why does the usa hate fidel

[Mike Cl]

Perhaps, which is why I waffled by using the word "often."

Part of the reason the U.S. did so well after that insanity is that most of the world's manufacturing capabilities were lost, leaving the U.S. as almost the sole nation able to make things the world needed, with something like (I think) 50% of the capacity of the world. Hence the Golden Age we went through after the war. Those were not normal times, however, and now we're going back to being just one more manufacturing nation, as we were before the war.

The worlds Greatest Generation, I have often wondered, should have been called the worlds Luckiest Generation. 

No, going off to war, and all the average Joe's that died, were not lucky.  The world was in genuine danger; and our country was as well.  But in the end, we built stuff at an unbelievable pace and volume.  The Chinese and Russians died at an unbelievable pace and volume.  And the rest of most of the world beat the shit out of each other.  The two large oceans kept us safe.  We were not only left standing, we were growing.  And yes, that generation did a hell of a job!  But I don't see any other generation that would have done less.  That generation was severely pushed and pushed back.  What I'm trying to say, is that the circumstance they found themselves in was extraordinary and so was their response; I think any other generation would have responded extraordinarily as well. 

[Mike Cl]

I'm not sure how that is relevant to nuking a country that was about to surrender, but alright.

How do we know they were about to surrender???

[Shiranu]

How do we know they were about to surrender???

Because that's what they said? The military had basically been reduced to non-existence. Tokyo was being absolutely leveled by firebombings (arguably even more inhumane than the nukes we dropped... in two days of bombing in early March over 100.000 people were killed in Tokyo). The Soviets had begun invading Japanese Manchuria. We had intercepted transmissions for months before the bombs between officials in the government who wanted to find a peaceful ending without being absolutely fucked over. The U.S. media was instructed by the government not to release documents that showed the Japanese were looking for a peaceful resolution... and finally the General of War had drafted a surrender statement before the bombing that was almost identical in what we demanded after the bombing.

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply not justifiable.

But to actually say a little bit more about comparing the two... you're (not you Mike) are telling me there is a moral equivalence between nuking the major naval fleet of your enemy at the beginning of a war to destroy your enemies' military capabilities... and nuking civilians at the butt-end of a war you have already won?

I'm guessing the people you ask that to don't have a good answer... they just probably don't have one because it's such a pointless question.

[Baruch]

How do we know they were about to surrender???

If you know the facts from the Japanese side, the idea that they were about to surrender ... is not factual.  They were ready to surrender, as soon as the Allies declared them the winner (like keep all their stolen shit in China etc).  Frankly I wish we had let the Soviets occupy all of Korea and Japan, and rape every Japanese woman ... so that by now, their half Russian offspring (Russian-Asian no Amerasian this time) would have never invented Anime and Manga ;-) /sarc  I like the Japanese too Shiranu ... but not if I were alive in 1945.  My mother still hates them, forever.

On that basis, Hitler was ready to make terms, if we left him in power, and betrayed Stalin.  The anti-Hitler military plotters believed that was the case, provided they eliminated Hitler and put a nicer German in charge, like Rommel.  Again, let the Germans keep Poland, France etc.  The same kind of surrender monkey crap the world did in 1918 ... when we should have done scorched Earth to Germany instead of having an Armistice.  This is what FDR insisted on vs Churchill.  Stalin agreed with FDR.  Don't have an armistice with the Axis ... kill it dead, including German generals who didn't do enough to assassinate Hitler ... in the 1930s.

So yes, lets have an armistice again, and go fight the same war over again every 20 years (enough for the youth to recover) ... because war is profitable for all sides, provided that we only kill young men, and solve the unemployment problem that way ... and don't blow up too much shit that the upper classes have.  The point wasn't finding a peaceful resolution.  That ship already sailed or not at Pearl Harbor.  Peace negotiation was fine, up until 1939.  It is not wrong to kill people, provided you kill the right ones.  Pacifists should be dropped without parachutes over enemy territory.

[Baruch]

As it is, it was a very nearly losing thing for the Allies.  The Axis weren't dummies, just impatient and overly aggressive.  Similarly the Cuban Missile Crisis came within minutes of blowing up (if Castro had the launch codes, or that Russian submarine captain hadn't kept his cool under extreme provocation).  Peace isn't the issue ... if you want peace, you can get it, but only by exterminating the human race.  That is too high a price.

I was reading this week about the Heroes of the Telemark, how the failed efforts of British Engineering Commandos, and successful efforts by Norwegian partisans, slowed down the German nuclear program.  When I read about what the Gestapo did to Norwegian resistors, I just want to go punch a pacifist in the face (many Norwegians were pacifists, and thus collaborators in their own occupation).  If Sweden had declared war on Germany, and freed Norway and Denmark, this would have made life very hard for the Germans, instead they helped supply steel to the Germans, so much that one old guy I knew, who was in the US fleet in the Atlantic, told me at one point the US was on the verge of bombing Stockholm.  So much for quislings.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm not sure how that is relevant to nuking a country that was about to surrender, but alright.

"About to surrender"? Not until the last second was that sure. Gen. Anami, the War Minister was telling the nation "We will chew grass and eat dirt!" and "One hundred million dead for the Emperor!" (Japan had seventy million, so the Allies would have to provide the other thirty million. The second bomb convinced Anami to switch to the "end it, damnit!" side. Even then hard cord militarists were frantically searching the Imperial Palace for the recordings of the Voice of the Crane, hoping to find and destroy them. "About to surrender"...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply not justifiable. 

Crap.

[Mike Cl]

Because that's what they said? The military had basically been reduced to non-existence. Tokyo was being absolutely leveled by firebombings (arguably even more inhumane than the nukes we dropped... in two days of bombing in early March over 100.000 people were killed in Tokyo). The Soviets had begun invading Japanese Manchuria. We had intercepted transmissions for months before the bombs between officials in the government who wanted to find a peaceful ending without being absolutely fucked over. The U.S. media was instructed by the government not to release documents that showed the Japanese were looking for a peaceful resolution... and finally the General of War had drafted a surrender statement before the bombing that was almost identical in what we demanded after the bombing.

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply not justifiable.

But to actually say a little bit more about comparing the two... you're (not you Mike) are telling me there is a moral equivalence between nuking the major naval fleet of your enemy at the beginning of a war to destroy your enemies' military capabilities... and nuking civilians at the butt-end of a war you have already won?

I'm guessing the people you ask that to don't have a good answer... they just probably don't have one because it's such a pointless question.

History in hindsight is usually easier than history right now.  I would have hated to have been Truman at this period.  I have a feeling he would be damned if he did and damned if he didn't.  I too, decry the fire bombing of many axis cities; but I also realize war is not nice, nor is it really just.  I think I would have come down on the side that Truman did.  If people were to die--and they would--then make it them and not us.  I do not doubt the estimates of over a million dead and wounded if we had had to invade.  As for morals, it is hard to find them in war.  But the Japanese were exceptionally cruel on whom they conquered or were trying to conquer.  They did not do anything to mainland USA only because they couldn't.  They tried in sending over fire bomb balloons that were mainly a failure, except in Oregon.  If they could, they would have set all the US on fire.  And what they did to China and the other Asian nations they did get to is unspeakable.  On one hand it is tragic the Japanese leadership did not do what was best for their people; but they didn't.  I don't lose any sleep over using the two bombs.

[Shiranu]

"About to surrender"? Not until the last second was that sure. Gen. Anami, the War Minister was telling the nation "We will chew grass and eat dirt!" and "One hundred million dead for the Emperor!" (Japan had seventy million, so the Allies would have to provide the other thirty million. The second bomb convinced Anami to switch to the "end it, damnit!" side. Even then hard cord militarists were frantically searching the Imperial Palace for the recordings of the Voice of the Crane, hoping to find and destroy them. "About to surrender"...

And what army do you propose the non- surrendering Japan would have thrown at us? The utterly untrained peasants who were starving or burning? Or maybe the occupiers of China now being decimated by the Soviets.

What pile of ruble would they have made the sufficient supplies of weapons in? Where would they have gotten the iron to make the machinery capable of posing a threat to us?

The Japanese were done for and they knew it. You don't think the Japanese were the first people to ever tell their people the war is going swell, while plotting an end to it behind their back, do you?

[Baruch]

Anti-nuke feeling is partly White hate.  If Black homies in the lower E Side had used nukes on Brooklyn, then it would have been cool.

[Baruch]

And what army do you propose the non- surrendering Japan would have thrown at us? The utterly untrained peasants who were starving or burning? Or maybe the occupiers of China now being decimated by the Soviets.

What pile of ruble would they have made the sufficient supplies of weapons in? Where would they have gotten the iron to make the machinery capable of posing a threat to us?

The Japanese were done for and they knew it. You don't think the Japanese were the first people to ever tell their people the war is going swell, while plotting an end to it behind their back, do you?

Okinawa ... oh uneducated one.

[Shiranu]

History in hindsight is usually easier than history right now.  I would have hated to have been Truman at this period.  I have a feeling he would be damned if he did and damned if he didn't.  I too, decry the fire bombing of many axis cities; but I also realize war is not nice, nor is it really just.  I think I would have come down on the side that Truman did.  If people were to die--and they would--then make it them and not us.  I do not doubt the estimates of over a million dead and wounded if we had had to invade.  As for morals, it is hard to find them in war.  But the Japanese were exceptionally cruel on whom they conquered or were trying to conquer.  They did not do anything to mainland USA only because they couldn't.  They tried in sending over fire bomb balloons that were mainly a failure, except in Oregon.  If they could, they would have set all the US on fire.  And what they did to China and the other Asian nations they did get to is unspeakable.  On one hand it is tragic the Japanese leadership did not do what was best for their people; but they didn't.  I don't lose any sleep over using the two bombs.

"They did terrible things, so we did them as well." is hardly a convincing argument. It's eerily similar to what the villains always seem to say.

I'm sorry, but justifying immoral actions is what the immoral do. It's one thing to admit it was wrong and regret it, another to say it was wrong BUT...

[Baruch]

"They did terrible things, so we did them as well." is hardly a convincing argument. It's eerily similar to what the villains always seem to say.

I'm sorry, but justifying immoral actions is what the immoral do. It's one thing to admit it was wrong and regret it, another to say it was wrong BUT...

The Allies were villains.  Why are you against our villains, and for their villains?

[Mike Cl]

And what army do you propose the non- surrendering Japan would have thrown at us? The utterly untrained peasants who were starving or burning? Or maybe the occupiers of China now being decimated by the Soviets.

What pile of ruble would they have made the sufficient supplies of weapons in? Where would they have gotten the iron to make the machinery capable of posing a threat to us?

The Japanese were done for and they knew it. You don't think the Japanese were the first people to ever tell their people the war is going swell, while plotting an end to it behind their back, do you?

I don't see it as quite that simple.  Just because the peasants had no modern weapons, they could still fight with knives, shovels, etc.  And the sick fact is that I think they would have.  It's hard to remember that the people of Japan were religiously fanatical to their emperor.  They would do what they thought that god wanted them to do.  In Okinawa, women, with their children, threw themselves over cliffs into the rocks and sea below to keep from being captured by the Americans.  Invading the homeland would have produced a fevered pitch of fanatical religious fervor.   Their way of viewing the world was not our way; nor was their idea of personal behavior with honor, the same as ours.  They would have felt the only thing they could do would be to fight and die for god.

[Shiranu]

Okinawa ... oh uneducated one.

130.000 entrenched soldiers with limited mobility and no naval capabilities. Mainland America was shaking in its boots.

What actual, immediate threat did Japan pose and what means to produce an actual threat did they possess?

Knives and stones, while scary as an individual, do not so much frighten someone in an American cruiser or bomber.