Opinion to be printed.
Offline I just got a notice from a newspaper out west that WILL print my godless rant about how we should take over the world and BBQ kittens.
I don't want to spoil it, so when they send me notice to the article being printed, I will post it here.
FAME.......I'M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER........I'M GOING TO LEARN HOW TO FLY.....
Stupid Shakespeare with his "signifying nothing".
I am being silly. But what this should say to all reading this, is to RAISE YOUR VOICES. I am a dumbass compared to most at this site. If I can get an opinion printed, you can too. And I know most of you don't like shiny objects like I do.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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This is great Brian37!
Cool. Last time I had anything printed was when I called Hiroshima terrorism.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
It has been argued that the war still would have been won without those bombs being dropped. HOWEVER, the amount of civilian death and soldier death ON BOTH SIDES much less the genocide, all combined make those bombs pale in comparison.
I don't think you would be saying that if you had to face the soldiers tortured and murdered in prison camps in the orient, not to mention any Jew who was witnessed to family and friends being shot on the street or gassed to death.
The argument has been made that although the bombs might not have been needed, they pushed up the end of the war significantly.
And keep in mind that Japan attacked us, we didn't attack them.
Having said that. I hate civilian casualties. I wish our species if they want to fight, make an uninhabited non-civilian area, and duke it out there. I am just as pissed about the civilians killed in Iraq.
But what would you have had us do, even if the bombs hadn't been dropped? We killed in WW2 German civilians and Japanese civilians outside those bombs.
Wasn't it terrorism for Hitler to invade Europe, and bomb civilian Britain? Wasn't it terrorism for Japan to attack Peril Harbor?
If your argument is two wrongs don't make a right? I agree, but i am glad Hitler didn't get the bomb before the west did, otherwise you and I would be speaking German and bowing to a dictator.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
One of the worst mind fucks the Japanese successfully used as propaganda was the idea that the western invaders would be savage and rape and torture and enslave them if defeated. It was so deeply sold that many Japanese citizens committed suicide upon the approach of the western forces on mainland Japan. There is even black and white footage of a women jumping off a cliff to her death out of fear if caught that she would be enslaved.
The fact is war is part of human history and part of our evolution. There are no winners in war. There are merely those who succeed at domination for a period.
War is a manifestation of our evolutionary history as a species, and all biological life for that matter, in the drive to control resources. Until we recognize this as a species we will be stuck in the same vicious cycle.
IT WAS wrong for us to drop those bombs. But it was also wrong for Hitler to invade Europe. It was also wrong for the West to let Germany rot without reconstructing it after WW1.
Until our species recognizes that we really are all in this together, war will be a constant threat.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Before he dies, I want my granddad to write about his necklace of ears and the time he won his company an extra ration of ice cream by hitting one of the two japs they let loose to tell the rest they had landed. 150 yards iron sights M1 Garand running target.
Granddad is always fun to take to the shooting range too. He once brought an advertisement for Dutch Boy paints to shoot at because it was the perfect size. The looks of the other shooters present were priceless.
It wasn't wrong to drop the bombs. It was a reaction that when put into context was the only viable course toward ending a war with less of a loss of life than if we had to land on the Japanese mainland in a D-day fashion.
BTW, good job on being printed. Can't wait to read.
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Again, read my post. I SAID that dropping the bombs shortened the war. SO in that context from a tactical standpoint saved lives.
IT WAS WRONG in the context that people died, whose only crime was living in a country we were having a war with. As long as any government anywhere in the world plays a numbers games with the lives of it's citizens things like this will always be unavoidable.
There are no acceptable deaths in war. There are only people who are convinced by their government that the outsiders are not like them.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Terrorism is terrorism, and Hiroshima was terrorism. Period. Nothing you say redefines the word.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I agree that the bombings were terrorism - they were intended to frighten the Japanese into early surrender.
The practical moral issues are still debatable, but will never be ultimately decidable without knowing just what would have been the damage and death and injury toll of a conventional invasion.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Maybe.... WWII could have ended at that time, without a single death, IF the US simply accepted Conditional surrender from Japan.
Japan merely wanted to retain their emperor. They were ready to throw General Tojo under the bus to satisfy the allies, but not their emperor.
And guess what: after we dropped the bomb and achieved 'unconditional surrender' we allowed the emperor to continue....
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
I don't think America needed to use nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki either. I suspect these attacks were carried out for mostly political purposes, maybe even partly just to observe the amount of destruction an atomic bomb could inflict on heavily populated cities.
But, I'm not sure if it was 'terrorism' by definition, and if it is, I'm not sure if that would mean anything significant. Under some definitions, countries could not commit terrorism. Under some definitions, terrorism is just an act of violence carried out with the purpose to intimate or coerce, which would include pretty much every war or military action ever committed.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
Japanese into early surrender.
I don't like to disagree with your indoctrinated view of the cause of Japanese surrender,cause I agree with you,that dropping the bombs was the cause for Japanese surrender,but in my opinion,dropping the bombs served a much bigger picture,it also gave the U.S.S.R. a warning.
Signature ? How ?
"it also gave the U.S.S.R. a warning."
Which also ended badly, leading as it did to a 40 year long cold war.
Hiroshima was terrorism because it was an assault on civillians with the intention of causing fear of genocide within the victim population.
There was no justification for the use of the bombs on civillians. Taking out ports would have achieved the same effect, while causing actual damage to Japan's capabilities in assailing other nations. Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have had factories, but ports are how munitions are delivered upon a target, not cities.
Edit:
That said, it was never my intent to derail the topic, and I'll back out of it now to prevent further derailment. Apologies to you Brian.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
that's the typical apology, but howard zinn makes a very convincing statistical argument otherwise in a people's history of the united states. i'd advise you to check it out.
i recall my high school social studies teacher also had the balls to call this bullshit. it was an eye-opener after the jingoist one we'd had in middle school.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
here here. that's another of zinn's arguments.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson