Presidential vapor in Hiroshima....

[Artemus]

There is nothing to suggest that a conditional surrender would have made no difference.

There is everything to suggest that an armistice that kept the military in control would have made a tremendous difference. Others have probably said this earlier in the thread but it seems it is worth repeating, please read about the Battle of Okinawa, the kamikaze attacks, the Japanese beliefs of honor, and, perhaps most importantly, the book "Japans Longest Day." If you can read all of those and still believe that there would have been no difference between an armistice and an unconditional surrender then there is no point in attempting to continue a discussion.

 

[whichphilosophy]

There is nothing to suggest that a conditional surrender would have made no difference.

There is everything to suggest that an armistice that kept the military in control would have made a tremendous difference. Others have probably said this earlier in the thread but is seems it bears repeating, please read about the Battle of Okinawa, the kamikaze attacks, the Japanese beliefs of honor, and, perhaps most importantly, the book "Japans Longest Day." If you can read all of those and still believe that there would have been no difference between an armistice and an unconditional surrender then there is no point in attempting to continue a discussion.d

When I was at school there was a whole series of US documentaries about the Japanese in WWII

The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot (The Battle of the Philippines Sea June 19 and 20) was the decisive WWII battle eliminating the Japanese ability to carry out Air Craft attacks supported by Carriers.
As I recall 3 carriers were destroyed and it lost hundreds of aircraft. The documentaries were based on black and white war footage and sometimes a little blurred but still very clear.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Don't know if this has been mentioned in the previous 37 pages, but the resurgence of Germany after WW1 taught the Allies to accept nothing less than a full surrender, including occupation of the defeated country. They weren't about to let that happen again.

Occupation was a fat load of good in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because we never occupied the enemy countries.

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There is no evidence to support your claims regarding the Japanese people's awareness or reaction to war crimes in China, nor for your bogus claim that our leaders wanted to test the bomb on the Japanese. What a load of crap.

Like the Germans, the Japanese didn't give front page coverage to its war crimes. What other use was the bomb other than to see what damage its first use could inflict?

The bomb did exactly what it was intended to do: Make the Japanese think their position was helpless and thus bluff them into surrender.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Occupation was a fat load of good in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because we never occupied the enemy countries.

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There is no evidence to support your claims regarding the Japanese people's awareness or reaction to war crimes in China, nor for your bogus claim that our leaders wanted to test the bomb on the Japanese. What a load of crap.

Like the Germans, the Japanese didn't give front page coverage to its war crimes. What other use was the bomb other than to see what damage its first use could inflict?

The bomb did exactly what it was intended to do: Make the Japanese think their position was helpless and thus bluff them into surrender.

The Troops massed in Iraq and Afghanistan were definitely not tourists
Of course the bomb did what it intended to do, but as you will read from US experts it was already on the verge of defeat and was seeking a peace deal. We let them keep Hirohito, hence the A bomb was senseless in that our demand was that he is removed.

 

[Tristan Scott]

There is no evidence that the Japanese people knew of or the extent of the war crimes until decades after the war was over.

The use of the atomic bombs were to force the surrender of the Japanese, which history shows without a doubt, succeeded.

Not decades but the full extent, certainly.

Here is an article which I think is trying to provide the views of both sides.
http://www.historyextra.com/feature...ic-bombs-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-during-second

Please. You are using superficial debates between students now? I suggest you read up a bit more before you continue this.

I'm basing my opinion on archived accounts on the debate going on in Japan between officials who were tasked by the Suzuki government to find an end to the war. The military leaders were not going to accept any surrender, period. It was only after the second bomb was dropped that the Emperor broke the deadlock and ordered them to accept the allied surrender terms. You can quote the opinions of American leaders all you want, it didn't matter what their opinions were, the only thing that mattered was what the Japanese were doing. The ball was in their court, only they could accept or reject the surrender terms. Of course dropping the A bombs wasn't necessary, we could have continued LeMay's firebombing until there were no cities let, and then we could have invaded them until we killed every last one of them, which was what the Japanese military would have preferred.

Your discovery that certain Japanese diplomats were looking for ways to negotiate a peace isn't news, it was known at the time, but the US terms had already been made public. Unconditional surrender. The American public would accept nothing less, nor should they have. Anyway, we've been over this same information for too many pages-I'm done with this.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Because we never occupied the enemy countries.

- - - Updated - - -

There is no evidence to support your claims regarding the Japanese people's awareness or reaction to war crimes in China, nor for your bogus claim that our leaders wanted to test the bomb on the Japanese. What a load of crap.

Like the Germans, the Japanese didn't give front page coverage to its war crimes. What other use was the bomb other than to see what damage its first use could inflict?

The bomb did exactly what it was intended to do: Make the Japanese think their position was helpless and thus bluff them into surrender.

The Troops massed in Iraq and Afghanistan were definitely not tourists
Of course the bomb did what it intended to do, but as you will read from US experts it was already on the verge of defeat and was seeking a peace deal. We let them keep Hirohito, hence the A bomb was senseless in that our demand was that he is removed.

We occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't occupy the places like Iran and Saudi Arabia that are actually driving the violence.

Keeping repeating the revisionist crap about a peace deal doesn't make it true. We left them Hirohito, we didn't leave their military in charge of Japan.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Not decades but the full extent, certainly.

Here is an article which I think is trying to provide the views of both sides.
http://www.historyextra.com/feature...ic-bombs-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-during-second

Please. You are using superficial debates between students now? I suggest you read up a bit more before you continue this.

I'm basing my opinion on archived accounts on the debate going on in Japan between officials who were tasked by the Suzuki government to find an end to the war. The military leaders were not going to accept any surrender, period. It was only after the second bomb was dropped that the Emperor broke the deadlock and ordered them to accept the allied surrender terms. You can quote the opinions of American leaders all you want, it didn't matter what their opinions were, the only thing that mattered was what the Japanese were doing. The ball was in their court, only they could accept or reject the surrender terms. Of course dropping the A bombs wasn't necessary, we could have continued LeMay's firebombing until there were no cities let, and then we could have invaded them until we killed every last one of them, which was what the Japanese military would have preferred.

Your discovery that certain Japanese diplomats were looking for ways to negotiate a peace isn't news, it was known at the time, but the US terms had already been made public. Unconditional surrender. The American public would accept nothing less, nor should they have. Anyway, we've been over this same information for too many pages-I'm done with this.

However, given the emperor ordered the surrender, the mainstream military obeyed him. For this reason a coup attempt failed.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Because we never occupied the enemy countries.

- - - Updated - - -

There is no evidence to support your claims regarding the Japanese people's awareness or reaction to war crimes in China, nor for your bogus claim that our leaders wanted to test the bomb on the Japanese. What a load of crap.

Like the Germans, the Japanese didn't give front page coverage to its war crimes. What other use was the bomb other than to see what damage its first use could inflict?

The bomb did exactly what it was intended to do: Make the Japanese think their position was helpless and thus bluff them into surrender.

The Troops massed in Iraq and Afghanistan were definitely not tourists
Of course the bomb did what it intended to do, but as you will read from US experts it was already on the verge of defeat and was seeking a peace deal. We let them keep Hirohito, hence the A bomb was senseless in that our demand was that he is removed.

We occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't occupy the places like Iran and Saudi Arabia that are actually driving the violence.

Keeping repeating the revisionist crap about a peace deal doesn't make it true. We left them Hirohito, we didn't leave their military in charge of Japan.

The West has armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth with 700 warplanes and military hardware that could possibly help turn the wars against ISIS. The West tried to occupy Iran via Saddam Hussein by arming him, but his armies were pushed out of Iran. Then he was America's glove puppet.
The military obeyed Hirohito which is my point. Hence the more reason for peach talks a few months earlier.

 

[Tristan Scott]

The West has armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth with 700 warplanes and military hardware that could possibly help turn the wars against ISIS. The West tried to occupy Iran via Saddam Hussein by arming him, but his armies were pushed out of Iran. Then he was America's glove puppet.

The "West" armed Saddam? Since when is Russia considered "the west"? Iran was using US hardware. The CIA was covertly selling Iran spare parts for their F-15s and using the cash to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

 

[whichphilosophy]

The West has armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth with 700 warplanes and military hardware that could possibly help turn the wars against ISIS. The West tried to occupy Iran via Saddam Hussein by arming him, but his armies were pushed out of Iran. Then he was America's glove puppet.

The "West" armed Saddam? Since when is Russia considered "the west"? Iran was using US hardware. The CIA was covertly selling Iran spare parts for their F-15s and using the cash to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

I heard about the selling of parts to Iran for when it came to funding a war anything went

The US (and European powers) certainly supported Iraq

My internet is very slow (Philippines poor service) but here are some articles.

Perhaps the Iranian source may contain bias but a lot of this has been increasingly known during the past few years.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26...rove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/


http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/iran_iraq_war_american_interest.php
QUOTE: Despite its strong ties to the USSR, Iraq turned to the west for support in the war with Iran. This it received massively. As Saddam Hussein later revealed, the US and Iraq decided to re-establish diplomatic relations —broken off after the 1967 war with Israel—just before Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 (the actual implementation was delayed for a few more years in order not to make the linkage too explicit). Diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq were formally restored in 1984 —well after the US knew, and a UN team confirmed, that Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranian troops. (The emissary sent by US president Reagan to negotiate the arrangements was none other than the present US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.) In 1982, the US State Department removed Iraq from its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, and fought off efforts by the US Congress to put it back on the list in 1985. Most crucially, the US blocked condemnation of Iraq’s chemical attacks in the UN Security Council. The US was the sole country to vote against a 1986 Security Council statement condemning Iraq’s use of mustard gas against Iranian troops — an atrocity in which it now emerges the US was directly implicated (as we shall see below). END OF QUOTE
AND
QUOTE A US Senate inquiry in 1995 accidentally revealed that during the Iran-Iraq war the US had sent Iraq samples of all the strains of germs used by the latter to make biological weapons. END OF QUOTE

AND
QUOTE:
It is ironic to hear the US today talk of Saddam Hussein’s attacks on the Kurds in 1988. These attacks had full support from the US:
“As part of the Anfal campaign against the Kurds (February to September 1988), the Iraqi regime used chemical weapons extensively against its own civilian population. Between 50,000 and 186,000 Kurds were killed in these attacks, over 1,200 Kurdish villages were destroyed, and 300,000 Kurds were displaced.... The Anfal campaign was carried out with the acquiescence of the West. Rather than condemn the massacres of Kurds, the US escalated its support for Iraq. It joined in Iraq’s attacks on Iranian facilities, blowing up two Iranian oil rigs and destroying an Iranian frigate a month after the Halabja attack. Within two months, senior US officials were encouraging corporate coordination through an Iraqi state-sponsored forum. The US administration opposed, and eventually blocked, a US Senate bill that cut off loans to Iraq. The US approved exports to Iraq of items with dual civilian and military use at double the rate in the aftermath of Halabja as it did before 1988. Iraqi written guarantees about civilian use were accepted by the US commerce department, which did not request licenses and reviews (as it did for many other countries). The Bush Administration approved $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission devices the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait.” (“The dishonest case for war on Iraq” by Alan Simpson, MP, and Dr Glen Rangwala, Labour Against the War Counter-Dossier, 17/9/02) END OF QUOTE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war
United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and direct involvement in warfare against Iran.[1][2]
Support from the U.S. for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open session of the Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nightline that the "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."[3]

 

[Tristan Scott]

The "West" armed Saddam? Since when is Russia considered "the west"? Iran was using US hardware. The CIA was covertly selling Iran spare parts for their F-15s and using the cash to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

I heard about the selling of parts to Iran for when it came to funding a war anything went

The US (and European powers) certainly supported Iraq

My internet is very slow (Philippines poor service) but here are some articles.

Perhaps the Iranian source may contain bias but a lot of this has been increasingly known during the past few years.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26...rove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/


http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/iran_iraq_war_american_interest.php
QUOTE: Despite its strong ties to the USSR, Iraq turned to the west for support in the war with Iran. This it received massively. As Saddam Hussein later revealed, the US and Iraq decided to re-establish diplomatic relations —broken off after the 1967 war with Israel—just before Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 (the actual implementation was delayed for a few more years in order not to make the linkage too explicit). Diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq were formally restored in 1984 —well after the US knew, and a UN team confirmed, that Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranian troops. (The emissary sent by US president Reagan to negotiate the arrangements was none other than the present US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.) In 1982, the US State Department removed Iraq from its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, and fought off efforts by the US Congress to put it back on the list in 1985. Most crucially, the US blocked condemnation of Iraq’s chemical attacks in the UN Security Council. The US was the sole country to vote against a 1986 Security Council statement condemning Iraq’s use of mustard gas against Iranian troops — an atrocity in which it now emerges the US was directly implicated (as we shall see below). END OF QUOTE
AND
QUOTE A US Senate inquiry in 1995 accidentally revealed that during the Iran-Iraq war the US had sent Iraq samples of all the strains of germs used by the latter to make biological weapons. END OF QUOTE

AND
QUOTE:
It is ironic to hear the US today talk of Saddam Hussein’s attacks on the Kurds in 1988. These attacks had full support from the US:
“As part of the Anfal campaign against the Kurds (February to September 1988), the Iraqi regime used chemical weapons extensively against its own civilian population. Between 50,000 and 186,000 Kurds were killed in these attacks, over 1,200 Kurdish villages were destroyed, and 300,000 Kurds were displaced.... The Anfal campaign was carried out with the acquiescence of the West. Rather than condemn the massacres of Kurds, the US escalated its support for Iraq. It joined in Iraq’s attacks on Iranian facilities, blowing up two Iranian oil rigs and destroying an Iranian frigate a month after the Halabja attack. Within two months, senior US officials were encouraging corporate coordination through an Iraqi state-sponsored forum. The US administration opposed, and eventually blocked, a US Senate bill that cut off loans to Iraq. The US approved exports to Iraq of items with dual civilian and military use at double the rate in the aftermath of Halabja as it did before 1988. Iraqi written guarantees about civilian use were accepted by the US commerce department, which did not request licenses and reviews (as it did for many other countries). The Bush Administration approved $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission devices the day before Iraq invaded Kuwait.” (“The dishonest case for war on Iraq” by Alan Simpson, MP, and Dr Glen Rangwala, Labour Against the War Counter-Dossier, 17/9/02) END OF QUOTE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war
United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, non-U.S. origin weaponry, military intelligence, Special Operations training, and direct involvement in warfare against Iran.[1][2]
Support from the U.S. for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open session of the Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nightline that the "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."[3]

The US allowed the sale of some weapons to Iraq, thats true but most of your cite is not accurate, for example the US did not block any of the three UN resolutions condemning Iraq for the us of chemical weapons during the war. All three passed unanimously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_582
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_620
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_612

This is off topic, by the way, and has zero to do with the topic of this thread.