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Old 2008-11-13, 08:35   Link #59
Mumitroll
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Germany
Age: 44
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I'd disagree there. Without the effect of the atomic bombs, and Russia invading, Japan would not have surrendered until the Allies at the very least established a beachhead. At this point of the war Japan was looking for a decisive victory to use to get better terms. With the forces Japan had left in the home islands, they did have a very realistic chance of repulsing the first allied invasion. They would not have surrendered until that played out.
most informed people think otherwise. a 1946 US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded:

"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. "

or the opinion of a certain General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. 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."

a certain Albert Einstein - who is commonly regarded as a pretty bright person - was very much against it as well.

etc. basically the only people you'll find supporting it are pro-American rightwing historians.



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Yet you said that the US has been looking to start WWIII ever since WWII ended. Perfect opportunity right there, yet the US chose a course less likely to cause war.
I did not mean that literally. obviously if the US *wanted* a WWIII, it would be way easy to start it anytime - just launch a couple ICBMs against targets in Russia and China. what I meant was that the US has been very aggressive in its foreign policy since WWII and has been the initiator in most of the confrontations between it and the USSR - including the most dangerous one, the Cuban missile crisis, and the most recent ones, the war in Georgia and the ABM systems in Poland.


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When did I claim otherwise? Sorry, but I don't see how you can say I have my history wrong when I only mentioned the crisis itself as being a situation that could have easily lead to WWIII, not any details.
you wrote "USSR invaded Cuba". that's simply wrong.


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What the US is seeking isn't a war, but someone that it's not inconcievable they might someday have to fight. That helps justify the large military budget.
no it doesnt. the US military budget is FAR greater than necessary for defense against a WWIII - and a major share of it goes into things which are practically unrelated to defense, like aircraft carriers and a stealth air superiority plane (F-22). the budget is mainly necessary for two completely different reasons which have nothing to do with defense: 1) having a mobile and strong military capable of controlling and subduing places to US interests worldwide by force and 2) keeping the military-industrial complex afloat.


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Only because of a threat of a ground war which put them in a no win situation. Serbia was able to preserve it's military force relatively intact by digging in and staying put.
there was no threat of ground war. and no, basically Serbia was defeated rather clearly - simply by massive bombing of all kinds of targets, military and not. I read an account of a Serbian soldier operating a mobile radar - they said that within a few minutes of deploying and starting a scan, several HARM missiles were incoming.


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Israel has quantity as well though. Also, once again simply buying the planes isn't enough, you need the logistics to support them. This means not only fighters, but things like AWEC and tankers.
AWACS you mean? thats not a must.. yes most modern airforces have coordination planes like that, but if fighters have good radars and/or are supported by a good ground radar system, they can do without.


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I disagree there. The US would not send ground troops. Maybe give air support, but even that's pushing it. Most likely US aid would be in the form of lots of free weapons.
you'd see that you're wrong if Israel were actually under any real threat of being invaded.



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Oh, I freely admitt the article has a heavy anti-Russian spin. However, I'm not sure how you can say it does not report that the Georgians fired first, when the whole damn thing is about Georgia whining that Russia was intervening in their war. Oh but of course you'll only pick and choose the parts that support your claim, and of course interpret the parts that could go either way to support a particular view.
listen, all you're trying to do is construe a way to interpret this heavily anti-Russian article - which does NOT clearly report who and what started the war - as giving some objective information. it isn't. and it would be very easy to find out. you could just ask 100 CNN readers who didnt know anything about the area before what happened. I did. I talked to lots of US/Western people in the first days of the war. almost EVERYBODY had the impression "Russia is attacking Georgia" from their media, even some intelligent people with academic degrees. brainwash ftw is all i can say.



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"Georgia's ambassador to the United Nations, Irakli Alasania, said that "Russia has become a party to the conflict." He said Russia has supported separatists in South Ossetia, a charge Russia dismissed."

Now tell me how Russia could "become a party to the conflict" if Russia invaded Georgia first? That implies a conflict is ongoing, hense Georgia attacked first.
that implies nothing. the Georgian clashes with Ossetian "separatists" had been going on for years. what that Georgian means is that "Russia has invaded our territory to help the separatists". you dont seriously think he'd imply that Georgia had started the war, do you?



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So here we have Georgia having already attacked, but no Russian invasion yet?How could Russia's ambassador deny plans to intervine militarily if Russia had already intervened?
simple - it's quoted "as is". i.e. "Russia's ambassador says X" - but thats not something that we trust. so if he says that Russia has no plans to intervene, we secretly suspect that it already has tanks rolling towards Tbilisi (because Georgian sources Y and Z say so). so we do 10 other articles along the lines of "Russian tanks rolling into Georgia as cities burn" (actual title from the Guardian).


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While they may work with US planners, calling the Israeli military a sub division of the US military is greatly exaggerating the relationship.
lol, they have very modern US equipment - and are the first to receive it - run many joint exercises and planning operations, and closely cooperate in military research and development. no other country even comes close as far as I know.



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Hate is a much stronger term than don't like. You can dislike something without hating it. While they deal with the same concept, there is a rather big difference in degree. Saying you don't like something is not the same as saying you hate it.
tis all word play. the general attitude is the same, its just the intensity that varies.



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Most reports I've heard indicate he's in Waziristan, the border region of Afganistan and Pakistan, though I've also heard some crazy theories like he's in Iran. It's entirely possible he's someplace else, but considering the terrain and that there's strong support for the Taliban in the region, it's a good bet he was thn until very recently at least. Though I've also heard reports that the Taliban has cut their ties with Bin Ladin, so in that case he would have likely left.
well, to be honest, the very idea of trying to kill bin Laden by dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan is... um... kinda like trying to kill a fly somewhere in a big house with a guided missile. your odds of even approximately hitting are slim, and all you'll do is inflict lots of damage on unrelated people.



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Oil's on the way out regardless. There's only so much financially viable oil to extract, and even optimistic estimates give it 50 years.
which is exactly why the major industrial nations' competition for the remaining oil resources is going to intensify in the near future. and why the US planning people want to control the location of 2nd largest - and most easily accessible - oil reserves already today.


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If that was the actual policy of the US, I doubt things would be much better though. Instead of setting up puppet dictatorships, we'd set up puppet democracies, and that would be the end of it.
why so. a different, better way is also possible, and there are examples for that too. just not so many. but two prominent ones are post-WWII West Germany and Japan. in both, the US could have installed puppet regimes directly controlled by Washington, severely restricted their economy to a non-dangerous agricultural state (which was in fact done in the first years of post-war West Germany.. until they saw that millions of people would simply starve if they did not lift their 25% cap on production compared to pre-war levels). but the system they set up was largely democratic, and was given freedom to evolve. also, they ultimately famously provided major one-sided financial aid (the Marshall plan). in Japan, tehy were more severe, basically pushing lots of things down their throat - a new radically different constitution and legislative system, disarmament clauses, prohibiting any criticism of the Allies, strict press censorship, etc. a de-industrialization program similar to the one in West Germany was also run, but it was less strict and abandoned entirely after several years.

still, they ran free PM elections, and in 1949 gave almost full freedom to the new JP government.

however, in both places, all that freedom and aid had nothing to do with pure good will or any similar altruistic motives. West Germany had the crucial role of being the barrier against the USSR in Europe, and it was more useful in a strong and industrialized state than as a starving wasteland. a similar reason is valid for Japan - already in 1949 the Korean war, a direct confrontation with the USSR, made it important to build up Japan as an outpost against evil Communism in the Far East.

most other US-controlled places, since they did not have such major importance, did not end up so lucky, and were just exploited.



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Personally I think the US should partily return to isolationism. Not completely of course, but stop intervening in all these random nations. Just meet our treaty obligations and keep the navy patroling shipping lanes. Anything else, let someone else worry about for a change.
the US foreign policy has nothing to do with "worrying". that's mere propaganda. that deaths of millions totally dont bother the US is easily illustrated by the fact that there are ongoing large-scale wars and mass genocide in Central Africa - yet the US just ignores that since there's simply nothing of interest in Central Africa. there's no oil and it's not a strategically important location. but when an evil Saddam Hussein oppresses the Kurds in Iraq (albeit with about 1/100th of the victims in Africa) - oh there we have to intervene. although when Turkey oppresses the same Kurds (at a much larger scale than Saddam by the way) - we help Turkey with weapons.

or when an evil Milosevic oppresses poor Albanians - even although they are a former minority in a Serbian province who are now a majority because of the demographic crisis, and their militarized wing KLA terrorizing Serbs living there in order to obtain independence as an Albanian province - oh then we must bomb him.


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That was more to get public support. The legal framework for the invasion centered around Iraq's violations of the UN resolutions. It was shakey, but a good lawyer could make a case there.
thats wrong. there was no case. there was no legal framework. this invasion was completely illegal from the UN point of view. Saddam ultimately famously complied with all UN resolutions in a last-straw attempt to prevent an invasion. a few days later Bush announced that "diplomacy has failed". with the well-known result.



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One little problem there, the US public largely isn't buying that.
what do you mean by not buying? those are all more or less quotes from US sources.



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After a nuclear attack by terrorists, the American public won't care, they'd simply want someone to pay.
that much is obvious. but killing a few million completely unrelated Pakistanis for them "to pay"? thats.. insane.


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Fair enough. I'd also add that Iraq showed that even if you overthrow an unpopular and oppressive regime, it doesn't mean the people will like you telling them what to do, and Iran's regime isn't quite as bad as saddam's. Hell, if we'd lift the embargo and improve relations, odds are the Iranian people would eventually vote in people who'd reform the country.
i think so too. in fact, some say that Ahmadinejad's very nationalist position only received so much support from the population at the 2005 election because of the US invasion of Iran.


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The big L word, Logistics. There simply wasn't a way to get a large army on shore in the face of a strong german defense, and keep it supplied. Look at the trouble Operation Torch had in North Africa with a relatively unopposed landing. Now add in several german divisions trying to throw the invastion back into the sea and you have a recipe for disaster.
well, you know, all this logic reminds me of jokes against the French "surrendermonkey" mentality. like:

Q: How many gears does a French tank have?
A: 4 reverse and 1 forward, in case the enemy attacks from the rear.

the Russians had all kinds of logistics problems as well. for example supplying blockaded Leningrad for 900 days over the ice of the Ladoga lake was an immense logistic task - but it was ultimately done, and the city was defended - albeit with an extreme number of victims. in war, if you want to win, there is no such thing as "logistically cant do". if you dont want to win, and rather prefer to have others fight it out - then yeah you can find all kinds of excuses.



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Maybe late 1942, but that would be pushing it. Mid 1943 would be the soonest they could do it with a good chance of success. The best they could do prior to that would be to secure a beach head. They wouldn't have been able to push inland. Once again, you can't simply put an army in the field and tell it to fight without giving it the logistical support it needs. That support simply wasn't there yet. Doing so only results in losing that army.
the end result of all that was that a few million more Russians died on the Eastern front, and most of Eastern Europe and half of Germany got Communist regimes installed for the next 50 years. to be honest, I think it would have been better if they had opened a second front in 1942, with whatever losses necessary. Europe would have been much better off in the long term.


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I have not heard that one about Japan before though.
its a popular argument from Western historians who want to play up the Allied role. because of JP attacking Pearl Harbor and the US entering the war, it became possible for Stalin to pull off some Far Eastern troops which had been kept there as a guard against a potential second front by Japanese continental forces in China, and use them in the Winter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow - which was ultimately won - as the first successful Soviet operation against the Wehrmacht.


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No, but if you did it several years before, and I've succeeded in securing control of the country, then ask for help because of a foriegn invasion I'm trying to put down, the request becomes a bit more legitimate.
I dont think thats legitimate at all. a regime installed by a military coup, oppressing the vast majority of the population, is never legitimate. and of course not "several years" later. for example, the Soviet regime was actually never legitimate. it was never elected by the Russian population. it came in power in the Bolshevik coup of 1917, and stayed till 1991. that doesnt make it any more legitimate!



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You're talking about an invasion that installed a government though. This is a case of a previously established government later asking for aid.
its not very different. assume the Nazis would have sent in a special forces unit to France like, 6 months - or 2 years - prior to invading, and would have overthrown the government from within. would that make it any more legitimate?


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Perhaps, but that doesn't change the easily researched fact that it was the British that dropped the incindaries. Stick to blaming the US for the stuff it actually did.
okay, so I'll blame the US for the "bombing" part of "firebombing Dresden", not the "fire" part. that ok? lol...



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If, and it's a big if, the US could catch the Russians totally unaware, it might be possible to take out a signifigant chunk of Russia's fixed ICBM assists. However, you yourself pointed out that it does not acocunt for mobile launchers, let alone SLBMs Most likely if relations have deterrioriated to the point a first strike is possible, it means the Russians would have at least a portion of their missiles on alert and launch before the US missiles hit.
yes, i think similarly. but, as you can see, some pretty respected US experts think otherwise. I think thats reason enough to be worried.



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Yet what we were talking about goes directly to motives. Wanting to go in isn't enough. They had to also think they could get away with it. Georgia thought Russia was bluffing and that they'd have more support from the US. If they thought Russia would counterattack like that, they would have had to be mad to launch the invasion after all.
this may surprise you, but they actually had a realistic chance to get away with it. i didnt know it at the time when i was writing the article, but there is only one major road connection from North to South Ossetia (there's a mountain chain between them) which is operable in winter - the Rok tunnel. had it been destroyed (for example with a Georgian special forces unit placing explosives there - there were some unconfirmed news on the 8th that this had been attempted but failed), there would be no easy way for Russia to send ground forces to South Ossetia for weeks or even months. and the peacekeeper batallion stationed there was merely about 500 people with light weapons and no armor. they would not be able to defend against the Georgian army. of course, airstrikes could still be made, but it would certainly be possible for the Georgians to occupy all of South Ossetia and either expel the civilian population, or install a proxy government and more or less use the Ossetians as a hostage against Russian airstrikes. that would have been pretty much a victory for Georgia, for reasons I have listed in section 4.


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Let's assume 10% survive. That's still 200 left. Assuming 16 warheads per missile on average, that gives 13 missiles remaining. (doesn't work out evenly, so assume the actual number is a bit higher than 200) Assuming 100% success rate, that's still 3 that get through, loaded with warheads. Assuming a more realistic 30% success rate, that's 10 that get through, with 160 warheads raining death on the US. And that's likely a wildly over optimistic scenerio.
well, its all more or less guesswork, but i also tend to think that the risk of a US first strike even with taking into account all the recent events, would be pretty much incalculable. nobody in the US might die - or 50 millions might die. the military people think differently though. for them the "maybe" is not sufficient. what has kept the world somewhat stable in the Cold War was the so-called MAD principle - Mutual Assured Destruction. i.e. that no matter what kind of first strike one side did, the other would still be guaranteed to have enough ICBMs to destroy all major cities of the attacker. the problem is that recently the US is gnawing at the MAD principle - and as a result destabilizing the situation.



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Of course that such a puplication exists means there will be people who buy into it, whcih is a very dangeous situation.
thats my point. and its not even a publication in say the NY Times or on Fox News. its a publication in Foreign Affairs - which is the #1 academic journal on international policy in the US.



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No one, but they did.
well, does that US position represent your own opinion on that conflict?


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Nuclear waste is just as dangerous as nuclear bombs
lol? nuclear waste is nowhere near as dangerous as nuclear bombs. if you seal it in a reasonably good container its harmless and you can leave it sitting for millenia. the only issue is that its expensive to make reasonably good containers, so that in practice people prefer to just dig big, deep, caves and dump the stuff there. which also mostly works - xcept for the cases when, as youve said, something leaks and radiation gets transported off by water.

Last edited by Mumitroll; 2008-11-15 at 05:03.
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