Eighth anneversary of 9/11 (part II)

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1.In 1945 when Japan did not accept The Potsdam Declaration President Harry S. Truman used the atomic bomb on Japan twice to "to avoid tremendous sacrifice of American lives."

2.In 2001 Afghanistan does not accept the extradition of Osama Bin Laden. Even though The U.S knows that Osama is in Tora Bora Bush does not use the atomic bomb to avoid the sacrifice of over 5000 American lives.

3.It had been 56 yeas from 1945 to 2001. What changed?

1: Proliferation. In 1945 the only people with a bomb were Americans. Nowadays everybody and their best mate has nukes. Who HASNT got nukes? There is no guarantee that a nuclear strike would not start a much larger and more ruinous conflict.

2: Afghanistan itself is not a hostile nation, and the "war" was supposed to be one of Liberation. Nobody was liberating the Japanese.. in fact it was widely believed that each and every citizen of japan was ging to be a combatant, and that each and every soldier in the Imperial Army was going to fight to the bitter end, no surrender, no capitulation. In Afghanistan it is POSSIBLE that any civilian could be a combatant.. but by no means a sure thing.

Perhaps the consideration should include the scale of the sacrifice.
A invasion of a somewhat fortified island nation would have easily cost at least hundreds of thousands of lives.
On both sides.

How'd this get in here twice?
I'm erasing this one.

Last edited by southwestforests on 20 Sep 2009, 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

At least half a million men died during Operation Overlord (on all sides) alone. (Though this figure is variable as no counts were made of actual deathtolls on the opening day. Counts made later include the dead from various battles on D+1 and so forth. Nevetherless, if half a million men died in the first few days alone.. ie making the initial operation a success... and this was against incomplete coastal fortifications with no depth, often manned by second-line troops with no real motivation to fight, whilst invading a nation friendly to the invader... with only a short logstics chain and the combined naval and military might of several nations... against an aggressor fighting a war on more than one front led by a dictator of dubious military skill... fighting on foreign soil...

Then imagine how big the deathtoll might be fighting against loyal troops indoctrinated to fight to the last round and beyond, who as a matter of course will NOT capitulate.. fighting on home ground.. who were mobilizing schoolchildren, arming the civilian population, constructing and fortifying subterranean coastal defences.. Ketsu-go (the defence of Japan included the use of at least 20 Kamikaze airstrips alone...and a force of some 12,000 aircraft were still available for home defence.. and the Japanese navy was well prepared to enter the fray, attacking the potentially vulnerable invasion fleet with the same elan and spirit as the kamikaze pilots (unlike the Kriegsmarine, who frankly bottled it, or the Luftwaffe who pretty much didnt show up.).. The Japanese were willing to use their own variants of the "Vengeance Weapons (V-1 etc) against the actual invasion fleet/beaches (and it was well noted by Eisenhower et al that V-weapons on the Normandy beaches would have had a serious ill-effect.) ... The American logistic chain would have been much longer than at Normandy, much more vulnerable to interdiction by submarine/naval/air attack, whereas the Japanese logistic chain could easily have been as short as "to the factory gate.." (The Japanese were also notable for having almost no logistical chain at all, working very much on a "what you can carry" logic, which is even more effective when the civilian populace are willing helpers.) ... and once the Americans had penetrated and overcome the coastal defences, there is a WHOLE nation to subdue.


A more accurate deathtoll might be found by comparing the investiture of the Westwall or Siegfried Line). This, a fortification in depth, manned generally by much more motivated troops fighting on home ground, cost the Allied forces dear..much dearer than Normandy...

Even a tentative analysis suggests that Uncle Sam could look forward to a very high death toll indeed, not including the casualties that could have been suffered by the Japanese themselves...

You'd think dropping one would've gotten the message across.

The Germans and the Japanese are no longer threats to world peace.

Nazi fascism and Japanese fascism were thoroughly smashed which was the point in fighting WW2.

Next question?

ruveyn

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f12_1221775542

(sarcasm?)

OK, probably the image of the US making mushroom clouds would be too much for everyone to take. It would be counterproductive to political aims, but more importantly, it would kill a whole bunch of innocent people who aren't even supposed to be involved in this conflict.

CNN happened.

In 1945, during a war, a plane could fly over a city filled with paper houses and drop a firebomb. Nobody would be any wiser.

Nowadays, CNN is on the ground and is making the civilian targets look like people instead of numbers (it's a good thing). No self-respecting country would commit a genocidal outrage because this time they wouldn't be able to get away with it.

I'm not saying that the US was wrong to end WWII the way they did but simply that time has moved on and public perception has gotten stronger.

There was nothing to destroy in Afghanistan. They were at war there since 1978 or so... The Taliban were the friends of the U.S. for years. This was the result of the geopolitical imperative to weaken all those who could aspire to regional leadership or possibly some kind of global clout. That means China and Russia. Each of those two had problems with Islamic rebels that were supported by the Taliban. Russian supported the non-Pashtun opposition to the Taliban. Now, the U.S. is helping Russia in this.

And that certainly wouldn't be the the best PR anyone ever had.
Probably wouldn't look good on a resume, either.

Conquering Afghanistan and curing the common cold are similar. They are exercises in futility. Alexander the Great could not do it. The Brits could not do it. The Soviets could not do it and neither can we. But Lord Obama is bound to try it and bound to fail.

The people who live there are impossible and impervious to reason. Their greatest contributions to human culture are the bushkazi and the opium poppy.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 21 Sep 2009, 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Dropping a few smaller, maybe cruise missile size nukes on remote terrorist training camps would have sent a clearer message.

Such weapons would be different from those in the conventional arsenal only in the deadly radiation it spews after the fact, not that the nuclear-waste enclosed cruise missiles are perfect in that respect...

Macbeth wrote:

The only country that may qualify of having nukes and may want to retaliate for a nuclear strike on Tora Bora would have been Pakistan. Although Pakistan has nuclear weapons it would be no match for the U.S. arsenal and for that matter it may yet decide to retaliate even without the incentive of a first strike by the U.S. if the religious fanatics ever take over the government like the military did.



For that matter Japan was not a hostile nation either. It was only the emperor and the military elite that were hostile. When Japan was invaded very few of its civilians fought to the bitter end or did not surrender and for that matter the rhetoric of the Taliban was very similar to the Japanese before the invasion. As far as liberation goes, you would find a larger percentage of Japanese considering themselves liberated that Afghanis.

southwestforests wrote:

I don’t think anyone knows what the exact statistics are but I can almost assure you that the cost in lives for Afghanistan and Iraq is over a hundred thousand.
On both sides.