Would you have used the atom bomb on Japan in WWII if you were Prez?

If we had not dropped the bombs on Japan the world would not know the devastation and horror of nuclear weapons until someone else used it somewhere else. Does anyone believe the rest of the world would have believed how dangerous nukes are if they hadn't seen it with their own eyes after it was used? Because it was used it makes MAD work as a preventative today. But with other nations getting nuclear weapons like N. Korea and Iran Mutual Assured Destruction will not prevent it's use by rogue nations..

 

No. To me those 2 nukes were a war crime
Japan was almost defeated there was no reason to burn alive so many people...

 

Which principle of the laws of war do you believe was violated?

It certainly didn't appear that way to the US at the time that the A-bombs were dropped.

I don't see your point. Is this giant picture supposed to challenge the reality that the A-bombs were dropped on military targets?

Hiroshima was a huge military center filled with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers and was the military headquarters in charge of repelling any invasion in the southern half of Japan.

Nagasaki was an industrial center with massive weapons factories.

Thermobaric bombs are conventional weapons. They offer a small fraction of the destruction that nuclear weapons offer.

Our possession of the A-bombs was a global power play.

Our use of the A-bombs against Japan was an attempt to make them surrender.

I am skeptical of this. What part of the Fourth Convention do you believe would have been violated?

Fighting the Japanese Navy did not lead to surrender.

If Japan had continued to refuse to surrender, invasion was the only way to force them to do so.

Invasion was the only way we had to force Japan to surrender if they had kept refusing to do so.

Leaflets were dropped on the cities warning people to flee because the cities would shortly be destroyed by attack from American bombers.

Yes.

We had been regularly leafleting cities and then subsequently destroying them all summer. The Japanese people knew very well that the leaflets represented a genuine threat.

You don't have to be part of a continental land mass to flee a city. You only have to leave the city.

The timing was down to weather reports. But Japan had clearly resolved to not surrender after Hiroshima, so I don't see a need to wait longer.

Of course.

Wartime strikes on military targets are not genocide.

No. If someone chooses to fight to the death, that is not genocide.

They said no such thing.

If that is true they certainly kept quiet about it.

And some of the people that you claim opposed the bombs were actually pretty enthusiastic about following up Nagasaki with an A-bomb on Tokyo.

They said no such thing.

The military experts offered no such advice.

Aside from Ike voicing his opinion to only a single person (just before the bombs were dropped when it was already too late to stop them), and then giving up when he failed to convince that one person, not one military expert tried to oppose dropping the A-bombs.

One of those generals enthusiastically responded to news of Nagasaki by pressing to have the third A-bomb dropped on Tokyo.

The other of those generals was more than happy to pass this advice along to Truman.

 

These are cities, populated cities, highly populated - that been bombed. Stop trying to come with excuses for the murder, you piece of hypocrite. THIS. IS. WARCRIME. Only thing it deserves - is punishment.

 

This is just a silly conversation. After WWII what the US did and several other nations did with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons would be considered a War Crime by the ICC today. So the conversation is really just about how we feel about what the wisdom of the ICC has concluded are war crimes. There are only four States that never signed on to the NPT: India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Sudan. The first three members are all known nuclear weapon States. Yet North Korea which was a signatory legally withdrew per article 10 and was immediately black-balled by the International community, while the US holds strong relationships to non-signatory States that have never signed on. The US itself also only signed with exception-clause.
The Geneva Conventions have looked at everything from cluster-bombs, chemical and biological weapons, to nuclear. It is beside the point of if and when it either was or wasn't legal. The only relevant point is that it was reviewed by professionals (on the International level) and concluded to be unacceptable. I don't even want to talk about hardened targets like the Japanese main-land in WWII, because the only thing we had t ever target was the Japanese Navy on open waters. Japan is an island, and as such, dependent on its Navy. It doesn't matter what their manufacturing industries were able to produce if they lacked the ability to transport it to the battlefield. But, "no" we're too incompetent (then and now) to compete on the thousands of miles of open-ocean that we want to justify attacking a civilian source. Well I have news for you, all of the US military industrial complex is housed exclusively in civilian areas, and likewise any invaders would have a tough challenge from our civilian population, so just maybe it's just as justifiable to nuke the US (civilians and all) without any concern from the International Community. That surely puts the entire 9/11 attack in better perspective.

 

These fact seemed to have gone unnoticed;

We fire bombed 67 Japanese cities prior to the A bombs. They were just a ramp-up in superiority.

http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html

 

This is horrible.

People should know about this, but this is horrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

 

The Japanese awakened the sleeping giant.

Or in modern terms, "Don't poke the bear"

 

That does not excuses the mass murder. If you claim to have better, more just society than they had - this society should've not allowed such atrosities.

 

Yes, of course, thermobaric bombs are conventional weapons.... It's rumored that they've, uh, been further developed in a number of interesting ways in the past twenty years, for both tactical and strategic applications. Hint: when you seize an enemy's inventory and territory, or deny him the use of these, you don't want everything to be contaminated by radiation for a prolonged period of time.

 

The principle they did violate was: during the war you don't have to kill civilians or at least you don't have to do that purposely

 

Pre-1949 it wasn't a violation of War, but we are much more civilized today (well some of us are, excluding Israel). However that is beside the point. The point is that it is now recognized as a war crime because it was considered under review after the US implemented it for the first time in global history. What is classified as a crime until someone first exploits it. If you need a history lesson on what the rules of war are in regards to civilians then you can find it here.

 

Yep, now today we seldom try and actually win a war and/or destroy the enemy.

 

Well said. But it also saved countless American lives as well.

And interesting statistic that reveals exactly how the US military viewed the invasion of Japan, and the cost in casualties, is that the purple hearts handed out to this day were all ordered in preparation for the invasion of Japan.

 

There was never a need for an invasion according to the military generals of the time

 

There are always competing arguments, but after Okinawa where thousands of brainwashed Japanese citizens threw themselves off of cliffs for fear that American cannibals were coming to eat them, it was clear that any invasion of Japan would be catastrophic on both sides. Monday morning quarterbacking isn't advised when talking football, let alone a world war.

 

There were no competing arguments. I have posted the quotes. Every single military leader of the time was against the bomb except one. And even he made only half hearted support for it. The war was over....all we needed to do is wait a few weeks

 

So you bought out lives of your soldiers, who killed and been ready to be killed, by lives of innocent people. Monsters. Murderers. Hypocrites.

 

The death of civilians is inevitable in war.

There was no purposeful targeting of civilians here. Both cities were military targets.

They were also military targets.

Wartime strikes on military targets are not murder.

What is a piece of hypocrite? Partial hypocrisy? How so?

What principle of the laws of war do you believe was violated?

Do you also wish to punish those Japanese who murdered American POWs, who attacked Pearl Harbor before declaring war, who killed 30 million Asian civilians in a horrible genocide?

Wartime strikes on military targets are not murder (or mass murder).

Wartime strikes on military targets are not atrocities. The military is allowed to attack enemy forces during a war.

The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

Japan was inflicting such horrors on the world that we felt we had no choice but to take extreme measures to stop their reign of terror.

Wartime strikes on military targets are not murder. The laws of war allow attacks on enemy forces.

What hypocrisy is this?

What principle of the laws of war was violated?

I don't think it has been established that the ICC would regard these as war crimes.

North Korea's withdrawal was not legal in any way. That is why the world has heaped crippling sanctions on them.

I am not aware of any such professionals with any such authority.

The question of whether something is legal or illegal has great relevance in a discussion over whether or not it was or wasn't a crime.

This is incorrect. Attacking the Japanese Navy was not enough to force Japan to surrender.

I'm not sure what you mean by a civilian source. The A-bombs were dropped on military targets.

Yes. If the US is ever involved in a large nuclear war, the damage will be catastrophic.

Israel is highly civilized.

I question what in the laws of war would have been violated post-1949.

It isn't now recognized as a war crime. What principle of the laws of war was violated?

I don't need any lessons. I am quite familiar with the laws of war.

It certainly didn't appear that way to the US during the war when the A-bombs were being dropped.

There were no arguments period. No one knew what it would take to make Japan surrender. All anyone knew was that Japan was still refusing to surrender.

Wrong. None of them offered any opposition to using the A-bombs.

Well, except for Ike. But he only told a single person, and only just before the A-bombs were dropped when it was too late to stop them, and he failed to make a convincing case even then.

It didn't appear that way during the war when the A-bombs were being dropped.

 

You are factually incorrect

 

Understand that not everyone wanted the USA to win. So it is fairly predictable there will be a few Americans - including possibly on this forum - that wanted the USA to lose and wanted more Americans to die.

On the flip side, there will be war junkies that wanted the USA to slaughter it's way across Japan with a million American and 20 million Japanese killed as there then would be more war movies for them to watch and fantasize they are in the fighting.

 

And there are some that suggest we should have listened to the military experts of the time

 

You mean your experts who wanted to initiate nuclear war with both China and Russia? Predictably there were military commanders who wanted to keep killing Japanese, including to keep their jobs. You haven't cited "military experts."

Sorry, I don't think you will get a military dictatorship in this country, though a few Democrats have said that is what they want.

 

No, he is factually correct. You are factually incorrect.