American in Hiroshima...

[MMM]

Originally Posted by Enkidu22

MMM of course I know that most americans are against the war and many US soldiers are good people who really want to help iraqis, but from what I know (and I know that from people who were there) 2/3 of them don't. They call them stupid/dirty/ugly and often laught at them in public, you don't have to know english to understand such things and iraqis understand. Also I heard about things like US soldiers giving iraqis beer out of good will not knowing that alcohol is forbidden for muslims, and therefore offending them. Such situations are very often. Seriously 90% of US soldiers just aren't properly prepared and trained for this mission.

About the infos on the news I think noodle covered it very good. Don't believe in everything you see in TV.

I believe almost nothing our leaders say at face value, and am very skeptical of what appears on the news. I think for the most part the leaders on the ground are doing the best with what they have, and I do agree, many young men and women are sent there unprepared. There is bound to be conflicts and problems. We are now finding severe human rights violations being done in the name of American security to detainees, and it makes me wonder...what is the point of ousting Saddam for terrorizing his own people, when WE are terrorizing his people for information?

[typesblur]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

My jusification is my honor. My hate of cowrads. My justification is my honor. My hate of those who think it is right to kill the innocent. You think it is right to kill the innocent. You are a blind coward.

so your saying that you hate americans because we are cowards.....we may have killed innocents but what country has not......

in my opinion back to the subject. no i dont think its bad for an american to visit hiroshima. i mean what does it matter. its a place not some forbidin land where no non native can step foot in.

and so about pearl harbor. i cant come visit pearl harbor because your afraid im just going to call in some random air strike and boat bombardment?

MMM and Enkidu22 yes there are many nice marines fighting a in my opinion unjust war. BUT there are those dumb !@#$%^&*( meat heads (most from the mid states of america *rednecks*) that give us a bad name. I.E. the marines that wave a waterbottle off the edge of the car and drive off slowley while little iraqi kids try and chase for it. or dumb meatheads throwing a flash gernade into a sheepherders sheep. very unpatriotic

i guess what im getting to is dont judge a country by the ignorant, stupid, and cruel ones that may visit your country. judge a country by what the country does as a whole.

[samurai007]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

Not hate, am disgusted, as am I with many other people. I know that. What is worse is the lack of shame and their pride in the stead of the dead innocents.

Needless bloodeshed? No honor? Slaughtering an army of willing militia and soldiers to save the lives of innocents is more honorable than burning cities full mostly of civilians to the ground. You are disgusting. I dont think you know the first thing about it. No Samurai nor Knight nor man with an honest stomach would openly feel shameless about murdering the innocent.

You are really crossing the line into personal attacks here, IMO. I have a great deal of honor, it's why I chose the name Samurai. I've said many times that it was tragic and sad that so many people had to die in WW2, soldiers and civilians. Millions of people died, and millions more would have died if the war had gone on and we'd had to invade the Japanese islands. You seem to want to overlook all of that, and simply attack America. We ended the war after being attacked and brought into it, and we did so as quickly as possible. If we were as bloodthirsty as you claim, why didn't we just slaughter the Japanese after they surrendered? Why did we instead help them to rebuild, achieve a peaceful and independent democracy, and assist them in becoming the world power they are today?

It was a terrible choice, to lose a couple hundred thousand civilians, or millions of civilians and soldiers. Japan could have surrendered sooner, after Okinawa, heck, even after Hiroshima and the Russians declaring war. They chose not to. At what point will you lay any blame on them for their atrocities in WW2, and for their unwillingness to surrender even when defeat was inevitable? Oh, that's right, you've never even heard of the Rape of Nanjing, the Bataan Death March, Unit 731, the "Comfort Women", or anything else besides the things America did, have you? That shows that you've either had an incredibly lopsided (and poor) education, almost to the point of indoctrination, or you simply don't care to learn about such things as it might dull the white-hot focus of your America-hatred.

Honor is not about killing as many people as you can, so long as you "look them in the eye", as you say. It's about having the courage to make incredibly tough decisions about the greater good and the willingness to carry them out. WW2 was full of tough decisions, like the choice to temporarily ally with a monster like Stalin in order to defeat an even bigger monster like Hitler, or the choice to invade Africa and Italy or go straight for Germany, or the choice of whether to drop the bombs and try to end the war with a minimal loss of life, though still a couple hundred thousand innocent civilians, or invade the islands and kill millions of men, women, and children as well as hundreds of thousands of US troops. War is not full of simple easy answers, and sometimes it requires distasteful decisions in order to prevent a greater evil or just to get the job done and the war over with.

[MMM]

But honor is a personal thing, as well, is it not?

[samurai007]

Originally Posted by Tenchu

Whatever. Say you know what honor is, at the end of the day it is your people with the blood of inocent people on their hands, not mine. Makes you seem a bit vacant in your words.

And I never said I back the Japanese, I was talking about America. Dont get me started on the corruption that has formed in the minds of many Japanese since the fall of the Shogunate.

Not your hands? What about the massacre of the Aborigines? If the atomic bombs are "on my hands" despite the fact that I wasn't born yet and half my family hadn't even arrived in the US when it occurred, surely you must be culpable for that...

[Enkidu22]

This discussion has started to go into wrong direction IMO.

Originally Posted by samurai007

Millions of people died, and millions more would have died if the war had gone on and we'd had to invade the Japanese islands. You seem to want to overlook all of that, and simply attack America. We ended the war after being attacked and brought into it, and we did so as quickly as possible. If we were as bloodthirsty as you claim, why didn't we just slaughter the Japanese after they surrendered? Why did we instead help them to rebuild, achieve a peaceful and independent democracy, and assist them in becoming the world power they are today?

Just read this: The Hiroshima Myth by John V. Denson

Originally Posted by samurai007

It was a terrible choice, to lose a couple hundred thousand civilians, or millions of civilians and soldiers. Japan could have surrendered sooner, after Okinawa, heck, even after Hiroshima and the Russians declaring war. They chose not to. At what point will you lay any blame on them for their atrocities in WW2, and for their unwillingness to surrender even when defeat was inevitable? Oh, that's right, you've never even heard of the Rape of Nanjing, the Bataan Death March, Unit 731, the "Comfort Women", or anything else besides the things America did, have you? That shows that you've either had an incredibly lopsided (and poor) education, almost to the point of indoctrination, or you simply don't care to learn about such things as it might dull the white-hot focus of your America-hatred.

It's not that I say americans were the evil ones, japanese did just as bad things. What I can't stand is the fact that japanese crimes are called crimes against humanity and many heard about them but american ones aren't, they are instead called lesser evil or necesary evil. You have to understand that those few hundred thousands japanese cilvilians didn't have to die to end the war. That was a lie made up by US politics.

[samurai007]

Originally Posted by Enkidu22

This discussion has started to go into wrong direction IMO.



Just read this: The Hiroshima Myth by John V. Denson





It's not that I say americans were the evil ones, japanese did just as bad things. What I can't stand is the fact that japanese crimes are called crimes against humanity and many heard about them but american ones aren't, they are instead called lesser evil or necesary evil. You have to understand that those few hundred thousands japanese cilvilians didn't have to die to end the war. That was a lie made up by US politics.

I have read it, and I read "The Decision to Use the Bomb" by Gar Alperovitz in full as well. As I said, my degree was in History with a specialty on WW2, and my 32 page honors thesis was on the dropping of the bombs. So I've read books on both sides, read translated accounts from Japanese officials, and much, much more. Don't mistake my disagreeing with you for ignorance of the opposing arguments. I've read them, and disagree with most of what Alperovitz and others wrote.

Key things to consider:


The "feelers" were unofficial and had no authority to do anything. They were sent out to gauge the will of the opposition, and in the event surrender became necessary, what were the best terms they could get. They basically presented 3 options to see what the reaction to them were, (though again, they had no authority to actually surrender for Japan in any way):

1) Japan keeps what little remains of its empire (a few islands and Manchuria) as well as its entire govt. Basically, we stop where we are and everyone keeps what they still have.
2) Japan surrenders it's empire but keeps its entire govt.
3) The rest of the govt steps down by the Emperor remains.

"Feelers" were also sent to the Russian govt to see if they could be encouraged to stay out of the war.

If the US govt looked too eager to compromise and accept terms of surrender, it would have emboldened the Japanese and encouraged them to fight on longer in order to get even better terms.

The Japanese were preparing a massive build up of forces in Kyushu to defend against the coming invasion. If they were planning to surrender, there was no need or reason for this

The Japanese govt, although it secretly had a few "doves" looking for a way to surrender, officially was 100% opposed to surrender before the atomic bombs, and even after Hiroshima and the Russian declaration of war!

The Potsdam Declaration was just one of many opportunities for the official govt of Japan to surrender or offer terms for surrender if they really wanted to, but they unanimously rejected it.

Alperovitz states that the main reason the bombs were dropped was to intimidate the Russians after they declared war on Japan. But the US had been asking for the Russians to join the war for months, they wanted their help, they didn't want to frighten them off! Since his book was written during the cold war, I think he fell into the trap of seeing EVERY US action as a counter to the Russians, even when evidence strongly suggests it was not.



I've examined the claims and evidence from both sides, weighed them, and I came to the following conclusion, which I've stated before: While more effort might have been made to follow up on the feelers and see if an official offer of surrender could be obtained, I don't believe that the Japanese were truly willing to surrender at that lowest rung of conditions yet. They might have settled for retaining Manchuria and their entire govt at that point, but that was unacceptable to us. Even keeping just their militaristic govt was unacceptable, because they could just start another war in a few years. Something more needed to be done to truly convince them to surrender, either a land invasion or the bombings. IMO, an invasion would have cost far more civilian lives than were lost in the bombings, PLUS millions more US and Japanese soldiers' lives. And I therefor believe that the atomic bombs were sadly the best option available.

[Enkidu22]

I'm too lazy to write so much as you did (^_^) so I will just say that of course you may have your opinion and I'm not saying that I must be 100% right (most likely there is some truth on both sides) but the fact is that most of non-american WW II specialists agree that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't necesary and every year more and more books and publications about war on Pacific state so. This show that there might have been another way.

Also from other conflicts throught the XX century I developed an opinion that US politics generaly don't care about civilian lives. Korea, Vietnam and Iraq show clearly that they disquise US interests and their own agenda into "fighting for freedom/justice/democracy" and such things, and they don't care that innocent suffer. The thing is that becose of modern mass media people all around the world see this and they start to hate americans.

[samurai007]

Originally Posted by Enkidu22

I'm too lazy to write so much as you did (^_^) so I will just say that of course you may have your opinion and I'm not saying that I must be 100% right (most likely there is some truth on both sides) but the fact is that most of non-american WW II specialists agree that Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't necesary and every year more and more books and publications about war on Pacific state so. This show that there might have been another way.

Also from other conflicts throught the XX century I developed an opinion that US politics generaly don't care about civilian lives. Korea, Vietnam and Iraq show clearly that they disquise US interests and their own agenda into "fighting for freedom/justice/democracy" and such things, and they don't care that innocent suffer. The thing is that becose of modern mass media people all around the world see this and they start to hate americans.

Modern mass media is severely biased in many cases. Al Jezeera is incredibly biased against the US and Israel, as is the Guardian and other leftist media outlets. Even most American media has a massive leftist tilt that tends to be anti-American (polls show 92% of American newscasters are leftists!) Many good things are happening in Iraq, but that never gets reported. Violence is way down, refugees are returning by the thousands, the terrorists are losing ground, etc, but they won't report that because they don't want America or Bush to be able to point to it and say "look, there are some successes." Yeah, it was botched for a long time, many mistakes were made, but the surge is working and conditions are improving rapidly now.

The US does care about fighting for freedom, democracy, and justice. They aren't just slogans or disguises. It doesn't always work out as planned, but then there is an old soldier's saying "no plan of battle ever survives first contact with the enemy". It is all that BS about "war for oil" that are the lies and slogans. If we wanted oil, Saddam was eager to sell as much as he could (look at the oil for food scandal in the UN where tons of people and countries were taking him up on his offer.) If we wanted his oil so badly, why haven't we taken it yet? We've been there for years, we're paying much more than usual for gas here, and yet most Iraqi oil is being sold to Europe and Asia. We get our gas from other countries.

[noodle]

Originally Posted by samurai007

Al Jezeera is incredibly biased against the US and Israel

I wouldn't say that at all... My brother has worked for BBC, MBC and is has now been working for Al Jazeera for the past 4 years and he tells me they are NOT allowed to show half the crap the US does... eg, read that example i gave to MMM...

Personally, i would say Americans are Biast... And thats fine if it was only slightly biast, everyone is to a certain extent proud, patriotic and biast about their country... BUT i think some if not most americans sometimes prefer to totally ignore reality & truth and then just have these images in their heads of how the US gov is doing the right thing!! Of course, eventually the people start to realise what the governemt is doing and then most of them don't like it, BUT there are always plenty of people that are clueless and seem to ignore reality!!