The Guy Who Unknowingly 'Live-Blogged' the Bin Laden Raid 142
netbuzz (955038) writes "Three years ago today, software consultant Sohaib Athar was working on his laptop at home in Pakistan when he tweeted: 'Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).' And then: 'A huge window-shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S.' It was for Osama bin Laden. Today Athar says, 'People do bring it up every now and then.'"
All these Traitors you have (Score:1)
Find zem und kill zem!
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Find zem und kill zem!
The killing part is especially important for people such as Bin Laden, Saddam, Qadaffi, and so on. Can't have them actually on trial, they might have some things to say that would inconvenience the West. That might break the carefully crafted illusion of us being Good guys and hint at the fact that really there's only Bad guys.
All the rhetoric about "international law" and "bring them to justice" is fine in theory, so long as you simply kill them extrajudiciously in practice.
Re:All these Traitors you have (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, yeah, sort of [wikipedia.org].
Critics, including Saddam's legal counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi, alleged that American officials had a heavy influence on the court.[55] In a statement, Khalil said, "this court is a creature of the US military occupation, and the Iraqi court is just a tool and rubber stamp of the invaders."[56]
Khalil al-Dulaimi and various international commentators alleged that the date on which the verdict was read live to the world, 5 November 2006, was deliberately selected by the Bush Administration in order to influence the US midterm elections which occurred two days later. This has been called a November Surprise.[56][57] The verdict was expected to be on 16 October 2006, but was postponed to consider recalling some of the witnesses.[58] Even as the verdict was released verbally on 5 November, the written, final verdict was not released until days later.[59]
It is perhaps not very suprising that the defense in the case made such objections. But it hardly stops there:
The Washington Post reported that "Americans have drafted most of the statutes under which Hussein and his associates are being tried". It also reported that "A US official in Baghdad confirmed last weekend that only the United States and Britain had contributed experts to advise the court on how to prosecute governments for war crimes and other such matters".[60]
The human rights organization Amnesty International criticized the death sentence and said the trial was "deeply flawed and unfair." The process was marred by "serious flaws that call into question the capacity of the tribunal," Malcolm Stuart, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program, said. "In particular, political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court." [61] The specific concerns raised by Amnesty International included the status of the trial as a "Special Trial" (unconstitutional according to the Iraqi Constitution), political interference in trial proceedings by the removal of a judge mid-trial, exclusion of members of the defense team at points in the trial, assassination of multiple members of the defence team, and the closure of the trial before the defence team had completed presenting its legal case.
In the opening statement of the Jury of Conscience of the World Tribunal on Iraq, keynote speaker Arundhati Roy retorted, "Saddam Hussein is being tried as a war criminal even as we speak. But what about those who helped to install him in power, who armed him, who supported him—and who are now setting up a tribunal to try him and absolve themselves completely?"[62]
The Ayn Rand Institute argued that "A trial that presumes Hussein's innocence can achieve nothing but a travesty of justice": "Saddam Hussein is not a private citizen, whose guilt requires proof in an objective court of law, but a dictator whose incontestable evil was manifest to any rational observer of his tyranny."[63]
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And would the same have come to the defense of Adolf Hitler? The two are similar. Well, same kind. I'd have put a bullet through his head. Either. No problem.
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Your post is bullshit, including that load of crap about it being deliberately timed to coincide with the US elections. Anyone bothering to familiarize themselves at even the most basic level would realize the difficulties of the trial. I do like your "sort of" comment. I guess you think there was genuine doubt about Saddam killing massive numbers of people? I guess 800+ mass graves and nerve gassing the Kurds would leave some people in doubt.
I suggest simply reading this article to get a better idea of
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true fail, how blood hard is it for you guys to click the 'Parent' link.. FFS
To quote the parent of my post
"The killing part is especially important for people such as Bin Laden, Saddam, Qadaffi, and so on. Can't have them actually on trial, they might have some things to say that would inconvenience the West"
My point being those guys were not some magic off the top kill them before they say something, they say or said crap all teh time. Nice to see how lazy slashdotters are that they cant even follow a thr
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what event was unimportant?
Anniversaries (Score:1)
Murder is never "unimportant" 3 years ago a man was murdered in his home, apparently an unarmed man. He was convicted of Nothing. Was not a national of any country that the United States was at war with (you can not declare war on an organisation or individual, only a nation. Something US presidents appear to conveniently forget)
My reaction on hearing the news was to wonder when the war crimes trial would be convened, I am still waiting. Who said that History is written by the victors.
The US currently h
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My reaction on hearing the news was to wonder when the war crimes trial would be convened, I am still waiting.
That is because you are a nitwit.
3 years ago a man was murdered in his home, apparently an unarmed man. He was convicted of Nothing. Was not a national of any country that the United States was at war with (you can not declare war on an organisation or individual, only a nation. Something US presidents appear to conveniently forget)
Bin Laden was the leader of an armed revolutionary faction making war on the US. You see to have a bunch of "personal rules" that aren't related to reality. You're going to continue to be disappointed.
The US currently has;
A War on drugs.... A total failure. But it does employ lots of people.
A war of Terror.... I am not even sire what that is! Does everyone get a security blanket stolen from Afghanistan or what. I assume the desired outcome is to make the little kiddies less scared It has achieved nothing substantive in a decade but also employs a lot of people..
The "war on drugs" is rhetorical. You do understand that, right?
The "war on terror" is symbolic language. The Authorization for Use of Military Forces specifies military action against the perpetrators of 9/11 and their supporters.
You don't seem to have any useful informati
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Slow News Day at Slashdot (Score:1, Insightful)
How old is this story?
ZZzzzzz....
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"'People do bring it up every now and then.'"
And when they don't, I remind them! It's kind of who I am. It's all I am. I have nothing. I'm so sad. Please kill me.
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Pretty Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
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because it happened so long ago already.
hell, "people bring it up sometimes".. what's next, a slashdot story about the time cops picked me up from the school to confiscate among other things floppies I had lying around on the floor while not confiscating one computer, and later returning all the stuff 2.5 years later? I mean fuck, it's a neat story and all but it's about 16 years late to publish as news now.
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Yeah, cool story bro.
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Hmm, that's kind of a neat story actually. Not sure what's with all the negative comments.
Between the wingnuts on the right who will whine about anything BHO does, the wingnuts on the left who will whine that BHO isn't all love and unicorns, Russian trolls who have allowed cold war thinking to be revived, and Muslim trolls who are just pissed, yeah, there's going to be a lot of negatives. Oh, and let's not forget the Slashdot Hipsters who're "too cool to fool".
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While living in a cave...
We're talking about the same country who got its ass kicked by vietcongs for at least two decades (while using Napalm). Ass kicked in Afghanistan by people using weapons the CIA gave them back in the late '70s when Brejnev invaded their country and IEDs. The same country that declared WAR against Irak because of WMDs (Oil), but was the only one to use them... Twice... Hiroshima August 6th 1945... Enola Gay...Little Boy...Gun Type 16kT. Nagasaki August 9th 1945... Bockscar...Fat Man.
Re:"Three years ago today" (Score:5, Insightful)
You are trolling, but I'll still bite.
While living in a cave...
We're talking about the same country who got its ass kicked by vietcongs for at least two decades (while using Napalm). Ass kicked in Afghanistan by people using weapons the CIA gave them back in the late '70s when Brejnev invaded their country and IEDs. .
Interestingly, this is is a time honored methodology for fighting against a much stronger force and is exactly how I would fight against the US, NATO, Russia, China, etc. if I were in a small country. Take to the hills, don't expose yourself to pitched battles that you will lose anyway and subject your opponent to death by a thousand paper cuts. Americans themselves successfully used this methodology against the British between 1775 and 1781.
The only real ways to fight against it are to either make yourself more popular among the populace than the resistance force (VERY difficult to do) or go full Ghengis Khan.
but was the only one to use them... Twice... Hiroshima August 6th 1945... Enola Gay...Little Boy...Gun Type 16kT. Nagasaki August 9th 1945... Bockscar...Fat Man...Implosion type 21kT.
Other designs were planned. We're talking about weapon testing... If the war wasn't over back in the old countries, they would *never* have dropped a nuclear weapon in europe.
So..... its the summer of 1945. YOU are Harry Truman. The war has killed, what 50 million people so far. The battle of Okinawa has just finished and it killed.... oh about 200,000 people. (about half being soldiers of the two side and the rest civilians). That was essentially the dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan itself. You've just been told about these new kinds of bombs. What would you do? Try to finish the war off by using them and then bluffing the Japanese by saying you have a thousand (you don't. you have two) or go ahead with the invasion?
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What would you do? Try to finish the war off by using them and then bluffing the Japanese by saying you have a thousand (you don't. you have two) or go ahead with the invasion?
I'd just accept the Japanese surrender but then I don't need to make a point to Stalin.
Re:"Three years ago today" (Score:5, Insightful)
You are aware that Japan only surrendered after the A-bombs, right? And the U.S. was encouraging Stalin to open up another front for the Japanese in the hopes the U.S. wouldn't have to invade. MacArthur was all for invasion. The most in the Japanese military were all for dying until the last man, woman, and child. They had armed the populace with pitchforks and was teaching them how to gut an American GI. The Emperor signed off on the surrender and parts of the Japanese military attempted a coup but were put down due to some loyal (to the Emperor). Okinawa was only the last of a string of very bloody islands where most Japanese fought until they died or attempted to surrender to get close enough to American GIs to kill them with a grenade. Iwo Jima, Tinian, Saipan, Guam, all were nasty, brutish fights and the Japanese were flinging Kamikazis against American ships.
Fortunately, Admiral Nimitz knew better than to attempt an invasion of Japan and was against it. Germany was already gone, but it took many American lives and the wounded were arriving back in the U.S. with horrific injuries. Truman had to tell the American people the war wasn't over yet because an uncowed Japan would surely attempt to reconstruct its empire. Japanese atrocities in the Pacific and certainly China were legendary. The Pacific campaign had also claimed many American lives and wounded.
Now you sin in Truman's office. Some on his military staff tell you invasion is the only way...estimated U.S. casualties: 250,000 up to 1 million (they couldn't be sure other than the figure was appalling). Some on his military staff tell you the invasion is not necessary. You dither for about 3 months, bombing Japan is certainly reducing the country but they won't surrender. Now one of your secret projects offers a chance to blow some sense into the stiff-necked Japanese. Do you (a) take it, (b) invade at horrible cost, (c) do nothing and attempt to keep a war going that is fast losing support, (d) declare victory believing you will have to come back and fight the war again in 10 years? You have to decide Mr. President.
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The A-Bombs are not what did in the Japanese. The damage inflicted by the A-Bombs on the two cities didn't even match the worst damage done to several other cities with conventional weapons.
What did the Japanese in was Russia's declaration of war against them.
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It's an awesome sight, and then the Japanese government was told that the U.S. had another thousand bombs of the same caliber.
The Japanese command crunched the numbers and saw that it would exterminate their race. More importantly, it showed them unequivocally that the Japanese were inferior to U.S. firepower and technological prowess.
Missing option.. (Score:2)
This interview with Feynman [youtube.com] talks about his elation at ending the war followed by a deep nihilistic anger at society. Oppenheimer came to deeply regret [youtube.com] his stiff opposition to the petition after he saw the destruction in Japan, he confessed that urging the president to use the bomb on civilians without warning was a "mistake".
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The most in the Japanese military were all for dying until the last man, woman, and child. They had armed the populace with pitchforks and was teaching them how to gut an American GI.
This is simply not true. You are repeating propaganda that was hard to believe even at the time. By that stage in the war the majority of Japanese were against the war and would not have fought if invaded anyway. Many of them were struggling just to survive due to lack of food and other essentials. A GI with a food parcel would have been welcomed, as they were after the surrender.
The stories of suicide attacks against US troops are true. Those people were trying to cover the retreat of the main Japanese for
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Dude,
We know what happened on iwo jima and okinawa.
22000 japanese solders- 19000 of them died.
6800 u.s. soldiers dead- alot more that survived without one or more limbs.
Okinawa
12000 u.s. soldiers dead- again- 50000 more wounded.
Up to 40% of the civilians dead- many (thousands!) by suicide or "suicide" at the hands of japanese solders. Large numbers (caught on film) were jumping off cliffs toir the deaths ahead of u.s. soldiers
110,000 Japanese soldiers dead. Only 7000 were captured or surrendered.
And this
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You really need to read up on the japanese.
a) they were not surrendering
b) the civilians (not just the military) were prepared to fight to the death (with regular training with improvised weapons in school) and commit suicide if they couldn't win (there are movies of japanese civilians in okinawa raining over the cliffs like lemmings). Point is- the number of japanese deaths from an invasion would have been much larger than the deaths from the nuclear attacks.
c) the military in japan wasn't going to follo
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So..... its the summer of 1945. YOU are Harry Truman. The war has killed, what 50 million people so far. The battle of Okinawa has just finished and it killed.... oh about 200,000 people. (about half being soldiers of the two side and the rest civilians). That was essentially the dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan itself. You've just been told about these new kinds of bombs. What would you do? Try to finish the war off by using them and then bluffing the Japanese by saying you have a thousand (you don't. you have two) or go ahead with the invasion?
Well, I'd consider that the Russians are looking to enter the war. Japan is starved of pretty much everything, including food, oil and other materials necessary for war. Intelligence is telling me that there is pressure from the top down for Japan to surrender, and most of the senior military personnel consider the war un-winnable and are hoping for a truce. Even my own advisors are saying Tokyo won't hold out for more than a few more weeks.
So basically I have this devastating new weapon that I know other c
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Americans themselves successfully used this methodology against the British between 1775 and 1781.
True.
It is said that North Vietnamese war leader Ho Chi Minh admired George Washington because of his successful use of guerrilla war against the British.
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So..... its the summer of 1945. YOU are Harry Truman. The war has killed, what 50 million people so far. The battle of Okinawa has just finished and it killed.... oh about 200,000 people. (about half being soldiers of the two side and the rest civilians). That was essentially the dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan itself. You've just been told about these new kinds of bombs. What would you do? Try to finish the war off by using them and then bluffing the Japanese by saying you have a thousand (you don't. you have two) or go ahead with the invasion?
What would I do? Bring the troops home, then resign. If Japan actually attacked again after that point, people could rally an effective defense. I don't think they were any danger at that point, and I don't really think they would have ever been a danger without the belligerent actions of Franklin Roosevelt toward Japan before America got into the war.
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After the war, we helped rebuild both antagonists of WWII. Today they are strong democracies and allies. We have our differences, but can work through them.
Bewail the evilness of America all you want, but there's not much historical evidence of this kind of thing ever happening before.
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Bewail the evilness of America all you want
Can't find where I did that - perhaps you have me confused for someone else, or are tilting at a strawman.
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Only because the USA'ians fight civilized.
The war in afganastan would have been over in 8 minutes, re-target the missiles, spool them up and launch... *Boom* glass bowl, and most of region dead from radiation poison in the next few months. Or carpet bomb the area for 2 months straight, etc....
You prefer the USA play with the big weapons or attempt a civilized fight against uncivilized wild animals that uses children and women as bombs and shields?
Dude, everyone knows that the Islamist extremists are fucki
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Iran certainly denounces violent Sunni Muslims who go around attacking Shias. But violent Shia Muslims who go around attacking Sunnis (or Christians, or Jews, or..) are great people just fighting for freedom and peace!
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You're accusing Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush of being pussies? (ie. Civilized).
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Ass kicked in Afghanistan by people using weapons the CIA gave them back in the late '70s when Brejnev invaded their country and IEDs.
How is it that opponents of the war in Afghanistan both claim a) we got our ass kicked and b) we killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans in retaliation for only a few thousand of our people? Can they not see that these are conflicting statements?
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Sounds like a pretty lame excuse for Slashdot to publicise the day that the country with the biggest, most sophisticated, most expensive army in the world was finally able to track down and assassinate the man who evaded them for _NINE YEARS_.
The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
Your comment sounds like you are not happy with both Slashdot and USA - all the Muslim terrorists (and the Japanese imperialists... and many left-wing nutcases... and those that oppose "beta"!) feel the same as you and support your mission to inform the public about the evil USA but in my opinion the fact that the USA army managed to find him is impressive because i know how difficult is to find a rat that hides in a rat's nest - and that rat didn't declared war on the USA only but to the whole Western Civi
Re:"Three years ago today" (Score:5, Interesting)
The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable.
War - total war, on the scale of nations - is a constant question of choosing the lesser evil. There are very rarely good options to take - if there were, there would not have been a war in the first place.
We haven't had a war like that since WW2, so I suppose it's excusable that people forget just how much death and destruction it causes. The numbers can be a bit hard to wrap your head around, after all.
The two atomic bombings killed a quarter million people. On its own, that's horrifying. In the context of the Second World War, that's a rounding error. Some countries were literally decimated - over ten percent of their prewar population dead. Compared to Germany, Japan got off light.
Let's look at the alternative to the A-bombs. Japan was not going to surrender - even after losing Manchuria to the Soviets, they were still ready to fight. So we were looking at an invasion - and after Iwo Jima, we knew it would not be an easy fight. Estimated Allied killed were in the hundreds of thousands to millions - Japanese casualties, military and civilian, are incalculable, particularly since the plans that did not involve nuclear weapons generally involved chemical weapons in their stead. Some plans involved both, on top of the more mundane horrors of a million-man invasion force. Oh, and if you delay it too long, the Soviets will probably invade, and they barely cared about their own casualties, much less enemy noncombatants.
There *was* no good option there. Japan was going to get pounded. The least evil option was whichever one ended the war fastest - and that option is using whatever weapons you have available to force your opponent to surrender. If that means firebombing cities, so be it. If that means atomic bombs, so be it. Because if you hold back, all you're doing is making the war last longer, which means not only do more of your own people die, but in the long run, more of theirs do too.
There are plenty of justifiable ways to claim that America is evil - pretty much anything done in the past decade counts, really. You don't need to make shit up about the atomic bombings in order to wedge it into an unrelated argument.
PS: Hiroshima was a major military city during 1945, with both a major command center, as well as a supply hub and munitions stockpile. Nagasaki was a major munitions industrial center. Calling them "innocent civilians" is at best misinformed.
Re:"Three years ago today" (Score:5, Insightful)
I add the following for your consideration.
After dropping those two bombs, nobody on Earth has ever dropped one since. Think about that for a second. Yes, they have been tested, but never once dropped in anger since the first two. And all nuclear-capable countries between the 50s and the 80s have had was at some point to consider using them. All of them treated them as retaliation weapons, only to be used if they were shot at first.
So let us treat Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the ignorant first use of an unknown technology that it was and accept that the world went through a massive, rapid learning curve and HAVE NOT USED THEM SINCE.
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I doubt that the US or Russia had any moral qualms about using atomic weapons because of what they learned from the attacks on Japan. It was simply that their mutual destruction was assured. In fact both sides had plans to attack first if they thought they could get their own casualties down to an acceptable number of millions while annihilating the opposition.
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I'm thinking of the days before MAD. By the start of the Korean war, the Soviets had tested one device only. Some might have entered service by the time of the war, but the Americans still had the upper hand with nuclear weapons at that time.
There was arguments to use them, and Truman did go so far as to release them to the theater, but he never dropped them. Nor did Ike when he won the election. There seemed to be a reluctance to use them even before the whole arms race and MAD became what it did.
Now gen
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The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable.
.
Absolutely. The Japanese then were like Muslims are now - believing they were on a divine mission and that anyone who stood in the way of their divine right should be killed without mercy in the most unpleasant way possible. There will be time when muslims will use nuclear weapons, then our big regret will be that we had not used them earlier
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There will be time when muslims will use nuclear weapons, then our big regret will be that we had not used them earlier
Well, it depends on where they use them first, doesn't it?
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In pre-war and during war Japan, the emperor was the living G-d on earth. Yes, the country did have a religion that they fanatically believed in. The analogy stands.
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The emperor was a god on earth and japanese ground was sacred.
Propaganda in schools was comprehensive.
Many japanese civilians and military were suicidal and didn't view non-japanese as entirely human. (Rape of nanking, bataan death march, etc. etc. etc.).
Were there exceptions in a population of tens of millions- absolutely. There were thousands of pro american japanese- some who fought reluctantly- some who refused to fight (Jehova's Witnesses are mentioned specifically). However- when you look into them
Re:"Three years ago today" (Score:4, Insightful)
Winston Churchill said the World War II did not begin in 1939, but in 1919 when the Versailles Treaty was signed with punitive sanctions against Germany. That is a lesson they are learnt well, they did not treat Germany and Japan they way losers of WW-I were treated. That is how we avoided WW-III.
If we maintain the distinction, realizing we are not fighting all the Muslims, but only the small section of leaders who whip up the passion we will be able to pacify them as we pacified Japan. Think about it, if someone told Americans in 1944, "we are going to pacify Japan, not subjugate them, not conquer them, but truly make friends out of them" how it would have been received. Now substitute Muslim instead of Japan and see how incredulous most Americans would be. But we did make friends, or at least a reasonable approximation of friend, out of Japan.
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USA had real leaders who realized that we were fighting the Japanese government and the military, not the citizenry
Then why not nuke military-only targets, or demonstrate the weapon first? Why skip directly to nuking people who you were not even fighting?
This is the question no apologist can ever answer. Why not a demonstration first, to give Japan the opportunity to surrender?
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Think about it. Japanese Imperial army actually believed USA was thickly forested and it could send incendiary devices on hot air balloons along the jet stream and the whole of USA would be consumed in conflagration. Don't laugh at their lack of knowledge. They did not think of summoning the US forces, demonstrate their ability to destroy the
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You are assuming the awesome power of nuclear weapon would be believed and not assumed to be some kind of Hollywood fakery.
The Japanese were trying to develop one themselves, working with Germany, so it is clear they knew what it was and what it was capable of.
The balloons were just the usual "try anything" approach to war. It happened in Europe a lot too, with various half baked ideas being tried out. For every bouncing bomb there were half a dozen ineffective new weapons.
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There was a test demonstration, on Hiroshima. The Japanese did not believe that many more bombs could be prepared so they did not capitulate. So 3 days later the second bomb was deployed.
Given what we know from what actually happened, a bombing off the coast or wherever would have had even less of an effect than a bombing of a city and Japan still would not have surrendered.
Do you still want to believe that you somehow know how things should have been done 60 years ago that no one else was able to figure
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I would like to suggest you read in depth some of the history of that time.
Not saying it should have been an easy decision, but
As a military, the Japanese didn't earn much in the way of mercy. Their war conduct was atrocious. Read about how they treated
Koreans
Filipinos
Chinese
Captured prisoners
etc
Medical experiments, "comfort women".
Read about the Bataan death march.
Read about the Chinese campaign ( not that Chiang Kai Shek was a great guy, but that should have been a Chinese internal matter, and the Japan
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After we conquered them. How does one conquer a bunch of radicals, in various separate countries, instead of a single country?
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Absolutely. The Japanese then were like Muslims are now - believing they were on a divine mission and that anyone who stood in the way of their divine right should be killed without mercy in the most unpleasant way possible. There will be time when muslims will use nuclear weapons, then our big regret will be that we had not used them earlier
No, they really were not.
They were building an empire in the parts of China and Korea they invaded, mainly because they wanted the natural resources. Attacking the US was a desperate move. They knew there was no chance that they would be able to defeat the US, invade and take over such a vast area. Their goal was to cripple the Pacific fleet and stave off what they saw as an inevitable attack long enough to build up their own fleet into a permanent deterrent.
Why did they think the US was going to attack the
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Was there a real need to drop a second bomb? Certainly seems like nobody wants to use the third bomb.
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They were convinced America couldn't possibly have a second one, and if they did, maybe that was their last one, and hence decided not to surrender. When the second one was dropped in such short succession they realized there were a lot more where that came from and finally decided to surrender.
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We were using them as fast as they could be made - a third one was being prepared when the surrender happened, and was later used in the Operation Crossroads test. Dozens more were in production (military command was split as to whether to continue firing them indefinitely, or to build a stockpile to use during the invasion they still thought might be necessary).
The atomic bombs alone did not end the war, simply because they were not all that powerful. All they really did was condense a massed air bombing (
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"Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable."
The reasoning of every war criminal.
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And every other member of any armed force. It's sort of what a war is. What's your point?
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I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
There is a bigger issue with the statement "America is evil" than hindsigth being 20/20 - all countries are composed of a lot of people, some good and some bad. At most one could claim that the *leadership* is evil, but claiming that the whole country is evil due to the actions of a few just doesn't work. A similar, modern day example is claiming that Israelis (or all jews, if you really want to put on the brown shirt...) are evil due to some of the actions of their governement being debatable morally. Or a
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There is a bigger issue with the statement "America is evil" than hindsigth being 20/20 - all countries are composed of a lot of people, some good and some bad. At most one could claim that the *leadership* is evil, but claiming that the whole country is evil due to the actions of a few just doesn't work. A similar, modern day example is claiming that Israelis (or all jews, if you really want to put on the brown shirt...) are evil due to some of the actions of their governement being debatable morally. Or all muslims being evil due to the actions of a few madmen etc.
In any democracy the electorate must accept responsibility for the actions of government. The degree of responsibility varies. Those who voted for the government bare the most, followed by those who voted for other candidates who would have done the same thing or supported the government anyway. Then you have those who voted against the evil actions of the government, and finally those who protested against those actions.
You also have to consider how much the electorate was deceived and lied to, and how cor
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I wouldn't feel too guilty. What happened in Iraq was no worse than Saddam's long term average body count or less, and now it is done. Saddam is gone, his sons who were even worse than Saddam was will never take power, and Iraq is a democracy even if it is a troubled one. They at least have a chance. Saddam intended to go back to his usual ways as soon as he could, and between the oil for food bribery and waning interest the world wasn't going to contain him for much longer.
Even Afghanistan is better of
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The atomic bombs were on par with what we did to Berlin with standard bombs.
We talk about the horror of Okinawa, look at what days upon days of firebombing Berlin and Germany did.
The fires were so hot that some basement shelters when opened burst into flames when Oxygen got into them, and this was days after we stopped bombing. Civilians hiding in a bomb shelter cooked to death from the heat.
War is not pretty or civilized. We attempt to make it that way, but honestly It's humanity's dark evil underbelly
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Japan was not going to surrender
Japan was in the process of working out how to surrender. They were quite interested in doing just that.
You have been taught different just to justify the misdeeds of your country.
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Japan was in the process of working out how to surrender.
Next time, surrender faster.
Or even better, don't even send a two million soldiers into China to turn it into a Japanese colony, killing 4 million Chinese and leaving 60 million homeless.
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Yet another hindsight bias. The American commanders had no knowledge of that - quite the opposite, in fact, since the Japanese were making active preparations to defend the south islands.
Consider also that there was a mutiny against the emperor attempting to *continue* the war. The Japanese military (at least in the upper command) was more than ready to keep fighting, and up to that point the Japanese military had pretty much ignored any attempt by the government to rein them in.
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You're just confused about both the history and what constitutes "misdeeds." Much of the Japanese military was willing to continue the struggle to the death. Maybe you should look into the revolt over the surrender proposals.
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Let's look at the alternative to the A-bombs. Japan was not going to surrender
I encourage you to research this conclusion - Japan had been told that nothing less than unconditional surrender would be accepted. Unconditional surrender means that there is absolutely no protection for your civilian populace when you surrender. They can all be killed by the invading victors who have all been spending the last few wartorn years dosing up on racist propaganda explaining how inhuman your people are. A demand for unconditional surrender in war was unprecedented until the world wars and wa
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The Japanese, with their warrior
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I think you have made a good, reasoned argument.
I just have one important point of caution for you on this statement: "The two atomic bombings killed a quarter million people. On its own, that's horrifying. In the context of the Second World War, that's a rounding error."
While relativity is important in a great many things, it is problematic to use from an ethical point of view. Many atrocities were committed by all sides in WW2. In fact, all sides committed mass atrocities of some kind or another: the
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There are men who are inside the United states that have evaded the best agents for longer than that. They still have not found the Atlanta Olympics bomber.
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The city was selected for the nukes specifically because it was a military manufacturing city. Yes, there were "innocent" japanese people who died, it also was a declared war. You cannot even try and compare hijacking a plane and slamming it into a building, in peacetime - to do so shows pure ignorance of reality
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I'm not so sure.
What did it cost Osama to attack us (well under a hundred million dollars-- probably under 10 million dollars).
What did it cost us to find attack Osama?
Close to a trillion dollars.
How much did it cost us to hold up our economy after the Twin Tower Attack?
Several Trillion dollars.
How much have we spent to prevent another attack?
At least a hundred million dollars.
How much did we spend on the middle east war?
2 to 3 trillion.
---
His attack was effective.
Remember when Osama got iced? (Score:1)
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You ignore the key difference in that Osama was so conservative (and charismatic), if he'd lived in America he'd probably have had his own talk show on Fox news.
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omg just saw an apache helicopter @binladen (Score:1)
brb guyz gotta go check out this @usa apache helicopter lololololz #yolo!
Smiley (Score:2)
A huge window-shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S
Heh, I just love the ":-S" smiley there. I can totally relate to the feeling it describes.
Newsroom 5/1 (Score:2)
http://thenewsroom.wikia.com/w... [wikia.com]
I'm pretty sure I recall seeing the Abbottabad tweets being a focal point of The Newsroom's S01E07 episode: "5/1"
3 years already? (Score:2)
Wow, 3 years ago already?
May 1 should be a national holiday.
'People do bring it up every now and then.' (Score:1)
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A lot of those on slashdot, its a pretty good ratio, if you like Y's