barely, if at all, touched ISIS or the middle east.

I honestly still don't understand why the U.S. are so against defending themselves. They've got one of the best militaries in the world and have successfully defended themselves consistently almost each and every time.

The closest the U.S. has ever gotten to being invaded is 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.

A few New York buildings blew up and a few Hawaiian coast engagements. And of course the Russian and Cuban missile crisis scares.

That's it. No major damage or destruction, no major deaths. Other countries that have been invaded have suffered far worse than the U.S ever has, such as (*gasp*) Japan's bombings, many middle east nations, etc.

And before any of your Americans respond aggressively, I will tell you now that that will just prove my point.

On plenty of other forums or discussions, I've seen or experienced hostility from some Americans.

Americans I discuss these things with (not all Americans, mind you - I'm not making a generalization of stereotyping here of any kind) seem to love complaining about the atrocities the Japanese or Nazi's committed, but once anyone points out the atrocities America has committed as well, the American's I've spoken to (not all) have reacted civilly and maturely by saying stuff such as "Hey, you should be grateful to us, or we could bomb your *blanking* country with nukes just like we did to Japan, we've got the best military in the world/we're the greatest country in the world/we've done more good for this world than your pathetic (insert foreign country) has ever done for anyone else, you ungrateful pieces of *blank*."

Please, to anyone here, American or non-American, let us not go down that path...

The last post column in PPI says beneficii had the last post, but I can't see it. Can anyone else see it? There was another thread a while back where ASpartofme had a post that I couldn't see. Does this happen to anyone else?

This is difficult question. Knowing what we know now it would have been possible to win without. However that is hindsight. Japan was exhausting its resources and was loosing.

It is amazing how Japan was able to rebuild under the circumstances.

Japan needs to teach some of what it did in Asia in its schools. There are still those in denial.

It seems the court historians' stories about World War 2 are still widely believed all these years later. I recommend some of the articles on lew rockwell's site for a gentle introduction to revisionism, for example-

I'd like to point out one more thing:

During WWII it seemed many people liked to collect newspapers. I and my wife inherited two very large piles of newspapers and clippings (very non-archival). And these newspapers detailed, day-by-day, the activities of the war. This by itself is not impressive....but what WAS impressive (and depressing) was the daily killing and destruction. Day-after-day....Year after year. Thousands killed....hundreds of thousands killed.....millions killed day-after-day-after-day-.... WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD NOT WANT TO SEE THIS STOPPED INSTANTLY?

THIS was the reality.....what would happen tomorrow????? More of our guys killed? For what?

There was no decision to make. The job was to end the war. Their decision was correct.

We can NOW say (with our lattes in hand) that perhaps we might have done things a little more humanely...perhaps gentler?

This is why the numbers on the polls change. People today have no idea what a World War is. It was NO civilian autos being produced (can you imagine that today?), everyone on food rationing, medicine hard to get and your loved ones being killed so you never knew when you'd get "the letter."

This is the type of thing that drove the Japanese in the U.S. into interment camps....but it was overkill on everything at the time, Take No Chances, etc. (I read that after the war some of the immigrants from Japan said they would have heeded the Emperor's call for industrial sabotage) and nothing would stand in the way.

You HAD to think differently then to preserve your sanity.