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The Guy Who Unknowingly 'Live-Blogged' the Bin Laden Raid
netbuzz (955038) writes "Three years ago today, software consultant Sohaib Athar was working on his laptop at home in Pakistan when he tweeted: 'Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).' And then: 'A huge window-shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope it's not the start of something nasty :-S.' It was for Osama bin Laden. Today Athar says, 'People do bring it up every now and then.'"
Hmm, that's kind of a neat story actually. Not sure what's with all the negative comments.
@junktext
The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable.
War - total war, on the scale of nations - is a constant question of choosing the lesser evil. There are very rarely good options to take - if there were, there would not have been a war in the first place.
We haven't had a war like that since WW2, so I suppose it's excusable that people forget just how much death and destruction it causes. The numbers can be a bit hard to wrap your head around, after all.
The two atomic bombings killed a quarter million people. On its own, that's horrifying. In the context of the Second World War, that's a rounding error. Some countries were literally decimated - over ten percent of their prewar population dead. Compared to Germany, Japan got off light.
Let's look at the alternative to the A-bombs. Japan was not going to surrender - even after losing Manchuria to the Soviets, they were still ready to fight. So we were looking at an invasion - and after Iwo Jima, we knew it would not be an easy fight. Estimated Allied killed were in the hundreds of thousands to millions - Japanese casualties, military and civilian, are incalculable, particularly since the plans that did not involve nuclear weapons generally involved chemical weapons in their stead. Some plans involved both, on top of the more mundane horrors of a million-man invasion force. Oh, and if you delay it too long, the Soviets will probably invade, and they barely cared about their own casualties, much less enemy noncombatants.
There *was* no good option there. Japan was going to get pounded. The least evil option was whichever one ended the war fastest - and that option is using whatever weapons you have available to force your opponent to surrender. If that means firebombing cities, so be it. If that means atomic bombs, so be it. Because if you hold back, all you're doing is making the war last longer, which means not only do more of your own people die, but in the long run, more of theirs do too.
There are plenty of justifiable ways to claim that America is evil - pretty much anything done in the past decade counts, really. You don't need to make shit up about the atomic bombings in order to wedge it into an unrelated argument.
PS: Hiroshima was a major military city during 1945, with both a major command center, as well as a supply hub and munitions stockpile. Nagasaki was a major munitions industrial center. Calling them "innocent civilians" is at best misinformed.
I add the following for your consideration.
After dropping those two bombs, nobody on Earth has ever dropped one since. Think about that for a second. Yes, they have been tested, but never once dropped in anger since the first two. And all nuclear-capable countries between the 50s and the 80s have had was at some point to consider using them. All of them treated them as retaliation weapons, only to be used if they were shot at first.
So let us treat Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the ignorant first use of an unknown technology that it was and accept that the world went through a massive, rapid learning curve and HAVE NOT USED THEM SINCE.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable.
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Absolutely. The Japanese then were like Muslims are now - believing they were on a divine mission and that anyone who stood in the way of their divine right should be killed without mercy in the most unpleasant way possible. There will be time when muslims will use nuclear weapons, then our big regret will be that we had not used them earlier
Was there a real need to drop a second bomb? Certainly seems like nobody wants to use the third bomb.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
You are comparing an entire country to a religion's entire followers, which makes you a fool. A racist, ignorant fool.
You are trolling, but I'll still bite.
While living in a cave...
We're talking about the same country who got its ass kicked by vietcongs for at least two decades (while using Napalm). Ass kicked in Afghanistan by people using weapons the CIA gave them back in the late '70s when Brejnev invaded their country and IEDs. .
Interestingly, this is is a time honored methodology for fighting against a much stronger force and is exactly how I would fight against the US, NATO, Russia, China, etc. if I were in a small country. Take to the hills, don't expose yourself to pitched battles that you will lose anyway and subject your opponent to death by a thousand paper cuts. Americans themselves successfully used this methodology against the British between 1775 and 1781.
The only real ways to fight against it are to either make yourself more popular among the populace than the resistance force (VERY difficult to do) or go full Ghengis Khan.
but was the only one to use them... Twice... Hiroshima August 6th 1945... Enola Gay...Little Boy...Gun Type 16kT. Nagasaki August 9th 1945... Bockscar...Fat Man...Implosion type 21kT.
Other designs were planned. We're talking about weapon testing... If the war wasn't over back in the old countries, they would *never* have dropped a nuclear weapon in europe.
So..... its the summer of 1945. YOU are Harry Truman. The war has killed, what 50 million people so far. The battle of Okinawa has just finished and it killed.... oh about 200,000 people. (about half being soldiers of the two side and the rest civilians). That was essentially the dress rehearsal for the invasion of Japan itself. You've just been told about these new kinds of bombs. What would you do? Try to finish the war off by using them and then bluffing the Japanese by saying you have a thousand (you don't. you have two) or go ahead with the invasion?
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
There is a bigger issue with the statement "America is evil" than hindsigth being 20/20 - all countries are composed of a lot of people, some good and some bad. At most one could claim that the *leadership* is evil, but claiming that the whole country is evil due to the actions of a few just doesn't work. A similar, modern day example is claiming that Israelis (or all jews, if you really want to put on the brown shirt...) are evil due to some of the actions of their governement being debatable morally. Or all muslims being evil due to the actions of a few madmen etc.
The other issue is the time - very few if any of the people involved in building and dropping the atomic bombs on Japan are still alive. You can't blame their kids and grandkids for the actions of their ancestors. Same goes for Germany - you can't really blame the people who live there today for what happened during WWII, even if many people who wherent even born during that war still have guilt complexes.
Winston Churchill said the World War II did not begin in 1939, but in 1919 when the Versailles Treaty was signed with punitive sanctions against Germany. That is a lesson they are learnt well, they did not treat Germany and Japan they way losers of WW-I were treated. That is how we avoided WW-III.
If we maintain the distinction, realizing we are not fighting all the Muslims, but only the small section of leaders who whip up the passion we will be able to pacify them as we pacified Japan. Think about it, if someone told Americans in 1944, "we are going to pacify Japan, not subjugate them, not conquer them, but truly make friends out of them" how it would have been received. Now substitute Muslim instead of Japan and see how incredulous most Americans would be. But we did make friends, or at least a reasonable approximation of friend, out of Japan.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You are aware that Japan only surrendered after the A-bombs, right? And the U.S. was encouraging Stalin to open up another front for the Japanese in the hopes the U.S. wouldn't have to invade. MacArthur was all for invasion. The most in the Japanese military were all for dying until the last man, woman, and child. They had armed the populace with pitchforks and was teaching them how to gut an American GI. The Emperor signed off on the surrender and parts of the Japanese military attempted a coup but were put down due to some loyal (to the Emperor). Okinawa was only the last of a string of very bloody islands where most Japanese fought until they died or attempted to surrender to get close enough to American GIs to kill them with a grenade. Iwo Jima, Tinian, Saipan, Guam, all were nasty, brutish fights and the Japanese were flinging Kamikazis against American ships.
Fortunately, Admiral Nimitz knew better than to attempt an invasion of Japan and was against it. Germany was already gone, but it took many American lives and the wounded were arriving back in the U.S. with horrific injuries. Truman had to tell the American people the war wasn't over yet because an uncowed Japan would surely attempt to reconstruct its empire. Japanese atrocities in the Pacific and certainly China were legendary. The Pacific campaign had also claimed many American lives and wounded.
Now you sin in Truman's office. Some on his military staff tell you invasion is the only way...estimated U.S. casualties: 250,000 up to 1 million (they couldn't be sure other than the figure was appalling). Some on his military staff tell you the invasion is not necessary. You dither for about 3 months, bombing Japan is certainly reducing the country but they won't surrender. Now one of your secret projects offers a chance to blow some sense into the stiff-necked Japanese. Do you (a) take it, (b) invade at horrible cost, (c) do nothing and attempt to keep a war going that is fast losing support, (d) declare victory believing you will have to come back and fight the war again in 10 years? You have to decide Mr. President.
Well, yeah, sort of.
Critics, including Saddam's legal counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi, alleged that American officials had a heavy influence on the court.[55] In a statement, Khalil said, "this court is a creature of the US military occupation, and the Iraqi court is just a tool and rubber stamp of the invaders."[56]
Khalil al-Dulaimi and various international commentators alleged that the date on which the verdict was read live to the world, 5 November 2006, was deliberately selected by the Bush Administration in order to influence the US midterm elections which occurred two days later. This has been called a November Surprise.[56][57] The verdict was expected to be on 16 October 2006, but was postponed to consider recalling some of the witnesses.[58] Even as the verdict was released verbally on 5 November, the written, final verdict was not released until days later.[59]
It is perhaps not very suprising that the defense in the case made such objections. But it hardly stops there:
The Washington Post reported that "Americans have drafted most of the statutes under which Hussein and his associates are being tried". It also reported that "A US official in Baghdad confirmed last weekend that only the United States and Britain had contributed experts to advise the court on how to prosecute governments for war crimes and other such matters".[60]
The human rights organization Amnesty International criticized the death sentence and said the trial was "deeply flawed and unfair." The process was marred by "serious flaws that call into question the capacity of the tribunal," Malcolm Stuart, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program, said. "In particular, political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court." [61] The specific concerns raised by Amnesty International included the status of the trial as a "Special Trial" (unconstitutional according to the Iraqi Constitution), political interference in trial proceedings by the removal of a judge mid-trial, exclusion of members of the defense team at points in the trial, assassination of multiple members of the defence team, and the closure of the trial before the defence team had completed presenting its legal case.
In the opening statement of the Jury of Conscience of the World Tribunal on Iraq, keynote speaker Arundhati Roy retorted, "Saddam Hussein is being tried as a war criminal even as we speak. But what about those who helped to install him in power, who armed him, who supported him—and who are now setting up a tribunal to try him and absolve themselves completely?"[62]
The Ayn Rand Institute argued that "A trial that presumes Hussein's innocence can achieve nothing but a travesty of justice": "Saddam Hussein is not a private citizen, whose guilt requires proof in an objective court of law, but a dictator whose incontestable evil was manifest to any rational observer of his tyranny."[63]
The atomic bombs were on par with what we did to Berlin with standard bombs.
We talk about the horror of Okinawa, look at what days upon days of firebombing Berlin and Germany did.
The fires were so hot that some basement shelters when opened burst into flames when Oxygen got into them, and this was days after we stopped bombing. Civilians hiding in a bomb shelter cooked to death from the heat.
War is not pretty or civilized. We attempt to make it that way, but honestly It's humanity's dark evil underbelly that proves we are barely out of the caves.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
simple reason why, If someone other than the US or russia used it, we would return with 10 nukes. using a nuke today would literally be annihilation for whatever country used them
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The most in the Japanese military were all for dying until the last man, woman, and child. They had armed the populace with pitchforks and was teaching them how to gut an American GI.
This is simply not true. You are repeating propaganda that was hard to believe even at the time. By that stage in the war the majority of Japanese were against the war and would not have fought if invaded anyway. Many of them were struggling just to survive due to lack of food and other essentials. A GI with a food parcel would have been welcomed, as they were after the surrender.
The stories of suicide attacks against US troops are true. Those people were trying to cover the retreat of the main Japanese forces and protect civilians. Looking at it from their point of view the US was killing a lot of innocent people, even if not deliberately. There was no fanatical brain washing going on, it was just the usual stuff that happens in war. It happened in Europe too, with British troops using suicide attacks and fighting to the last man to cover their comrades' retreat.
Thing is, we will never know now. A bomb detonated in some remote place or on an island could have ended the war with minimal casualties. Longer could have been given after the first bomb for Japan to surrender. Instead the US went directly to testing on civilians, not once but twice. Trying to present the false choices you present as the only ones is simply a straw man argument. Explain why two bombs had to be dropped so close to each other on civilians, instead of a demonstration or longer pause.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Japan was in the process of working out how to surrender.
Next time, surrender faster.
Or even better, don't even send a two million soldiers into China to turn it into a Japanese colony, killing 4 million Chinese and leaving 60 million homeless.