The human reality of nuclear war

[FreeTraveler]

ALL this happened (and will continue to happen) because the people are STUPID! The LEADERS of this crap decide that it's not "gentlemanly" to go after the LEADERS, so weapons are created to kill millions of civilians and justified as WAR.

If individuals EVERYWHERE would STAND UP and kill the people who are trying to get gangs to fight each other, whether crips and bloods or US vs JAPAN, this shit would stop.

Instead, we're too stupid to stand up to these "statesmen" who send our children off to fight, and steal from us to create weapons to KILL US!

...and then we PRAISE the fools who strap packs on their backs and go kill people because some idiot in Washington told them too!

There are ONLY individuals! If GWB has a problem with OBL, then let THEM duke it out. Keep the land and people out of the battle.

No war would EVER be possible if there weren't fools willing to swallow the "us vs them" mentality.

We would not be suffering the effects of "blowback" if there weren't citizens WILLING to be stationed in 150 countries around the world. A government can only do what the citizens allows it to do.

 

[Kraig]

It's not quite so simple. You can choose to be entirely individualistic here and life will be swell until some other mass of people that have chosen to unite and fight under one flag decides to come rape you in your weakness, a la Palestine. You forget that a war was needed for our own revolution, of course in that war Gearge Washington was usually in the front of the batte. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, unite or die.

 

[hairball]

ALL this happened (and will continue to happen) because the people are STUPID! The LEADERS of this crap decide that it's not "gentlemanly" to go after the LEADERS, so weapons are created to kill millions of civilians and justified as WAR.

If individuals EVERYWHERE would STAND UP and kill the people who are trying to get gangs to fight each other, whether crips and bloods or US vs JAPAN, this shit would stop.

Instead, we're too stupid to stand up to these "statesmen" who send our children off to fight, and steal from us to create weapons to KILL US!

...and then we PRAISE the fools who strap packs on their backs and go kill people because some idiot in Washington told them too!

There are ONLY individuals! If GWB has a problem with OBL, then let THEM duke it out. Keep the land and people out of the battle.

No war would EVER be possible if there weren't fools willing to swallow the "us vs them" mentality.

We would not be suffering the effects of "blowback" if there weren't citizens WILLING to be stationed in 150 countries around the world. A government can only do what the citizens allows it to do.

You forget, humans are pack animals, and humans are killers by nature. To kill, to conquer is in our nature. Has been for ten of thousands of years. Individaul concepts in practise are a relatively new thing, and still suseptable to the mass who array against you. The best individuals can do is gather and attempt to create a group that is fiercely individual yet united enough to fight off aggressors, and individual enough to refrain from conquest through force.

The one civilization in human history that was evolving to that end were the Celts, but the Romans stomped them out of existence.

People aren't so much sheep as bovine. They are herd, but more aggressive, particularly when pride and sectarianism come out. Be it religion, form of government or race, people like the Japanese and Germans CHEERED when their side was winning, then, for these people in victory lust, war was wonderful. When their conquered fought back, and turned the tables on them, then the Japanese and Germans began to wail about how awful war is.

 

[raiha]

War is awful enough, and fussing over the results of the one bomb as if it should have any real bearing on the facts is superfluous. One bomb versus the rfire-bombing of cities, what is the difference? Trying to evoke emotions over one mission kinda denigrates the tens of thousand who died smothered in flame, feeling their skin boil and burn off their bones, their lungs seared because the air they breathed was near the point of combustion.

i agree hairball. Dresden wasn't very pretty. Napalm in Vietnam not pretty. Not trying to have a competition as to whether one form of annhilation is preferable to another. Death is death. Burns are burns.
I went to the River Kwai and saw and read enough to make anybodys hair curl. War brutalizes. No dispute. The dispute in my mind is about the tendency to demonize entire cultures and races because of the antics of their lords and masters of the day.

I am concerned about nuclear weapons, not only because of their indiscriminate nature but also because of the likelihood of the domino effect and mutually assured destruction. It worries me that Bush now speaks in terms of 'usable' nukes, an oxymoron if ever i heard one.

Little story:
When i was nine years old, on a wee sheep farm in the north of NZ,in the sixties, I was tucked up in my bed. It had been dark for three hours as it was July (the middle of winter in the Antipodes) and i was gazing out the window looking at the stars.
Suddenly i could see the sheep, the trees, the hedge. I lay there petrified with terror. Something was impossibly wrong. Finally i was able to move to run to my parents. Apparently what i said was "there's something wrong with the sky."

Mum and Dad came in and stood looking out the window and said "Oh my God."(I was kinda hoping for some reassurance)
It was reported on the nine oclock news two minutes before I burst into the lounge in a complete hysterical state, that the Americans had exploded their 100 megaton atmospheric hydrogen bomb over Johnson Island and we were witnessing the aurora. Samoans had thought the moon had burst. The newpapers were full of it for weeks after.
I think children know intuitively what is deathly bad and what is not. Guess the bee i have in my bonnet about nuclear weapons is conditioned.

 

[xxsicknessxx]

You are shedding tears over the wrong people, there Bubba.

Met Tibbets, a great man with great heart and no regrets, and after 30 years of reading the history of that war, I can fully and completely understand that what was done was fully justified as a proccess of war and as justice raining down on people who built weapons to kill Americans, and a populace who delighted in beheading competitions that repudiated any rules of conduct.

You talk of high ideals, and great morals that should be observed, but the harsh reality of that war is the Japanese were not fighting for ideals, they were fighting to extermination. Most of the leaders wanted the Americans to land so that the populace could be killed, one by one, by American soldiers.

You want to split hairs and debate fine points of philosophy but life is a lot more than pretty songs and kumbaya. In the grim math of war, dropping those two bombs saved the Japanese from the their self-imposed extermination plan and it saved American lives, too, which to my mind, and the mind of many soldiers and generals then, was an even bigger plus.

The Japanese received two mushroom clouds of justice. It was tragic, but needed doing.

Some people feel bad about death and destruction, you kinda just laugh it off as being war. They did not want to give up, becasue they knew what we would do to them. I don't blame them. Maybe we should of uhh stopped attacking them, island after island. We destroyed there air force, there navy, there infrastructure. Why did we have to go in and nuke them? So they would give up and we could go in and screw them. Thats why. I feel horrible about it, and I don't think we had to do it, I think we could of nuked right next to the city, and they would have given up. But we wanted to see what would happen on a city, so we did it. Don't get mad becasue not everyone thinks that we had to nuke them. We did not. We don't have to do anything, we choose to. We choose to nuke and murder and kill a lot of people. Did they choose to kill us at pearl harbor? Sure! so were just like them we kill non combatants too.

Maybe someday the Russians will to nuke us, well thats what they will tell there school children, and they will grow up thinking nuking America was there fault thats how history and brainwashing works.

 

[soapmistress]

They took the photos down because someone said they were likely to be earthquake casualties and not related to Hiroshima.

 

[Aratus]

it was hiroshima... curiously enough... ironically enough...

 

[Mongoose470]

The war against Japan was justified.

The dropping of the atomic bombs was more humane than a full ground invasion.

However the OP made his point in the current context of 50,000 existing nuclear weapons. Personally I recommend the British movie Threads for a powerful reminder that nuclear war isn't pretty. It won't end all life but it will end life as we know it. It pulls no punches, has an almost documentary feel, and since it takes place in Britain, there will be no patriotic outrage to cloud the reality of nuclear war, at least for Americans.

 

[hairball]

Some people feel bad about death and destruction, you kinda just laugh it off as being war. They did not want to give up, becasue they knew what we would do to them. I don't blame them. Maybe we should of uhh stopped attacking them, island after island. We destroyed there air force, there navy, there infrastructure. Why did we have to go in and nuke them? So they would give up and we could go in and screw them. Thats why. I feel horrible about it, and I don't think we had to do it, I think we could of nuked right next to the city, and they would have given up. But we wanted to see what would happen on a city, so we did it. Don't get mad becasue not everyone thinks that we had to nuke them. We did not. We don't have to do anything, we choose to. We choose to nuke and murder and kill a lot of people. Did they choose to kill us at pearl harbor? Sure! so were just like them we kill non combatants too.

Maybe someday the Russians will to nuke us, well thats what they will tell there school children, and they will grow up thinking nuking America was there fault thats how history and brainwashing works.

Where, young lad, do you see me laughing here? I did not laugh, but I will not weep for the dead enemy. They started a war. They behaved in barbaric fasions that defied belief, and to the end believed they would overcome because we were weak. Americans mastered the type of war Japan chose to fight, and there is nothing funny about having to drop nukes, incinerate cities and kill every living thing on the islands till they gave up the fantasy of victory.

You do not fight to just win, you fight to crush your enemy. That is the nature of war, and it is the nature of man to fight wars. To think there is a nice way to fight a war, particularly when your enemy is so brutal and obstinent is obscene. Even at the end, Japanese troops were murdering prisoners rather than let them be returned home.

I wasn't laughing, but there is no rightious way I can feel sorrow at what the Japanese brought upon themselves at that time.

 

[american empire]

I wasn't laughing, but there is no rightious way I can feel sorrow at what the Japanese brought upon themselves at that time.

no the japenese who were killed by the nuclear bomb did not tell the emperor to go attack us....
the Japenese people didnt go the the emperor and tell them they hate the americans so go bomb their MILITARY......

Even at the end, Japanese troops were murdering prisoners rather than let them be returned home.

uhhh thats what both sides did and if you check we too had internment camps.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

To think there is a nice way to fight a war, particularly when your enemy is so brutal and obstinent is obscene.

oh yeas the enemy is always "obstinate and obscene" and we are always ethical and "good"....1984 summarizes the enemy well....

point is there was no justification for the nuclear bomb to be dropped...hell if you read the interviews of the scientist's involved in the manhatten project some of who were germans they were shocked at the devestation....

 

[hairball]

no the japenese who were killed by the nuclear bomb did not tell the emperor to go attack us....
the Japenese people didnt go the the emperor and tell them they hate the americans so go bomb their MILITARY......



uhhh thats what both sides did and if you check we too had internment camps.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment



oh yeas the enemy is always "obstinate and obscene" and we are always ethical and "good"....1984 summarizes the enemy well....

point is there was no justification for the nuclear bomb to be dropped...hell if you read the interviews of the scientist's involved in the manhatten project some of who were germans they were shocked at the devestation....

No, the Japanese people cheered when the Emperor's military began to lay waste to great swathes of the Pacific region. The poeple cheered thier favorite Army personell who could behead the most chinese. They killed American and British prisoners, which is far, far worse than what happened in the Internment camps.

The mistakes of the Internment camps were acknowledged later, but Japan, the people, or the Govt has yet to apologize for the atrocities committed.

There was every justification for the atomic bombs being used at that time and on that country. Better to trade as many Japanese civilians as we could to save every American life we could. The Japanese people and military beieved they were invincible, and when defeat stared them in the face, they believed a noble national suicide was better than surrender. The American military showed the Japanese people and Govt that they were neither invincible nor going to die nobly in battle to the last.

In a very ironic way, the bombs benefitted more than the Americans, it benefitted the Japanese.

Wrap your mind around that truth.

 

[Todd]

It's horrible. All war is horrible. we need to make sure it never happens again.

Excellent. All war is indeed horrible and this is simply the best simple reason why arguing over moral issues about war is a futile excercise. War is about killing people and breaking things and it is a horrible act that trancends any other human endeavor. What is the difference if 100,000 perish in an instant or over a 5 year period in war?
I hate it when I see threads where people continue to think their rationale for or against war is somehow is the true moral aggrandizement.

 

[hairball]

Excellent. All war is indeed horrible and this is simply the best simple reason why arguing over moral issues about war is a futile excercise. War is about killing people and breaking things and it is a horrible act that trancends any other human endeavor. What is the difference if 100,000 perish in an instant or over a 5 year period in war?
I hate it when I see threads where people continue to think their rationale for or against war is somehow is the true moral aggrandizement.

Man is made for war. Man has the potential for more, but by and large, murder is in the human psyche. To argue otherwise is to be one who wishes upon a rainbow with a little fairy wand.

Yes, I would like to see man achieve someting like the potential, but all the endeavors of man is for destruction.

So, again, to be merciful, to be kind, war should be as brutal and short as possible. Leniency should be offered where it can be, but otherwise, and Japan works into this, anything goes.

 

[AmericaFyeah92]

constituent, i'd just like to point out that even though you think collectivist thought is a bad thing, the japanese themselves loved it. They were a totalitarian state, could probably be called fascist, and saw themselves as one poeple and us as one enemy. The japs were the ones who thought in "us vs. them" terms, which is why they sank to such brutality in the areas they conquered.

The only way to deal with an enemy like that is through collective punishment, unfortunately.

And your assertion that we could somehow spark a rebellion in Japan as an alternative to invasion/bombing is ridiculous and naive.