Is there anyone here who thinks suicide bombers are freedom fighters?

 

Answer my last question first.

 

Ask Le Ferber he seems to be able to use conjecture well enough to convince you that it is the truth.

There is nothing behind that tired old cliché.

 

I have not read Truman's memoirs about his decision to drop the bomb, but I would like to. I have read his sentence, [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]"If it explodes, as I think it will, I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys"[/FONT] quoted enough times to be confident that he did say it, and that the "boys" he was talking about included Russian "boys." That is the way they interpreted it.

 

and what would that tired old cliché be exactly?

 

War is robbery on a state level, nothing more. All you can do is defend yourself from the robbers.

 

Don't worry....I'm very good at that.


I'm a bit worried about robbery being war on a state level though.....


you know.......at the expense of the tax payer?


It's when it gets that close to home that start to get REALLY bothered.

 

billions of pounds to secure a few barrels of oil, and the country goes broke so we can't afford the petrol.

 

Hiroshima: Historians Reassess

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]by [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]Gar Alperovitz[/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva] "Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." (Emphasis added.)
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]The author of that statement is not a revisionist; he is J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nor is he alone in that opinion. Walker is summarizing the findings of modern specialists in his literature review in the Winter 1990 issue of Diplomatic History...
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]Similarly, a top-secret April 1946 War Department study, Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan, declassified during the 1970's but brought to broad public attention only in 1989, found that "the Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies."...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]The United States had long since broken the enemy codes, and the President was informed of all important Japanese cable traffic. A critical message of July 12, 1945--just before Potsdam--showed that the Japanese emperor himself had decided to intervene to attempt to end the war. In his private journal, Truman bluntly characterized this message as the "telegram from [the] Jap Emperor asking for peace."...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]The range of opinion even among expert defenders Truman's decision is extraordinarily suggestive. For instance, McGeorge Bundy--who helped Stimson write a classic 1947 defense of the bombing, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" in Harper's Magazine--now holds that the necessity of bombing Hiroshima was "debateable," and the bombing of Nagasaki was "unnecessary."...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]Historian Stephen Ambrose notes in his biography of Eisenhower that he also clearly stated that he personally urged Truman not to use the atomic bombs...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]Modern research findings, for instance, clearly demonstrate that from April 1945 on, top American officials calculated that using the atomic bomb would enormously bolster U.S. diplomacy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in negotiations over both postwar Europe and the Far East...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]Stimson, for his part, regarded the atomic bomb as what he called the "master card" of diplomacy towards Russia...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]In a 1949 interview, Truman recalled telling a close associate before the test, "If it explodes, as I think it will, I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys" (meaning, it seemed clear, the Russians as well as the Japanese)...[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, geneva]http://www.ncesa.org/html/hiroshima.html[/FONT]

 

Not to mentions the lives involved.


Can we put a price on them?

 

Answer my last question first.

 

What question?

I can't be arsed to look back..........


However...having had a quick flick back through.......

You haven't even ever posted in this thread.


So........?????

 

the government can, will and has.

My answer is fuck off.

 

Well..the average price for death by industrial injury is about £35.000

I wonder what soldiers widows get?

 

I will try to find out.

http://www.noclaimsdiscount.co.uk/news/art_display.php?show=201001281

this is interesting though

 

I am amazed that this 19-month old thread, essentially a semantic non-argument, has regained such traction . . . verrrry interesting.

 

I find nothing unusual Old Tool,. unless you know something I don't. An old feud?

I find the term "freedom fighter" used too haphazardly, or as a euphemism. This is particularly true amongst the press in recent years.
it does depend on one's point of view. I do not consider a suicide bomber a freedom fighter. I would consider one to be if he/she was helping to overthrow a corrupt and violent government, in their own country.

 

Just depends on which side you are on. One persons freedom fighter is another persons terrorist.

 

simple H

many people judge the past with our precent day morals and with regard to war a point of relative safety

its a philosophical question

if you believe the bombing of Dresden was wrong and should not have happened would you still believe the same if wiping that event from history would mean that you and your family would cease to exist

basically war should be avoided if at all possible but in the WW2 scenario i would rather thousands of the enemy died if this only gave the probability of saving the lives of a few of our troops

also Dresden could never be an act of revenge for the Blitz as the blitz was an act of revenge for out bombing of Berlin
we were losing the war the Luftwaffe was bombing the RAF out of existents by striking at military targets

Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin to provoke Hitler in to attacking civilian targets

A terrible decision to make but without it Hitler would have defeated us and had a free run at Russia in all probability he would have won WW2

 

Ah, the old 'blood for oil' trope rears it's head once again.