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"Thank God for the Atom Bomb"

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  • Originally posted by bigross86 View Post
    I had a tank commander whose father started out the Yom Kippur War after the surprise attack as a cadet in Armor Officer OCS. He ended the war 19 days later as a Captain and Company CO.
    As promised, here's the link to my Yom Kippur tale at "Stories."

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    • Originally posted by Asim Aquil View Post
      But, say Israel's a lot more capable of killing more humans in the middle east than the humans on Israel.

      So whoever shoots first, wins. Why wait for Israel to actually launch a nuke.

      Say one guy from Hezbollah, one guy from Hamas, one Wahabbi, one Taliban one some other militant each goes and blows something off in Israel.

      So now is it our solemn duty to bend over to Israel and get things in our nations pulverized? Shouldn't we just blow them up and call it a day?
      The Arabs have plenty of oil and their armies are easy to defeat on conventional battlefields. The only reason the United States is not good at guerrilla wars is because we are too humane. We want to be loved by the people we occupy. The way to occupy a hostile population is to tell them, "We are here because we want to be here. If you cooperate with us we will not kill you."

      If the Arabs keep pushing us with their terrorism we can kill them all, take their oil, and say to Israel, "There's the land. Settle it."

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      • Originally posted by Mandala View Post
        The Arabs have plenty of oil and their armies are easy to defeat on conventional battlefields. The only reason the United States is not good at guerrilla wars is because we are too humane. We want to be loved by the people we occupy. The way to occupy a hostile population is to tell them, "We are here because we want to be here. If you cooperate with us we will not kill you."

        If the Arabs keep pushing us with their terrorism we can kill them all, take their oil, and say to Israel, "There's the land. Settle it."
        You are exceedingly stupid,even for a teenager.
        Those who know don't speak
        He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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        • UNITED STATES STRATEGIC BOMBING SURVEY SUMMARY REPORT (Pacific War)

          WASHINGTON, D.C. 1 JULY 1946

          UNITED STATES
          GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
          WASHINGTON : 1946

          The United States Strategic Bombing Survey was established by the Secretary of War on 3 November 1944, pursuant to a directive from the late President Roosevelt. It was established for the purpose of conducting an impartial and expert study of the effects of our aerial attack on Germany, to be used in connection with air attacks on Japan and to establish a basis for evaluating air power as an instrument of military strategy, for planning the future development of the United States armed forces, and for determining future economic policies with respect to the national defense. A summary report and some 200 supporting reports containing the findings of the Survey in Germany have been published. On 15 August 1945, President Truman requested the Survey to conduct a similar study of the effects of all types of air attack in the war against Japan...

          Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
          United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report (Pacific War)

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          • American Military Leaders Urge President Truman not to Drop the Atomic Bomb

            In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:

            [T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

            Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:

            The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 329, Chapter 26) . . . [Nimitz also stated: "The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . ."]

            Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:

            The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before. (See p. 331, Chapter 26)

            Rear Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1945 (and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission), replaced Bard on the Interim Committee after he left government on July 1. Subsequently, Strauss repeatedly stated his belief that the use of the atomic bomb "was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. . . ." (See p. 332, Chapter 26) Strauss recalled:

            I proposed to Secretary Forrestal at that time that the weapon should be demonstrated. . . . Primarily, it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate.

            The commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, gave a strong indication of his views in a public statement only eleven days after Hiroshima was attacked. Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said:

            The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air. (See p. 334, Chapter 27)
            In his 1949 memoirs Arnold observed that "it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." (See p. 334, Chapter 27)

            Arnold's deputy, Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, summed up his understanding this way in an internal military history interview:

            Arnold's view was that it [the dropping of the atomic bomb] was unnecessary. He said that he knew the Japanese wanted peace.

            On September 20, 1945 the famous "hawk" who commanded the Twenty-First Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay (as reported in The New York Herald Tribune) publicly: said flatly at one press conference that the atomic bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war." He said the war would have been over in two weeks without the use of the atomic bomb or the Russian entry into the war. (See p. 336, Chapter 27)
            The text of the press conference provides these details:

            LeMay: The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.
            The Press: You mean that, sir? Without the Russians and the atomic bomb?

            LeMay: The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

            (See p. 336, Chapter 27)

            On other occasions in internal histories and elsewhere LeMay gave even shorter estimates of how long the war might have lasted (e.g., "a few days"). (See pp. 336-341, Chapter 27)

            On the 40th Anniversary of the bombing former President Richard M. Nixon reported that:

            [General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the Bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants. . . . MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off. . . . (See p. 352, Chapter 28)

            The day after Hiroshima was bombed MacArthur's pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, noted in his diary:

            General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster [the bomb]. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa. . . . (See p. 350, Chapter 28)

            Former President Herbert Hoover met with MacArthur alone for several hours on a tour of the Pacific in early May 1946. His diary states:


            I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria. (See pp. 350-351, Chapter 28)

            Saturday Review of Literature editor Norman Cousins also later reported that MacArthur told him he saw no military justification for using the atomic bomb, and that "The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." (See p. 351, Chapter 28)

            In his memoirs President Dwight D. Eisenhower reports the following reaction when Secretary of War Stimson informed him the atomic bomb would be used:

            During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. . . . (See p. 4, Introduction)


            Eisenhower made similar private and public statements on numerous occasions. For instance, in a 1963 interview he said simply: ". . . it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." (See pp. 352-358, Chapter 28)
            MILITARY VIEWS About Dropping the Atomic Bomb

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            • Originally posted by Mandala View Post
              Eisenhower made similar private and public statements on numerous occasions. For instance, in a 1963 interview he said simply: ". . . it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." (See pp. 352-358, Chapter 28)
              MILITARY VIEWS About Dropping the Atomic Bomb
              And yet, it was Eisenhower who championed the so called "New Look" military of the 1950s that relied almost totally on nuclear weapons. Clearly he saw utility in the thing he derided. Also, I wouldn't put too much trust in what people wearing four and five stars were saying after the dust was settled. People wear that many stars because of their military acumen, yes; but more so for their political abilities. I've addressed the Joint Chiefs in conference more than once. Trust me, you've never seen or heard so much revisionism, back peddling, back stabbing, etc., etc., etc., in one place in your life.

              One other comment. We don't do COIN not because we are too humane. Humanity is rather the point of the exercise. Military options alone never work in COIN. Even the applicable doctrinal manuals, the former FM100-20, and the newer FM3-24 tell us that an insurgency is only defeated when the legitimate political complaints of the people receive redress. Just killing them makes more of them. We aren't good at it because as a people we don't have the patience for it. As General Stan McChrystal once infamously said in Rolling Stone, "COIN is hard!" It's not the "American way of war." We like "shock and awe" and getting inside the other guy's OODA Loop, and bitch-slapping them and then getting the hell out. If we are stuck somewhere for four years or more, bad things start to happen. All of those guys wearing stars that you quoted were saying all the "right" things in the aftermath, but for most of them, in their heart of hearts, they didn't mind seeing the pictures of those mushroom clouds one damn bit, if it meant the thing could be brought to its denouement one day quicker. It was time for everyone to go home.

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              • Originally posted by desertswo View Post
                And yet, it was Eisenhower who championed the so called "New Look" military of the 1950s that relied almost totally on nuclear weapons. Clearly he saw utility in the thing he derided. Also, I wouldn't put too much trust in what people wearing four and five stars were saying after the dust was settled.
                Nor would I. These same five-stars were developing plans for the invasion of Japan and anticipating half a million casualties.

                A couple of excerpts from D. M. Giangreco's horrifyingly detailed examination of those plans, Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947

                "While we were looking at some of our own casualty estimates, the Japanese military was doing much the same thing, and the figure of 20 million appears again and again."

                "Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, held by the Japanese since the U.S. defeat in the Philippines, was told by a confident Japanese colonel that "there are a hundred million people in the Japanese empire. It will take ten times one hundred million to defeat Japan. To move such a force against Japan even if you had that many warriors, would be impossible." Said one field army staff officer to his interrogators after the war, "I thought that the war would continue three or four [more] years because, although Japanese national power was far below standard, it was considered that [the United States' power] would be insufficient ... It was thought that the battle for the homeland would be difficult, would require years and, with the help of Manchuria, would be fought to a draw."
                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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