Bombs and Stuff

[Dingy]

The 'REBELS' dingy, are Saddam loyalist. They enjoyed the time under saddam because they wre sunni, he was sunni, and if something went wrong, blame the Kurds and Shite's. Saddam was a modern Hitler Dingy.

Bush is the modern Hitler. Oh wait...I think I just insulted Hitler.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

Bush is the modern Hitler. Oh wait...I think I just insulted Hitler.

You just cornered yourself with a crappy analogy. You seriuosly don't think that though....at least i hope not. If so you obviouslt don't know what you are talking about.....and proof of those injured Iraqi civilians being shot would be nice before you make accusations.

[GundamGuy]

You just cornered yourself with a crappy analogy. You seriuosly don't think that though....at least i hope not. If so you obviouslt don't know what you are talking about.....and proof of those injured Iraqi civilians being shot would be nice before you make accusations.

Hittler < Bush might be talking it just a wee bit to far.

Have you not seen the news. They shot the guy in the head because he was "fakeing being dead"... of course that was most likely an insergent...
But it's still wrong, and against the rules of war.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

Insurgents are not protected under the rules of war as they do not follow them, themselves. They don't follow rules and that soldiers buddies have been killed by faking dead insurgents so he had to make a split decision. I would have shot him to and i am guessing you would have too.

[GundamGuy]

Insurgents are not protected under the rules of war as they do not follow them, themselves. They don't follow rules and that soldiers buddies have been killed by faking dead insurgents so he had to make a split decision. I would have shot him to and i am guessing you would have too.

Have you read the rules of war?

Fact of the Matter, is If he is unarmed it is impossable to tell if he is an insergent or not, The fact that he did not have a gun or was rigged to explode, makes him a possible civilan. It's not easy to tell when fighting in a city. Shooting people who's allegance is unknown is against the rules of war.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769998.html

These are the rules of war and guess who didn't sign it.....Iraqi insurgents, thus it does not apply to them and they get no protection under it. I don't think killing surrendered people is good though, even though he might have had a bomb strapped to him.

[GundamGuy]

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0769998.html

These are the rules of war and guess who didn't sign it.....Iraqi insurgents, thus it does not apply to them and they get no protection under it. I don't think killing surrendered people is good though, even though he might have had a bomb strapped to him.

They did not sign it but we did, which means we cant break them.

That's how a contract works, the people who sign it are held to it.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

For those rules to help them they have to sign it too, i believe.

[GundamGuy]

For those rules to help them they have to sign it too, i believe.

Nope. We signed the contract, we are legaly bound to them, under all circumstances.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

Nope. We signed the contract, we are legaly bound to them, under all circumstances.

Do you have proof....because since we are fighting a stateless enemy, i don't think we have to follow it with them, even though i think we should anyway.

[GundamGuy]

Do you have proof....because since we are fighting a stateless enemy, i don't think we have to follow it with them, even though i think we should anyway.

The burden of proof is on you...

But i'll just say this, Nowhere in the Rules of war is there a clause about it not applying. In order for it to not apply under a situation it would have to be spelled out in the Rules, what situation that the rules do not apply under. Since their is no said Non-application clause, then the rules apply to all wars and all forums of warfare.

And since we signed it we are held it the Rules as written.

The only thing, is I dont know if what's going on in Iraq is a War, or just a rebellion. Of course their are rules for rebellions as well. Which may or may no have been broken.

International law... not fun.

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

The burden of proof is on you...

But i'll just say this, Nowhere in the Rules of war is there a clause about it not applying. In order for it to not apply under a situation it would have to be spelled out in the Rules, what situation that the rules do not apply under. Since their is no said Non-application clause, then the rules apply to all wars and all forums of warfare.

And since we signed it we are held it the Rules as written.

The only thing, is I dont know if what's going on in Iraq is a War, or just a rebellion. Of course their are rules for rebellions as well. Which may or may no have been broken.

International law... not fun.

Well we can agree to disagree on if they apply or not. But we both agree that international law isn't fun.

[08nagaer]

I love the Left-wing historical revisionism of America's atomic bombings of the Japanese. You would think that back then they were just a bunch of closet anti-nuke pacifists that didn't really want to kill Americans...........

Guess what, folks? The Japanese were planning on nuking us too during the war, so I don't have much sympathy for that generation of Japs.

I'm sure our grand-parents didn't feel like dying in a drawn-out battle of attrition to invade Japan just to save people that were probably as fanatical as today's suicidal islamists in a war that we didn't even start..........when we had a much more bloodless(for our side) alternative.

President Truman, however, called the decision to drop the bomb 'No big deal'. Tells you something really, doesnt it?

That's right. Our grandparents didn't lose any sleep over it..........

As soon as people saw the power at the disposal of the USA, countries began arming themselves at a very rapid pace. They were seen as bargaining tools, with the lives of the Japanese people looked upon as pawns in a much larger game.

A throwaway statement maybe, but had America not dropped those atomic bombs then maybe there wouldnt have been a Cold war for the following 30-40 years.

OMG!!!1111 The big bad USA is gonna nuke the world!!!!111one

Awwww, the poor little Japanese were getting picked on by the big American meanies in their cruel game.............I guess the Japs weren't playing any games when they invaded Manchuria, Indo-China, etc. before we got into the war. You seem to forget that we lost almost every battle against the Japs before the Battle at Midway, so the America-hating, Left-wing revisionists can lick my ass and choke on the hairballs..........

Despite having a nuclear monopoly for over 3 years, we didn't do shit to the rest of the free world. If we never bombed the Japanese, Stalin would have still gotten the bomb anyway and there would still be a Cold War to contain Soviet expanisionism. Oh, but you people forgot that the peace-loving Soviets under Stalin invaded Finland and the Eastern half of Poland before Hitler betrayed him........

[Kosmo Yagkoto]

http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_14990.shtml

I found that the laws don't apply to insurgents or terrorists. Sorry GundamGuy.

[Mistral]

You've misquoted. Kosmo said that, not me.

Oh, you're right. That is why I don't do this kind of stuff too often. I invariably misquote and insult someone.

I'm confused. So are you saying we can/cannot blame America?

Well, the first and last sentences were just to poke fun at Kosmo Yagkoto, and the rest was to state that, despite agreeing to some degree with him, I disliked his statements, which gave the semblance of absolving America of all responsibility, something that shouldn't be done. America may or may not have been justified, but they certainly were responsible.

I can't accept that, sorry. You said before, but I am too lazy to quote, that we largely ignore Dresden. I don't. I've been to Dresden. Of the 400 heritage buildings before the bombings, only something like 35 remain. But, at least the populace there are not in fear of their health due to cancer, or their childrens well-being. The fact that people make distinction over Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the disgusting, horrible power of Nuclear Technology. Japan was a defeated country. Whether or not they had plans to attack or not, which is what people in this thread seem to have been debating, doesn't matter when their desperate. It also isn't good enough to justify the bombs as a demonstration of power to the Soviet Union. That's primal, childish. "Look at my big, huge, destructive,longlasting and harmful toy."
No, America made a huge mistake, and its peoples continue to justify it, when there is no other justification. Even the use of carpet bombs would have been vaguely acceptable, but nuclear technology, is not.

It is primal and childish. I don't have a very high opinion of foreign affairs between countries (Especially between the USA and USSR...when brinksmanship is official strategy between nuclear powers, things can fall apart too quickly), but sometimes I believe that one side just had to completely stun the other into submission, something which Nagasaki and Hiroshima did. Unfortunately, we very much get into what-ifs when we start justifying (or not justifying) the use, and we cannot know what the USSR would have done if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not happened. As it was, they still got the Kurils, Sakhalin, and half of Korea, and turned Manchuria over to Mao Zedong and the PRC.

I believe that if it hadn't been done, the USSR would have tried to obtain still more, such as reannexation of Finland (Axis symphathizer only because the USSR had invaded well before Fall Weiss to push the border out of artillery range for Leningrad, and had only sought back the land it lost to the USSR throughout WW2), a more direct say in the Japanese occupation and a partition similar to that in Germany, pressing further south in Korea (As I recall, they did that anyway within a decade through their proxy government, but later turned direct support over to their Chinese then-allies), putting a more radically pro-Soviet government in place in Iran (The area was invaded by the British and Soviets when the Shah began exhibiting pro-German tendencies, who was deposed and replaced by his son), or other such acts. You probably view this as panicky, and to a degree, it is a worse-case scenario (Not worst, though; Soviet trying a total grab would have been worst), but plausible. I personally believe that the USSR would have tried to expand its hegemony as far as possible, but it wasn't an aggressive power so much as a preemptive-defensive power seeking to put any future conflicts far off Russian lands.

Of course, any land assault on Japan would have resulted in many, many casualties. But the legacy from such an assault would not have had anywhere near the same implications as the dropping of those bombs. As soon as people saw the power at the disposal of the USA, countries began arming themselves at a very rapid pace. They were seen as bargaining tools, with the lives of the Japanese people looked upon as pawns in a much larger game.

Unfortunately true. Perhaps I should be a bit more reserved, since it is true that the use of nuclear weapons as a diplomatic deterrent once justified the proliferation of it throughout the world as a tool of diplomacy akin to the Army in Bismarkian diplomacy (Unifying Germany politically once the societal framework was laid boiled down to a war with Austria-Hungary and a war with France, and keeping France isolated from any military allies was the key behind his diplomatic efforts afterward), and led to the MAD situation and brinksmanship that characterized the early-to-mid Cold War.

Don't forget, of course, that a ground invasion of Japan wasn't even necessary, anymore, since their government was trying to surrender under the terms that would later be accepted on the Missouri. When I, at least, say saving lives, I mean those who would have had to live under the Stalinist paranoia and general Soviet dearth of rights (No economic, spiritual, or political freedom, and very little civil freedom) relative to the Western world, and if the present condition of much of the former USSR is any indication, putting more of the world under the poor leadership that characterized their government from Stalin to Gorbachev (Not a bad leader, but he destroyed the preexisting system without creating a replacement governmental and social system, paving the way for the Yeltsin-era chaos that took a man like Putin, for good or ill, to crush) would have been a bad idea. Countries like the Baltic States, Slovakia, former Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria all are seeing little political and economic parity with the west, though Poland in particular has done well at repairing the damage done (Understandable, considering they were the most independent of the Warsaw Pact, and one of the first to break away, and the only to do so via free elections rather than revolution). Since the Soviet model centralized production by country (Consumer goods in Czechoslovakia, for instance), the breakup easily could have been disasterous, and was bad enough as it had been. Countries with significant ties to the west throughout the era, like Poland, Hungary, and the present Czech Republic, fared better, but how many comment on the economic strength of Albania? The topic on Olympic and Coronet on my first post was just for those who didn't recognize how many Japanese would have died if they had, for whatever reason, be activated, rather than a belief that they would have been.

And I'm not touching the Iraq debate that's coming up.