and we went and bombed the hell out of Afghanistan ...and now it's a possibility that it could'v ebeen Germany or someone else? ...Man sucks ~FS
So Should Germany Be Dictating Terms?
by Englishman 75 Replies latest jw friends
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Yerusalyim
Realist,
you said,
the us has intervened only in conflicts where they think they can gain something. if they would do it to protect human rights then why don't they declare war on israel?
Perhaps it's because we see the terrorism wrought against Israel as worse than the human rights violations of the Israelis. The Arabs have attacked Israel from it's inception as a nation and it has fought a brutal war. Which is a greater human rights violation, to use terror as a weapon (like blowing up a passover seder in which the target is innocent civilians or to drop a bomb on a house containing a Terrorist who purposefully surrounds himself with civilians?
Sometimes we are about protecting US industry, our economy. SO WHAT! That is a valid national interest, or would you rather our living conditions be like those in Cuba? Yes, the US has killed thousands of Civilians in bombing campaigns, but there have not intentionally been civilian targets in ages. Even Nagasaki and Hirosima were aimed at the industrial base of Japan's war machine, with whithering consequences in civilian life. Still, at least a million lives were saved by dropping those two bombs.
. the US airforce did not just target military facilities but deliberately civil targets in their large scale bombardments. this is not different from terrorism in any way.
What's your proof for this statement? -
nixi
Even Nagasaki and Hirosima were aimed at the industrial base of Japan's war machine, with whithering consequences in civilian life. Still, at least a million lives were saved by dropping those two bombs.
Well, here's a small excerpt from an article on Hiroshima. Just to remember: the bomb on Hiroshima was dropped on August 6, 1945...
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While Japan was being bombarded from the sky, a Naval blockade was strangling Japan's ability to import oil and other vital materials and its ability to produce war materials (Barton Bernstein, ed., The Atomic Bomb, pg. 54). Admiral William Leahy, the Chief of Staff to President Roosevelt and then to President Truman, wrote, "By the beginning of September [1944], Japan was almost completely defeated through a practically complete sea and air blockade." (William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 259).
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July 1945 - Japan's peace messages
Still, the messages from Togo to Sato, read by the U.S. at the time, clearly indicated that Japan was seeking to end the war:
- July 11: "make clear to Russia... We have no intention of annexing or taking possession of the areas which we have been occupying as a result of the war; we hope to terminate the war".
- July 12: "it is His Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war".
- July 13: "I sent Ando, Director of the Bureau of Political Affairs to communicate to the [Soviet] Ambassador that His Majesty desired to dispatch Prince Konoye as special envoy, carrying with him the personal letter of His Majesty stating the Imperial wish to end the war" (for above items, see: U.S. Dept. of State, Potsdam 1, pg. 873-879).
- July 18: "Negotiations... necessary... for soliciting Russia's good offices in concluding the war and also in improving the basis for negotiations with England and America." (Magic-Diplomatic Summary, 7/18/45, Records of the National Security Agency, Magic Files, RG 457, Box 18, National Archives).
- July 22: "Special Envoy Konoye's mission will be in obedience to the Imperial Will. He will request assistance in bringing about an end to the war through the good offices of the Soviet Government." The July 21st communication from Togo also noted that a conference between the Emperor's emissary, Prince Konoye, and the Soviet Union, was sought, in preparation for contacting the U.S. and Great Britain (Magic-Diplomatic Summary, 7/22/45, Records of the National Security Agency, Magic Files, RG 457, Box 18, National Archives).
- July 25: "it is impossible to accept unconditional surrender under any circumstances, but we should like to communicate to the other party through appropriate channels that we have no objection to a peace based on the Atlantic Charter." (U.S. Dept. of State, Potsdam 2, pg. 1260 - 1261).
- July 26: Japan's Ambassador to Moscow, Sato, to the Soviet Acting Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Lozovsky: "The aim of the Japanese Government with regard to Prince Konoye's mission is to enlist the good offices of the Soviet Government in order to end the war." (Magic-Diplomatic Summary, 7/26/45, Records of the National Security Agency, Magic Files, RG 457, Box 18, National Archives).
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To read the whole article, click here:
http://www.doug-long.com/hiroshim.htm -
Yerusalyim
Yet through all that Japan was still fighting. Unless the military industrial base of Japan was defeated it would rise again. Japan would not agree to unconditional surrender, and anything less was not victory for the allies. Leave a country it's weapons and you have a situation like we do with IRAQ, they aren't in compliance with the UN Mandates or the treaty and are a threat to US National Security.
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nixi
Hi Yerusalyim,
this is from http://www.doug-long.com/hiroshim.htm again:
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The Potsdam Proclamation
On the evening of July 26, 1945 in San Francisco (which in Tokyo was the morning of July 27) a message from the Allies now commonly known as the Potsdam Proclamation was broadcast in Japanese. The broadcast was relayed to the Japanese government on the morning of the 27th (Pacific War Research Society, The Day Man Lost, pg. 211-212).
The proclamation demanded "the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces" (U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the U.S., The Conference of Berlin (Potsdam), vol. 2, pg. 1474-1476). It made no mention of Japan's central surrender consideration: the retention of the Emperor's position (Butow, pg. 138-139). What made this crucial was that the Japanese believed their Emperor to be a god, the heart of the Japanese people and culture (Pacific War Research Society, Japan's Longest Day, pg. 20). The absence of any assurance regarding the Emperor's fate became Japan's chief objection to the Potsdam Proclamation (Pacific War Research Society, The Day Man Lost, pg. 212-214). In addition, the proclamation made statements that, to the Japanese, could appear threatening to the Emperor: "There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest" and "stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals" (U.S. Dept. of State, Potsdam 2, pg. 1474-1476).
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As far as I understand this, the main reason for Japan not to surrender was that they didn't know, what would happen to their Emperor, who, BTW, also wanted to end the war.
Another excerpt from http://www.historychannel.com/cgi-bin/frameit.cgi?p=http%3A//www.historychannel.com/tdih/wwii.html :
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... "Little Boy" was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. ... There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city's 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying. According to John Hersey's classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load. There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them.
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Even Nagasaki and Hirosima were aimed at the industrial base of Japan's war machine
Sorry, but dropping an a-bomb over a hospial isn't exactly what I understand "aimed at the industrial base of Japan's war machine"
I personally think, dropping the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was (among other things) the retaliation for Pearl Harbor (4 yrs earlier). The difference: 2,400 American soldiers and sailors were killed in Pearl Harbor (which is bad), in Hiroshima and Nagasaki over 240,000 Japanese civilians died (which is even worse).
Anyway, the only thing I wanted to say is, that the America is far from being perfect or better than other countries... It's only a thing from the point of view...
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Yerusalyim
I've never claimed the US is perfect. The propriety of dropping the bomb on Japan will be debated 100 years from now, but it ended the war more quickly than conventional warfare would have.
The U.S. has had the moral high ground in ALMOST every conflict we've been involved in. To compare the U.S. policy in war with that of Terrorists is ludicrous. I could care less what the German government thinks, they had no qualms about taking care of business when they were fighting the Bader Meinhof Gang, etc. Ask the Germans if they have police brutality laws. The answer is NO. We are in a war against terrorists, people with no moral sense of decency. People who would take from us the very right of this debate were they given a chance.