Do you really believe this?

[YowYan]

We split the atom 70 years ago. If a country in the east had achieved this goal, the world wouldn't exist anymore. Someone would make a comment about their 'god' and end up with a nuke on them. "With great power, comes great responsibility" is the term coined by Spiderman author Stan Lee and it serves well. We have the best weapons and technology cause we are also tempered enough not to use the stuff unless absolutely no other alternative is available.

ahem *hiroshima* ahem *nagasaki* ahem

 

[ThomasJeffersonwasasadist]

@yowyan using the bomb in those situations saved more Chinese, Japanese and american lives by avoiding an invasion of Japan and forcing an early surrender. I believe he's referring to us not using them to completely obliterate a country despite our ability to do so. Why are you so anti-American? Where are you from heaven? Your country's hands are clean?

 

[YowYan]

@yowyan using the bomb in those situations saved more Chinese and american lives by avoiding an invasion of Japan. I believe he's referring to us not using them to completely obliterate a country. Why are you so anti-American? Where are you from heaven? Your country's hands are clean?

You find using an atom bomb, killing millions in a whim a wise tactic to prevent the Japanese from invading? So, it's wise to use people like a sacrifice warning, to scare the japanese government instead of prolonging milder repercussions? Which was possible if it was within the interest of-. That goes to show how simple-minded ppl are supporting their government that sees them only as a product/cattle.

Misplaced sense of patriotism seems to be a common issue in the us.

No, Holland was one of the biggest supporters of slavery back in the day. Holland also neglected human rights in Indonesia, slaughtering the natives and taking over like Hitler did with east-european countries. I don't find my country 'better' than any other, I just live here.

 

[Gyakusetsu]

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”
― George Carlin


“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
― Howard Zinn


“He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.”
― Albert Einstein


“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
― Edward Abbey


“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.”
― Thomas Paine

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”
― Aristotle, Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics


“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot


“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”
― Oscar Wilde


“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”
― Bertrand Russell


“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”
― François Fénelon

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander


“The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte


“One question in my mind, which I hardly dare mention in public, is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world. Patriotism is rampant in war and there are some good things about it. Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family, pride in teammates, pride in hometown bring out the best in groups of people. War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages its citizens in the direction of excellence and it encourages them to be ready to die for it. At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that's enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans.”
― Andy Rooney, My War


“Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti


“Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven


“They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.”
― Bob Dylan


“There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”
― Mark Twain


“Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.”
― George Orwell

“What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

 

[YowYan]

“I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”
― George Carlin


“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
― Howard Zinn


“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
― Ernest Hemingway


“He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.”
― Albert Einstein


“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
― Edward Abbey


“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.”
― Thomas Paine

“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”
― Aristotle, Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics


“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot


“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”
― Oscar Wilde


“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”
― Bertrand Russell


“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”
― François Fénelon

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander


“The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte


“One question in my mind, which I hardly dare mention in public, is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world. Patriotism is rampant in war and there are some good things about it. Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family, pride in teammates, pride in hometown bring out the best in groups of people. War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages its citizens in the direction of excellence and it encourages them to be ready to die for it. At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that's enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans.”
― Andy Rooney, My War


“Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti


“Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven


“They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.”
― Bob Dylan


“There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”
― Mark Twain


“Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.”
― George Orwell

“What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present

Well said. I remember half of all these quotes, thanks for reminding me.

 

[Vegeta]

ahem *hiroshima* ahem *nagasaki* ahem

I just mean we haven't went crazy and blown up the world with nuclear bombs. I know we dropped atomic bombs on them but from what I understood there wasn't any options left for a quick end to the fighting. I don't like what's going on right now, and everything we are doing in the east is not helping. It would be nice if the rest of the world wasn't also so violent and all that money could be spent here for homeless and sick and poor people. If America drops their defense budget, other countries would take advantage of that.

 

[YowYan]

I just mean we haven't went crazy and blown up the world with nuclear bombs. I know we dropped atomic bombs on them but from what I understood there wasn't any options left for a quick end to the fighting. I don't like what's going on right now, and everything we are doing in the east is not helping. It would be nice if the rest of the world wasn't also so violent and all that money could be spent here for homeless and sick and poor people. If America drops their defense budget, other countries would take advantage of that.

I agree with half your post. Don't get me wrong, I'm not 'anti-american' which thomasjeff assumed, I just want to clear out that delusional sense of patriotism. At the bolded: That wouldn't have been true if(still might not be) America wouldn't try to overthrow other govts so badly over the past 60 years. (Iran 1951/1953 for starters). The missile threat from middle-eastern countries is also a hoax to justify your governments meddling overseas.

 

[ThomasJeffersonwasasadist]

@yowyan you didn't even understand what I said you know that little of American history yet you talk about it? Dropping the bomb on those two cities didn't kill anywhere near a million people and we weren't afraid of a Japanese invasion dropping the bombs on Japan and scaring them into surrender prevented us from having to invade Japan which would have cost more Japanese, American, and Chinese lives because the Chinese would have had to keep fighting the Japanese in china while we invaded Japan. Every esimate of deaths is below 200,000 far less than the combind loss of life that would have occurred on all sides had we not won the war early. Defending your country from untrue slander on the Internet isn't misplaced patriotism dropping those bombs meant more people overall got to stay alive.

 

[Typhon]

@yowyan you didn't even understand what I said you know that little of American history yet you talk about it? Dropping the bomb on those two cities didn't kill anywhere near a million people and we weren't afraid of a Japanese invasion dropping the bombs on Japan and scaring them into surrender prevented us from having to invade Japan which would have cost more Japanese, American, and Chinese lives because the Chinese would have had to keep fighting the Japanese in china while we invaded Japan. Every esimate of deaths is below 200,000 far less than the combind loss of life that would have occurred on all sides had we not won the war early.

Eh, that reason may be the publicly given reason, but its been largely exaggerated in terms of the estimated number of casualties a land invasion would have caused. The main reasons the bombs were used were to end the war before Russia entered (so they couldn't try to gain more influence in SE Asia during peace negotiations) and to display the power of the bombs to the Soviets.

Japan was already on the brink of surrender before they were dropped.

 

[Sir Blades]

Does dept by any chance mean debt? If so, Europe is in far less debt than the US. Im not really sure you know anything of economics, im not an expert but i know enough to know europe isnt economic trash. Maybe our debt isnt your fault but the start of the current crisis partly is, there are many many problems inthe economy of both EU and the US

You know what the biggest problem with the EU is by any chance? If you dont answer im just gonna assume you have no idea

i dont think you know that the u.s gave a large economic push to Europe in the last half of the century, because they were in shambles, the u.s has lent Europe money countless times . Europe has not given any of it back, the u.s doesn't say **** about it, and Europe just acts like they did everything themselves. Europe still owes the U.S money, and as far as it goes we are still waiting for it... tick tock tick tock.

 

[Space Cowboy]

'Murica.

 

[ThomasJeffersonwasasadist]

Typhoon everything you say makes sense but I believe taking Japan (which was very fanatical at the time with kamikaze pilots and what not) would have equalled more than 200,000 deaths if American, Japanese and Chinese casualties were added together. The rest is convenient or perhaps the extra lives saved is convenient but regardless dropping the bombs was the right choice.

 

[YowYan]

Eh, that reason may be the publicly given reason, but its been largely exaggerated in terms of the estimated number of casualties a land invasion would have caused. The main reasons the bombs were used were to end the war before Russia entered (so they couldn't try to gain more influence in SE Asia during peace negotiations) and to display the power of the bombs to the Soviets.

Japan was already on the brink of surrender before they were dropped.

Indeed. No government in general has their citizens well-being as it's nr.1 priority. It's all a game Catan, trying to gain power and dominance across the globe.

@Jeff, I understood everything you mentioned. Though I forgot the death rate by the atom bombs was in the thousands, not millions, you were right on that ;p

 

[Gyakusetsu]

The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “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.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to [the tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom bombs on Japan.]

The fact of the matter is that dropping the bombs was completely immoral and indescriminate. If you ask soldiers of that era their thoughts on the subject they will tell you that they would have preferred the risk of death than to drop bombs on women and children.

On a side note the actual number one weapon of mass destruction title goes to the Klashnikov AK 47. It continues to kill an estimated 300,000 people each year. It just doesn't do it all at once so people never really think about it, well most people....

 

[Olorin]

i dont think you know that the u.s gave a large economic push to Europe in the last half of the century, because they were in shambles, the u.s has lent Europe money countless times . Europe has not given any of it back, the u.s doesn't say **** about it, and Europe just acts like they did everything themselves. Europe still owes the U.S money, and as far as it goes we are still waiting for it... tick tock tick tock.

You mean the marshall plan?

If europe wasnt rebuilt than the us would have noone to sell to, europe is the biggest trading partner of the us and the relationship ws even more important after the war when the world was completely divided, if europe was let alone that americas economy would crumble as they wouldnt have many options for exporting

Neither the us nor eu would be where they are if we didnt have eachother that was my point

 

[ThomasJeffersonwasasadist]

@yowyan you said that I thought it was appropriate to prevent the Japanese from invading but it was so we wouldn't have to invade and cost even more lives. It's all good though. @guaketsu wow dude that sounds terrible ill do more research into the topic I was just arguing based on what they taught in school. I suppose the victors really do write history. I do wish you'd sighted such a critical post in the discussion though.

 

[ROSH2]

I'am not a anti american
I'am anti american military
I'am anti american politics
I'am only respect 1 american president he is Abraham Lincoln
also I'am not a muslim but i allways figh injustice come from warlords

 

[Vegeta]

I'am not a anti american
I'am anti american military
I'am anti american politics
I'am only respect 1 american president he is Abraham Lincoln
also I'am not a muslim but i allways fight injustice come from warlords

That's fine but when I see people posting 'America will burn' and you agreeing with it, it looks bad

 

[killer1]

USA biggest mistake is they attacked ideological countries and tried to conquer them well let me tell you, you cant conquer ideological countries you break them from inside because they have only ideology to begin with once you damage that its over however USA learned that too late and is trying it on PAKISTAN well its too late again as people know by now

 

[ROSH2]

That's fine but when I see people posting 'America will burn' and you agreeing with it, it looks bad

'America will burn' thx to CIA & FBI