bazmeistergen said:
rocketpig said:
bazmeistergen said:
rocketpig said:
routsounmanman said:
mhsillen said:
routsounmanman said:
I can't believe what I'm hearing from some people! US went to war with Afghanistan and Iraq to "combat terrorism". With your logic, them nuking Los Angeles would have been a great resolve to end the war...
Seriously, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be considered nothing less than terrorism and crimes of war, there's no spinning that.
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oh bad usa bad
I'm japan was so Innocent
Do you know history?
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I never said the Japanese were good folks. Every member of the Axis, and many of the Allies actually went on a killing spree during WW2, civilians included. You just can't claim that the US went on a crusade and the bombing was justifiable, no way.
They were crimes of war, end of story.
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Then everyone in WWII was guilty of crimes of war. Dresden, London, Leningrad, Tokyo, Nanking, continue ad nauseum.
It was a war where carpet bombing entire cities and civilians was commonplace. It was an ugly war and ugly things had to be done to finish it.
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Once again, ONLY if you accept the premise that the Japanese didn't want to surrender. They did.
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Even AFTER the bombs were dropped, there were factions within Japan that resisted and tried to stop the surrender.
Some of your assumptions that the Japanese were ready to roll over and give up completely are greatly overstated.
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I have no assumptions. Some Japanese didn't want to surrender. Okay. The government had put proposals for surrender forward to the Soviets. They were not accepted or even discussed in any depth. This is either because the allies didn't believe in the sincerity of the offer or because they only wanted an unconditional surrender. Having the bomb at your side may well have helped keep minds focussed on the latter.
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If the Japanese wanted to surrender that badly, it would have been quite easy to contact us through American agencies or even the Chinese, a direct ally. Going to the Soviets in mid-1945 was a dumb move by anyone's standards, as American and Soviet relations had already begun to fall apart and it was all pretty public courtesy of Potsdam.
Besides, Japan would only agree to a conditional surrender before the bombs dropped that surely wouldn't have been favorable to America. Given the state of mind of people in 1945, after having faced TWO World Wars in their lifetimes, was it really unreasonable to demand an unconditional surrender to just end this shit once and for all?
