Where's the information, tenguy?

"...in [July] 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. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"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. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

 

In many comments I chased you around the XNXX forum asking three simple questions. Finally I answered the first one myself. Very few Canadians come to the United States for medical treatment. When they do come, their bills are often paid for by the Canadian government. Time and time again I have quoted the Harris survey to prove that the Canadians like their system far more than they like the American system, and that the Canadian system is more popular than the American system is in the United States.

 

Reopen this in an appropriate thread, if you want to debate it again.

 

Once again you run from a simple question.

 

Okay just once though, any more and we go to another thread.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/07/4079006/

 

Thank you for that link. I agree with the author that precision guided munitions made the critical difference in the first Gulf War, and the War in Bosnia.

However, the author of the article had nothing to say about the atomic bombing that has not been contradicted by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Dwight Eisenhower, ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman), HERBERT HOOVER, GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR, JOHN McCLOY (Assistant Sec. of War), RALPH BARD (Under Sec. of the Navy), LEWIS STRAUSS (Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy), and PAUL NITZE (Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey).
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

Their views have greater credibility on this issue.

 

In your opinion. I personally place a much higher value in the opinions of the grunts in the field.

 

Are you arguing that enlisted men had a better appraisal of Japanese defense capabilities than the military and political leaders I quoted? :???:

 

Yes, they were on the ground, not behind the lines.

A very similar thing is happening today, armchair Generals are calling the shots in Afghanistan, they and the president, are ignoring the guys on the ground.

Just like was done on both Korea and Vietnam.

I trust them ten times over.

 

If enlisted men knew more about strategic issues than senior officers we would have them vote on military strategies.

 

They actually do within the military, field commanders were always consulted on the real situation. Until the politicians decided to interfere with the process.

You cite the few folks who commented on the need of the a bombs to end the war. I totally agree, they weren't needed, we would have won anyways, but the question is, at what cost?

There are many who feel that the toll of a protracted war would have been in the millions of casualties, you chose to ignore them for purely political reasons. This is an example of the typical problem when politicians decide to enter the fray. End result more people die.

 

One small detail, enlisted men are always shut down when it comes down to their opinions. Senior officers do not like to listen to the enlisted, thus creating a battle between enlisted and officers in the military.

But the main issue is when you have people who know nothing about being in the middle of a war, or served a day in the military, as you state tenguy, and make decisions for the military.

 

It was my experience that field commanders, commissioned officers, always talked to the NCO's to get feedback. This is the key to keeping morale high and to avoid the stratification of command.

The problems really come in where the lower commissioned inexperienced officers try to act like they know what they're doing.

 

You have different levels of NCOs, and the ones in the middle of the fight are not the ones that get heard. It is pretty depressing, because the NCOs who are heard, are pretty much the same as the Officers. They are worried about politics, and not strategies.

Officers have to follow orders, and they relay those orders to the higher NCOS, which delegate how those orders are carried out. It is pretty bad when a unit as a whole, does not want to do a mission.

The NCOs that should be listened, no one is paying attention, and if they are paying attention, they decide not to do anything about it.

 

The people I quoted said Japan would have surrendered without the atomic bomb, and without an invasion. All we had to do was tell them they could keep their emperor, and we let them keep him anyway. Hirohito was a figurehead monarch who was not responsible for Japanese aggression. He might have been able to stop it, but even this would have been difficult. The militarists might have assassinated him and framed the Communists.

 

You are grasping at straws here. The reality was that Japan was not prone to give up territory, they had not done so prior to the bombing.

Now as I stated earlier, why do you want to beat this dead horse in this thread?

Move it to an appropriate place.

 

You're grasping at straws. I have quoted authorities. You have not.

 

I give up, you are too dense to logically debate a subject.

 

no debate in here its liberal land

Land of yellow bellies people who believe factcheck .org funded by the Aninberg foundation witch obo worked. facts from loaded questions rigged to get the proper response, facts from al gore on global warming, facts from all the so called news agency's that are liberal assholes like distant lover,SilverLycan, stumbler. The only reason obo won the election is all the dumb kids who were brainwashed in school by union teachers pushing their do good agenda.And of course 97% of the black vote. So put on your seat belt, put out you cigar or cigarette and let the gays grope on TV, don't drink, don't hop up your car , sell your boat, get rid of your guns, put mufflers on your Harley, don't cut down a tree , only byrd watchers and hikers are allowed in the woods, If you catch a fish throw it back because that hook hurts its mouth,Roadtoad

 

So doing things to keep you from flying out of a car, not using products that cause cancer, letting people express their sexuality, not having a loud ass Harley, not cutting down trees, being a bird, enjoying a hike in the woods, letting fish be fish....

All that is bad?