08-07-2017, 05:49 PM
(08-07-2017, 05:39 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Interesting how you bring up the Bombing Survey as your evidence of why they didn't need to do it (nevermind your Nov-Dec meant 4-5 more months of our people dying) and then ignore the Bombing Survey's estimations of casualties in favor of a much more inflated estimation of 220k.
Also ignoring that the WW2 Japanese were some of the worst people to walk this planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 (Deadly experimentation on POWs.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre (Rape, pillage, and murder of an entire city.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women (Widespread sexual slavery.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Alls_Policy (Scorched earth policy in China of "Kill all, burn all, loot all.")
Combined with their kamikaze attacks, Pearl Harbor, and the fact that 20 MILLION Chinese civilians died from their actions.
But please, do tell us how really we're the bad guys in that situation, and how they would have (maybe) surrendered after killing our troops for another 4-5 months, and how them just surrendering and not the *unconditional* surrender that we ended up getting would have removed the blight on the world that the Imperial Japan mindset was instead of them biding their time and eventually invading mainland Asia (they had already done it twice in the previous 50 years).
They dropped the bomb just a little over 4 months after the end of Iwo Jima, where the US had 6,821 dead and over 19,217 wounded. Pshaw, what's another 4-5 months of that type of combat in order to let the Japanese go "Our bad, lolz" and change nothing about themselves that was abhorrent.
Just a stupid post. You talk about if we did that today... if a country today was doing what Imperial Japan did during WW2, it would have been wiped off the map by every single other country on the planet, and everyone would sleep better for it.
Let's start at the top, the numbers I gave were the high side of the 1945 estimate. Since then that number has been revised up to close to 192k deaths in Hiroshima alone when you account for those who died not just instantly but within a few years from the radiation and such. I get it, people don't like to believe we killed hundreds of thousands of people for no reason but we did. Go back and look at many of the military people involved. They staunchly disagreed with the decision to drop the bombs and found it unnecessary even when weighing potential casualties going forward. Two wrongs don't make it right and the ends don't justify the means. Incinerating civilians in a city is despicable no matter how you want to frame it. You say it's a stupid post but you may want to go and look at a lot of the information around it.
Many people who look at history outside of the U.S. agree it was a barbaric and unnecessary act. We controlled Japan's resources and we could have broke them further if need be. We spent a lot of money and resources developing these bombs and needed Russia to know about their power. We were flexing for Russia, and we had a "reason" we could do it.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Russia's entry into the pacific theater basically crushed Japan's hopes. They had a mutual non aggression pact that basically broke their spirits as they knew they couldn't beat us both. In looking back historically it was actually Russia who won WW2, we just get to collect a lot of the accolades and praise after the fact.
I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but most people know what we as a country has decided is the narrative. Look at the other sources that say we may have not been so right.
