Now, given what happened today, Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden, and Robert Gates, two of them who were Secretary of Defense and all former directors of the CIA, two of them Republicans, have stated that Donald Trump cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. Does this not terrify everyone? Why does any Republican leader support him? This point needs to be made again and again until he has no support from any elected leader. All of our children and grandchildren are placed in jeopardy with his candidacy.
As opposed to the firebombings leading up to the atomic bombs which wasâŚnot?
Do you draw some sort of moral distinction between the atomic bombs and LeMaysâ firebombing? Because the firebombing would certainly have continued at 50-100K deaths per raid.
Yes, Dresden is recognized as an event deserving of war crime prosecutions. But, to the victor belong the spoils.
***It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.***
***Voltaire***
You know there were firebombings in Japan too, right?
Were those conducted on the eve of a surrender widely anticipated by a large array of military and intelligence officials?
Thank goodness we dropped those bombs. The Japanese deserved them. Every Aug., we have American Humiliation Day, where the Japanese lecture us about our inhumanity. How did we escape that this year? Uh-oh, we still get to humiliate ourselves on Aug 6.
For the idiots who still blame the US for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I suggest a quick review of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, the comfort women, and Nanjing on Dec 13, 1937. And why is it that Japanese history books still omit mention of Japanese culpability in WWII?
MacArthur estimated 250,000 U.S. casualties. George Marshal thought he was low-balling. And he was mad that it deprived him of the opportunity to lead the biggest amphibious invasion in history.
But mass murder of civilians troubled none of them. A few weeks before Hiroshima, LeMay killed almost twice as many people in the Tokyo firebombing raid and repeated that feat in the rest of Japanâs cities again and again thereafter.
It took us decades after that war to get back to the accepted principle of international law in the 1920s that the deliberate aerial bombardment of civilian populations was a war crime.
What rot. Honestly, this is total crap. Every war results in civilian deaths. Every single one. There is no such âaccepted principalâ. In the first place, there were no air forces in the WWI which were CAPABLE of such bombardments.
They sure did. In Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. I canât remember if they did them in Nebraska or not.
Sure, but they saw the obvious potential in the future.
O yes we did them in Texas and duck and cover was just the small response. At least once a month they did a full on disaster drill and sent us out into the corridors where we faced the wall and put our hands behind our heads.
And they showed us films of atomic bomb tests. (video wasnât invented yet. pardon me but it was so long agoâŚ)
Back in the days of St Raygun I asked myself if I wanted to bring children into this world. What with the idea of a 500 ship Navy, increase of armed forces strength beyond reason, and the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) it looked and felt like we were on the fast track of the button being pushed.
Air raid sirens.
Surrender widely expected? What absolute rot and a total lie. I wonder if you realize when the last Japanese soldier surrendered? It was about 1980. The carnage in the invasion of Okinawa was terrible, and that was a tiny island. The main Japanese Islands would have cost us at least the 250,000, and my dad would have been in that invasion. So, Iâm very happy about the bombs. They were militarily appropriate.
Well, when you occasionally forget those principles it sure helps to sit in judgment on yourself, no?
Washington (CNN)The Pentagon announced Friday that 16 military personnel will be disciplined for the deadly U.S. strike on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, in October, but maintained that it was not a war crime because it resulted from unintentional human error and equipment failure.
The military said some personnel involved "failed to comply with the rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict," and that a general officer was among those facing discipline for their roles in the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital.
The punishments include suspension and removal from command, letters of reprimand, formal counseling and extensive retraining. These punishments would have adverse effects on promotion of the personnel involved, according to the U.S. military.
That and remember the TV movie âThe Day AfterââŚ
Yes, they should mention Pearl Harbor or something.
Really, tell that to the Londoners who dies during Zeppelin raidsâŚnot very effective but if you were on the receiving end and died you were still dead.
The concept of âstrategic bombingââtargeted airstrikes on a particular locationâdidnât exist before the conflict. The advent of aerial warfare changed that, and also robbed the British of the protection afforded by the English Channel. The zeppelin allowed Germany to bring the war to the English homeland.
The war in the Pacific was an entirely different kind of war than we had fought before. IT was more savage by far than the war in Europe and our experience with the Japanese was that they didnât surrender. They would keep coming.