100% Proof that Russia is supporting terrorisim!!!

Vader said:

Kelsie,

Let us not forget that Japan started that war. I'll grant you that war is a terrible thing and that civilians should never be targeted; however, in the case of Japan you should read about the atrocities they commited in Manchuria. I think your sympathy for them would dwendle.

Also, after spending some of my formative years in Hawaii being discriminated against by japanese people who hate America, because we kicked their butts in WWII; I will never have an ounce of sympathy for them.

I am sorry for those who died and I hope that there is never a loss of life of that magnatude again; however, I do not believe that Japan deserves any sympathy. Japan started that war and Japan is responsible for the conflicts and battles of WWII.

Japan is a sore loser and that is the truth.

:2razz:

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The Japanese military should have been held responsible, not their civilians. That is the entire point of war...to attack each other's armies. Going for the civilians is below the belt, dishonest, and quite honestly disgusting. Children were not responsible for the war. And yet how many children did we kill?

Kelzie said:

The Japanese military should have been held responsible, not their civilians. That is the entire point of war...to attack each other's armies. Going for the civilians is below the belt, dishonest, and quite honestly disgusting. Children were not responsible for the war. And yet how many children did we kill?

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In the interest of balance, lets note that all participants in this war killed civilians, including women and kids. For a famous example, google "the rape of nanking".

Kelzie said:

The Japanese military should have been held responsible, not their civilians. That is the entire point of war...to attack each other's armies. Going for the civilians is below the belt, dishonest, and quite honestly disgusting. Children were not responsible for the war. And yet how many children did we kill?

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Kelsie,

War often responsible for the deaths of innocents. The japanese started the war. They attacked the U.S. without provocation. They brought that destruction on themselves.

I am sorry for the innocents who died as a result of the war, however, the japanese started that war and they can live with the consequences that decision.

Vader said:

Kelsie,

War often responsible for the deaths of innocents. The japanese started the war. They attacked the U.S. without provocation. They brought that destruction on themselves.

I am sorry for the innocents who died as a result of the war, however, the japanese started that war and they can live with the consequences that decision.

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There is a vast, VAST difference from accidental deaths and actual targetings. Only terrorists target civilians to get what they want.

this is an arguement that to me is a stalemate because If Truman didn't drop the bomb and call for an invasion, MAny US soldiers would've died so Truman acted on what was best in the intrests of America rather than humanity as a whole.

However, I do think Truman should've dropped the bomb into the ocean somewhere near Japan to show what an atom bomb could do.

Che said:

this is an arguement that to me is a stalemate because If Truman didn't drop the bomb and call for an invasion, MAny US soldiers would've died so Truman acted on what was best in the intrests of America rather than humanity as a whole.

However, I do think Truman should've dropped the bomb into the ocean somewhere near Japan to show what an atom bomb could do.

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Not a stalemate at all. That only shows that terrorism might be justified in certain circumstances. But it doesn't change what they did, it was still terrorism.

kelzie said:

Only terrorists target civilians to get what they want.

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Thats easy say. It is also entirely correct - as a generalization. "There is simply no justification for deliberately targeting civilians" is the moral high ground. In a war for survival against a nation state, though, generalizations fail.

I'm thinking of the factories producing war munitions in WWII: the guns, planes, tanks, bullets, bombs, etc. These factories were producing the means of destruction, the means of waging war. If deprived of the war-making goods produced by these factories, the enemy's ability to wage war was diminished, meaning that less of our soldiers and civilians would die and our chances of victory were enhanced. And make no mistake: WWII was viewed as a war of survival.

The workers in these plants were civilians, and in Germany, were sometimes slave labor. The allies bombed them, no doubt killing many civilian munitions plant workers. Was that terrorism?

Applying the concepts of what we now think of as terrorism retrospectively to WWII is fraught with difficulties, with many shades of grey. Today, many of us (and rightly so) would be appalled at the "the only good German/Japanese is a dead German/Japanese" sentiments expressed by many during WWII. Remember though, those sentiments were a learned response, the product of sufficient demonstrations of our sworn enemies lack of distinction between civilians and military that it became a matter of strong belief that WWII was a "them or us" struggle.

Retrospectively, it is easy to identify events that we would now label as terrorism, events perpetrated by all parties to the conflicts. But we should not be too hasty to judge; we should temper our criticisms with the knowledge that we weren't there, we didn't have to live through it, we didn't have to make the difficult decisions. From that high ground offered by hindsight, its easy to be critical. Its also easy to be wrong.

Che said:

this is an arguement that to me is a stalemate because If Truman didn't drop the bomb and call for an invasion, MAny US soldiers would've died so Truman acted on what was best in the intrests of America rather than humanity as a whole.

However, I do think Truman should've dropped the bomb into the ocean somewhere near Japan to show what an atom bomb could do.

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I have been saying that for years and nobody agrees! I don't think people realize how horrifying the atomic bomb is and how it almost led to the destruction of humanity in October 1962. Just imagine having your city hit by one!

Hell, I guess Russia has the mentality if they couldn't beat the middle eastern people, they might as well join them.

That people like to forget about the nuclear atack against Japan is that it was very near failing. That it became a tie between the people who still wanted to keep fighting and the people who wanted to surrender, so the emperor had to lay the deciding vote.

So it was very close for USA having to make really tough decision between nuking bigger citys like Kyoto and Tokyo (that I think could have really screwed up the rebuilding of Japan and the relationship with USA). Or starting a ground invasion with even more pissed of Japanese.

Also that the nuclear atack was the last of along period of terroratacks against Japanes citys with regulare bombing and fire bombing.

oldreliable67 said:

RD,



The US has never deliberately targeted innocents. The US has never called for the killing of any the citizens, military or civilian, of any nation to be killed whereever they might be found. And your saying the "War on Terror" is "bogus" because we are opposing that deliberate targeting of all US citizens?

If you are, and if you haven't already, you should peruse bin Laden's fatwa, issued in 1998, which can be found here in its entirety.

And RD, I certainly can't speak for everyone, but it seems to me that there has been plenty of recognition in the halls of american govt that we have from time to time done some stupid things, including supporting dictators whom we shouldn't have. Thats what I meant by our mistakes.

But, look, we need to move forward. It is very important that we learn from our mistakes so as to not repeat them in the future - though that sometimes seems like a near impossible undertaking. But we gotta' try.

Don't confuse what we thought was in our best interest years ago(generations ago, in terms of the world events that have transpired) with today's realities. We have already acknowledged some mistakes in the ME, and we are likely to make more. But, there can be no mistaking the fact that despite those missteps, there is now the best chance for peace in the ME that we have seen in decades.

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......."The US has never deliberately targeted innocents. The US has never called for the killing of any the citizens, military or civilian, of any nation to be killed whereever they might be found."..............................................

On August 6, 1945 the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by Enola Gay, a U.S. Air Force B-29 bomber which was altered specifically to hold the bomb, killing an estimated 80,000 people and heavily damaging 80% of the city.[citation needed] In the following months, an estimated 60,000 more people died from injuries or radiation poisoning.[citation needed] Since 1945, several thousand more hibakusha have died of illnesses caused by the bomb. It was the second such device to be detonated (the first being the successful test at the Manhattan Project's desert test site, in New Mexico), and the first ever to be used in military action.

On 9 August 1945, Nagasaki was the target of the world's second atomic bomb attack at 11:02 a.m., when the north of the city was destroyed and an estimated 39,000 people were killed outright with another 75,000 believed to have died of bomb-related causes in the decades that followed. [citation needed]