Wow, this pisses me off - Page 7

On March 14 2011 12:37 Tzel wrote:


So yeah, Pearl Harbor was an unjustified attack on the USA, which had decided to be neutral in the war at that point. I know that. We went to war, killed tons of people, lost tons of people. I compared them because the USA killed over half a million people, the majority civilians, in a way that the Japanese could not directly counter, similar to the way that we could not muster enough forces to defend Pearl Harbor.

Please elaborate on why you find that biased and inaccurate. Just saying it is doesn't help me change my views that you hate so much, so what was the point of you posting that if you don't explain why?

On March 14 2011 21:43 Sm3agol wrote:

This isn't SC. Just because "they can't counter it" doesn't mean that it's cheap and lame, and that we shouldn't have bombed them. We were in an all-out war with japan, and despite us brutally kicking their butt all over the Pacific by that point in the war, they still refused to surrender, and were still mounting counter-attacks. They hadn't given up, and were still fighting everywhere. If anything, they were the inhumane idiots for continuing a war they hadn't even the slightest hope of winning. Their own leaders and code of honor got millions of their own people killed because they refused to surrender when they knew they were hopelessly beaten. Japan should have surrendered after Midway or Guadacanal. At that point in the war, there was no coming back. They lost whatever advantage they gained at Pearl Harbor, and there was no way they were going to compete with the US war machine in the long run. If we had not bombed Japan's civilian infrastructure, there is no telling how much longer the war would have carried on, and the only guaranteed fact was that not bombing them would not have saved any Japanese lives, and would only have costed the US thousands more in casualties.

To put it in a wierdly fitting SC2 setting. The US was the Terran up 10 bases to the Japanese zergs 1. The US is on Tier 5, and the Japanese have been blasted back to tier 2. The US has 500 marines, 10 BCs, 10 banshees, 20 tanks, and 5 ghosts. The Japanese have 100 banelings, zero anti-air, zero detection, and no production, just 60 idle drones and a hatch.
What would you do? First of all, the Japanese should have gg'ed about 5 minutes ago. But if they refuse.....what would you do? Attack with the marines or attack with the banshees and BCs? The end result to the Japanese people would have been the same.....the only difference is one way gets thousands of your own soldiers killed, while the other does not.

The reason you can't compare Pearl Harbor and the US bombing of Japan was that Pearl Harbor was an attempt at a 1 shot kill of the US. It was the only way possible to try and start the war on a somewhat even footing for the Japanese. They almost succeeded. Directly attacking civilians would have had zero effect on the American war machine, and would have been a waste of resources.


The US bombing of Japan was an attempt to end the war without physically invading Japan. I'll restate. Not bombing Japan(nukes, firebombs, etc) would not have saved Japanese lives or cities. It would only have resulted in thousands of additional US deaths as well as MORE destruction of Japanese infrastructure and more civilian casualties to the more indirect side of war, not to mention the Japanese plans to arm thousands of civilians with bamboo spears and banzai charge the US on the beach. The only ones at fault for the US bombing of Japan were the Japanese leaders for not ending the war sooner. It was painfully obvious after the late-war battles of Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima that the US could never lose to Japan, and carrying on the war would have zero effect on the war's outcome. And yet the Japanese fought on for another year and a half. Heck, even AFTER the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, there was a threat of a military coupe overthrowing the Japanese government which was considering surrender and forcing the war to go on even longer.

So I'll ask again. Why was it the US' fault for bombing Japan? Do you really just not know anything about the war, and just listen to random internet haters and random Wiki facts and form your opinions about an entire country from it? Really? Because you're obviously so much smarter and have so much more knowledge than people like MacAurthur and Truman. Do you honestly think the US believed it could have ended the war sooner with less casualties, and yet refused to do so?