israel plunges to new low

[Richard Whiteley]

The point about the Atomic Bomb is exactly as Algie says. The Japanese were prepared to fight to the last man (and woman and child) and if they had done so countless Allied servicemen and no doubt civilians would have died as a result. As it is people seem to forget that Japan attacked a lot of countries in pursuit of its own wealth. In so doing they also slaughtered many innocent civilians and quite often in a bestial way. Its rather hard to find much sympathy for a country that was responsible for the Rape of Nanking for nstance. Anybody who has met an ex Japanese POW (I have) would tend to feel the same.

However, another thing that has been overlooked is that in fact that conventional bombing of Japan caused more civilian deaths thanks to the Japanese having nothing in the way of air raid precautions and a whole lot of cities with mainly wooden buildings.

There was a justification for dropping the A bomb, it was because it was the only way of stopping the aggressors from killing even more of their enemies in a pointless waste of life as ultimately Japan would have lost anyway.

That is a matter of historic fact.

It's not eaxactly as Algie says, it's a point of view put forward by people who believe that dropping the Atomic bomb was the only thing to do. It is not a fact, just as the estimate that a million American soldiers would die in an invasion of Japan wasn't a fact either, just a ridiculously high number pulled out of the air by the American military to justify their means.


Historic fact my f***ing arse

 

[Richard Whiteley]

oh and feel free to resort to calling me PC. You know you will at some point so why not get it over with now.

 

[bhaexpress]

what the f*** do you know? You come across as one of the thickest posters on here.

Maybe so but he's dead right on this occaision.

 

[Richard Whiteley]

Maybe so but he's dead right on this occaision.

in your head perhaps

 

[El Presidente]

Richard Whiteley is PC, is there a prize? If so could I go for the teasmaid, or if that has already gone, the steak knives please

 

[bhaexpress]

in your head perhaps

Well he was spot on about the A Bombs on Japan at any rate. Why is it you feel the need to bve insulting anyway ? Is that the level of your debating skills ?

 

[El Presidente]

Well he was spot on about the A Bombs on COVENTRY at any rate.

Lights blue touch paper
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Runs away and hides

 

[bhaexpress]

That's the last bloody time I give you computer advice

 

[Albion Dan]

Well he was spot on about the A Bombs on Japan at any rate. Why is it you feel the need to bve insulting anyway ? Is that the level of your debating skills ?

You are a fine one to talk about insulting people. You managed to offend the entire Coventry forum with ill comments about bombs in the war, and also got banned on Rivals (Almost impossible to acheive) for wishing cancer on someones kids.

Nice!

 

[bhaexpress]

You are a fine one to talk about insulting people. You managed to offend the entire Coventry forum with ill comments about bombs in the war, and also got banned on Rivals (Almost impossible to acheive) for wishing cancer on someones kids.

Nice!

Spoken like a true twat seeing as you seem to understand that level of comment, it was a joke made entirely in jest but uptight bores like you make a big issue out of nothing.

 

[tedebear]

somehow deserve to be blown up by Israeli rockets is Ugly as sin imo.

Where the f*** did I say that? All I said is they should have known &/or expected it and got the hell out - how the hell you got to deserving to be blown up is beyond belief...

You are unbelievable - absolutely unbelievable....

I won't log on again to defend myself - I'm a good and just person and the likes of you with your oddly skewed mind really are too much to have to put up with.

 

[Tooting Gull]

Bloody hell, only just read this thread. I'm not sure which is more of a tinderbox - NSC, or the Middle East.

Tedebear - don't flounce, your postings would be missed. Slander threats are silly (and with little or no hope of success from what is on here), and remember how stirred up people can get on this subject. I've never met Albion Dan, but he seems genuinely appalled by what is happening, it's not just for show.

Albion Dan - for what it's worth I agree with a lot of what you say on this issue, but you shouldn't have called tedebear (as opposed to her comments, if you had to) ugly, as you did in your 1st response to her. Not needed or appropriate on here.

That's the first - and last - time I try and play Kofi Annan on here.

 

[Les Biehn]

This is the biggest rip out thread I have ever seen on here. In my opinion all of you need to grow up.

 

[looney]

Just a factual point, the Lebanse people did not vote Hizbollah in as their government, I think they got 25% of the poll. The Lebanese government and the Hezbollah are two seperate things. Apparently that still doesn't stop Israel slaughtering many non-Hizbollah supporting Lebanese civilians. I would be intrigued to hear how you would either justify, rationalise or excuse that.

That is a non arguement. Why did the lebanese party feel it necerssary to form a Government with Hezzbollah rather than other parties?

Was it because they were Christian or Sunni?

 

[Albion Dan]

Maybe I shouldnt have said that due to her comments she was ugly, but imo they were ill conceived views, when the generally the Lebanese people have nothing to do with Hizbollahs actions, and it winds me up that we have that kind of ignorance when the facts are out there.

I do think the overeaction on her part is laughable, I only said she was ugly (and Ive never met her so obviously didnt mean physicaly!!!!!).

 

[London Irish]

Maybe so but he's dead right on this occaision.

Oddly enough, I was taught at sixth form that there were competing theories to explain Truman's A-bomb decision, one that it was indeed an attempt to save US miltary life, or two, that it was an attempt to establish strategic dominance over the Soviet Union. I must have had one of those Marxist teachers that the Daily Mail keep banging on about



Here's a New Scientist article from last year that gives the scope of the debate:


Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda
13:46 21 July 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Rob Edwards


The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

"He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. "It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."

According to the official US version of history, an A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, to force Japan to surrender. The destruction was necessary to bring a rapid end to the war without the need for a costly US invasion.

But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings.

Looking for peace
New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.

Kuznick and Selden's arguments, however, were dismissed as "discredited" by Lawrence Freedman, a war expert from King's College London, UK. He says that Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima was "understandable in the circumstances".

Truman's main aim had been to end the war with Japan, Freedman says, but adds that, with the wisdom of hindsight, the bombing may not have been militarily justified. Some people assumed that the US always had "a malicious and nasty motive", he says, "but it ain't necessarily so."

 

[London Irish]

That is a non arguement. Why did the lebanese party feel it necerssary to form a Government with Hezzbollah rather than other parties?

Was it because they were Christian or Sunni?

My view is that the Lebanese government thought it was better to have Hezbollah inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way round. Hezbolloah are a movement like any other capable of being steered towards either greater moderation, as with their community work setting up hospitals, schools and other social programmes, or greater militancy with greater confrontation with the Isreali military.

All academic now anyway because the war will now entrench Hezbollah's military destiny and ensure them massive waves of new converts - should any election be held again in that shattered country I would expect massive growth in their support from the 25 per cent I mentioned.

This is what Isreali strategy has done, it cuts off any hope of Arab moderation. Just as Israel's permanent war has driven the Palestinians into the arms of Hamas, so their latest carefully planned slaughter will entrench Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

My view is that Israel doesn't give a shit about this. It doesn't want dialogue with Arab moderates because that would mean giving concessions on land. And why should they give concessions when they have the biggest army in the region that can wipe out anything that stands in its way?

Israel has opted for permanent low-intensity war with its Arab neighbours, sure, it will lose a very small percentage of its population to Hezbollah rocket attacks and Hamas suicide bombings every year, but that's a less scary prospect to them than giving up the land they've occupied for many years now and will probably now never give back.

When Israel only offers the Palestinian and Lebanese people permanent war, Hamas and Hezbollah will take the leadership of those peoples. The shockwaves of this conflict will continue to reveberate around the world as it also generates a slide to extremism throughout the Middle East.

 

[London Irish]

How much irony is there in this thread? A debate about a conflict caused by two side unwilling to concede that the other side has any valid arguments and which escalates from there turns into a messageboard equivalent

Frankly, I think it is one of the most humane things I've ever seen on this messageboard for people to be showing anger and emotion as we watch civilians being blown to pieces on our TV screens. People should be upset about this things, it should provoke people to say rash, unconsidered things, it is a human response.

Comparing any spat on here to the genuine horror of what is happening in the Middle East doesn't sit well with my tastes but I freely admit that's just my sensitivities.

 

[Mr Burns]

Frankly, I think it is one of the most humane things I've ever seen on this messageboard for people to be showing anger and emotion as we watch civilians being blown to pieces on our TV screens. People should be upset about this things, it should provoke people to say rash, unconsidered things, it is a human response.

Comparing any spat on here to the genuine horror of what is happening in the Middle East doesn't sit well with my tastes but I freely admit that's just my sensitivities.

And to think our great government and our greatest of friends, those lovely Americans are suppling a huge amount of the bombs that are killing these innocents.

Makes you proud to be British

 

[The Great Cornholio]

Frankly, I think it is one of the most humane things I've ever seen on this messageboard for people to be showing anger and emotion as we watch civilians being blown to pieces on our TV screens. People should be upset about this things, it should provoke people to say rash, unconsidered things, it is a human response.

Comparing any spat on here to the genuine horror of what is happening in the Middle East doesn't sit well with my tastes but I freely admit that's just my sensitivities.

Is it possible for you to get more supercilious without disappearing up your own backside? I've defended you in the past against unwarranted abuse but this post shows exactly why you get it. Every time an issue like this comes along, you mount your high horse and head off for the moral high ground.

Were you really the only person who read my post and thought I was comparing a spat between two posters to the loss of thousands of lives? Were you the only person that couldn't see that my point was about how such situations occur and that even talking about it causes massive flare ups?. You even reinforce my point by saying that it is human nature to be upset. But you seem to believe that it is OK for such a debate to turn into the slanging match we had on here. Taking two soliders hostage is an emotive issue and overreactions on both sides have led to the current situation. Yet you justify massive overreactions in the microcosm that is NSC.

I assume from your first paragraph that you believed yourself to be the only person who feels moral outrage at the loss of lives on both sides as you seem surprised that the "proles" should get emotive.

It is threads like this that have stopped me from posting on emotive issues because flare ups like this are becoming commonplace. It looks like I shall avoid even observational posts in future in case I offend your fragile sensibilities as you are clearly more morally outraged than me.

Strangely, if I had posted what you had, DtG would have felt the need to reply with "f*** Off, you sanctimonious wanker". I guess that privilege is reserved solely for me.