North Korea 2nd Nuke Test

[thestalkmore]

lol idealists

Thank you =)

Edit: the : ) smiley is terrible

[Aurara]

I'm personally worried about the announcement that NK discarded the cease fire against SK.

[Vekta]

I love how on the internet the evil bastards are always portrayed as being the victim. Face fact for just once, the Japanese surrender prior to the dropping of the A bomb was nothing more than propaganda, Japan was actively developing and testing biological weapons.
After looking at the casualty figures for the battle of Okinawa you will see they come remarkably close to the number of deaths inflicted by the bombings. Imagine the death and destruction a invasion of the mainland could have done, what if Japan had unleashed what bio weapons it had already developed? Heck the nation had been using suicide missions for a good while prior what lengths do you think they would goto to protect their homeland?

Again comparing or even using japan as a reason not to confront NK is laughable. There are no similaritys between the two situations.

[Beckwin]

Your absolute ignorance of very valid anti-nuking Japan arguments is pretty astounding. Top Pacific theater generals believed they were unnecessary; the 500k to 1 million casualties is widely accepted as an inflated figure and Japanese communications with the Russians indicated a readiness to surrender, especially in the face of a Russian (and US) invasion of the islands.

I love how on the internet, unwitting civilians are always portrayed as being evil bastards. Does talking about innocent people deserving death and mutilation make your dick salute the flag?

[Aurara]

There is no doubt tho beckwin, that thousands of japanese would have died had we invaded japan. Those guys were willing to fight to the end

[Kryssan]

Actually, you should all read a little history. This is why sometimes I think military courses should be offered in schools and colleges, not just to military academies and ROTC candidates.

We dropped the bombs because:

A) FDR no longer had a say~ he was gone.
B) Truman felt it was a necessary evil.
C) Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese refused the surrender terms because they wanted to keep the emperor. Potsdam called for the prompt and utter destruction of Japan should they fail to abide, and that along with item E) led significantly to the bomb. While Potsdam itself did not entail use of atomic weapons, Truman felt the bomb fit the bill. He's quoted with having saying given the chance he'd have done it again.
D) The Japanese military had not been under the control of the Japanese government for a major portion of the war. Japan went behind a lot of its military actions merely because the civvies no longer had the power to stop the military from doing whatever they wanted.
E) The Russians were poised to invade. Truman and several other members of the US gov't saw what they believed Stalin could become should he be allowed to have an even larger piece of the victory pie. There are even instances of where he basically taunted Stalin in conferences with what the US planned on doing... amusingly enough however Stalin already had a general idea. The bombs being dropped, if you'll notice, was right before the scheduled Russian main assault. Russia still owns the northern territories of Japan, which has become a major sticking point even in today's relations. In fact, if you dig deep into paperwork, Russia and Japan are still at war from WWII. They just have one hell of a cease fire. However, Truman's actions are given much credit with starting the Cold War (though some of this might be part of the blame associated with McCarthyism). Whether or not this is true, is anyone's conjecture at this stage in history.
F) After seeing the fight the Japanese military was willing to put forwards even during their final moments in a losing war, the American military cabinet did not want a land war. The easiest way to do that is to break not only the resolve of your enemy, but also to destroy any manufacturing capability they had remaining. Nukes take care of both.


Also, I'm kinda curious as to why my last post in this thread was quoted? Are you trying to add something to it or something else?

[Demosthenes11]

The whole point of war back then was to break the other countries moral/will to fight. We didn't have the rules we did now in war where civilians are more or less off limits. Nobody wanted to see flames of destruction kill hundreds of thousands of people almost instantly, but at the same time nobody wanted to drag out the war another few years and risk more american troops. War breaks down to: I want the other country to die and my people to live. It's pretty simple. If the bombs hadn't been dropped, many more US soldiers would have died. Or we could drop the bombs and end the war basically over night. I'm not even saying we should have dropped it, but it's stupid to look at this situation in the eyes of today and say OH FUCK THOSE MURDERER US TROOPS FUCK THEM. The world was hugely different. The president had a tough call and decided enough american troops had died in the war of 2 fronts. You are an idiot if you paint Truman as an evil man for this.

[Aurara]

The whole point of war back then was to break the other countries moral/will to fight. We didn't have the rules we did now in war where civilians are more or less off limits. Nobody wanted to see flames of destruction kill hundreds of thousands of people almost instantly, but at the same time nobody wanted to drag out the war another few years and risk more american troops. War breaks down to: I want the other country to die and my people to live. It's pretty simple. If the bombs hadn't been dropped, many more US soldiers would have died. Or we could drop the bombs and end the war basically over night. I'm not even saying we should have dropped it, but it's stupid to look at this situation in the eyes of today and say OH FUCK THOSE MURDERER US TROOPS FUCK THEM. The world was hugely different. The president had a tough call and decided enough american troops had died in the war of 2 fronts. You are an idiot if you paint Truman as an evil man for this.

this, this over and over.

[Celeste]

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

[Demosthenes11]

and he doesn't afraid of anything

[Kryssan]

No such thing as good or evil, silly Demo, just shades of gray.


I paint the man as nothing; I merely stated what the general consensus of American military historians and strategists agree on. Plenty of other opinions out there but this is the consensus. Whether or not you agree with it, or whether or not you derive Truman to be evil, is solely up to you. I haven't thought in terms of good and evil since the age of reason (yay George Carlin jokes[RiP funny guy]), so I'll leave that choice up to you guys. We know you'll decide on it anyway regardless.


However, this had much more to do with than just the lives of troops. It always does, speaking from a troop you see. For the past 7 years, and for at least the next 3. We are just the pawns, war is about the other pieces. Occassionally the pawns do something amazing, but generally speaking...

[Beckwin]

yeah demo11, I don't see anyone screaming OMG TRUMAN IS EVIL. As much as I disagree with how the bombs were handled, and even after considering the 20/20 hindsight that makes Truman's decisions far less ironclad, there still remains an understandable argument for ending the war promptly, which Truman did indeed accomplish. The one thing I will vehemently argue against and not hesitate to call evil is the notion that those people deserved to be nuked.

[Demosthenes11]

aye, and I would agree with you on that thought. Iirc there are tons of writings from Truman and advisors about the president's decision and how hard it was for him. It's honestly probably one of the hardest decisions one sane man has ever made

[noblemountain]

I'm an immigrant to Canada from Laos btw.

I would like to apologize on America's behalf for what we did to your country. I have been to Laos and helped clean up unexploded ordinance on several occasions and still cannot believe the widespread ignorance in this country of what we did there against people who were in no way at war with us.

On topic, I really don't think anyone here believes that civilians deserved to die. Looking back at decisions in history through rose-colored glasses is nice, but it isn't comparable to warfare of today. Granted, my family wasn't in this country during all this (I'm the first one in America...adopted from Mongolia when I was 4) but I think that we can all agree that this is a totally different situation and in no way would it be handled the same way. We are under no circumstances going to drop any sort of atomic weapon on NK. They may try and launch something short-range...but those "Fists of an Angry God" in the ocean off the coast will knock it down before it can reach it's target.

It comes down to will NK barrage Seoul and kill a few hundred thousand people or not really. That is fairly close to a worst case scenario as you can get here. At the end of the day, this is going to end exactly how China wants it to. However that may be.

[Aurara]

I dont doubt it. It was a lose lose situation for him publicity wise.

[Beckwin]

No doubt. I don't really think Truman did it sadistically; the chief reasons were to end the war and display power to the Russians (the latter is pretty bad but I'm willing to disassociate it and a desire to torture Japanese civilians).

I'm glad you agree on the point that those civilians certainly did not deserve to be killed/mutilated. In an ideal setting, it would've been great to drop a bomb on a bunch of empty munitions factories populated only by higher-level officers who directed the atrocities in China and Korea, and who tortured US POWs. Similarly, it would be great if we could just make NKs weapons go bye-bye and vaporize KJI, but there's no way of doing that without heavy civilian casualties, likely on both sides of the border.

Truman did what Truman did to end a war. We're not in the middle of a war right now; let's try to keep it that way.

[0ni0n]

I guess that's directed to me. I have relatives died in the war and they were civilians. They didn't perish from fire bombings, but they were executed and their bodies were mutilated and left out to rot. Did they deserve to die after they already surrendered? No. But they were killed anyway for some japanese foot soldier's past time amusement. While I am not going celebrate bombs being dropped on japan, excuse me if I feel indifferent regarding the deaths of the Japanese civilians as the direct result of their government being the aggressor and bane of everyone's existence. If that makes me a bad person, that's the cross I will have to bear.

If there's a war now, do I think civilians are fair game? No. I don't even condone waterboarding or harsh interrogation techniques on supposed terrorists. It may sound strange, but back then it was a different time.

[Beckwin]

I was more talking to Demos11 with that last post. As for you... I'd advise reconsidering your stance. You have very pertinent reasons to empathize with civilian casualties, yet you have chosen to misdirect them in order to not care about civilian casualties of nations whose actions you (understandably) don't care for.

[Demosthenes11]

pffft i don't even want to get involved in the NK shit at all. US needs to stay out and let the UN attempt to do something (looooooool)

Not our job

[0ni0n]

I was more talking to Demos11 with that last post. As for you... I'd advise reconsidering your stance. You have very pertinent reasons to empathize with civilian casualties, yet you have chosen to misdirect them in order to not care about civilian casualties of nations whose actions you (understandably) don't care for.

Beckwin, I'm afraid I won't be able to do that. I only hope that the war deaths can serve as a reminder of the pains japan has caused for everyone else during WWII. I bear no ill will toward japan or japanese individually. hell, anime was all i watched growing up and one of my exes is japanese. If I were the pilot I probably couldn't bring myself to hit the bottom, but I am ok with the fact they got a taste of what it was like.

About NK, it's moving its ICBMs. So it's better you gather some provisions and have a contingency plan in case scuffle erupts.