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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
We've all seen the polls showing Trump as the forerunner in the massive GOP field with around 20% support. It's early. His name recognition is sky high. And with so many in the race, you can be a frontrunner with a big lead without a huge amount of support. But here's a number that is genuinely a big deal.
We've assumed that Donald Trump is not only capped in a national race but also likely capped about where he is now in a GOP primary race because his negatives are so high and there are so many people who not only do not support him, but who would never support him under any circumstance.
But check out this number from the latest Monmoth poll. Monmouth has polled the evolving GOP primary in April, June and July. And over that period Donald Trump's favorable ratings have gone from 28% to 52%, while his unfavorables have gone from 56% to 35%. To put that a different way he's gone from a -28% net approval to a +17% net approval . In other words, that's a 45 point shift in three months.
It's one of the truisms of politics that high negatives are close to impossible to change, especially if you're a well known person. While new (negative) facts can drive your numbers down, it's very hard to find ones that drive them back up. Like many truisms, this one is bogus. It's difficult to recover from high negatives. But it happens all the time. That said, this is a massive, massive shift, especially for someone who is extremely well-known to the public and must have very high name recognition numbers. One might also add that it is a remarkable move over the course of a period in which Trump has marching around like a clown leveling racial slurs at whole nationalities. But that's a more subjective judgment.
At least according to these Monmouth numbers, Republican voters' perceptions of Trump are roughly on par with one time frontrunner Jeb Bush. His unfavorables are much higher than Rubio's and Walker's. But his favorables are also higher than Walker's.
Source
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On August 05 2015 03:31 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +We've all seen the polls showing Trump as the forerunner in the massive GOP field with around 20% support. It's early. His name recognition is sky high. And with so many in the race, you can be a frontrunner with a big lead without a huge amount of support. But here's a number that is genuinely a big deal.
We've assumed that Donald Trump is not only capped in a national race but also likely capped about where he is now in a GOP primary race because his negatives are so high and there are so many people who not only do not support him, but who would never support him under any circumstance.
But check out this number from the latest Monmoth poll. Monmouth has polled the evolving GOP primary in April, June and July. And over that period Donald Trump's favorable ratings have gone from 28% to 52%, while his unfavorables have gone from 56% to 35%. To put that a different way he's gone from a -28% net approval to a +17% net approval . In other words, that's a 45 point shift in three months.
It's one of the truisms of politics that high negatives are close to impossible to change, especially if you're a well known person. While new (negative) facts can drive your numbers down, it's very hard to find ones that drive them back up. Like many truisms, this one is bogus. It's difficult to recover from high negatives. But it happens all the time. That said, this is a massive, massive shift, especially for someone who is extremely well-known to the public and must have very high name recognition numbers. One might also add that it is a remarkable move over the course of a period in which Trump has marching around like a clown leveling racial slurs at whole nationalities. But that's a more subjective judgment.
At least according to these Monmouth numbers, Republican voters' perceptions of Trump are roughly on par with one time frontrunner Jeb Bush. His unfavorables are much higher than Rubio's and Walker's. But his favorables are also higher than Walker's. Source
Tell me again how Trump doesn't represent a huge chunk the Republican party...?
Republicans have no one to blame for this besides themselves. They had the opportunity to nip this all in the bud 8 years ago and instead they fed Trump.
Instead of coming out strong and harsh on Trump when he was pushing that birther nonsense, Republicans twiddled their thumbs and said crap like "I think we should take the president at his word".
While conservatives look over all the Trump supporters, wondering how this is happening I can't help but think "You DID build that".
EDIT: Anyone know what time today Fox News is telling the RNC who gets to be in their first debate?
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I believe I read that the cut off is 5pm today, although I'm not sure if that's east or west coast
edit - looked at a couple of sources. Context clues indicate 5pm EST, but I didn't find one that explicitly said eastern over pacific
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On July 25 2015 02:11 always_winter wrote:
What constitutes a non-proliferation expert? I wonder if that comes on a business card.
A non-proliferation standpoint is an ideological standpoint. Enlisting labels as a source of discourse is entirely counterproductive. Non-proliferation is an ideology. It's simply yours.
On July 25 2015 03:41 always_winter wrote:
Non-proliferation expert is a title a think tank devised for one of its fellows. It's not a credential.
A non-proliferation expert is someone who has extensively studied, discussed and written on the issue of limiting/reducing the proliferation of WMDs, and whose entire work revolves around being knowledgeable on the topic (and its political, military and technical dimensions).
This, of course, does not mean that a non-proliferation expert cannot be wrong on a given matter. A community of experts can also sometimes collectively be too focused to take note of paradigmatic shifts that go beyond the scope of their focus. Yet in this case, we are talking about a specific deal whose details can be analyzed thoroughly, and a clear majority of experts on the issue of non-proliferation agree that it is a good deal from a non-proliferation standpoint.
You are right that wanting to limit/reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons is an ideological/political standpoint, but assessing whether or not a diplomatic deal does achieve that objective (or at least is a step in the right direction) is not a matter of ideology. If the objective is to reduce the chance that Iran gets a nuclear weapon in the near future, then based on the facts of the deal, the agreement is unambiguously a good one.
On July 25 2015 02:11 always_winter wrote:
Imagining the deal from a non-proliferation standpoint relies on a series of assumptions, the first of which is that Iran isn't within reach of a developmental breakthrough already. No one outside of Iran knows the current stage of the program; Iran could already be nuclear. It's only logical Iran would keep that hand close to the chest.
You are imagining assumptions where there are none needed. Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon. We are sufficiently informed about Iran's nuclear infrastructure to know this, and to know that the deal that was struck provides the necessary processes to keep being sufficiently informed about its infrastructure in the years ahead.
On July 25 2015 02:11 always_winter wrote:
Another is the belief Iran's nuclear ambitions could possibly be limited to energy, an astronomically naïve insinuation which ironically exhibits an incredibly poor understanding of Middle Eastern politics and the incredibly complex dynamism between increasingly non-rational state actors. A child could understand the concept of non-proliferation; similarly a child could be persuaded to view the entire world order through a single lens. That's dangerous.
Your first sentence consists in the analytically- and argumentatively-empty conflating of two different issues. If your point is that we need to look at Iran through other lenses than the one of non-proliferation, that is a valid argument that I will address below. This certainly does not mean, however, that there is anything remotely naïve in how the deal approaches the issue of non-proliferation with regards to Iran's nuclear programme. Again, on the issue of non-proliferation, the deal is a good one. Let's now move to the other issue you're raising, namely what the deal means with regards to Iran as a regional player.
On August 03 2015 22:32 always_winter wrote:
Khamenei is the supreme authority in Iran. He has more power and authority relative to his constituency than any elected official on the planet, including the POTUS. His will dictates Iranian policy.
It exemplifies the issue of pigeon-holing oneself to a single lens from which to see an entire world order; that every state actor could be viewed with absolute relativity. Iran is not relative. It does not fit into a nice, little peaceful "non-proliferation standpoint." If you seek expertise, seek Middle Eastern experts. Seek people who actually understand the nature of the beast you wish to tame.
On August 03 2015 22:54 always_winter wrote:
Khamenei is fanatical, but as a state sovereign he must act rationally. He won't risk annihilation by engaging in nuclear warfare with Israel and the United States. He has claimed responsibility for both the 2006 Lebanon War and Gaza War. During both engagements his capacity for military support was highly constricted under international sanctions. Imagine what he will do with a $12 billion paycheck.
I agree degenerative ideology is losing traction in Iran, particularly among youth. It doesn't change the fact religious fanatics hold the reigns.
[...]Why would Khamenei be opposed to a deal in his favor? Why would he be opposed to something which advances his agenda, particularly when he views the deal as a victory over the other party, a nation which he regards as the "Great Satan." I'm not sure which logic you're referring to.
On August 03 2015 23:32 always_winter wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2015 23:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 03 2015 23:06 Gorsameth wrote:
Still have not seen any viable alternative solution from anyone that disagrees with the treaty. There isn't one, just empty rhetoric, chest beating, and shitty Beach Boys remixes. It's actually responses like this which make intellectual discussion on a gaming forum a fool's errand. Khomeini has distributed a 416-page manifesto outlining his political ideology; the Iranian equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine or Roosevelt Corollary. There's nothing empty about that rhetoric. Read the damn thing instead of regurgitating idealism from an administration you admire. Guess what? I admire it, too. I think Obama is one of the most intelligent presidents in recent memory. The Iran Deal is a gross intellectual misstep riddled with misplaced idealism.
On August 03 2015 23:49 always_winter wrote:
I'm going to pull the big dick card for just a second and ask, how many of you have even studied Iran? How many of you have spent thousands of dollars pursuing a highly impractical degree in International Relations, learning from men far more intelligent than yourself and far more well-versed in world affairs? I studied Middle Eastern policy from a man recalled to Egypt to draft its new constitution. That's how big his dick is. Mine's much smaller.
I guess I just find it funny people are so willing to blindly regurgitate the things the hear in the media, often from positions of authority from people they respect or admire. I mean for Christ's sake one of these dudes didn't even know Khomeini was the supreme leader of Iran.
There are several misrepresentations in the posts quoted above.
First, the deal itself: there is nothing "idealistic" about how it addresses the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities. The deal is pragmatic and does not rely or depend on idealistic views of the Iranian regime. If it does not hold up its end of the bargain, it will be punished accordingly. I just wanted to address this again since you keep conflating the issues of Iran's nuclear capabilities and of the state's role in the region. To move to the latter, I suppose you are also arguing that there are "idealistic" interpretations of the deal's effects on how Iran will behave in the region, and that this runs counter to how Middle East experts are reading the situation. This brings me to my next two points.
With regards to your referring to Middle East experts (right after disparaging non-proliferation experts, way to be consistent in your treatment of experts) and to your IR credentials, I happen to be a research fellow in International Relations (specifically security studies) who works in the same research centre as several scholars working on Middle East issues, and you are either deliberately misrepresenting what Middle East experts think of the deal or simply ignorant on the topic. Most experts on the region modestly believe that the future impact of the deal with regards to Iran's role in the region is still relatively incertain, but that the broad lines that seem likely are: not much of a positive improvement in the short-term in terms of stability (with some arguing that there might be a temporary negative effect due to an increase in funding of proxy militant groups, and others arguing that Iran will instead try to gain respect as a responsible power by temporarily maintaining current policies while at the same time trying to improve its diplomatic relations with some of the other powers in the region), but positive changes in the middle-term and long-term.
Indeed, what you are simplistically reducing as a deal "advancing the adgenda of Khamenei" in fact may well contribute to bringing about long-term changes in the ideological foundations of the regime, or at least in the balance of power between the offices of the Supreme Leader and of the President. It is too early to have extreme confidence that significant changes will happen, but Iran's growing middle class largely contributed to putting Rohani in power and it has been very supportive of his conciliatory stance towards the West. The benefits from the lifting of sanctions will further lead the population to be much more critical of aggressive policies that would result in new sanctions being put in place. Khamenei's attempt to keep his hold on the defining of the state's foreign policy (through the document he released) in the wake of a major foreign policy success by Rohani is hardly surprising and is certainly not indicative that Iran will keep an aggressive stance in the middle- and long- terms, and that the internal balance of power will not progressively shift in a positive direction towards the office of the president. This would contribute to an Iran more conciliatory towards the West and more interested in being a "responsible" player in the region in order to push its interests economically rather than militarily. Again, it is too early to make predictions, but the deal was clearly a push in the right direction on the international level from a diplomatic point-of-view and an internal political success for the moderate Iranian political players rather than the hardliners, which is a positive development as well.
On August 03 2015 23:49 always_winter wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2015 23:37 Gorsameth wrote:
Still waiting for that alternative solution. Check my recent posts on the subject; it's all been articulated. I'll admit the one logical inconsistency I've adhered to is not always articulating myself in the same fashion, often times giving one-liners like my boy Bernie, Jr. I think the difference is it's always in jest and rarely am I actually committing to the argument or projecting real conviction.
No, at no point did you articulate anything else than "keep the sanctions going and hope for the best", which is a ridiculously out-of-touch position to hold:
- with regards to Iran's nuclear program, the sanctions have been ineffective in preventing its advancement.
- with regards to Iran's role in the region, the sanctions have been ineffective in preventing Iran from engaging in conflicts abroad, either directly or through proxies. While removing the sanctions will make it easier for Iran to fund Shiite groups engaged in conflict abroad if they want to, working diplomatically with Iran is the best option available to improve the situation in the region from a long-term perspective.
- with regards to the sanctions themselves, you apparently seem to be missing the fact that the sanctions regime would collapse anyway if the U.S. decided to ignore the other powers that were part to the negotiations and if it declared the deal null and void.
In short, you have no solution whatsoever to improve the situation in the region and to keep Iran's nuclear programme away from a nuclear weapon. You also seem quite ignorant of how most Middle East experts (who do not have ideological affiliations that make them critical of anything that even remotely benefits Iran) see the agreement.
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On July 26 2015 09:17 killa_robot wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2015 16:42 kwizach wrote:On July 25 2015 11:57 RenSC2 wrote:On July 25 2015 10:37 Millitron wrote:
I think it's the peak of irony that the US, the only country on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon on people, is going around saying other people are too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. It's like a drunk driver manning a DUI checkpoint, or a pot-smoking DEA agent. The two 1945 bombs were considered justified due to the fanatical nature of the opponent and the fact that the opponent directly brought us into the war through an attack. Many historians believe that the Japanese casualties would be significantly higher had we not dropped those bombs. This is a view that was initially put forward by a number of historians in the years that followed WW2, but it has been significantly disputed since then. Keep in mind as well that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were mostly civilians. The use of the bombs is a tragedy of immense proportions. Who has disputed that? They had to be civilians to stop the Japanese people. Attacking a military establishment would have just pissed them off. If you look into history you'd see the American choose their locations very carefully. Places that would cause the devastation needed to dissuade the Japanese, without rallying them against America.
The view that using the atomic bomb twice was a necessity to end the war is very much disputed among scholars. Several high-ranking military officials in charge during WW2 publicly made it known that they did not consider it militarily necessary to drop the bomb. And by the way, there's a reason the deliberate killing of civilians is now considered a war crime.
On July 26 2015 10:57 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2015 09:52 Stratos_speAr wrote:On July 26 2015 09:17 killa_robot wrote:On July 25 2015 16:42 kwizach wrote:On July 25 2015 11:57 RenSC2 wrote:On July 25 2015 10:37 Millitron wrote:
I think it's the peak of irony that the US, the only country on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon on people, is going around saying other people are too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. It's like a drunk driver manning a DUI checkpoint, or a pot-smoking DEA agent. The two 1945 bombs were considered justified due to the fanatical nature of the opponent and the fact that the opponent directly brought us into the war through an attack. Many historians believe that the Japanese casualties would be significantly higher had we not dropped those bombs. This is a view that was initially put forward by a number of historians in the years that followed WW2, but it has been significantly disputed since then. Keep in mind as well that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were mostly civilians. The use of the bombs is a tragedy of immense proportions. Who has disputed that? They had to be civilians to stop the Japanese people. Attacking a military establishment would have just pissed them off. If you look into history you'd see the American choose their locations very carefully. Places that would cause the devastation needed to dissuade the Japanese, without rallying them against America. Basically everything you've said about the bombings is the whitewashed, American version of the events. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are very contentious topics in the scholarly/academic community. Historical experts are very divided on the interpretation of these events. Both nonsense. Americans were bombing Japan indiscriminately and the firebombing of Tokyo was more of a warcrime than Hiroshima was. Morality didn't come into the question, there was simply a desire to bomb the enemy into submission. The suggestion that nukes were somehow crossing a line in World War II is nonsense, that line was crossed a long, long time before then. Hiroshima wasn't uniquely bad, it wasn't even unusual, it was simply the latest incident in an extremely long line of similar incidents. It wasn't that Hiroshima was somehow needed to convince the Japanese due to the awesome power of the nuclear bomb, nor was it a completely unjustified transgression, it was just another Monday.
The idea that the Hiroshima bombing was "just another Monday" is so far from the truth it would be comical if we weren't talking about the killing of around 100,000 people. Just because the bombing of Tokyo probably resulted in slightly more immediate deaths does not make either event a routine occurrence. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were politically, militarily and technically out of the ordinary, and they were treated as such by the scientists, politicians and military officers involved.
On July 26 2015 15:58 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2015 14:55 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2015 11:38 DannyJ wrote:
The fact that the US made so many Purple Hearts in anticipation of the invasion of Japan that those medals were still in stock 6 decades after the war ended show just how bloody it could have been. Not to mention the Russian advancement into Manchuria was probably a bit concerning to Western powers.
I read an article written by one of the high ranking military men at the time. He said not once did anyone ever mention the morality or need to use the bomb. To them it was just a weapon that cost a massive amount of resources and was really efficient at blowing shit up. There was really nothing to question. It might seem odd to us 70 years later sitting at our computers, but I'm sure it wasn't to people who were actually in charge of trying to defeat an enemy years into the most cataclysmic conflict in human history. Everything everyone did in WW2 was horrible... And 70 years later callously killing civilians as collateral damage just so your own soldiers face less risk has become the norm.More than anything, it shows that every single nation will cross every single line if things look bad enough. It's rather disheartening. As for whether or not using atomic weapons were justified. The only real controversy was the entrance of Russia into the war against Japan. There are some historians that believe Japan would have surrendered soon after Russia had entered the war against them and that they weren't given enough time to do so. However, there is evidence that they were still planning to keep fighting even after the announcement of Russia and after the first bomb was dropped. So I think it's a pretty dubious claim by the historians that try to make that point. A US invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost the United States an estimated 500,000 dead soldiers. That estimate came from people who had planned and executed D-Day as well as the invasion of many small Japanese held islands. So they had a pretty good idea of what it would take to invade Japan and weren't sugar-coating it. Japan would have likely lost significantly more people than that between military engagements, bombings, and the suicides. Dropping the two nuclear bombs almost assuredly saved millions of lives. Is there still some controversy? Yes. But it's more like the controversy between Intelligent Design and Evolution than a real controversy.
No, the debate is absolutely not like the ID/evolution debate. Your disparaging of the scholarly work on the topic as "a dubious claim by the historians that try to make that point" is pretty indicative of the fact that you are simply not familiar with the relevant research. It is very much a serious ongoing debate, and the view that dropping the atomic bombs was not necessary to bring about an eventual Japanese surrender was even shared by several experts and military officers at the time of the events. I'm not claiming I know for a fact Japan would have surrendered shortly after (or by the end of the year) even without the bombs, but to claim that there is no serious debate on the issue is simply wrong.
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So the way I see it, there were two real alternatives to nuking Japan:
1. Wait until the Japanese decide to surrender.
2. Invade Japan, which would probably at least double the number of U.S. soldiers killed, and probably decimate (quite literally) the Japanese population.
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More or less what I expected.
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On August 05 2015 07:31 ticklishmusic wrote:
So the way I see it, there were two real alternatives to nuking Japan:
1. Wait until the Japanese decide to surrender.
2. Invade Japan, which would probably at least double the number of U.S. soldiers killed, and probably decimate (quite literally) the Japanese population.
Then the way you see it is uninformed. There was a spectrum of diplomatic and military options available to U.S. decision-makers that were not limited to those two plus using the atomic bomb. I suggest you read J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update", in M. J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 11-37.
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On August 05 2015 07:49 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 07:31 ticklishmusic wrote:
So the way I see it, there were two real alternatives to nuking Japan:
1. Wait until the Japanese decide to surrender.
2. Invade Japan, which would probably at least double the number of U.S. soldiers killed, and probably decimate (quite literally) the Japanese population. Then the way you see it is uninformed. There was a spectrum of diplomatic and military options available to U.S. decision-makers that were not limited to those two plus using the atomic bomb. I suggest you read J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update", in M. J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 11-37.
Could you quickly explain us what were those possible options ? I'm interested.
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How about the one where we send 1million+ men (boys) to their death? Or maybe the one where we let the Soviets take japan? Both sound awesome!
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United States42024 Posts
On August 05 2015 07:16 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2015 09:17 killa_robot wrote:On July 25 2015 16:42 kwizach wrote:On July 25 2015 11:57 RenSC2 wrote:On July 25 2015 10:37 Millitron wrote:
I think it's the peak of irony that the US, the only country on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon on people, is going around saying other people are too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. It's like a drunk driver manning a DUI checkpoint, or a pot-smoking DEA agent. The two 1945 bombs were considered justified due to the fanatical nature of the opponent and the fact that the opponent directly brought us into the war through an attack. Many historians believe that the Japanese casualties would be significantly higher had we not dropped those bombs. This is a view that was initially put forward by a number of historians in the years that followed WW2, but it has been significantly disputed since then. Keep in mind as well that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were mostly civilians. The use of the bombs is a tragedy of immense proportions. Who has disputed that? They had to be civilians to stop the Japanese people. Attacking a military establishment would have just pissed them off. If you look into history you'd see the American choose their locations very carefully. Places that would cause the devastation needed to dissuade the Japanese, without rallying them against America. The view that using the atomic bomb twice was a necessity to end the war is very much disputed among scholars. Several high-ranking military officials in charge during WW2 publicly made it known that they did not consider it militarily necessary to drop the bomb. And by the way, there's a reason the deliberate killing of civilians is now considered a war crime. Show nested quote +On July 26 2015 10:57 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2015 09:52 Stratos_speAr wrote:On July 26 2015 09:17 killa_robot wrote:On July 25 2015 16:42 kwizach wrote:On July 25 2015 11:57 RenSC2 wrote:On July 25 2015 10:37 Millitron wrote:
I think it's the peak of irony that the US, the only country on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon on people, is going around saying other people are too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. It's like a drunk driver manning a DUI checkpoint, or a pot-smoking DEA agent. The two 1945 bombs were considered justified due to the fanatical nature of the opponent and the fact that the opponent directly brought us into the war through an attack. Many historians believe that the Japanese casualties would be significantly higher had we not dropped those bombs. This is a view that was initially put forward by a number of historians in the years that followed WW2, but it has been significantly disputed since then. Keep in mind as well that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were mostly civilians. The use of the bombs is a tragedy of immense proportions. Who has disputed that? They had to be civilians to stop the Japanese people. Attacking a military establishment would have just pissed them off. If you look into history you'd see the American choose their locations very carefully. Places that would cause the devastation needed to dissuade the Japanese, without rallying them against America. Basically everything you've said about the bombings is the whitewashed, American version of the events. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are very contentious topics in the scholarly/academic community. Historical experts are very divided on the interpretation of these events. Both nonsense. Americans were bombing Japan indiscriminately and the firebombing of Tokyo was more of a warcrime than Hiroshima was. Morality didn't come into the question, there was simply a desire to bomb the enemy into submission. The suggestion that nukes were somehow crossing a line in World War II is nonsense, that line was crossed a long, long time before then. Hiroshima wasn't uniquely bad, it wasn't even unusual, it was simply the latest incident in an extremely long line of similar incidents. It wasn't that Hiroshima was somehow needed to convince the Japanese due to the awesome power of the nuclear bomb, nor was it a completely unjustified transgression, it was just another Monday. The idea that the Hiroshima bombing was "just another Monday" is so far from the truth it would be comical if we weren't talking about the killing of around 100,000 people. Just because the bombing of Tokyo probably resulted in slightly more immediate deaths does not make either event a routine occurrence. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were politically, militarily and technically out of the ordinary, and they were treated as such by the scientists, politicians and military officers involved. Show nested quote +On July 26 2015 15:58 RenSC2 wrote:On July 26 2015 14:55 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2015 11:38 DannyJ wrote:
The fact that the US made so many Purple Hearts in anticipation of the invasion of Japan that those medals were still in stock 6 decades after the war ended show just how bloody it could have been. Not to mention the Russian advancement into Manchuria was probably a bit concerning to Western powers.
I read an article written by one of the high ranking military men at the time. He said not once did anyone ever mention the morality or need to use the bomb. To them it was just a weapon that cost a massive amount of resources and was really efficient at blowing shit up. There was really nothing to question. It might seem odd to us 70 years later sitting at our computers, but I'm sure it wasn't to people who were actually in charge of trying to defeat an enemy years into the most cataclysmic conflict in human history. Everything everyone did in WW2 was horrible... And 70 years later callously killing civilians as collateral damage just so your own soldiers face less risk has become the norm.More than anything, it shows that every single nation will cross every single line if things look bad enough. It's rather disheartening. As for whether or not using atomic weapons were justified. The only real controversy was the entrance of Russia into the war against Japan. There are some historians that believe Japan would have surrendered soon after Russia had entered the war against them and that they weren't given enough time to do so. However, there is evidence that they were still planning to keep fighting even after the announcement of Russia and after the first bomb was dropped. So I think it's a pretty dubious claim by the historians that try to make that point. A US invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost the United States an estimated 500,000 dead soldiers. That estimate came from people who had planned and executed D-Day as well as the invasion of many small Japanese held islands. So they had a pretty good idea of what it would take to invade Japan and weren't sugar-coating it. Japan would have likely lost significantly more people than that between military engagements, bombings, and the suicides. Dropping the two nuclear bombs almost assuredly saved millions of lives. Is there still some controversy? Yes. But it's more like the controversy between Intelligent Design and Evolution than a real controversy. No, the debate is absolutely not like the ID/evolution debate. Your disparaging of the scholarly work on the topic as "a dubious claim by the historians that try to make that point" is pretty indicative of the fact that you are simply not familiar with the relevant research. It is very much a serious ongoing debate, and the view that dropping the atomic bombs was not necessary to bring about an eventual Japanese surrender was even shared by several experts and military officers at the time of the events. I'm not claiming I know for a fact Japan would have surrendered shortly after (or by the end of the year) even without the bombs, but to claim that there is no serious debate on the issue is simply wrong.
The argument that "OMG warcrime!!!!" ignores the fact that warcrimes were committed daily. The argument that "OMG civilians!!!!" ignores the fact that civilians were massacred daily. Hiroshima was the testing of a new delivery system for the same atrocities as before. It was not uniquely evil, nor uniquely devastating, certainly not uniquely criminal. It was uniquely atomic and thats about as much as you can say about it. This is a war in which the United States tested chemical weapons on their own Asian soldiers to see how the Japanese physiology might respond differently to them if used in the field. We were long, long past giving a shit about morality.
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On August 05 2015 07:49 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 07:31 ticklishmusic wrote:
So the way I see it, there were two real alternatives to nuking Japan:
1. Wait until the Japanese decide to surrender.
2. Invade Japan, which would probably at least double the number of U.S. soldiers killed, and probably decimate (quite literally) the Japanese population. Then the way you see it is uninformed. There was a spectrum of diplomatic and military options available to U.S. decision-makers that were not limited to those two plus using the atomic bomb. I suggest you read J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update", in M. J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 11-37.
I'll admit that I'm probably presenting a false dichotomy, but instead of referencing a book you could just outline them since you're so very clearly an expert on the subject. I mean, clearly you've read the 20 pages in the book which you've given a wonderful citation for. Heck, as an expert you may even have it sitting on your bedside table. On the other hand, I haven't read it and don't have a copy.
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On August 05 2015 07:57 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 07:49 kwizach wrote:On August 05 2015 07:31 ticklishmusic wrote:
So the way I see it, there were two real alternatives to nuking Japan:
1. Wait until the Japanese decide to surrender.
2. Invade Japan, which would probably at least double the number of U.S. soldiers killed, and probably decimate (quite literally) the Japanese population. Then the way you see it is uninformed. There was a spectrum of diplomatic and military options available to U.S. decision-makers that were not limited to those two plus using the atomic bomb. I suggest you read J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update", in M. J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 11-37. Could you quickly explain us what were those possible options ? I'm interested.
On August 05 2015 08:28 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 07:49 kwizach wrote:On August 05 2015 07:31 ticklishmusic wrote:
So the way I see it, there were two real alternatives to nuking Japan:
1. Wait until the Japanese decide to surrender.
2. Invade Japan, which would probably at least double the number of U.S. soldiers killed, and probably decimate (quite literally) the Japanese population. Then the way you see it is uninformed. There was a spectrum of diplomatic and military options available to U.S. decision-makers that were not limited to those two plus using the atomic bomb. I suggest you read J. Samuel Walker, "The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update", in M. J. Hogan (ed.), Hiroshima in History and Memory, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 11-37. I'll admit that I'm probably presenting a false dichotomy, but instead of referencing a book you could just outline them since you're so very clearly an expert on the subject. I mean, clearly you've read the 20 pages in the book which you've given a wonderful citation for. Heck, as an expert you may even have it sitting on your bedside table. On the other hand, I haven't read it and don't have a copy.
Three main alternate options to an invasion of Kyushu (and later Honshu) were considered in June-July 1945, in particular during the June 18 meeting at the White House between Truman, the Joint Chiefs and the Navy & War Secretaries. Those were 1) the intensification of the bombing and blockade of Japan, 2) the continuation at the same levels of the bombing and blockade of Japan in order to wait for the Soviet entry into the war with Japan, and 3) mitigating the demand by the U.S. of an unconditional surrender of Japan, by allowing the Japanese to keep the institution of the emperor (something that was allowed later anyway). These were of course not mutually exclusive, and they constituted credible alternatives that were weighed by the decision-makers at the time (there were objections against each, of course) against the prospect of an invasion (the fatal casualties for which [Kyushu and Honshu] were estimated at around 46,000 American deaths by the Joint War Plans Committee, not the "1million+" figure heliusx just put forward and the 500,000 - 1 million figure that was later claimed by Truman and some of his advisers).
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On August 05 2015 08:08 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 07:16 kwizach wrote:On July 26 2015 09:17 killa_robot wrote:On July 25 2015 16:42 kwizach wrote:On July 25 2015 11:57 RenSC2 wrote:On July 25 2015 10:37 Millitron wrote:
I think it's the peak of irony that the US, the only country on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon on people, is going around saying other people are too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. It's like a drunk driver manning a DUI checkpoint, or a pot-smoking DEA agent. The two 1945 bombs were considered justified due to the fanatical nature of the opponent and the fact that the opponent directly brought us into the war through an attack. Many historians believe that the Japanese casualties would be significantly higher had we not dropped those bombs. This is a view that was initially put forward by a number of historians in the years that followed WW2, but it has been significantly disputed since then. Keep in mind as well that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were mostly civilians. The use of the bombs is a tragedy of immense proportions. Who has disputed that? They had to be civilians to stop the Japanese people. Attacking a military establishment would have just pissed them off. If you look into history you'd see the American choose their locations very carefully. Places that would cause the devastation needed to dissuade the Japanese, without rallying them against America. The view that using the atomic bomb twice was a necessity to end the war is very much disputed among scholars. Several high-ranking military officials in charge during WW2 publicly made it known that they did not consider it militarily necessary to drop the bomb. And by the way, there's a reason the deliberate killing of civilians is now considered a war crime. On July 26 2015 10:57 KwarK wrote:On July 26 2015 09:52 Stratos_speAr wrote:On July 26 2015 09:17 killa_robot wrote:On July 25 2015 16:42 kwizach wrote:On July 25 2015 11:57 RenSC2 wrote:On July 25 2015 10:37 Millitron wrote:
I think it's the peak of irony that the US, the only country on Earth to ever use a nuclear weapon on people, is going around saying other people are too irresponsible to have nuclear weapons. It's like a drunk driver manning a DUI checkpoint, or a pot-smoking DEA agent. The two 1945 bombs were considered justified due to the fanatical nature of the opponent and the fact that the opponent directly brought us into the war through an attack. Many historians believe that the Japanese casualties would be significantly higher had we not dropped those bombs. This is a view that was initially put forward by a number of historians in the years that followed WW2, but it has been significantly disputed since then. Keep in mind as well that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims were mostly civilians. The use of the bombs is a tragedy of immense proportions. Who has disputed that? They had to be civilians to stop the Japanese people. Attacking a military establishment would have just pissed them off. If you look into history you'd see the American choose their locations very carefully. Places that would cause the devastation needed to dissuade the Japanese, without rallying them against America. Basically everything you've said about the bombings is the whitewashed, American version of the events. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are very contentious topics in the scholarly/academic community. Historical experts are very divided on the interpretation of these events. Both nonsense. Americans were bombing Japan indiscriminately and the firebombing of Tokyo was more of a warcrime than Hiroshima was. Morality didn't come into the question, there was simply a desire to bomb the enemy into submission. The suggestion that nukes were somehow crossing a line in World War II is nonsense, that line was crossed a long, long time before then. Hiroshima wasn't uniquely bad, it wasn't even unusual, it was simply the latest incident in an extremely long line of similar incidents. It wasn't that Hiroshima was somehow needed to convince the Japanese due to the awesome power of the nuclear bomb, nor was it a completely unjustified transgression, it was just another Monday. The idea that the Hiroshima bombing was "just another Monday" is so far from the truth it would be comical if we weren't talking about the killing of around 100,000 people. Just because the bombing of Tokyo probably resulted in slightly more immediate deaths does not make either event a routine occurrence. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were politically, militarily and technically out of the ordinary, and they were treated as such by the scientists, politicians and military officers involved. On July 26 2015 15:58 RenSC2 wrote:On July 26 2015 14:55 WolfintheSheep wrote:On July 26 2015 11:38 DannyJ wrote:
The fact that the US made so many Purple Hearts in anticipation of the invasion of Japan that those medals were still in stock 6 decades after the war ended show just how bloody it could have been. Not to mention the Russian advancement into Manchuria was probably a bit concerning to Western powers.
I read an article written by one of the high ranking military men at the time. He said not once did anyone ever mention the morality or need to use the bomb. To them it was just a weapon that cost a massive amount of resources and was really efficient at blowing shit up. There was really nothing to question. It might seem odd to us 70 years later sitting at our computers, but I'm sure it wasn't to people who were actually in charge of trying to defeat an enemy years into the most cataclysmic conflict in human history. Everything everyone did in WW2 was horrible... And 70 years later callously killing civilians as collateral damage just so your own soldiers face less risk has become the norm.More than anything, it shows that every single nation will cross every single line if things look bad enough. It's rather disheartening. As for whether or not using atomic weapons were justified. The only real controversy was the entrance of Russia into the war against Japan. There are some historians that believe Japan would have surrendered soon after Russia had entered the war against them and that they weren't given enough time to do so. However, there is evidence that they were still planning to keep fighting even after the announcement of Russia and after the first bomb was dropped. So I think it's a pretty dubious claim by the historians that try to make that point. A US invasion of the Japanese mainland would have cost the United States an estimated 500,000 dead soldiers. That estimate came from people who had planned and executed D-Day as well as the invasion of many small Japanese held islands. So they had a pretty good idea of what it would take to invade Japan and weren't sugar-coating it. Japan would have likely lost significantly more people than that between military engagements, bombings, and the suicides. Dropping the two nuclear bombs almost assuredly saved millions of lives. Is there still some controversy? Yes. But it's more like the controversy between Intelligent Design and Evolution than a real controversy. No, the debate is absolutely not like the ID/evolution debate. Your disparaging of the scholarly work on the topic as "a dubious claim by the historians that try to make that point" is pretty indicative of the fact that you are simply not familiar with the relevant research. It is very much a serious ongoing debate, and the view that dropping the atomic bombs was not necessary to bring about an eventual Japanese surrender was even shared by several experts and military officers at the time of the events. I'm not claiming I know for a fact Japan would have surrendered shortly after (or by the end of the year) even without the bombs, but to claim that there is no serious debate on the issue is simply wrong. The argument that "OMG warcrime!!!!" ignores the fact that warcrimes were committed daily. The argument that "OMG civilians!!!!" ignores the fact that civilians were massacred daily. Hiroshima was the testing of a new delivery system for the same atrocities as before. It was not uniquely evil, nor uniquely devastating, certainly not uniquely criminal. It was uniquely atomic and thats about as much as you can say about it. This is a war in which the United States tested chemical weapons on their own Asian soldiers to see how the Japanese physiology might respond differently to them if used in the field. We were long, long past giving a shit about morality.
I'm not sure where in my posts you've seen me write something akin to "OMG warcrime!!!!" and "OMG civilians!!!!", so if you want this to be an intelligent discussion perhaps you should refrain from strawmanning my points. I never claimed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unique occurrences of military violence enacted upon civilian populations. I was responding to your claim that those events were "just another Monday" and "not unusual", which is ridiculously inaccurate. They were out of the ordinary and seen as such by policymakers and military officers on both sides of the war. Again, this is not to say that there weren't plenty of other horrific occurrences of large scale violence upon civilian populations during the war. Also, the idea that American policymakers were "long past giving a shit about morality" is factually false, as evidenced by the testimonies of several high-ranking civilian and military officials at the time as well as by meeting records.
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United States19573 Posts
It should not be taken as a given that attacking a civilian population in a state that you are at war with is a war crime. This may be widely accepted now, but it lacks logic and shatters the basic theory of governance. If a government is a legitimate government (not always true, for instance Saddam Hussein likely was not) their actions are necessarily imputed to the citizens, because if that was not true, they would not be a legitimate government. Those civilians are most likely powering the war machine that is at war with your country, they are at war with you.
If bombing civilians is a war crime, then people who don't like anything a government does are not obligated to pay taxes, for instance.
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On August 05 2015 08:39 cLutZ wrote:
It should not be taken as a given that attacking a civilian population in a state that you are at war with is a war crime. This may be widely accepted now, but it lacks logic and shatters the basic theory of governance. If a government is a legitimate government (not always true, for instance Saddam Hussein likely was not) their actions are necessarily imputed to the citizens, because if that was not true, they would not be a legitimate government. Those civilians are most likely powering the war machine that is at war with your country, they are at war with you.
If bombing civilians is a war crime, then people who don't like anything a government does are not obligated to pay taxes, for instance.
That's basically exactly why ISIS inspired terrorists think civilians are legitimate targets. Are you saying you agree with them?
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On August 05 2015 08:43 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 08:39 cLutZ wrote:
It should not be taken as a given that attacking a civilian population in a state that you are at war with is a war crime. This may be widely accepted now, but it lacks logic and shatters the basic theory of governance. If a government is a legitimate government (not always true, for instance Saddam Hussein likely was not) their actions are necessarily imputed to the citizens, because if that was not true, they would not be a legitimate government. Those civilians are most likely powering the war machine that is at war with your country, they are at war with you.
If bombing civilians is a war crime, then people who don't like anything a government does are not obligated to pay taxes, for instance. That's basically exactly why ISIS inspired terrorists think civilians are legitimate targets. Are you saying you agree with them?
Nice reductio ad ISISum you got going there.
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On August 05 2015 09:01 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 05 2015 08:43 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 05 2015 08:39 cLutZ wrote:
It should not be taken as a given that attacking a civilian population in a state that you are at war with is a war crime. This may be widely accepted now, but it lacks logic and shatters the basic theory of governance. If a government is a legitimate government (not always true, for instance Saddam Hussein likely was not) their actions are necessarily imputed to the citizens, because if that was not true, they would not be a legitimate government. Those civilians are most likely powering the war machine that is at war with your country, they are at war with you.
If bombing civilians is a war crime, then people who don't like anything a government does are not obligated to pay taxes, for instance. That's basically exactly why ISIS inspired terrorists think civilians are legitimate targets. Are you saying you agree with them? Nice reductio ad ISISum you got going there.
It's really not though. He opened with "attacking a civilian population". If he meant as collateral damage then maybe, but it sounded like he was suggesting attacking civilians shouldn't be assumed to be a war crime. Whether they both fall under the umbrella of terrorism in his view, I don't think he made clear.
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Rofl. That's not reductio ad absurdum at all. It's not GH's fault clutz is apparently as ethically challenged as some of the worst mujahideen.
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EPT
