3 ms·

Hooray more death, that'll fix things.

by undersuit 8mo ago

testing22321 8mo ago
And billions spent on weapons that could be healthcare…
learingsci 8mo ago
Sometimes it does though, eg Hiroshima.
- DocTomoe 8mo ago
  Hooray genocide.
- pineaux 8mo ago
  Probably the worst example, because Japan was probably going to surrender anyways.
  - didntfixathing 8mo ago
    And it was followed by another bomb.
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    > Japan was probably going to surrender anyways Well yes. The question is how many more would have had to die to get it. This question doesn’t have an easy answer. To the extent there are wrong ones, it’s anyone claiming confidence.
    - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 8mo ago
      A nonsensical false dichotomy of sorts. Between "Japan surrenders without a single further death" and "We have to nuke two cities for them to surrender" there are numerous steps of gradual escalation that could have been taken before arriving at the "nuke the cities" option. One such possible step could have been nuking a remote area, or at the very least sparsely populated area, to achieve the demonstration of destruction without hundreds of thousands of deaths. I have no sympathy for the Japanese who killed tens of millions of people in their WW2 atrocities, and the two bombs killed orders of magnitude fewer of their people. I also see no reason to pretend that there weren't obvious alternatives to USA dropping nukes on their cities if we are to believe that the objective was merely getting Japan to surrender (an objective most difficult to believe). No need for pretense -- they wanted to demonstrate their new weapons, AND they wanted to kill a lot of Japanese.
      - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
        > One such possible step could have been nuking a remote area, or at the very least sparsely populated area, to achieve the demonstration of destruction without hundreds of thousands of deaths There is a reason it took bombing both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cause surrender. And if you telegraph that you’re going to bomb a remote place and the bomb fails, you’ve undermined your weapon’s credibility in unique ways. I’m not saying you’re wrong. Just that your confidence is wrong. What you’re talking about was contemporaneously and continues to be historically debated.
- delecti 8mo ago
  There's good reason to believe that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essentially technical demonstrations warning the soviets, given the clearly imminent end of the war, to not start anything with us. There were already signs of a Japanese desire for surrender.
  - nozzlegear 8mo ago
    > There were already signs of a Japanese desire for surrender. I'm no historian but this point doesn't sound very noteworthy unless it was the leadership who wanted that surrender. It took two bombs to make them surrender; they didn't surrender after the first. Edit: actually this is much more nuanced than I think either of us make it sound. Japan did send out "peace feelers", but they were more like "we want peace but we don't accept your terms." The Japanese required that the US allow retention of the emperor, no occupation, self-conducted war crime trials, and even possibly keeping some of their conquered territory. The US wanted an unconditional surrender.
- didntfixathing 8mo ago
  Hiroshima didn’t fix anything because they dropped another on Nagasaki. Furthermore they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities.
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    > Hiroshima didn’t fix anything because they dropped another on Nagasaki After which Japan surrendered. This logic is like arguing 99% of a drug doesn’t do anything because the bug is only eradicated by the last effective molecule. > they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities This was considered. The bombs’ unreliability (and cost) made it a non-starter.
  - ben_w 8mo ago
    > Furthermore they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities. Given the immediate response to Hiroshima was disbelief, surely an at-sea demonstration would have been even less convincing than the observable absence of a city? Even once the Japanese government confirmed that Hiroshima had indeed been destroyed by a nuclear weapon, part of the reason Nagasaki followed Hiroshima was that the Japanese forces estimated the US couldn't have built more than one or two more (they were correct, they just hadn't internalised what losing an entire city meant). Even after Nagasaki, there were some who attempted a coup to prevent surrender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident
kasrak 8mo ago
Do you have a suggestion for a plausible alternative that can stop the IR government from continuing to murder thousands of its own people?
- delusional 8mo ago
  I can accept that I don't have any better alternative while while not exactly being consoled.
- pineaux 8mo ago
  It's not about the Iranian government killing its own. Then we should have seen a lot more interventions. It's about oil and regional power. The US wants that the region is in hands of their allies and Iran threatens this.
  - tgma 8mo ago
    Everything is about self-interest. That does not mean there is no such thing as aligning interests.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  Yes. Iran’s territory includes ethnic minorities that could be joined to its neighbors, neighbours who are less brutal. Starting there might be a good first step since we’re now firmly back into redrawing borders with force.
  - tgma 8mo ago
    Really? You are advocating regional/civil war, aligned with ethnic ties at that, instead of surgical regime change by the US? How would a regime change of the Mullahs equate to "redrawing borders?" No such thing happened when they were installed and won't need to happen now. Seems like that's what you are suggesting.
    - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
      > How would a regime change of the Mullahs equate to "redrawing borders?" It doesn’t. Maybe there is a Delcy Rodriguez in the IRGC. I’m doubtful. If there isn’t, we have the option of creating a power vacuum or quarantining the problem. I’m arguing for the latter. The Azeri-majority northnorth to Azerbaijan; the Turkic areas to its west to Turkey [1]. Balochistani southeast to Pakistan. Arab southwest to Iraq. Hell, if you’re ambitious, find a way to give Bandar Abbas to the Emiratis and secure the Strait of Hormuz. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran

Hooray more death, that'll fix things.

testing22321 8mo ago

And billions spent on weapons that could be healthcare…

learingsci 8mo ago

Sometimes it does though, eg Hiroshima.

DocTomoe 8mo ago
Hooray genocide.
pineaux 8mo ago
Probably the worst example, because Japan was probably going to surrender anyways.
- didntfixathing 8mo ago
  And it was followed by another bomb.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > Japan was probably going to surrender anyways Well yes. The question is how many more would have had to die to get it. This question doesn’t have an easy answer. To the extent there are wrong ones, it’s anyone claiming confidence.
  - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 8mo ago
    A nonsensical false dichotomy of sorts. Between "Japan surrenders without a single further death" and "We have to nuke two cities for them to surrender" there are numerous steps of gradual escalation that could have been taken before arriving at the "nuke the cities" option. One such possible step could have been nuking a remote area, or at the very least sparsely populated area, to achieve the demonstration of destruction without hundreds of thousands of deaths. I have no sympathy for the Japanese who killed tens of millions of people in their WW2 atrocities, and the two bombs killed orders of magnitude fewer of their people. I also see no reason to pretend that there weren't obvious alternatives to USA dropping nukes on their cities if we are to believe that the objective was merely getting Japan to surrender (an objective most difficult to believe). No need for pretense -- they wanted to demonstrate their new weapons, AND they wanted to kill a lot of Japanese.
    - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
      > One such possible step could have been nuking a remote area, or at the very least sparsely populated area, to achieve the demonstration of destruction without hundreds of thousands of deaths There is a reason it took bombing both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cause surrender. And if you telegraph that you’re going to bomb a remote place and the bomb fails, you’ve undermined your weapon’s credibility in unique ways. I’m not saying you’re wrong. Just that your confidence is wrong. What you’re talking about was contemporaneously and continues to be historically debated.
delecti 8mo ago
There's good reason to believe that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essentially technical demonstrations warning the soviets, given the clearly imminent end of the war, to not start anything with us. There were already signs of a Japanese desire for surrender.
- nozzlegear 8mo ago
  > There were already signs of a Japanese desire for surrender. I'm no historian but this point doesn't sound very noteworthy unless it was the leadership who wanted that surrender. It took two bombs to make them surrender; they didn't surrender after the first. Edit: actually this is much more nuanced than I think either of us make it sound. Japan did send out "peace feelers", but they were more like "we want peace but we don't accept your terms." The Japanese required that the US allow retention of the emperor, no occupation, self-conducted war crime trials, and even possibly keeping some of their conquered territory. The US wanted an unconditional surrender.
didntfixathing 8mo ago
Hiroshima didn’t fix anything because they dropped another on Nagasaki. Furthermore they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
  > Hiroshima didn’t fix anything because they dropped another on Nagasaki After which Japan surrendered. This logic is like arguing 99% of a drug doesn’t do anything because the bug is only eradicated by the last effective molecule. > they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities This was considered. The bombs’ unreliability (and cost) made it a non-starter.
- ben_w 8mo ago
  > Furthermore they could have only destroyed only one city if Hiroshima had been an at sea demonstration instead, maybe even destroy zero cities. Given the immediate response to Hiroshima was disbelief, surely an at-sea demonstration would have been even less convincing than the observable absence of a city? Even once the Japanese government confirmed that Hiroshima had indeed been destroyed by a nuclear weapon, part of the reason Nagasaki followed Hiroshima was that the Japanese forces estimated the US couldn't have built more than one or two more (they were correct, they just hadn't internalised what losing an entire city meant). Even after Nagasaki, there were some who attempted a coup to prevent surrender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

kasrak 8mo ago

Do you have a suggestion for a plausible alternative that can stop the IR government from continuing to murder thousands of its own people?

delusional 8mo ago
I can accept that I don't have any better alternative while while not exactly being consoled.
pineaux 8mo ago
It's not about the Iranian government killing its own. Then we should have seen a lot more interventions. It's about oil and regional power. The US wants that the region is in hands of their allies and Iran threatens this.
- tgma 8mo ago
  Everything is about self-interest. That does not mean there is no such thing as aligning interests.
JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
Yes. Iran’s territory includes ethnic minorities that could be joined to its neighbors, neighbours who are less brutal. Starting there might be a good first step since we’re now firmly back into redrawing borders with force.
- tgma 8mo ago
  Really? You are advocating regional/civil war, aligned with ethnic ties at that, instead of surgical regime change by the US? How would a regime change of the Mullahs equate to "redrawing borders?" No such thing happened when they were installed and won't need to happen now. Seems like that's what you are suggesting.
  - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
    > How would a regime change of the Mullahs equate to "redrawing borders?" It doesn’t. Maybe there is a Delcy Rodriguez in the IRGC. I’m doubtful. If there isn’t, we have the option of creating a power vacuum or quarantining the problem. I’m arguing for the latter. The Azeri-majority northnorth to Azerbaijan; the Turkic areas to its west to Turkey [1]. Balochistani southeast to Pakistan. Arab southwest to Iraq. Hell, if you’re ambitious, find a way to give Bandar Abbas to the Emiratis and secure the Strait of Hormuz. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran