Heartland

Whenever I hear people arguing against the Americans dropping the bombs, I'm always reminded of some little sh*t I went to school with wailing to the teacher that I "hit him harder than he'd hit me". I received a finger-wagging scolding from some silly cow who told me it was "wrong to hit back".
Same principle applies in my mind. You don't launch an unprovoked attack and then whine at the retaliation. Blame Hirohito if you want to blame anyone.

paint it black wrote:OMD gave me my first blow job

All of them? Or just McCluskey?

I read an interesting 'alternate history' story several years back, where the USAAF discuss dropping the bomb in the harbour, rather than right on city centre.

Ultimately, the general staff go for a city attack, but Colonel Tibbets - the commanding officer of the Enola Gay acts unilaterally and bombs the ocean outside the city. The resulting explosion (and tidal wave) stuns the Japanese and has much the same psychological effect, causing them to sue for peace...

Obviously that's a fictional work, and it's difficult to tell if such a gesture of humanitarian restraint would have convinced the notoriously stubborn Imperial High Command to end the war. As was observed earlier, the island-hopping Pacific campaign of the Allies was incurring murderous losses and it clearly would have increased exponentially as we approached Japan itself...

Nuclear weapons are really more a tool of diplomacy and psychological warfare. Big Si mentioned that the Nixon administration wielded nuclear weapons as the proverbial 'big stick' and it's quite true - I'm reading The Ends of Power by Nixon's chief of staff, Haldeman, and Kissinger intimidated the Soviets into withdrawing from a pre-emptive strike on the emerging nuclear power of China by threatening a retaliatory attack. That's the bit no-one widely knows about in the celebrated 'discourse with the (real) People's Republic'!

Their use in warfare, even in a battlefield scenario, is increasingly unlikely as we emerge from the idealogical superpower era.

Unfortunately, their use in terrorism becomes increasingly more likely.

timsinister wrote:Their use in warfare, even in a battlefield scenario, is increasingly unlikely as we emerge from the idealogical superpower era.

Unfortunately, their use in terrorism becomes increasingly more likely.

IMO the biggest risk with existing nuclear arsenals is their accidental use.

this pdf wrote:In January 1995 a warning related to a US scientific rocket launched from Norway lead to the activation, for the first time in the nuclear era, of the nuclear suitcases carried by the top Russian leaders and initiated an emergency nuclear decision-making conference involving the leaders and their top nuclear advisers. Less than 4 minutes before the deadline for ordering a Russian nuclear response, it was concluded that the launch was not part of a surprise nuclear strike by Western submarines

Now that would be an ironic epitaph for the human race: "It was an accident!"

If you haven't already, you should watch "The Fog of War":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/

It's an engaging documentary and McNamara seems to be fairly honest in his discussion about his (and others) actions... but then again, who knows.

and even more scary..

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/ ... f_deadhand

DR STRANGELOVE LIVES!

Doktor Gott wrote:and even more scary..

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/ ... f_deadhand

DR STRANGELOVE LIVES!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWP_rEWG2xk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTstgN8ReTo