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North Korean Nuclear Facilities, From 30,000 Feet
Harperdog writes "Niko Milonopoulos, Siegfried S. Hecker, and Robert Carlin analyze terrific overhead photos of North Korea's nuclear facilities, discussing the rate of building and what the photos show. Also points to options for dealing with North Korea and their energy needs."
The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above'," reads the cable, published by the Guardian newspaper.
Some 300 North Koreans were working at the site, the authors said, although the cable suggested this number was improbably high.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says that for months there have been persistent reports in the press and specialised journals suggesting that Burma is building a nuclear facility with North Korean help.
Another cable released by the whistle-blowing site suggests that China, Burma's most powerful ally, is growing impatient with the country's leaders.
Frankly, this is what happens when powerful nations have nuclear weapons and smaller ones want them too to defend themselves. And remember that U.s. is still the only nation on planet to ever have used nuclear weapons. Against civilians, no less.
These NKorean nuclear facilities, are they constructed like the US facilities or the Soviet? The Soviets give the NKoreans help but it sounds dangerous for them not to use the US dome structure...
N. Korea and Burma are oppressive dictatorships. It is in no one's desire to let these countries have or retain nuclear weapons. The democracies of the world should do all they can (and thankfully they are) to disarm and dissuade these nations from their nuclear weapons. Thankfully, the US shows no intention of giving up this fight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev_Nuclear_Research_Center
This is in the hands of a Middle East nation which has attacked its neighbor countries several times:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#Notable_wars_and_violent_events
Israeli War of Independence 1948-1949
Retribution operations 1951-1955
Suez War 1956
Six-Day War 1967
War of Attrition 1967-1970
Yom Kippur War 1973
1978 South Lebanon conflict 1978
First Lebanon War 1982
South Lebanon conflict 1982-2000
First Intifada 1987-1993
Second Intifada 2000-2004
Second Lebanon War 2006
Gaza War 2008-2009
Right now Israel is lobbying around the world to get support for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Idiots.
So, in comparison? Which is worst? Two theocratic societies on collision course? Or a fat brat with an agenda? Really, really hard to tell.
From what I've seen in history, only democracies nuke civilians.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
What a daft comment. Obligatory xkcd.
"N. Korea and Burma are oppressive dictatorships. It is in no one's desire to let these countries have or retain nuclear weapons."
Indeed, its only oppressive democracies that should be allowed to have nuclear weapons.
A more important question is, should fair and relaxed dictatorships/democracies be allowed to have them ? Hmm, but i guess they wouldnt need them, because they dont go around trying to bully people all the time.
Perhaps having nuclear weapons is a sign that a country is oppressive ?
I read these news about North Korea and Iran and sometimes I interchange "North Korea" with "Iran" and realize how having nuclear weapons seems to make all the difference in the language used.
Sounds dangerous flying satellites at that altitude.
If that's the case then democracies only nuke Japan, so they have nothing to worry about.
From what I've seen in history, only democracies nuke civilians.
And it's a good job they did too. For practically everyone including Japan.
I suppose you think it would have been better for the Japanese people if they had been conventionally invaded. Would you please quote estimated local losses if that situation had occurred, then please quote total human loss that occurred due to being bombed with nuclear weapons including a 100 year fatality estimate from radiation secondary effects. Which one is higher?
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. " - a story right out of Hollywood :)
You often hear about the nuclear bombs and the horrors caused by those. It's a sexy story: A new weapon so powerful that nobody truly understood what it would do... A single massacre of civilians to end a war... It makes for great movies and great ethical arguments. Nothing like the cold and calculated cruelty, such as firebombing, that was utilized by both sides but perfected by allies when effectively destroying European cities.
For those too lazy to go to Wikipedia, Firebombing is a nasty tactic: The first wave of bombers attacks infrastructure (roads, electricity, firefighters, roofs of buildings), the second one contains powerful incendiary bombs. The fires are difficult to put out (due to the first wave) but there is also an added benefit: The people who managed to get into shelters have pretty good chance of suffocating to death as the whole city block is in flames for hours. This was used over and over again against civilian targets.
Not that ordinary bombing wasn't bad enough: It's nothing like the romanticized idea of a couple of people in a small bunker in their backyard. I've visited the old bomb shelters of Berlin: There are airtight rooms that can't be opened from the inside (if they run out of air there, opening the door would just result in them consuming all the oxygen from the rest of the shelter, too. It's better to just open the door from the outside after the raid is over and see if the people are still alive or not). There were dozens of people tightly packed into relatively small space, being very still and hoping that the air would last. At the beginning of the wars, there were indicators to tell how much oxygen was left (three at different levels and they'd change color when the oxygen was out near the roof, near the center and near the floor) but those just caused panic and were removed soon. As the number of raids grew, it no longer made sense to leave the shelter for extended time periods. The managers removed doors from toilets because by removing all the privacy, they were able to somewhat lower the amount of suicides (Several each day) that people committed in the shelter. This was all caused by the good guys.
To point out something "nice" from the Axis portfolio... The siege of Leningrad: The only place and time (as far as I'm aware of) in the modern western world where cannibalism actually became a widespread problem among the civilian population of a major city.
So... yeah. Nuclear weapons were bad but I don't think they're nearly the worst things that happened in those wars. I wouldn't even list them in top 3 (though they would get into top 10). This is also why I always feel a small amount of outrage when Americans talk about how they're at war (or even two wars): USA pays some people to risk their life overseas, some of which then end up dying. That's an invasion or perhaps expensive armed conflict or something, but hardly equivalent to being in war.
I don't really want to troll or anything, but with the NDAA and SOPA, I worry that the USA is heading that way as well.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden? In your comparison, please include comparisons of number of lives lost, percentages of military to civilian deaths, personal property losses, infrastructure losses, and the military value of all those losses.
Perhaps, if you have enough background, you could compare the overall losses to both German and Japan during and immediately after World War 2.
And, if you're up to the task, maybe you could explain why the US military still has a surplus of Purple Heart medals, to the tune of a quarter million of them.
Nuclear weapons are terrible, I'll grant that. But, so is a 500 pound incindiary bomb landing in your living room. To the dead people, there is no difference.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Is making the error to think countries like NK and Iran will use nukes because dictators are irrational madmen. Sure, they're 'mad' enough but that doesn't make 'm irrational. Launching nukes would mean imminent self-destruction and is akin to walking up to a battalion of tank with a single round of .22.
The only motivation pursuing nukes is for gaining more means to play the political game. Dictators use ideology (ie. Stanilism, religion) to mobilize citizens to maintain or expand power and/or resources. The rest is a game.
If you are so naive to believe entire countries act as suicidal maniacs then you're being fooled by the same tools dictators use, only we call it 'peace', 'democracy' and 'stability'.
From what I've seen in history, only democracies nuke civilians.
And it's a good job they did too. For practically everyone including Japan.
Why? By that point, the war was pretty much over anyway. The only two at least semi-sensible arguments for using the nukes was: a) it'd likely make an invasion of Japan unnecessary and b) we have them, so we might as well just use them.
Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes. Compared to the cost of getting to the point of invading the home-turf, the actual act of doing it is much less costly. And the USA were already ready to invade the home-turf of Japan at that point, so the down-payment was pretty much already done.
And if you look at the post-war recovery speed, both Japan and Germany did not differ much, so invading Japan would have worked just as well as nuking two cities full of civilians -- only that the former is somewhat less morally questionable, as it'd have mostly killed armed soldiers, instead of unarmed civilians and would've given the individual soldiers at least a chance to surrender.
So, given that fact a) is neither really pro-use nor fully contra-use, the most likely reason why they used the nukes was simply b). They had them, they wanted to test them for real, so they tested them for real. All in all, it just shows the banality of evil, and that a democracy is not immune against committing morally questionable or downright morally evil acts.
Oh, and using the argument "But it saved the lives of US-American soldiers" -- while certainly right -- is even worse, as it simply shows that your moral compass is blind in certain areas. It is basically trading the few or your own for the many of the others -- and good luck with morally justifying that without sounding just like those who you set out to defeat.
See, the North Koreans DID disarm and were working with the US to develop nuclear power that was capable of producing power, but very hard to weaponize. But apparently doing so actually required thought and subtlety to international relations, something Republicans are apparently incapable of actually comprehending. Come in our cowboy man-child president who scrapped the whole deal, called North Korea "evil", and then was shocked when they re-started their weapons program. Same with Iran, and then he, and Obama for that matter, decided to go after the people who WERENT developing WMDs, letting all dictators round the world know that if they develop WMDs they are safe, if they don't, then they will get killed so the president can prove what a "man" he is. Bush was the biggest failure of a president in the post-civil war era, and Obama is only SLIGHTLY better.
Monstar L
Anyone want to tell those guys that SketchUp isn't open source? This is slashdot after all, and we care about these things don't we?
Apparently not for those on the receiving end. All the kittens, puppies and babies guilty of war crimes. All life has value, those that ignore this devalue their own life to less than nothing.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Adding to parent, they could probably have made their point by nuking much less densely inhabited areas. Instead they decided to go for maximum civilian casualties.
Where is the verifiability in this article? Or are we all basing our assumptions on one photograph (assuming it is a photograph) collected by one source, a pinky swear that it's from North Korea, and a crude guesstimate of what each building is based on the fact that the picture looks kinda nuclear-power-station-y?
Germany was only partially invaded by the western allies, the russians did the lion share including the brutal Berlin battle. Japan's final battle by comparison was relatively peaceful.
As for civilians being killed, were these the same civilians who congratulated their sons for the mass murder they committed? I note Japan has never made reparations for their many war crimes.
The world at the time was tired of war, invading all of Japan by the US alone would have created a terrible cost, not just in soldiers lost but in retaliation by US soldiers against Japanese civilians. Lots of german women were raped, not that anyone could give a shit about it but the Russian soldiers were hardly in the mood to restrain themselves after having fought through the evidence of german war crimes to be nice to those same germans.
What would US soldiers have felt about the japanese people if they had to fight through Japan with more and more evidence of Japanese war crimes to fuel the already bitter hatred of the Japanese?
I also find it highly likely that you are willing to sacrifice soldiers without actually ever having served. An armchar moralist. Gosh, we need more of them. Easy bet you think Iraq was about oil while topping up your SUV.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That was a sloppy inclusion. Sorry.
Ubiquitous blue roofing, the usual waste pools, 3rd World construction at best, reactor failure within 20 years and finally an epic realization of the irrelevance of North Korea, do you see your neighbor to the south? That's what you could've been, instead you chose to be some poorly run dictatorship the likes of which should have been obsolete 50 years ago.
To put it in contemporary terms "FAIL"
I think any Russian General older than 60 would disagree that invading Germany was easy and low cost, compared to a nuke. Seeing as we had to completely strip a bomber to it's bare minimum, and fly it off a deck not meant for that platform, I would challenge the premise, "We were ready to invade." We would have had no air superiority, against a Kamikze ready force, which had to go huge distances via boat to arrive. This is just begging to things to go wrong.
Yes, and the US government has been very much better. The track record of at least 50 wars in less than half a century, Nuking civilian cities and killing or causing the death of millions in those wars is a very good record for your so called democracy.
... possibly
If there is one country which should not have the right of having nukes, that's the US. The US has used it before.... will use it again
Germans are not Japanese. Germans were willing to surrender (to Brits or Americans, at least). Japanese were not. When the US invaded Okinawa, even civilians made pointless attacks against US troops, while many committed suicide. Now adjust for the fact that Okinawa isn't considered a proper part of Japan, and is very small and you'll have some idea what would have happened on the mainland.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
As seen on the N.H. number plates.
What most Americans have to ask themselves is
"What is Freedom?"
"Is the current freedom I have worth dying for?"
"Does the Federal Gov actually undersdand the word Freedom?"
You could have said something very similar in 1770 or so.
"Does the Government of King George understand Freedom?"
Says it all really.
answers to your Elected Representatives.
The only two at least semi-sensible arguments for using the nukes was: a) it'd likely make an invasion of Japan unnecessary and b) we have them, so we might as well just use them.
c) "Hoi! Comrade Josef! Look what we've got!"
All three of the above arguments are correct.
How about "it saved the lives of millions of Japanese"?
Could the US have just contained Japan until it collapsed? Sure. It wouldn't even have taken all that long, really. Things were pretty grim in Japan in August 1945 - lots of homelessness, and significant problems with production. They were short on every kind of raw material, and the food distribution system was in such dire straits that many factories couldn't operate because their workers had to choose between coming to work or obtaining food. (You don't usually think of "do work" and "obtain necessities of life" as mutually exclusive things, after all - but the official ration was down to starvation level, and so people did what they could to obtain more... which moved more food out of the official distribution system and into the black market, which made it worse for everyone else, which meant even more people had to spend their days getting food instead of working...)
The transportation network was in ruins. The harbors were mined, the transports were being torpedoed one after the other, the rail bridges were bombed, the ferries were wrecked.
On top of that, the winter of '45/'46 was one of the worst on record for Japan. Even with food aid from occupying US forces, hundreds of thousands of Japanese starved to death. That's with us providing bread instead of bombs...
The bombs killed something like 110,000 people, and that's regrettable. But pretending that Japan would have surrendered in August '45 without the nukes is foolish, and every month the war dragged on, the death toll for the Japanese civilian population continued to rise. Things had degenerated to the point where even if the US had literally quit and gone home - just said "forget it, we're declaring peace and not attacking any more" - more Japanese civilians would have died in the next year than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
That's not even considering the nightmare scenario, where central governance in Tokyo collapsed and Japan's forces overseas could not be brought to surrender. Little Japanese garrisons on a hundred small islands in the Pacific, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and along the front in China... many of which would require sharp fighting to dig out. Or you could just try to starve them out, of course, but if you take that view of it, you might as well hang up your humanitarian hat...
It's true that nobody in the US high command was thinking of how many Japanese lives the bomb would -save-.
Nuclear weapons are terrible, I'll grant that. But, so is a 500 pound incindiary bomb landing in your living room. To the dead people, there is no difference.
There's a big difference to the dying. All things considered, it's less horrible to bleed out in a couple hours than to die of radiation poisoning over a couple weeks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Or we could have stopped Alcoa from selling the aluminum to Mitsubishi that they made into Zeroes that they crashed through the decks of our planes.
Or we could have stopped Prescott bush from knowingly funneling millions to Hitler's S.S. One of his contemporaries was arrested for selling a great deal of fuel to the Nazis too, can't find his name right now though, sadly. But only AFTER he sold them the fuel, so that the Nazis would be able to continue to fight and so that we could seize the proceeds.
The simple truth is that we helped fuel that war intentionally for our economic goals.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And the USA were already ready to invade the home-turf of Japan at that point, so the down-payment was pretty much already done.
Uh, no. There are two big differences. One is getting the troops to the Japanese homeland. The invasion of Germany was possible because of D-day. That was a pretty costly maneuver (in manpower lost and equipment), even though it was only a short hop across the Channel. Invading Japan would have meant massive amphibious landings supported not from the US homeland, but from small island bases.
Couple that with the Japanese willingness to fight to the last man, and the invasion would have been a bloodbath. So yes, a) was a valid reason.
Leaflets were dropped for 2 days before the bombings by the CIA warning citizens that the cities were going to be destroyed, and many of them got out of town.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
That's *OK* then...
Yes and no. We were deeply into isolationism and trying desperately to ignore Germany. If you read "Beast in the Garden" you'll see our only interest was for them to pay back reparations. When our ambassador tried raising the flag on Hitler's "Final Solution," most thought the stories were made up, the Jews probably created the situation, etc. We "apologized" for any stories neg about Germany and then again, tried to get reassurances we'd get paid back.
I shared this point of view once... that the nukes were acts of state sponsored terrorism. I sought out quite a bit of info on the topics... I think most "woah" was a History channel special and an article about Operation Downfall (Not the Wikipedia one). But anything I has out would probably be included in this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
I am convinced that due to the world's need for a Japanese surrender (War can only end when one side is defeated or surrenders), the pride of the Japanese emperor, had the bombs not been dropped, the Japanese "civilian" deaths would have been greater in the months that followed, and the military deaths at least 3x higher on both sides. That, with conventional war. But maybe that's just propaganda.
I'm wondering what will happen when something DOES go wrong, and how NK will handle it.
I bet it will take them a while to ask for help, at the very least.
It is simple. It was revenge. If you talk to any American that lived through the war, ask them about the mood of the nation the day after Pearl Harbor. No one was worrying a whole lot about the poor civilians and their human rights. America were hell bent on outright genocide with a smile against Japan as a matter of public policy, and overwhelming majority of Americans supported it along with most countries that were victims of Japan (ask the Chinese how they felt about, or the Koreans, or the British). The only thing that saved the rest of the civilian population of Japan was a) we had no more nukes b) they surrendered.
Had the U.S. invaded, we would have bombed every single concentration of humans and structures likely for months (we were already doing it) with conventional munitions before landing troops, and completely isolated Japan from any resources military or civilian. There likely would not be a Japan as we know it today. The actual landing of troops would have been more of a mop up job, than there was any significant target left to seize.
And it's a good job they did too. For practically everyone including Japan.
You are more right than you think.
Many people don't know that the Soviets had just declared war on Japan, and, after defeating the Kwantung army, had occupied nearly all territories held by Japan on the continent. After that they were planning to invade the Home Islands. Had the nuclear bombs not persuaded Japan to surrender at that moment, they might have been occupied by the Soviet Union. That would have had serious implications not just during the war, but after, because we would have likely had the People's Republic of Japan. What standard of living would its citizens have had?
Hiroshima was chosen due to the large scale of arms establishments they had during WW2.
didn't you get the memo? The Norks are just on re-runs. Switch before you miss the live bombing
Don't be daft, of course it's different. How many bombing runs does it take to kill an A-bomb's worth of people with chemical bombs?
Having to crawl up to your enemy and beat him to death with your own head is different to activating a guillotine remotely without ever seeing them.
There's a big difference to the dying. All things considered, it's less horrible to bleed out in a couple hours than to die of radiation poisoning over a couple weeks.
How about dying over a couple of weeks to an otherwise treatable infection? How about dying over a couple of years to hunger? The pro-nuke side has plenty of room for escalation here.
And those 72 virgins are an urban legend
No they are not.
Even if they're not mentioned in the Qur'an, they're an integral part of the official Islam in many parts of the world. See the Surah Quran 55:72:
""" It was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu al-Haytham 'Adullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa'id al-Khudhri, who heard Muhammad saying, 'The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy-two houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a. """
See also: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/72_Virgins
[...] used to make saboteurs into religious fanatics they aren't.
Look, I love being politically correct as much as most left-wing Europeans, but anyone who yells "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") and then presses the button counts as a religious fanatic in my book.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Have gnu, will travel.
Could the US have just contained Japan until it collapsed?
Seeing what happened to North Korea under near identical circumstances, I'd say "no". The US might be able to contain Japan indefinitely, assuming the USSR didn't ruthlessly exploit the situation, but they couldn't insure the collapse of Japan.
Leaflets were dropped for 2 days before the bombings by the CIA warning citizens that the cities were going to be destroyed, and many of them got out of town.
The US also dropped leaflets advising the Japanese to surrender because resistence was futile.
If you are stupid enough to believe enemy propaganda in whatever form, you are pretty stupid. The leaflets could just as likely be a ruse.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Adding to that: The US, at the time, didn't know IF Japan would surrender if they chose to drop the bombs. Japan was in a state of Total War, high on honor and all that. They could just as well have decided to die by the sword. Imagine then what would have happened next, if the "drop-the-bomb"-logic was sound, then the US would have had to nuke all of Japan because "well, then we wont waste lives on an invasion, lol"
Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes.
I guess you missed the part where 80% of the war against Germany was borne by the Russians.
Advice: on VPS providers
All life has value, those that ignore this devalue their own life to less than nothing.
I mowed the lawn this morning regardless.
Advice: on VPS providers
Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden?
The arguably Dresden was more necessary because it really was "us or them". If Britain had lost the war then Europe would have fallen completely to the Axis and we would have be subjugated totally. At first the US found area bombing and targeting civilians unpalatable so refused to join in, but we really were desperate and didn't have many options. And eventually the US did fire bomb Japan anyway.
The US, on the other hand, was never in any real danger of losing to Japan. Merely starting the war is regarded as a huge blunder by the Japanese because they could never win it, especially once their fleet in the Pacific had been decimated. The US also had lots of options available with its nuclear weapons. They could have been detonated on remote islands or high up in the atmosphere to demonstrate their power. As it happened the reason for surrendering was the fear that Tokyo would be attacked, and that same reasoning would have existed if targets other than cities had been destroyed.
The US wanted to test nukes on people though. At the time no-one knew what the effects would be, particularly long term. Presumably other countries would develop their own nuclear weapons and the US wanted to know what the likely effects on its cities and citizens would be. So they did some tests on the Japanese people. Morally there is no equivalence between Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The CIA was formed in 1947 ...
Could you please compare the bombing of Hiroshima with something more "acceptable", such as the repeated firebombings of Dresden?
The arguably Dresden was more necessary because it really was "us or them". If Britain had lost the war then Europe would have fallen completely to the Axis and we would have be subjugated totally. At first the US found area bombing and targeting civilians with incendiaries unpalatable so refused to join in, but we really were desperate and didn't have many options. And eventually the US did fire bomb Japan anyway.
The US, on the other hand, was never in any real danger of losing to Japan. Merely starting the war is regarded as a huge blunder by the Japanese because they could never win it, especially once their fleet in the Pacific had been decimated. The US also had lots of options available with its nuclear weapons. They could have been detonated on remote islands or high up in the atmosphere to demonstrate their power. As it happened the reason for surrendering was the fear that Tokyo would be attacked, and that same reasoning would have existed if targets other than cities had been destroyed.
The US wanted to test nukes on people though. At the time no-one knew what the effects would be, particularly long term. Presumably other countries would develop their own nuclear weapons and the US wanted to know what the likely effects on its cities and citizens would be. So they did some tests on the Japanese people. Morally there is no equivalence between Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
they could probably have
While if they hit areas that still have surviving military and manufacture infrastructure (such as your so-called "maximum civilian causualties" targets), they would be a bit more certain of that "probably".
You, Sir, win the prize, for the most educated, and most intelligent response.
I happen to disagree with you, slightly. I believe that it was necessary to defeat the Japanese. As for those options you mention - hmmmm. How many bombs were available at that time? And, what would the cost have been to acquire more? Remember, this was new technology, then. Wasting a bomb on a non-military target for the purposes of demonstrating the power of the bombs was probably seen as "Not an option!"
Testing nuclear destruction in populated areas was probably seen as necessary, but I suspect that the military was determined to inflict the maximum damage to an active enemy, more than anything else. Japan had inflicted a lot of hurt on us, and we demanded satisfaction. Japan had also inflicted a lot of hurt on various allies, and we demanded some satisfaction for that, as well. And, it didn't hurt that the Japanese are a different race, with a different culture, and different values. It was easy to dehumanize them.
And, let us not forget that "fire for effect" is very much the military way of doing things. "Fire for demonstration" or "Fire for shock and awe" is a foreign concept to the military mind.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
No direct complaint about TFA (pretty pictures, nice analysis) but just _why_ were USAF recon photos released? This smells like more propaganda blackwash, like the [non] nukes.
Sure, everyone says NK has nukes after two tests. But look carefuly at those tests -- both sub-kiloton in yield. 0.5 - 0.7 kt . AFAIK, it is _extremely_ difficult to design reliable pits in that range. Much easier and safer to go for the typical 15 kt yield (less Pu/HEU). OTOH, it would be simple to make 0.5 kt from ANFO (ammonium nitrate - fuel oil) explosive in a mine with chosen radiowaste at the mine-mouth to leave the desired radioisotope signature.
The US mil-ind complex must be desperate to keep that bogeyman alive. China needs both whipping boys (NK, Burma) to corral its peoples.
Oh - I must add one thing that is often overlooked in discussions of this type. Japan had already been subjected to some of the more conventional firebombings, such as Dresden experienced. Those more typical bombings were even more horrible than Dresden, because the Japanese military-industrial complex was more spread out into poor neighborhoods, than Germany had been. They were more terrible, in that Japanese construction was vastly more flammable than German construction, causing the damage to be even more widespread, and more deadly.
And, those firebombings had not even put a dent in their will to fight.
Invading Japanese islands and mainland would have been a nightmare indeed. I personally believe that the bombs were a necessary evil.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Or we could have stopped Alcoa from selling the aluminum to Mitsubishi that they made into Zeroes that they crashed through the decks of our planes.
You can't stop something after it has happened.
Why? By that point, the war was pretty much over anyway.
Nobody thought the Japanese were going to surrender -- including the Japanese themselves. Everyone expected a horrendous mainland invasion. Japan was crippled by constant firebombing; however, they had already shown that they would fight to the very end -- just like the Nazis did.
I know this from the testimony of people who were there doing the deeds -- including Japanese civilians.
Resistance was futile, and the Japanese did surrender.
I fail to see how believing the propaganda would make one stupid.
Actually, there was a strong call to nuke Russia before they could develop nukes as well.
Actually it's worse than that. Mainland japan would have likely offered little resistance.
Okinawa was disturbing because a) The Japanese mainland saw Okinawans as subhuman, and always had. But still recognized them as Japanese citizens. Killing them off would be bad politically, so they did the next best thing. Told the Okinawans that the US soldiers were there to rape and kill them, gave them weapons, and told them to not surrender, but to kill themselves and their families before the US soldiers overtake them and rape and torture them.
Yes, they basically gave them some shitty weapons knowing they would lose, no reinforcements from the mainland, and told them to go kill themselves.
They took care of a people they did not like using the US to do so, and suicide.
That's one of the reasons we have not outright handed Okinawa back to Japan, they wanted it cleared of the indigenous people so they could plow it over.
There were many Okinawans who weren't very keen on the Japanese. I'm sure some of those saw through the propaganda, or hated the Japanese so much they'd give the US the benefit of the doubt. Some turned against their former masters and helped the US by denounced hiding Japanese who could be recognized by their accents. That isn't going to happen among the "proper Japanese".
And Okinawa was just a colony. Japan (the mainland) is the sacred homeland. To suggest that defence of the latter would be less fanatical is an interesting POV. I don't buy it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I had a workmeeting a few weeks ago where i was waiting for a client (in his office) who was running late. Only to have him come in and verbally abuse the Polish painters doing some ceiling work, in the company of his subordinates (minions). A few weeks later (during a party) he entered the room jokingly yelling 'you big whore' at a girl (because of the themed dress) in front of some 20-odd people.
Not a lot of people can look right through this person, most are intimidated. That is the point. Showing who is boss. Were he a country he would've bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
You do know that the Soviet Union were the good guys during the Cold War, and we were the Bad Guys? What hick university did you go to?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Is there? Dying from full body burns and crippled medical infrastructure after a conventional firebombing sounds equally unpleasant.
Might look something like this
I think you might mean a B-52 bombsight
(Not be a B52 bombsight, but its certainly a bombsight!)
The allies were seriously contemplating a mainland invasion of Japan and the war was most certainly not over for either side. The casualties would have run into millions and Japan would have been left a wasteland, before being partitioned into Russian and US zones since Russia would likely have invaded too. So yes Japan and the allies benefited from a shortened war. I'm sure it didn't seem that way to Japan at the time or to the people unfortunate enough to die from the blasts but that's the reality of it.
The nuclear bombs didn't persuade Japan to surrender, it was Russia. The japanese were scared of the new weapon but they were really terrified by Russia entering the war. Most if not all the discussion in this thread is about variants of mythology. The US entered the war in order to get as big a piece of the cake as possible because the big players were dividing the world amongst them.
It conquered Japan because it could and because it didn't want to share it with Russia.
The simple truth is that we helped fuel that war intentionally for our economic goals.
The simple truth is that you're a retard.
The outrage over these countries is not that much centered around nuclear weapons themselves as is around their political systems.
Concerns over authoritarian states having nuclear weapons:
1. government is more stable because everyone fears nuclear weapons
2. much more political responsibility of a country
3. inability/high risk for USA to strike due to retaliatory possibilities.
4. lack of additional conflicts in the region, reducing the excuse for keeping US troops nearby (e.g. as they pretend to contain NK threat, but in fact are in the SK and Japan due to China).
See, it's not that bad.
Given the fact that Germany had to be pretty much completely invaded before it surrendered is a sure sign that while a) actually worked, it would not have cost more than employing the nukes.
I guess you missed the part where 80% of the war against Germany was borne by the Russians.
Please note that I did not state who invaded most of Germany. As I am a German myself, I merely assumed this to be common knowledge, so I did not saw the need to explicitly state it. This was, perhaps, foolish of me.
Believe me when I tell you that the history of the 20th century -- in all its at times gory details -- is a big topic in German history lessons.
What was this comment of the Israeli ambassador to Germany when he attended the opening of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" in Berlin, our capital, right next to our house of parliament?
"Where in the world has one ever seen a nation erect monuments to its own shame? Only the Germans had the bravery and humility."
While the universality ("only") of the statement may be incorrect, its gist is not.
Oh, and using the argument "But it saved the lives of US-American soldiers" -- while certainly right -- is even worse, as it simply shows that your moral compass is blind in certain areas. It is basically trading the few or your own for the many of the others -- and good luck with morally justifying that without sounding just like those who you set out to defeat.
That's the morality inherent in any war. After all, if you believe that killing the enemy to protect your own is not justified, then you can really reduce the casualties by surrendering on day 1.
Firebombing can produce some pretty nasty slow deaths too, like being roasted alive in your own house. IIRC, Vonnegut described one case where civilians were boiled alive when they hid in a water tank.
You think it was "pretty much paid for"? Are you INSANE? If by "pretty much paid for" you utterly ignore the insane cost of transporting goods and supplies to Japan during war time conditions, the insane cost of the multi-year battle it would take capture the country, and the half a MILLION or so American lives that they expected to lose, to say nothing of the Japanese lives, then, um, yeah... pretty much already paid for.
Fighting for Iwo Jima, an island that was 8 square miles, cost 28,000 casualties (7,000 American and 21,000 Japanese) and took a month, Japan is 150,000 square miles. Seriously.
Further, if you want to talk about immorality, ignore the nukes. The nukes were pocket change. The allies did fire bombing runs that made the nuke attacks look like small potatoes. The only reason why those two cities were picked to be nuked was because the US had made the decision to not firebomb them like they did all the other cities so that they had something interesting to use the nukes on.
Nukes were not the worst atrocities of World War II by any stretch of the imagination. Getting hung up on them is stupid. They were unique in that it was the first time such weapons were used, and the results were far more immediate and dramatic than most atrocities. In terms of actual atrocity though, they don't even score in the top 10. The atrocities that both the US and Japan were willing to commit during a theoretical invasion of Japan would have made the nukes look like an after thought.
c) i) "I know, we've had a spy in the Manhatten Project for years"
FGD 135
Do you remember that Japan attacked the USA first? After that, we couldn't not enter the war.
My research concluded the same - though in terms of morality, it's what the West believed at the time.
Those that lay down their arms, retire their armies when those around them are building their armies and weapons where primary ingredients of World War II, when some commercial greed by bankers and industrialists decided their bottom line could be fattened, the next big war was on. I would surmise 70 years without a major war might be because A. (immediately after WWII) everyone was tired of war. B. The industrialists and banks were too busy making money to figure out a way to make more by starting a war. and C. The "next one" would be so costly, it would likely destroy the finances (not to mention the lives of family members) of most everyone in the world.
Now the question is can we keep the M.A.D, (mutually assured destruction) from using "the bomb" and risk starting the kind of war M.A.D. ness was hoped to defer.
Based on my reading of history, (Nepolonic wars, WW I, WW II, etc.) the answers is that the ignorant will start such wars anyway.
Is that bombs were really, REALLY inaccurate back in the day. These days we (in the US at least) think about sending a single, small, bomber like an F-15E to do multiple missions. Go bomb this, then this, then come back kind of thing. A couple bombs per target at most.
In WWII that isn't how it worked. You wanted to take out an industrial plant inside a city you leveled a large part of the city around it. That was the only way to do it. Deploy a bunch of bombers and release hundreds of bombs. Statistically speaking a few of them would hit your target. Well given that targets would be spread throughout a city, that meant that you pretty much just bombed the city in to the ground. No other way to do it.
Thus the idea of the atomic bomb. Nobody understood the after effects, the thing was brand new. The idea was just being able to replace a fleet of bombers with one bomber. Send in a single plane with one bomb, take out a large number of targets. Sure a ton of civilians would die but a ton of civilians died in all bombing campaigns so what else was new?
The idea was never "Let's be as evil as possible and find a worse way to kill people," it was as it ever was with the military: "Let's find a way to complete our objective putting less of our men and material at risk." Given that precision was not an option, they went with overwhelming power.
Like, say, the bombing of Tokyo. It was firebombed and was the deadliest single air raid of the war. More than the atomic bombs. In terms of lives lost, buildings destroyed, people injured, etc, it was worse.
The reason that the atomic bomb raids worked so well is not their massive destruction, but the fact that one bomb could do that. The US did a god job convincing Japan it had a fleet of these bombs and would just keep doing it. They didn't say they only had three of them (one for the test, and the two they used).
This was the kind of thing against which there was no real defense. With conventional raids, there were hundreds of aircraft being used, which you should shoot down. You could inflect losses on your enemy, hope to wear them down. With this, they'd send in one plane and blow shit up. Shoot it down, another would come and do the job.
What this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo about the Mccollum memo fails to make clear is that the McCollum memo made perfect sense and that it wasn't even necessary to read it in order to come to the same conclusions. Which explains why the recommendations were implemented.
Have you never wondered why it was necessary not just to retaliate against the Japanese and make them pay dearly but actually conquer them in the fullest way possible?
Perhaps having nuclear weapons is a sign that a country is oppressive ?
Let's see....
India
France
United Kingdom
United States
No, that doesn't seem to correlate.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Thanks, I just wish someone with mod points would notice. The OP is a real arse hole.
Your point about "wasting" bombs only makes sense if they were to be used for military gain. As I said they were used as tests on civilians with the military targets as mere excuses so that the people making the decision could justify it. Either way the bombs would not have been wasted because the goal was to make Japan surrender, not defeat it militarily. That is exactly what happened when it became clear that conventional warfare was over in the face of atomic annihilation.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
All four of the countries you mention try very hard to influence international politics in ways that is beneficial to their interests.
Or are you suggesting that oppression is ok as long its done to other nations, i.e its ok to oppress foreigners, as long as you treat your own people ok ?
But without thinking too hard, it could also be argued that the United States is quite oppressive domestically with its pervasive domestic intelligence gathering, death penalty, restricted travel (no fly list), suspension of Habius Corpus.
Obama astroturfers, or Bush-lovers? Film at eleven.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can't stop something after it has happened.
Except that they were still making Zeroes during the war, and we were still selling them the material they were using to make them, your statement almost makes sense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes and nukes would be fairly painless if you were close enough.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
I'm sure they have the highest quality control for these reactors, yippee!!!1
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The problem with all these arguments is that the Japanese DID surrender after the two nukes. If they were really prepared to fight in hand to hand combat down to the last man, woman and child (as the Allied argument went) then why should they have crumbled so easily? If it was so psychologically impossible to surrender instead of die, why didn't the Japanese just wait for the US to wipe them out with nukes?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Except that they were still making Zeroes during the war, and we were still selling them the material they were using to make them, your statement almost makes sense.
Citation please. I googled around myself and the closest I can come up with was that Alcoa was a member of one or more trade consortiums. Alcoa's efforts within these sorts of deals appears to be to maintain an aluminum monopoly in the US, not to sell aluminum to Japan.
Not to mention that the whole reason they decided to use the bombs was that a full invasion was calculated to cost up to 500,000 US troops as casualties. With the state of Japan at the time, its resources, and troops, being told to fight to the death, I would have to assume that their casualty rate would be several times higher than that of the US.
So not even counting civilians deaths due to the prolonged war as you mentioned, you can add say another 2 million combined troops on top of that, conservatively.
So yeah, you can see why it was seen that nuclear bombing that killed 110k people might be thought of as a lesser evil. That would be probably the definition of "tough" choices that a leader might have to make.
Though to be honest, I don't know how much I would attribute that to thinking about the Japanese people, so much as it probably was a simply calculation of how politically unpopular it would be to lose 500k+ US soldiers.
Totally a necessary evil. People who say it is not have not studied the facts. The invasion of Japan would have destroyed it and caused many lives on both sides. It was a tough decision Truman made and I am sure he agonized over it. I do wonder sometimes if we really had to drop the second one.
The bombs were not dropped specifically on civilians. Both Hirshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets. Due to the culture of Japan the civilian workers lived very close to their place of work, i.e. the place of work is located deep in the cities.
Actually there was a third reason that's gotten "forgotten" because it's inconvenient. It was to see what they would do to a real human population-center. The choice was either Germany or Japan, and we were hellbent on seeing what it could really do. I remember when I was in Hiroshima at the Peace Museum reading documents uncovered after the war that generals and I believe even the present saying that Germany was a better choice to nuke, but Japan was better to hit. Reason being that they would be far less equipped, and able to study what hit them, unlike the Germans who were much further along at building their own. Hell, we even laid off on bombing raids in Hiroshima leading up to the bombing because otherwise we weren't going to have anything left to nuke (also in the documents displayed)!
Three guys are going to kill your 20 year old son unless you kill those three guys first. Shouldn't you just let your son die so there are fewer casualties? Oh, that's too morally questionable.