Read this if you're hell bent on war

DVauthrin

This is a serious request not a slam at your professor:

Ask him how should the United States react when our allies are being attacked. Should we rush to their aid or should we take on a laissez-faire attitude? Should we allow dictators such as Hussein to wreak havoc throughout the middle-East without interfering? Does he think the middle-East situation would be better today had we not gotten militarily involved in the Gulf War? If so, how and why?

If you get a chance to ask him this and can post his replies it may help understand where he is coming from. Thanks.

 

ill do the best i can on that

 

In ANY WAR, whether it be religious, political, etc. there will always be innocent casualties. There are no winners.

Enough of the blame game. Whether you believe in US Policy or not, I am PROUD to be an American. As a People, our country has done more GOOD than harm for any other nation in the History of the World.

See my thread

http://bbs.clutchcity.net/php3/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21947

GOD BLESS AMERICA

 

Dropping atomic bombs on Japan had nothing to do with showing utter and complete power. Japan would not surrender and an invasion of the island would have cost, by some estimates, 200,000 American casualties. This is not the time for hippy professors to be equating terrorist murders to legitimate military response.

 

I wish that I wrote that succintly, I would have been at work by now.

 

Now play the game Timing, and substitute the killing hundreds of thousands of civilians analogy w/ what Bin Laden has done. He has an objective, we have objectives.

It's war. It's a tool.

(I have to go to work, bye bye now).

 

You should be ashamed of yourself if you're trying to equate the terrorist murder of civilians with the bombing of Japan within the context of a declared World War. Japan was asked multiple times for surrender prior to the bombings. The government and citizenry received due warning well in advance of any attack. They were even given another chance to surrender after the first bombing and yet another warning of an attack. Your attempts to compare the two are horrible and insulting.

 

What gets me is that this professor is teaching our kids this garbage.

I was a journalism major in college too, got my degree in Broadcast Journalism.

One of the reasons I got out of the field is because I found that journalists are not men of action, rather they are watchers, people who sit on the sidelines and do not take part in history, instead they write about other peoples accomplishments.

That is fine for some, but I choose to be one that is written about, rather then writing about someone elses accomplishments.

Now to the issue at hand, YES America has screwed up in the past, YES, innocents have died, but does that mean that we should not ACT.... NO !!!

If you are saying that we should understand why these people do what they do, it is awful hard to understand giving up your life to kill innocent people to make a point.

Ask your professor what he thinks about the TEACHERS of these countries teaching their students to hate Americans? There is your answer to the WHY question above.

DaDakota

 

I'm guessing a pretty good number of people who perished Tuesday probably felt the same way as this man. So I'm guessing you're not mourning for them, but you don't think it's a bad thing they're dead.

 

Hey, I don't want to get into heated arguments that detract from how we understand the severity of what the people in NYC and DC are experiencing right now. I think that, like during other traumatic events, the way that people get into name-calling ("hippy professors"; "knee-jerking liberals"; or on the other side-- "war-mongers", etc.) really trivializes the events themselves. (For example, when people in Japan and China sit there and argue about exactly how many people were killed during the Nanjing massacre in 1942, or whether or not the fact that doctored photographs might invalidate the broader claims about what happened, it tends to shift attention away from where it should be-- on the families of those who can no longer speak and on the physical and emotional rebuilding process)...

This being said, I can't verify the sources from where I am right now, but a number of WWII historians have produced evidence (records of communications between Japan and the US, I believe) that indicate that Japan was announcing a surrender before the bombs were dropped. I recall that much of this scholarship has been criticized and suppressed by WWII vets-- certainly not to criticize them (those flying the E.G. bomber would probably not have been privy to such info in the first place-- during the Smithsonian exhibitions on the E.G. bomber. The whole idea that "Japan would never surrender without the atomic bombe" has become very much integrated into our "official" history and our historical memory of WWII. That it is only now being questioned is proof of the power of cultural and social memory of traumatic events. (If you still are skeptical about the veracity of the whole Japan question, do some research on the Smithsonian Exhibit of the Enola Gay. That should yield something.)

Anger is a natural result to what happened in NYC and DC and it is easy to get blinded by it. But this is not the time to bait each other and engage in divisive political arguments that essentially divert our own energy from helping those who really need it right now.

....

 

kpsta,

While I am not doubting your entire claim, I find it odd that we dropped the first one on August 6th, and asked them to surrender.

Their response was still no, and they believed we could not possibly have another such weapon, so we dropped the 2nd one on August 9th.

They then surrendered.

I believe that Japan was offering a CONDITIONAL surrender, and we were demanding an UNCONDITIONAL surrender.

Now, wheter or not the bombs needed to be dropped on cities, is another matter all together. I was not there, and can not possibly understand all ramifications at the time.

Reading about it in history books can not give us an accurate assesment of the situation.

DaDakota

 

The statement about history books-- you can certainly make a case for-- it makes it sound like I am referring to crusty and dusty old books that might have been published before you or I were born (assuming you were not alive at the time). I am talking about ongoing research, however, about things that for whatever reasons have been pushed out of our perception. In essence, creating an "official version" of the bombings and surrender.

I'll write more when I have time, but here's a link that may give more info about the whole exhibition controversy... and ignore the whole "peacewire" thing, because it is an article that they are citing for their own purposes...)

http://www.peacewire.org/photoexhibits/Hiroshima/articles/sherarticle.html

 

One should not believe everything one reads in history texts. First of all, most of them were written with a western, specifically US bias. Also, whats written is what THOSE authors WANT us to know. In order to find out the whole truth, you'd probably have to conduct your own research...check out first hand documents instead of third hand interpretations.

Also, I believe that the dropping of the atomic bombs had more than one purpose...that is, it was also to intimidate the soviets into not occupying a weakened eastern europe. Unfortuanately,, all it did was spark an arms race.

back to the main topic:

The US NEEDS to act against these acts of terrorism though. But with much discretion and care. THey need to consider the whole situation, and not just react out of vengeance or rage. Yes, bombing the **** out of the guilty parties or countries will solve the problem, but only temporarily. You'll just get more hatred out of other countries, or might alienate current allies. This is what those terrorists want! Just indiscriminately bombing locations where the enemy MIGHT be will just cause more people to be angry at the US. We need to get at the root of the problem.

 

Fromobile,

I am hardly a violent person. I am a realist, who understands that the US government is HARDLY perfect, and that innocent people have died as a result of some of our policies.

However, I do not blame the US government for a lot of the civilian deaths that your professor mentioned just because they supplied the weapons.

If you give me a gun, that does not make me a killer, the person that pulls the trigger is the one that is responsible, not the supplier of the weapon itself.

I do believe that the US government has acted irresponsibly on several occasions, and does not have an adequate grasp of world affairs.

As a country too often we have taken an isolationist approach to world affairs. I am saying at this point in history, we have to step up and lead this world into this next century. We are no longer the powerful nation that is separated from the rest of the world, rather we are the leader of the world, and need to deal with the responsibilities that come with that title.

I understand what your professor is saying, but I think he is saying it from a VERY slanted LEFT wing viewpoint. He mentions all those attrocities, and says that they are all our fault, why? Because we supplied the weapons? I do not concur.

I understand that you are young, and not yet wise to the world, so I will leave you with a quote from Winston Churchill, I believe.

To paraphrase.

"If you are not a liberal by the age of 20, then you do not have a heart"

"If you are not a conservative by the age of 30, then you do not have a brain"

DaDakota

 

I find it ironic that this is a similar sentiment repeated after World War II. I guess what we've been doing the whole time is just looking after our own concerns and making it sound like we were reaching out or "policeing the world"

 

One more thing, he clearly blames our government, yet the current administration has been in power only a few months.

Your professor is a man of ideals, clearly, but he has to understand that just SAYING he wants it to stop, does NOTHING to stop it.

Actions speak louder then words !

One day, grasshopper you will understand.

DaDakota


PS. Bartleby, I think the truth is somewhere in your words.

 

blah blah blah...

 

Enough with the "you're young, you'll understand one day" stuff...
Many of the people who are conservative now, acted with idealism (and not always conservative idealism) when they were younger and may very well have made the world a better place. Similarly, age doesn't always yield a less clouded or more realistic outlook. I know plenty of stubborn people who are older than I am, and while I have great respect for them, maintain some of the most outdated and narrowminded opinions about the world.

I also saw a post earlier (were you the author?) that stated something to the effect that journalists and other academic types are not people of action and invariably liberal in their political outlooks and therefore should not be teaching our kids... Not to defend an entire profession, but making a blanket statement to this effect seems a bit ignorant. Merely because someone in the academic professions goes to work in what you may not consider an action-filled field testifies to the fact that you have probably never been inspired by a great teacher to think about things more critically that you might have readily accepted for years.

I'd like to say that people are never too old to change their narrowminded outlooks, but maybe that is my idealism creeping in.

 

I rarely use expletives here, but what a total load of crap!!

Our government has certainly done many horrible things, but idiots like this swallow every negative speculation and ignore the ALL of the good that our country has done over the years.

I wish I had more time to discuss this bonehead, but I'm outa here right now.