wait wut?

 

 

 

 

I don't believe I have any 'rights'. So you can all just stop fighting for me, and send me a tax refund for all the money waisted fighting for my so called rights.

War is just natures way of dealing thinning out the herd. Since we don't have any predators to kill us when we overpopulate, we have to do it to our own species.

And WTF are we still sending people in battle anyways? We have drones, missiles and robots that can do all the killing while the operator is in the safety of an air force base in Nevada. Let the idiots after the 72 virgins be the ones that die in battle.

This macho 'going into battle' is such BS. If he really believes that fighting is so necessary, why not go to college and learn to make high tech weapons or join the CIA? Much more effective. This sending men into battle is so low tech. But that is what sheep still want to do.

 

 

When you add in all the costs of verterans benefits and taking care of the injured and widows, tech can be much cheaper. It's mainly because there are people that don't want to fight a war this way. There is so much macho-hero BS wrapped up in sending in the troops. And there is religion to help convince young men they should do this.

By sending in boots on the ground, we are playing right into the enemies strategy. They hide as civilians, while we spend all this money for troops that get injured and killed until we grow weary of war. I think the only people that need be in harms way are CIA spies and police. And we should not be policing Iraq or Afganistan anymore.

 

“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” General George S. Patton

 

 

 I am an open foxhole atheist, and though it has given me a share of trouble, it is worth doing. Groups such as MASH and rock beyond belief are a sight for sore eyes in an environment that is anything from underhandedly snubbing to outright hostile against anyone who isn't a professed christian. You would not believe how many times I have had to refute the belief stated as fact that this is a judeo-christian country founded by christians; or that it is actually god's army.

On the note of why we still have boots on the ground, I am a 35M human intelligence collector and having physical contact and presence is the only way to win the trust and cooperation of the population. Drones and airstrikes get kills, but protection patrols and humint missions win hearts, minds, and factions.

 

You really need people on the ground who know, or at least can learn, the situation in conflicts. Winning a war requires versatility, and people have always proven to be the most versatile weapon in warfare.

No, Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway. The terrorism merely sped it up by a week or two.
AND it still took pilots to deliver those bombs.

 

Brian, many people can think whatever they want to.  Just as many people are unaware that Truman had informed Stalin of the matter weeks earlier.

 

Also, Vastet, you can call it terrorism if you want to but there are a couple of other point which are relevant.  We had already destroyed a number of cities in Europe with conventional bombs because we had already gone to civilian bombing a couple of years earlier.  That and if we had had an active missile program, we would have been using them and not risking hundreds of bomber sorties over Germany.

 

The larger motivation was that we had come to the point where such things were thinkable and we wanted to test them on real cities so that we could go in and analyze the damage so that we could figure out the "best" way to use them.

 

As far as the surrender goes, I think it is relevant that we had to use two of them.  They and we were both on the verge of suing for peace as we were both nearly bankrupt at the time.

 

Additionally, we only had one more bomb ready to go with a three week lead time to make another one.  So the probable target would have been Tokyo.

 

 

The reason the bombs were terrorism is because they were deployed on civilians, when plenty of military bases would have been sufficient. You can argue till your face turns red on why, it doesn't matter worth a fuck. ALL that matters is that the targets were civilian, hence the action was terrorism BY DEFINITION.
/passionate rant

But really, all sides during WWII were attacking civilian targets.  Crush their spirit kind of thing.

Americans didn't start that practice during the war.  Nor did America start following along with everyone else starting with the atomic bombs.  Everybody had been bombing each other's cities for years at that point.

By your definition everyone was a terrorist during WWII.

Bombing civilians from the air certainly started before World War 1, in fact from balloons before aircraft flew if Wikipedia is to be believed. In WW2 the English bombed Berlin in 1940 and Americans joined in when they entered the war.

In any event, killing civilians has been normal military practice long before aircraft were invented. It makes it difficult to see what is the specific point of labelling the atomic bomb attacks terrorism, as if to distinguish them from any other killing of civilians in an attack on a non-military target.

At some point in previous history, never before were two people killed with one weapon. After that, we kept getting better at it, so to speak. 

Please try not to make ridiculous comments. You are depleting planetary resources of straw.

Vastet, are you addressing anyone or anything, or merely spluttering?

Seriously, if you think I condoned any terrorist attack whatsoever, quote where I did that. Use of illiberal quantities of personal prejudice to interpret my posts reflects only on you, and is not an argument.

You appear to be equating efficiency of killing with terrorism rather than the target and nature of attack with terrorism. If that is so, it would explain why you make patently silly claims about the meaning of other people's posts in this thread.

Where is the quote from me in which I condoned terrorism, Vastet, the one for which I have already asked you? You are unable to come up with any support for your ad hominem attacks.

My post #19 stated that civilians have been targets of the military in aerial bombardment since before WW1 and in all forms of war throughout history. I made no commentary on the practice, merely observed that this bombing was not novel or even rare in its target type.

Your response was to say that never before had a single bomb done the trick, as if that were a concluding proof of terrorism rather than the nature of the target. You are unable to deny that carpet bombing and firestorms destroyed other cities in WW2, Hamburg and Dresden for example, and other people have mentioned Japanese cities. Therefore, the "single bomb" is a question of efficiency, not nature of the act. I made that point about efficiency rather than target in #21 and more extensively in #23.

Around that, you have resorted solely to ad hominem statements.

If you believe every attack on a civilian target is terrorism, then what is so interesting about the weapon? If you believe, as you implied, that the weapon makes the difference, please present your unique definition of terrorism. Your latest post appears to retreat from the latter, that the bomb was significant, to a general comment about attacks on civilians. Go for it, but do not tell lies along the way about my posts.

 

 Ah, yes, that mighty ender of arguments, where someone imagines that using the word "period" carries utter conviction for whatever they spoke before.

Where? Quote me the post, Vastet. Where did I attack you personally? In #21 I referred to ridiculous comments and have defended that by reference to your failure to support your claims against me. Do you consider an attack on your argument a personal attack on yourself? If so, why? If not, what is your basis of claim?

You have failed to answer my two previous requests for a shred of evidence for your clear implications in #20, #22 and #24 that I condoned terrorism or otherwise did not distinguish it. Instead, you have initiated ad hominem attacks to which I have yet to respond in like fashion.

I will let my english comprehension speak for itself over time. I invite other people to re-read posts #19-#24. They need no reiteration from me to make my point.

Why would I be challenging something I never discussed? I asked you to quote any post, any, in which I condoned terrorism or otherwise did not distinguish it as clearly implied by your posts #22 and #24. Three times now, Vastet.

Third failure?

Is that like saying "period"?

 

Neither bomb took out the entire city.  Jeeze, read up on some facts.

9/11 is a different matter.  We didn't even know we were supposedly in a war when 9/11 happened.  Japan most certainly knew they were in a war when we nuked them.  They knew because they started it.

So tough shit for them.

Apparently you are.  You're still posting.

I got an idea.  Go hold a protest over it in downtown Nanking.

Good luck.