Japan attacked the US first, and by Hiroshima the US had 110,000 dead in the Pacific theater. Imagine living through that before judging them.

Also perhaps worth noting that after the first bomb the Japanese government was not planning to surrender. The second dropping moved things to a deadlock where half of the ministers—both in the small war council, and the larger full government—wanted to the surrender and the other half did not.

The Emperor had to be called in—an almost unprecedented action—to break the tie. Then, even after the Emperor had made his decision, there was a coup attempt to prevent the "surrender"† broadcast:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

I do not know how anyone can think that Japan would have stopped fighting without the bombings when two bombings barely got things over the line.

The book 140 days to Hiroshima by David Dean Barrett goes over the meeting minutes / deliberations and interviews to outline the timeline, and it was not a sure thing that the surrender was going to happen: the hardliners really wanted to keep fighting, and they were ready to go to great lengths to get their way (see Kyūjō above).

The Japanese knew for a year before the bombings that they could not win the war, but they figured that by holding out—causing more causalities of Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Filipinos, etc—the US would lose their resolve and terms could be negotiated so that Japan could (e.g.) keep the land they conquered in Manchuria, etc.

† A word not actually used by the Japanese in the broadcast.

That urgency and willingness to surrender was before Japan knew that the USSR had already agreed with the allies to declare war on them at the Yalta conference in February. The USSR committed to declaring war on Japan "two or three" months after Germany fell, which happened on May 8th. They declared war on Japan on August 8th.

We did not forward any of this information onto the other allies. Instead we chose to nuke Japan on August 6th. The Emperor was allowed to remain as a figurehead.

[1] - https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28458-document-39b-magic-...

More to the point, while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrible events, they were cheap lessons compared to what it would have cost humanity to establish the taboo of nuclear warfare later, in Korea or elsewhere, with bombs 10x to 1000x their size.

And I don't think there were any real lessons learned. We nearly nuked ourselves during the Cold War multiple times. And today, with bombs that make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like primitive weapons, you have people acting like nuclear war isn't something 'that' fearful. We killed hundreds of thousands of people largely for the sake of trying to get a slight geopolitical edge over the USSR. And that's far better than the alternative of there being no reason at all. In no world are the arguments about it saving lives valid, even if you attach 0 value to the life of the Japanese for having audacity to be born in the wrong country.

----

Leo Szilard was a critical scientist in the story of the atomic bomb, and he's also full of just amazingly insightful quotes. [1]

- Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

- A great power imposes the obligation of exercising restraint, and we did not live up to this obligation. I think this affected many of the scientists in a subtle sense, and it diminished their desire to continue to work on the bomb.

- Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation.

[1] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd

So no, they wouldn't be considered war crimes, any more than the equally-destructive firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden would be considered war crimes. Meaning, of course they would be considered war crimes, but only if the victims had won the war. That's the idea behind war. War is about doing the worst stuff you can do to the other guys, then doing whatever you can to claim the moral high ground afterward. So it's best avoided when possible.

Szilard was a great guy, and in fact he was behind the original missive to FDR that kicked the program into gear. It's as impossible -- and as inappropriate -- for us to judge him and his motivations as it is for us to second-guess Truman's decision to drop the bombs. However, he's all wet with that particular argument. Unlike Germany there was never any question that the Allied side would win the war, bomb or no bomb. The question was, what would be the cost, and who should pay that cost. I'm fine with Japan paying it. They would certainly have done the same to us, and they would certainly have skipped the subsequent navel-gazing.

By the way, it's easy to argue that the 'slight geopolitical edge' that the Bomb gave us over the USSR saved millions of lives in the future. For instance, it's far from clear that North Korea wouldn't be better off today if MacArthur had been allowed to have his way.

Imagine that the Russians had either somehow beaten us to the Bomb, or had invaded Japan in the absence of our ability to deter them. Given a choice between suffering Hiroshima and Nagasaki at our hands, and suffering a half-century of Communist rule, do you really think Japan would be better off in the latter scenario?

The history of Korea is another example of this stuff, and nothing like people think. After the Korean war South Korea was ruled by a series of US backed brutal dictators. When the first was overthrown, he lived out his final years in Hawaii, just to be replaced by another, and so on. South Korea only started to become what you think of today in the 6th Republic, which began in the late 80s. The only difference between North and South Korea is that we aimed to economically attack North Korea and economically support South Korea. And given South Korea is now having an extinction level fertility crisis, the final page of how things turned out is still yet to be written.

- Soldiers on both sides wear uniforms.

- When they can, Ukraine defends from trenches away from civilians.

- When urban combat seems unavoidable, Ukraine evacuates their civilians.

- Ukraine is a vast country, with plenty of safer areas to move to.

- Other countries have also accepted large number of Ukrainian war refugees.

Gaza is the opposite: Hamas fighters disguise as civilians, they defend mostly from urban areas, they never attempt to evacuate civilians (sometimes the opposite), it's a small territory, and no countries are accepting Gazan war refugees in significant numbers.

There's no military on the planet that could fight Hamas in Gaza without causing significant civilian harm.

Given these behaviors Russian forces would be justified in just carpet bombing these sort of areas that Ukrainian forces are entrenching, but they have chosen not to. By contrast that is precisely what Israel does, and also what the US does not only in WW2 but e.g. in Iraq and Afghanistan where killing dozens of civilians to get somebody who might be an enemy is considered a justifiable engagement.

And again this gets back to what I just said about this not even necessarily being about morality or ethics. Israel is in a vastly worse place now than it was on October 8th 2023, and it's unlikely things will be improving for them in the foreseeable future. Behaving good in war is simply in one's own best interest on any sort of timescale beyond the immediate.

[1] - https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ukraine-military-e...

I disagree with this premise. There are many examples of Russia striking civilian gatherings or infrastructure.

For example their Hroza village strike killed 59. If we're trying to be charitable to Russia, it's possible they knew of some important off-duty officer present in Hroza. But with our limited public info, there were no signs of any valid military targets. Can you name any IDF strike that looks worse than that?

> Israel is in a vastly worse place now than it was on October 8th 2023

There was no way Israel could have fought Hamas without significant civilian harm and bad PR. The choice was to fight a very messy war against an enemy that disguises as civilians, or leave them alone to plan the next Oct 7.

As Golda Meir put it: "If we have to choose between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image."

In WW2 partisans would intentionally induce brutal retaliations precisely because they thought it would expose the character of the occupier, garner support for themselves, radicalize the population, and generally further their interests. And they were right. It's paradoxical because those retaliations were intended to enforce control, yet they invariably achieve the exact opposite - a recurring theme throughout history. Again getting back to the point I'm making - the reason to behave good in war is because it's in your own best interest.

Where did you see that estimate? Some estimates were ~40k, with many more recruits added during the war. And not everyone attacking the IDF was Hamas-affiliated. PIJ alone had thousands of fighters, and as we saw on Oct 7, sometimes random Gazans join in on fighting too.

> They've killed people in the hundreds of thousands in Gaza now.

Hamas themselves claim ~70k, which already includes fighters and non-combat deaths. There are a lot of questionable works trying to embellish the numbers. One of them used garbage data like WhatsApp chats. Another ended up with an estimate of 380k deaths for age 0-5, which is impossible since there were never that many in Gaza.

It's interesting to compare to Ukraine, because we don't see the same desperate attempts to embellish numbers there. Zelenskyy said "tens of thousands" were killed in Mariupol, which is one significant digit; he didn't pretend to have more precision than that. He didn't send out a Google form so that they could claim a specific (but dubious) count. We didn't see a bunch of Western academics desperately trying to justify higher death counts.

For instance the Lancet carried out a study using a variety of sources for cross-referencing, including things like obituaries, and found ~70k deaths in the first 8 months of the war, a war that's now been going on for years. And those deaths they measured were also only those caused directly and immediately by Israel due to traumatic injury. Famine, disease, despair, an other such deaths are not counted and bring it up substantially higher.

Politics in the US waxes and wanes, increasingly between extremes. Israel has already alienated itself from one 'side' in America, and is gradually doing the same with the other. Consequently, the fate of Israel in the future is more uncertain than ever - imagine an Israel not only lacking US support, but with an antagonistic US government in charge. And they also aren't exactly making friends with Russia or China. Making enemies of the world as a micronation is generally not a wise path to go down.

As for Ukraine, there's similarly a clear picture. There's no doubt that civilians are being killed but there's also no doubt that the vastly overwhelming majority of all deaths are military. So the situations simply aren't comparable.

To kill a billion people by conventional bombs would require years of sustained effort costing trillions of dollars, and I imagine the army doing that killing would collapse under the moral horror of its own actions far before that number is reached. On that other hand, thousands of nuclear weapons can be deployed by a very small group of amoral people with instantaneous destructive effects.

It seems rather immoral to a high degree to send some Americans to their deaths unnecessarily because we didn’t want to use a weapon we had in our possession to end a war that we did not start.

Seventy two Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were already completely destroyed before the two atomic bombs were dropped. The two cities destroyed by atomic bombs were on a list to be destroyed regardless.

To the people killed, injured, or left in the shell of a city with no food or water it made very little real difference whether the cause was HE+incendiaries OR high burst shockwave from atomic bomb - the M&M statistics (death and injury, both immediate and following) were similar in either case.

The greatest military imperative to drop the atomic bombs were pragmatic .. they were developed at vast expanse for use on Germany but were not ready until after Germany surrended .. to close off an R&D program without a live target test on targets already targetted for destruction just seemed ... wasteful.

After the bombs were dropped, everything changed. Public awareness and perception. The need for post war PR. The start of the Cold War race with soviets over atomics. The pressing need for auto biographies and centre staging from actors late to the story, etc.

Much of the "justification" for dropping atomic bombs was retconned after the fact.

Were we at war with Japan? Yes. Therefore any action we take to end that war was justified, including continuing to bomb Japanese cities, industrial areas, and civilian centers until the war is concluded and they surrendered. Testing weapons even would be acceptable. Japan was still fighting us. Nations test weapons during war all the time which is partially how weapons development occurs.

Not that these things are enforced, of course, see bombings throughout SE Asia during Vietnam and the international punishment dealt out to Kissinger.

> I think that's the point you are broadly missing.

Did I?

Let me be clearer. There was no particular examination of the justifications for killing civilains specifically in the cases of the two cities destroyed by atomic weapons.

Why?

Because any such moral examination had already taken place many many months before; broadly in the case of heavy bombing campaigns in Europe and more specifically at the start of the Japanese bombing campaign that most appear to have forgotten.

Before H & N were bombed with the first atomic weapons 72 other cities had already been destroyed, including Tokyo. H & N were 'just' two targets on a list more than a hundred cities in length.

> Therefore any action we take to end that war was justified

Yeah, maybe take some moral and ethics classes, look into why there's pushback over actions in Gaza, etc.

There's no simple 'therefore' here.

Gaza (what a bizarre thing to bring up anyway) has nothing to do with actions taken by any nation during World War II. It's not even a war between nations. Unless you count Iran since they're the ones causing so much pain for everyone by inciting terrorist organizations in the region and ensure there can be no peace.

> During wartime justifications for carpet bombing do matter .. see Geneva Conventions et al.

Not all wars are created equal, and not all actions taking during one war can be justified during another. For example, the United States using an atomic bomb on Iraq (regardless if the invasion was justified or not, but for the sake of argument here we can assume it's justified) would be morally wrong in any context.

Why is that the case?

Because the United States unofficially (if memory serves) declared war on Iraq, invaded Iraq, and did so with overwhelming military, economic, and political superiority. Iraq posed no existential threat to the United States. Just because it's a war doesn't mean you get to use everything in your arsenal.

When you compare that with the war against Japan, you find a very different picture.

World War II as a whole, including the war against Japan was an existential war requiring the full participation of all of society, civilian or otherwise. This was the same case on the eastern front of the war. The Nazis were exterminating people. The Soviets (and anyone else for that matter) were justified in bombing Nazi population centers, including carpet bombing, or even dropping their own atomic bomb on Berlin if that brought an end to the war.

Concepts and ideas around things like the Geneva conventions fail in these existential total war scenarios for two reasons:

  1. They are arbitrary, and applied and justified post-hoc. Specifically the Geneva conventions weren't agreed upon prior to 1949 IIRC and so applying their moral and legal justification to actions prior to that as though one group broke a treaty or acted immorally doesn't make a lot of sense except of course as a way to criticize western powers. If you want to argue about how some countries violated what were later the Geneva conventions by their military activities, the only thing you're really telling me here is that all countries were very bad because the Japanese sure as hell violated the Geneva Conventions, and you know very well the Soviets did too, as did the Nazis. So if you want to criticize the US for dropping the atomic bomb, I criticize the other countries involved in the war equally, and I'd also criticize countries who stayed neutral during the war and did not fight to liberate Europe and Asia. 

  2. They don't map correctly to wars where one or more of the participants is intent on committing genocide or otherwise exterminating the actual population of the other. And in total war scenarios the civilian population is building and funding the war efforts and thus become legitimate targets. Otherwise it would be illegal and immoral to bomb a tank factory because you kill civilians. It's not. You know that, and I know that. 

See bombings by the Soviets and mass starvation of civilians by them and the Chinese. See any number of things done by other countries not named the United States. Let's talk about those as examples going forward instead. We're well aware of all the criticisms of the United States but I don't care about those, I'm interested only in criticisms of the actions of non-western countries and how they have acted in morally bankrupt ways with the usage of their weapons.

> Either the calculations were the justification

The person I responded to was trying to suggest the number of American lives saved was a lot fewer than estimates. Instead of saving 1,000,000 Americans it "only" saved 50,000 or something and because of that, the calculus to use the bomb wasn't as "good" as it otherwise would be if it had saved more lives.

I say if it saved a single American life it was worth it, and was righteous, thus the shifting around of how many American lives saved is pointless because we know the lower bound is 1, and 1 was all you needed.

It was pretty simple: you said "they’re our people and their lives matter more" and I explained that they are not "our" people because you're not talking to an US American: you're talking to a South American. They are not "my" people.

I also claimed that, in any case, arguments out of "our" vs "their" people are fundamentally not about being civilized (which was the root of the argument, let me quote it for context: "dropping nukes was both barbaric and the more civilized option. Oppenheimer et al. deserve their acclaim.").

You can make "us vs them" arguments, but it has nothing to do with being civilized, and it doesn't save anyone from accusations of barbarism. I mean, Hitler also thought in terms of "us vs them", and look how he is regarded today.

> The person I responded to was trying to suggest the number of American lives saved was a lot fewer than estimates. Instead of saving 1,000,000 Americans it "only" saved 50,000 or something and because of that, the calculus to use the bomb wasn't as "good" as it otherwise would be if it had saved more lives.

The person you responded to was me. Your understanding of my argument is incorrect. I argued that the number mattered because the actual number is used to say "the invasion [Operation Downfall] would have caused more casualties than dropping the bomb, therefore the bomb 'saved' Japanese lives too". Please don't tell me you haven't heard this argument, which is very well known and in fact was mentioned by the original commenter I was responding to. This moral calculus has been quoted thousands of times; I'm pointing out it's misleading and dishonest.

You simply can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the numbers matter or they don't; and if they do matter, it matters that they are well justified and accurate. And it matters whether they were really thinking of these numbers when they decided to use the Bomb(s), or whether they are an a posteriori justification!

(Besides, as a sibling commenter argued, more aptly than I did: US planners wanted to use the Bomb because they had it and had spent a lot of effort developing it. They were primed to use it. They wanted to test it on a real city, with real humans, and they wanted to send a message to the Soviets, too. All excuses -- Operation Downfall, American vs Japanese lives, etc -- were a posteriori, retroactively deployed to not be portrayed as cold hearted).

> I say if it saved a single American life it was worth it, and was righteous, thus the shifting around of how many American lives saved is pointless because we know the lower bound is 1, and 1 was all you needed.

This is fundamentally wrong and doesn't support the argument from "civilization" which, again, was the argument I was responding to.

If you are going to argue American lives are worth preserving more than lives from other countries, not only do I disagree (how would you feel if I told you they are less worth preserving?), but it's also not about being civilized. So we can abandon that pretense!

But we are talking about World War II, and a war in which the United States and Japan fought, with millions of casualties. Pardon me if I'm not particularly interested in what someone from South America thinks about saving American lives by using a weapon we had to stop a war that we didn't start.

> Either the numbers matter or they don't; and if they do matter, it matters that they are well justified and accurate.

I don't think the numbers matter and shifting around from 50,000 to 5 million or anywhere in proximity to those numbers doesn't change the categorical argument. But if someone such as yourself wants to claim the numbers matter, my number is 1. It only takes 1 American life to have been saved in that needless war to justify the usage of any* weapon to stop the war.

* I'm using any here but there are obviously limits like, using a weapon that destroys the entire world or something fantastical that would very unlikely be justified.

> This is fundamentally wrong and doesn't support the argument from "civilization" which, again, was the argument I was responding to.

> US planners wanted to use the Bomb because they had it and had spent a lot of effort developing it. They were primed to use it. They wanted to test it on a real city, with real humans, and they wanted to send a message to the Soviets, too. All excuses -- Operation Downfall, American vs Japanese lives, etc -- were a posteriori, retroactively deployed to not be portrayed as cold hearted

Japan could have surrendered and then it wouldn't have been used. Even if we just wanted to test it, it was justified. There's a lot of revisionist history that goes into these conversations with the goal of "USA BAD" and in the context of World War II I reject any and all of those assertions. It's the same lame crap that gets thrown around with respect to the Soviets and the Eastern Front.

"The US didn't do anything"

"The Soviets were the good guys fighting the good fight against the Nazis".

Both are untrue and are derived from Russian/Chinese propaganda schemes to sow self-doubt and defeatism for their own benefit.

For example, a lot of folks will claim things like the Soviets bore the brunt of the war in a moralist context in contrast with the western allies who didn't see as many lives expended. Of course that's true from a numeric context. 40 million deaths or something crazy from the Soviet side. But let's not forget, it was the Soviets who helped Germany kick this thing off by illegally invading and partitioning Poland. So... maybe those 40 million deaths were deserved. Just like the Nazis deserved to be destroyed?

> how would you feel if I told you they are less worth preserving?

I wouldn't care what you thought? In wartime, as an American, our soldier's lives are worth more than any enemy lives. This seems pretty straightforward to me. But if you want to insist you think your countrymen's lives are worth the same or less than some enemy that invaded you or that you are at war with, good luck fighting that war.

This is not an argument for "civilization", so it's very hard to follow your point.

If you don't care what I think, why bother debating with me at all?

> I don't think the numbers matter and shifting around from 50,000 to 5 million or anywhere in proximity to those numbers doesn't change the categorical argument.

On the contrary, it does change the categorical debate because the original argument ("it also saved Japanese lives") depended on those numbers. You seem to want to argue about something unrelated to what I said?

> Japan could have surrendered and then it wouldn't have been used.

It has been argued quite convincingly, multiple times already, that the Bomb would have been used nonetheless. The effort to develop it had been made, now they wanted to use it on real population centers. They were biased and primed to action. Also, it was done to send a message to the Soviets (the Japanese to this day maintain this, and while you could convincingly argue their opinion is self-serving, so is the US's).

None of this has much to do with Operation Downfall or whether Japan wanted to surrender (there were a pro and anti surrender factions, and the hardliners could maybe have been appeased. Or not. It's not self-evident there was no other way.)

More importantly, this is not a valid argument if we're going to argue about civilization. If you want to make a separate argument, go ahead, but that's not what I was reacting to.

Also, preempting your likely "I don't care about civilization": if you don't, why are you arguing in a thread precisely about this?

> "The US didn't do anything [in WW2]"

Puzzling strawman. Did I say this?

> "The Soviets were the good guys fighting the good fight against the Nazis".

I'm struggling to see the connection here. Was it because I mentioned the Bomb was also signalling to the Soviets? But that'd be true regardless.

> For example, a lot of folks will claim things like the Soviets bore the brunt of the war

They did.

> it was the Soviets who helped Germany kick this thing off by illegally invading and partitioning Poland

That's a very simplistic take, but I suspect you aren't interested in more nuanced takes. There's a lot to read on this matter.

> So... maybe those 40 million deaths were deserved

Wow. Just wow.

> I wouldn't care what you thought? In wartime, as an American, our soldier's lives are worth more than any enemy lives.

Why argue with me? You obviously care. Also, "our soldier's lives are worth more" is an argument, but not one out of civilization, which is what we were debating. As in "dropping the Bomb was a civilized option because [...]".

> But if you want to insist you think your countrymen's lives

I was just telling you how you sound when you say "our lives matter more..." as if everyone here was US American.

I don't know what you're talking about anymore with this. Can you elaborate?

> If you don't care what I think, why bother debating with me at all?

You keep replying.

> On the contrary, it does change the categorical debate because the original argument ("it also saved Japanese lives") depended on those numbers. You seem to want to argue about something unrelated to what I said?

If it saved Japanese lives that just makes it all the better, if it didn't, it doesn't matter. I think you're just not understanding the point. You're trying to make this calculation about how many lives equivalent to a moral choice made by the United States and Japan in the conduct of their war. I reject the calculation of the numbers of lives saved.

> On the contrary, it does change the categorical debate because the original argument ("it also saved Japanese lives") depended on those numbers. You seem to want to argue about something unrelated to what I said?

That's not convincing at all. If Japan had formally surrendered the United States would have not then, post-surrender gone and dropped an atomic bomb on a Japanese city. You're crazy if you think that is the case. There is no room for debate here and nothing you can say, including showing me letters, papers, whatever will change my mind. I'm close-minded to that idea.

> Puzzling strawman. Did I say this?

> I'm struggling to see the connection here. Was it because I mentioned the Bomb was also signalling to the Soviets? But that'd be true regardless.

Nope, not puzzling. It's just a common theme. It's always "question the United States actions", "talk about the United States", "the United States is bad and does bad things all the time" and saying things like the US would have dropped an atomic bomb on Japan after it formally surrendered is aligned with the same kinds of things people say about the Soviets or whatever. It's just the same playbook of anti-Americanism propaganda that serves just one purpose which is to make people in the United States (and honestly the west in general) want to withdraw from the world and let autocrats and their toads take over.

The common themes are:

  US bad for dropping atomic bomb on Japan, all the calculations about lives saved are wrong
  The US didn't do anything of consequence in Europe it was all the Soviets because they lost the most people, despite the fact that they started the damn war alongside Germany and are the bad guys too
  The western front was only full of old Germans, if the rest of the allies had to face the real German army like the Soviets did they wouldn't have done XYZ

> That's a very simplistic take, but I suspect you aren't interested in more nuanced takes.

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. I'd encourage you to read up more on the Soviet - Nazi alliance. Both governments were evil. The Soviets got what they asked for by trusting the Nazis and invading and annexing another country. While there is undoubtedly nuance to that arrangement, at a high level the Communists and Nazis got together and decided to start partitioning Europe.

Rejecting this is like the whole "clean Wehrmacht" thing or how Rommel was a "good general" since he wasn't in Europe. No, both groups were just as bad as the Nazi regime they fought for.

> Also, "our soldier's lives are worth more" is an argument, but not one out of civilization, which is what we were debating. As in "dropping the Bomb was a civilized option because [...]".

You are implying that the Japanese were civilized at this time.

> I was just telling you how you sound when you say "our lives matter more..." as if everyone here was US American.

I know how I sound. Our soldiers lives do matter more than the lives of enemy soldiers. In the case of the war against Japan they mattered much more than Japanese lives, soldiers or otherwise. I know you think this is some sort of controversial thing to say, but this seems rather routine to me.

Yes you do. I explained it multiple times already. If you don't, I suggest you pay more attention instead of replying to comments you admit you don't understand.

> You keep replying.

You claimed you didn't care about my opinion, yet here you are. Why? Sport?

> I reject the calculation of the numbers of lives saved.

Thanks for the straight answer. However, the person I was replying to didn't reject the calculation, which is why they mentioned it, and this is what I challenged. Clearer now?

> Nope, not puzzling. It's just a common theme. It's always "question the United States actions", "talk about the United States", "the United States is bad and does bad things all the time"

That's your own baggage. Argue with the things I actually said, not with "common themes". You seem to be upset about things I haven't argued, at least not here. I cannot be held responsible for whatever irks you on the internet, much like I cannot be upset at you for whatever BS Trump or the alt-right spews.

> Soviets good, West worked with Nazis, West didn't do anything, bombing Japan to end the war is immoral, blah blah blah

I don't know your internet circles, but most of what I hear is "America won WW2", "Soviets are as evil as Hitler", etc.

> Both are untrue and are derived from Russian/Chinese propaganda schemes to sow self-doubt and defeatism for their own benefit.

No... I suggest you read "The Myth of the Eastern Front" (2008) by American historians Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies, which is a scholarly work (well regarded and widely referenced and cited) that describes among other things American shifting views on WW2's Eastern Front (as well as documenting the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth, and others). These are not Russian/Chinese infiltrators, but well regarded American scholars.

What you identify as "revisionism" is actually a shift away from German-dictated histories of WW2, and towards a more balanced view.

> Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. I'd encourage you to read up more on the Soviet - Nazi alliance.

I expected you to extend me the courtesy of assuming I knew about Molotov-Ribbentrop. Like I said, there were nuances to the situation, even mentioned "there's a lot to read on the subject". I assume you don't care -- or you think anyone who disagrees with any action of the US is simply ill-informed or Russian/Chinese influenced -- but there are nuances on this topic (e.g. how the USSR foresaw war with Nazi Germany, how it sought an anti-German pact with the UK and France which was rejected). But I won't be dragged into defending the Soviets or whatever when it has very little to do with the original topic.

> You are implying that the Japanese were civilized at this time.

Well, they were in some sense and they were barbaric in others (ironically this is what the OP claimed of the Bombs!). But let's take it for granted that the Japanese were pretty savage towards the people they invaded: even then, your own civilization doesn't depend on your foe's. It's an inherent trait.

I know this may be hard to grasp when following your "us vs them" logic.

> I know how I sound

Apparently not; you don't seem aware of how jingoistic you sound. Or that when you say "our", this being a relative word, it pays to know your audience who may or may not be "yours".

Ok. I don't understand I guess. Whatever :)

> You claimed you didn't care about my opinion, yet here you are. Why? Sport?

I'm here for a broader audience to read. Do you care about my opinion?

> Thanks for the straight answer. However, the person I was replying to didn't reject the calculation, which is why they mentioned it, and this is what I challenged. Clearer now?

But I was replying and rejecting the calculation because the calculation doesn't matter, at least in my opinion. Again if 1 American life was saved it was worth it and Civilized so it isn't relevant whether 50,000 lives were saved (Japanese, American, otherwise) or 5,000,000.

> That's your own baggage. Argue with the things I actually said, not with "common themes". You seem to be upset about things I haven't argued, at least not here.

Nope. I know what you're doing because it's a common pattern and the same tropes are repeated. Even in this very article you're defending the Soviets illegally partitioning and invading Poland alongside the Nazis as "nuanced".

> I don't know your internet circles, but most of what I hear is "America won WW2", "Soviets are as evil as Hitler", etc.

Well the Soviets were quite evil. That's a simple fact and we can state that up front.They were arguably more evil than the Nazis over the long term but still categorically evil so it doesn't quite matter just who is winning the evil Olympics.

I don't know where you hear America "won" World War II. Vast majority of Americans accept and understand that the Soviets fought the Germans in the east which was hugely important for defeating the Nazis. While the United States fought Japan in the Pacific which was also incredibly important. There's a common phrase here in the United States that the war was won with Soviet Blood, British Intelligence, and American Steel.

> I expected you to extend me the courtesy of assuming I knew about Molotov-Ribbentrop. Like I said, there were nuances to the situation, even mentioned "there's a lot to read on the subject".

But at the end of the day, the broader actions are what matter, not the nuance. I can't tell if you are familiar with Molotov-Ribbentrop because your previous comments seem to be aghast that I suggested the Soviets, who helped kick off the war, deserved what happened to them.

> I assume you don't care -- or you think anyone who disagrees with any action of the US is simply ill-informed -- but there are nuances on this topic (e.g. how the USSR foresaw war with Nazi Germany,

I think people who repeat obviously untrue things, like suggesting the US would have dropped atomic bombs on Japan just to test them after Japan surrendered, don't debate in good faith and are also ill-informed.

> how it sought an anti-German pact with the UK and France which was rejected).

Nuance right? Or does that only count when it's the Soviets?

> Well, they were in some sense and they were barbaric in others. But let's take it for granted that the Japanese were pretty savage towards the people they invaded: your own civilization doesn't depend on your foe's. It's an inherent trait.

> I know this may be hard to grasp when following your "us vs them" logic.

Sure. I declare we are civilized because we bombed Japan and turned them into a peaceful democracy. During a war, it is us versus them. This is basic stuff. There's nothing we need to take for granted about the Japanese. They were rampaging, murdering lunatics. Korea, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and more suffered under their brutal regime of violence and repression.

> Apparently not; you don't seem aware of how jingoistic you sound. Or that when you say "our", this being a relative word, it pays to know your audience who may or may not be "yours".

Nope, I'm pretty aware. My audience isn't you, it's other readers who happen to stumble upon your argument. If they think I sound overly-Patriotic because I reject your claims, so be it. My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it.

By the way, you said you're not American. What country are you from?

Well, better read more closely then before replying :)

> I'm here for a broader audience to read. Do you care about my opinion?

If I didn't care about your opinion, I wouldn't answer -- I'm using human logic, not ET-logic.

> But I was replying and rejecting the calculation because the calculation doesn't matter, at least in my opinion.

Understood. Unfortunately, you got confused about who you were replying to; it wasn't me who argued the calculation mattered. I actually argued the calculation was a retroactive justification, not the actual one. I can see you got lost here. Maybe for the benefit of, you know, your "broader audience" you could have replied to that other commenter.

> Nope. I know what you're doing because it's a common pattern and the same tropes are repeated.

This thing you're doing is really bizarre, claiming to know my thoughts. I find it fascinating. Do you always debate like this?

> Even in this very article you're defending the Soviets illegally partitioning and invading Poland alongside the Nazis as "nuanced".

Nope. I was explaining the nuances of a situation which had more angles than what you implied. You were asking me to read on Molotov-Ribbentrop, yet you don't seem much well read on the subject if you ignore these nuances...

Have you read the Smelser & Davies book I mentioned?

> I don't know where you hear America "won" World War II.

I don't know how you can ignore this widespread take.

> I think people who repeat obviously untrue things, like suggesting the US would have dropped atomic bombs on Japan just to test them after Japan surrendered, don't debate in good faith and are also ill-informed.

"Obviously untrue" is begging the question; I mean, it's precisely what we're debating! In your adult life you'll sometimes face people who will argue that something you believe in is false or untrue, and this doesn't automatically make them bad faith arguers or ill-informed.

I consider someone to be arguing in bad faith when they feign ignorance, put words in other people's mouths, argue against strawmen, or consistently use cheap rhetorical tricks. Not by mistake, or a one-off, but consistently. Like you're doing now.

> But at the end of the day, the broader actions are what matter, not the nuance. I can't tell if you are familiar with Molotov-Ribbentrop because your previous comments seem to be aghast that I suggested the Soviets, who helped kick off the war, deserved what happened to them.

Both matter: broader actions and nuance. Being aghast at someone who claims 40 million people deserved to die has nothing to do with Molotov-Ribbentrop or any pact. Again... I'm aghast but not in defense of the Soviets, just at your callousness.

> Nuance right? Or does that only count when it's the Soviets?

No, nuances also apply here as well. It doesn't count only when it's the Soviets. There were nuances to the reasons for dropping the Bomb as well. Is this another of your "common tropes" you're constantly fighting against? Please, I urge you to engage with the positions that are actually stated, not with some imaginary enemy you've constructed.

> Sure. I declare we are civilized because we bombed Japan and turned them into a peaceful democracy.

Ok, this is a straightforward, honest position. You think dropping the Bomb was ok because it won the war. Also you make some non sequitur about the Bomb turning Japan into a peaceful democracy (completely bizarre logic, it doesn't follow that it was the bomb). You've repeatedly ignored arguments by me, and others here, that argued that it wasn't necessarily the Bomb that won the war, but whatever. I understand this is your position; I think it's wrong.

> There's nothing we need to take for granted about the Japanese. They were rampaging, murdering lunatics. Korea, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, and more suffered under their brutal regime of violence and repression.

Do you understand the expression "let's take for granted"? It seems you're hell-bent on arguing where there's no argument.

> Nope, I'm pretty aware. My audience isn't you, it's other readers who happen to stumble upon your argument. If they think I sound overly-Patriotic because I reject your claims, so be it. My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it.

My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it either. But, I posit, by sounding jingoistic you're not doing yourself any favors.

> By the way, you said you're not American. What country are you from?

Why does it matter? I'm South American. I'm not from: Russia, China, Japan, Venezuela, North Korea or any country deemed a rogue state or hostile actor by the US. I don't believe in American exceptionalism or their Manifest Destiny. People are entitled to dissenting opinions about the US, right? (I hope, at least!)

Nope. I prefer to read not so close and just reply anyway.

> Understood. Unfortunately, you got confused about who you were replying to; it wasn't me who argued the calculation mattered. I actually argued the calculation was a retroactive justification, not the actual one. I can see you got lost here. Maybe for the benefit of, you know, your "broader audience" you could have replied to that other commenter.

I'm saying that it doesn't need to be retroactively justified, and even if the numbers are high or low it doesn't matter. The action was justified until Japan formally surrendered and ended the war. What you're trying to debate it seems to me is around agreements or disagreements about the justification of using the bomb, my criteria is that we were still at war with Japan, and so the justifications, either accurate at the time or retroactive, are irrelevant. It's possible that what you are suggesting around the number of lives saved was a revision, which I don't agree or disagree with, but you are later implying a moral failure because of that revision, and I am rejecting that there was ever a moral failure by using the bomb provided we were still formally at war.

If you want to reject a moral claim about the revision of the justification, I don't really have much to debate here. Whatever the facts are, are the facts. But if you are making a moral claim about the usage of the bomb, that's different.

> This thing you're doing is really bizarre, claiming to know my thoughts. I find it fascinating. Do you always debate like this?

I debate and discuss things depending on various contexts.

In this context you're engaging in a group of common debate tactics (for example, you're afraid to say what country you are from, yet you're happy to speak English and criticize the United States and only the United States) that are a well-known pattern of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. I just noted the patterns and identified your discussion points as being among them.

For example, let's change the subject and talk about the evils of the Soviet Union. And no we don't have to stay on topic, nobody is reading our nonsense anyway.

I know you won't do that though, because you don't know much about Soviet atrocities, and you won't be able to engage in a strict criticism of Soviet actions unless you introduce nuance (excuses) and find ways to make Soviet atrocities the fault of western countries.

If that's not true, prove me wrong. Let's spend some time now talking about the awful things the Soviets did.

> Nope. I was explaining the nuances of a situation which had more angles than what you implied. You were asking me to read on Molotov-Ribbentrop, yet you don't seem much well read on the subject if you ignore these nuances...

> Both matter: broader actions and nuance. Being aghast at someone who claims 40 million people deserved to die has nothing to do with Molotov-Ribbentrop or any pact. Again... I'm aghast but not in defense of the Soviets, just at your callousness.

Actions matter more than nuance, the nuance is just an excuse to justify the actions of the side you want to support. It sucks that so many Soviet Union, uh, members I guess? I'm not sure how to best describe that hellish autocratic government, but at the end of the day the Soviet Union colluded with the Nazis, and so I'm not really shedding a tear for them losing soldiers or civilians fighting the same maniacs they colluded with.

> Ok, this is a straightforward, honest position. You think dropping the Bomb was ok because it won the war. Also you make some non sequitur about the Bomb turning Japan into a peaceful democracy (completely bizarre logic, it doesn't follow that it was the bomb).

Well I said we bombed Japan, not necessarily it was because of the atomic bomb. But I acknowledge of course that specific context could be interpreted differently than my intention.

I'm suggesting that dropping the bomb, or any other action was just another action that our civilized country took and the end result was that we took over influence of Japan and civilized it and made it a peaceful democracy.

(besides obvious stuff like just raping people or whatever)

> You've repeatedly ignored arguments by me, and others here, that argued that it wasn't necessarily the Bomb that won the war, but whatever. I understand this is your position; I think it's wrong.

I think it's very much up for debate whether the bomb was actually what got the Japanese to surrender. It's possible and debatable that we could have just continued to bomb Japan without the atomic bomb and we would have seen a surrender anyway.

But it is not up for debate that the Japanese military were very much divided on whether or not to continue to hold out against the United States up until the usage of the atomic bomb and some were still holding out (if my memory serves correctly) even after the reports of the first bomb. You're suggesting that I'm ignoring your arguments, but I'm not, I'm disagreeing with them.

> Do you understand the expression "let's take for granted"? It seems you're hell-bent on arguing where there's no argument.

The specific language used matters. When you introduce the term "let's take for granted" you are implying that there is another option to be considered, such as that the Japanese weren't rampaging, murdering lunatics at the time. It's not an assumption to be taken for granted that the Japanese were as I described, it's simply a fact.

Another way to look at it is you can replace "let's take for granted" with "let's suppose" or "let's pretend". That term or variation of those terms, in my view, aren't valid to be used here because we don't suppose that the Japanese were rampaging murderous lunatics from around 1938, they were as a matter of fact.

> My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it either. But, I posit, by sounding jingoistic you're not doing yourself any favors.

I'll posit by sounding anti-western and anti-American you're not doing yourself any favors.

> Why does it matter?

Why are you afraid to say where you're from?

It shows. Maybe you should read closer so as to debate the actual statements and not something you imagined.

I had typed a longer answer but then realized it's pointless. You seem intent on setting some kind of trap or gotcha, which is pointless. It's also against the HN guidelines, but you already know this.

You've already decided I fit a "common pattern" and that I'm anti-American and anti-Western (that's hilarious, I was born and live in Trump's very own Western hemisphere. Plus good luck arguing that anti nuclear weapons Americans are anti-American), so stay with that opinion. I have nothing to gain by telling a bad faith troll my country, and you haven't justified why you need this information.

I hope you can overcome your anger.

Just because I disagree with you and characterize your arguments as following a similar pattern as other anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric doesn't mean anything I said is a "trap" or a "gotcha" or against guidelines. Though accusing others of trolling or bad faith tends to be against the rules.

You don't know the first thing about me, or what I think of any given country, so by accusing me ahead of time of "bad faith trolling" of your country" you're engaging in the same behavior you are accusing me of. You've already decided I fit a common pattern and will troll your country!

The fact of the matter here is that I disagreed with your points and said why, and all you did was accuse me of saying I ignored your arguments. But I did not, I addressed them head-on and shared my point of view.

During that time you couldn't say what country you were from so perhaps we can discuss your country too, and you can't bring yourself to criticize the Soviet Union or its mass murders and genocide and collaboration with the Nazis because you're just engaging in anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric. You say I've already decided that you fit a common pattern. No, I didn't decide that, you just provided the evidence.

Goodbye.

Before he became General Secretary, but while Stalin was a high government official, the US, Britain, France and Japan literally invaded Russia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...

The operation against Maduro was launched from countries in the region aligned with the US.

You also rule out the possibility of an invasion of Seoul, as though it would be "unfair" -- when you're advocating for and actively in the process of tearing whatever remains of the concept of international law to shreds, what makes you think PRC would be inclined to play nice?

I don't see what's unlikely about this, it's basically NK's defense strategy.

It wasn't just carriers in Maduro's case. The operation was carried from multiple places, including out of Caribbean countries aligned with the US. The US was literally signing deals with those countries months in advance.

Who would those countries be in an hypothetical NK strike? Because those countries would suffer retaliation.

China's primary concern is resource extraction from Venezuela, which is why Trump immediately clarified that they'd make sure China still got their oil deliveries.

Russia is stretched way too thin right now to do anything meaningful about it.

Venezuela was basically being run by Cuba. Maduro was really only a figurehead. The military and government was functionally run by imported Cubans which is why a coup wasn't possible.