The GREATEST war crime

[Tech_Esq]

German war criminals were hanged because Jewish people died in work camps. The same people who hanged the Germans vaporized some 350000 Japanese civilian men, women, and children. Seems somewhat hypocritical to me but I'm like that you know, kinda fair minded.

Focus on the manner of death is pretty stupid. The fact is we were "vaporizing" cities on a routine basis at that point in the war. The fire bombing of Dresden, Tokyo and a list of other Japanese cities are evidence of that. The wounds suffered by the victims of the fire bombing are no less horrific than the radiation sickness suffered by the nuke bomb victims. It was novel though. As was the attack. Instead of taking huge squadrons of planes and lots of bombs to do the same thing, it now took one of each.

I'm sure the Japanese took note of the math and the extrapolated the result. At any rate, I certainly don't get your point if all you are saying is a bunch of people died at one time, therefore it's a war crime. We were killing that many people everyday in Japan. You're just improperly focused on two novel uses of a new weapon to do it.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Remember the Vietnam debacle? You lost that one badly..............

Not militarily. People like you were successful in undermining the will of the limp dick politicians to fight though. So I guess we should tell you Good Job! Huh?

 

[Tech_Esq]

If they're willing to accept a conditional surrender then they're beaten.

again, what did conditional mean? Tojo gets to stay in power?

Condition meant (at that point in negotiations) ONLY that the person of the emperor would NOT be violated.

That is, according to what I've read on the subject, the ONLY condition that the Japanese were making for surrender.

And what's more that was the only condition they were making before we invaded Okinawa, too.

And if that is correct...

.. then I believe that one hell of a lot of American servicemen died needlessly at Okinawa.

And if that is correct

...then , as WELL as a hell of a lot of Japanese civilians died from those A-bombs AFTER the Japs were TRYING to surrender, too.

IF that is correct...

My understanding from the latest things I've seen on it is that while the junta was crumbling, they still had such fractured control over the levers of power that no real surrender could be effectuated. I have no doubt that during the relevant time periods you are talking about there were elements in and around government that wanted to surrender. But, we're talking about a chaotic situation and nothing was clean. My understanding is that even after Nagasaki, the surrender was nearly foiled by an attempted coup by militarist elements.

 

[Tech_Esq]

You must not be canadian, all Canadians I know would be smart enough to read the part with "Berlin Germany NOT MASSACHUSETS".

Actually, I daresay that Southparks creators are highly above average concerning political knowledge and education as well as intelligence.

In an actual war with the US, Canada would likely loose since all your population and industrial centres are within relativly easy reach of US bases, meaning that you could not employ "General Winter" to your advantadge like for example Russia could against any foe.
Secondly, Canada could try to employ a premptive strike at either Chicago or the east coast, however a fairly decentraliced entitity like the USA can not be decapaciated so easily.
The longer the war would take, the more the industrial and manpower andvantadge of the USA would come into play. Last but not least, Canadas army is reknowned for its very good infantry units, if you want to decapaciate the USA (as Canada, be lucky that you dont need a friggin large transport fleet too )you need Tanks and Tank-Grenadiers, as well as the ability to neutralize the aerial superiority the USA will likely enjoy in the parts were you are waging your attack. Although the Canadian army in theory has all of that, it has neither of that in the required quantities.

Basically, Canada would be like Russia, but without the Nukes, without the Manpower, without the ability to use the winter, without scores of satelite nations and without any cross ocean logistic constraints on either side. You forces may have a slightly higher qualitiy than the Russian ones (for some reason, the Russian soldier is always the most underestimated one of his time period, no matter wether we are in modern times or in the antique), but you totally lack numbers.

Overly generous analysis. Canada has 23 million people. They lose.

Air and sea power would be so instantaneously and overwhelmingly an obstacle to logistics and counter-logistical operations (cutting the US gas and oil supplies), that they would never fully get on balance. There would be no electricity in Canada after the first week. No important targets for US forces lay very far to the north. Our troops and doctrine are easily capable at operating at the required latitudes and any advantage to Canadian infantry would be minor.

Our biggest difficulty would be massing equipment with an antiquated and degraded rail system. Decapitating the US would be a nightmare once Canada was "blinded" since we control most of the North American "vision" assets.

But as you say, Yukon is not Canadian. I've never known a Canadian that was that much of a putz.

 

[Yukon]

How sad that the loss of a war isn't accepted by the "losers". The Japanese never eally accepted her of WWII.Americansever accepted their humiliating losses in 1812 or 1974. How sad, how pitiful, how typically Americanesque.

 

[Xenophon]

The USA didn't lose the war of 1812.

BTW, there was no 'Canada' back then, it was a part of the British Empire.

That war ended in a status quo agreement, with Britain agreeing to not interfere with US shipping anymore, a major aim of the USA.

 

[Gunny]

How sad that the loss of a war isn't accepted by the "losers". The Japanese never eally accepted her of WWII.Americansever accepted their humiliating losses in 1812 or 1974. How sad, how pitiful, how typically Americanesque.

So now the US lost the War of 1812? Do you ever just STFU?

The US left Vietnam by agreement, chowderhead. The South Vietnamese lost the Vietnam war. Whenever the NVA or VC went up against US troops they got the same thing you get every time you open your mouth on this board ... owned.

 

[mightypeon]

To me, claiming that the US did not loose Vietnam is like a Football Star player who quite the match while it is a draw claiming that "He didnt loose" although his team in the end lost without him.

Did the US fullfill its war goals? I would say no.
Although the Vietcong ceased to exist as a fighting force after Tet, the South Vietnamese gouverment was not stabilised, and the north Vietnamese were not broken.

Did the North Vietnamese fullfill their war goals? Their war goal concerning the US was to get them removed from the picture. They managed to achieve this. Their War goal concerning South Vietnam was to overthrow and annex them. They managed to achieve that too.
A clear Yes here.

If one side fullfills their war goals while the other side doesnt, the side which fullfilled its goals wins, and by extension, the other side looses.

 

[strollingbones]

pst when they burn down yo ur white house...thats not winning....but i digress


president harry s truman had guts and balls...he bombed them once...warned them ahead....said .....surrender...uncontionally...to avoid the 2nd bomb...they refused..he bombed them again....told them again...uncontional surrender or a 3rd bomb would be dropped...fuck what you say or care....the lives of many allies as well as our own men were saved by a man willing to have the balls to drop an unknown weapon and then to bluff like hell....we had no 3 rd bomb...but we had a man willing to go balls to wall....to receive the unconditional surrender of japan....

we will never know how many lives president truman saved....

but if he only saved one american, one brit, one allied solider...he was right to do it....you talk of civilian deaths...collateral damages...the only fucking collateral damage i give a flying fuck about is the mother braver than me....the one who was willing to let her son or daughter go....if bombing those 2 cities saved one mother from heartbreak...then president truman made the right decision....debate it all you want

 

[Gunny]

To me, claiming that the US did not loose Vietnam is like a Football Star player who quite the match while it is a draw claiming that "He didnt loose" although his team in the end lost without him.

Did the US fullfill its war goals? I would say no.
Although the Vietcong ceased to exist as a fighting force after Tet, the South Vietnamese gouverment was not stabilised, and the north Vietnamese were not broken.

Did the North Vietnamese fullfill their war goals? Their war goal concerning the US was to get them removed from the picture. They managed to achieve this. Their War goal concerning South Vietnam was to overthrow and annex them. They managed to achieve that too.
A clear Yes here.

If one side fullfills their war goals while the other side doesnt, the side which fullfilled its goals wins, and by extension, the other side looses.

Ummm ... no. Did the South Vietnamese establish and maintain a democratic government in the South? No. Did the South Vietnamese support their government? No. Was supporting the South Vietnamese government an untenable position and waste of resources? Yes. Is the wise decision to continue to prop up a loser against the face of our own public opinion? No.

Who should fight for S Vietnamese independence? The US? Or South Vietnam? The latter. We built their armed forces up to a strength it had never seen and its military forces had been trained by US forces for close to a decade. All the weaponry and materiel in the universe can't install a set of balls.

The fact is, the US never had a clear-cut objective in Vietnam. I would say since our last objective was to turn the fighting over to the South Vietnamese and get US forces out of Vietnam, we achieved our goal.

As you stated, N Vietnam achieved its goal. South Vietnam didn't achieve its goal.

 

[mightypeon]

As far as I got it, the US went in under the premise of "Stopping the Domino".
it did not achieve that.

That it did not have any clearer cut goals may have contributed a lot to its performance.

 

[Tech_Esq]

As far as I got it, the US went in under the premise of "Stopping the Domino".
it did not achieve that.

That it did not have any clearer cut goals may have contributed a lot to its performance.

As I said earlier, it was not a military loss. It was a political loss. The left in America pro-actively cooperated with the communist government of North Vietnam to undermine the will to fight in the United States. After 1968, the media was a willing participant in the undermining of American will to fight a foreign war.

As Gunny correctly stated, the US won every military engagement of consequence in the war. So much so that after the Tet offensive of 1968, the Viet Cong ceased to exist as a fighting formation. After that time guerrilla fighters were exports from the north.

All of that is not to say that I agree with Kennedy and Johnson's decision to involve the US in Vietnam. Johnson, the more I hear him and learn about him, seems to have been something of a mush-brain. The way he engaged in Vietnam was completely idiotic.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

pst when they burn down yo ur white house...thats not winning....but i digress


president harry s truman had guts and balls...he bombed them once...warned them ahead....said .....surrender...uncontionally...to avoid the 2nd bomb...they refused..he bombed them again....told them again...uncontional surrender or a 3rd bomb would be dropped...fuck what you say or care....the lives of many allies as well as our own men were saved by a man willing to have the balls to drop an unknown weapon and then to bluff like hell....we had no 3 rd bomb...but we had a man willing to go balls to wall....to receive the unconditional surrender of japan....

we will never know how many lives president truman saved....

but if he only saved one american, one brit, one allied solider...he was right to do it....you talk of civilian deaths...collateral damages...the only fucking collateral damage i give a flying fuck about is the mother braver than me....the one who was willing to let her son or daughter go....if bombing those 2 cities saved one mother from heartbreak...then president truman made the right decision....debate it all you want

Yes, thank goodness Truman had the guts to incinerate children.

 

[Yukon]

My name's Yukon and I'm from Cana-duh. Looking for a new altarboy to replace the one I was canned from the church for. Any takers?

 

[theHawk]

On 6th August 1945 a B29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima It has been estimated that over the years around 200,000 people have died as a result of this bomb being dropped. This was always a controversial decision. General Dwight Eisenhower told President Harry S. Truman that he was opposed to the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan.

IKE said: " I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face".

Winston Churchill also agreed that it was not necessary to drop the atom bomb on Japan. He later asserted: "It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the bomb fell."

Mainly historians have argued that the US used the atom bomb as a warning against the Soviet Union. It was not an attempt to end the war but to determine what happened after the war.

The dropping of the bomb was a terrible war crime, equal to the extermination of the Jews.

The war was not over at the time. And each engagement with the Japanese got more and more fierce the closer they got to the main islands. I suggest picking up and reading a book like E.B. Sledge to get a better understanding what they were up against.

And by the way, the Japanese had a chance to surrender before Hiroshima, and after, and they didn't. More people died in the Tokyo "fire raids" by conventional bombing than died in Hiroshima. Not to mention, it seems a little rediculous to make a case that the killing of 200,000 people was a "war crime" when 50-70 million people total died as a result of World War II.

 

[American Horse]

Julius Caesar after the Siege of Uxellodonum:
His harshness towards the Gauls when they refused to accept their conquest would increase over time.

Caesar had tried mercy and he had tried savagery, but his punishment of the survivors of Uxellodonum must be viewed as one of the great atrocities of warfare. After he had captured the natural fortress of Uxellodonum he granted the surviving soldiers - perhaps 2,000 men - their lives. He then cut off both their hands. They were freed and sent away as cripples to remind Gaul of Caesar's punishment. This was the effective end of the Gallic war.

 

[mightypeon]

Uxellondum?

The gallic war ended in Alesia, an engagement with some 2000 tribesmen is by no means major for that times standarts.
What was more important than the Roman cruelty was the fact that the Romans set up a functional and working administration which quickly brought stability to the lands.

 

[editec]

Pukon,

Yes, IMO it was criminal that we didn't annex Canada when we had the chance.

We never had a chance, manifold.

We invaded Canada twice and the people living there catagorically rejected our advances to join us against Britian TWICE.

 

[American Horse]

Uxellondum?

The gallic war ended in Alesia, an engagement with some 2000 tribesmen is by no means major for that times standarts.
What was more important than the Roman cruelty was the fact that the Romans set up a functional and working administration which quickly brought stability to the lands.

What was important was not the cruelty in itself, nor the great number, but the constant reminder. These soldiers who had resisted Rome would have been among the larger population for the rest of their lives, unable even to feed themselves or take care of their body functions. That is what it always has meant to me anyway.

So, the rest of the population understood from this reminder that the Romans were capable of effective administration of government, or they could be effectively cruel against rebellion, take your pick.

 

[editec]

again, what did conditional mean? Tojo gets to stay in power?

Condition meant (at that point in negotiations) ONLY that the person of the emperor would NOT be violated.

That is, according to what I've read on the subject, the ONLY condition that the Japanese were making for surrender.

And what's more that was the only condition they were making before we invaded Okinawa, too.

And if that is correct...

.. then I believe that one hell of a lot of American servicemen died needlessly at Okinawa.

And if that is correct

...then , as WELL as a hell of a lot of Japanese civilians died from those A-bombs AFTER the Japs were TRYING to surrender, too.

IF that is correct...

My understanding from the latest things I've seen on it is that while the junta was crumbling, they still had such fractured control over the levers of power that no real surrender could be effectuated. I have no doubt that during the relevant time periods you are talking about there were elements in and around government that wanted to surrender. But, we're talking about a chaotic situation and nothing was clean. My understanding is that even after Nagasaki, the surrender was nearly foiled by an attempted coup by militarist elements.

It is possible, I suppose, that some of the militarists would have continued fighting or that the emperor still didn't have control over those rogue militarists and the US government understoood that.

Diplomatic records indicate one thing, but they aren't necessarily the entire story, that's for DAMNED sure.

For us to really get this down we really do need to understand what was happening in Japan and Washington on a moment by moment basis.

We can each focus on one event or the other and decide that was the most important development, but we weren't there to really understand how any one event played against all others, or what the mindset of the players was as those events unfolded, either.

This is a rather trypical problem when one is trying to understand history, I think.

And this debate is one of the reasons that historians should NOT get into the business of making judgements about history.

The job of history is merely to document the facts as well as they possible can.

The moment any of us start to make value judgements about history or the players in it, we're bringing our own prejudices and presuppositions into that process.

Of course none of us can avoid doing that, but it's easy for us to get it wrong because we don't have perfect understanding, or because even when we do, our biases and prejudices don't make sense for that time and those people.