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Originally posted by The_Dude
well, we werent or arent "at war" with iraq right now. when was the last time we had an official declaration of war?
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World War II. Korea was a United Nations "police action", Vietnam was undeclared, as were both of the Gulf wars.
Here's a link to the Google cache of a U.S. Navy History page which has some details of 234 military actions on foreign soil by United States troops. Five of them were in "declared" wars.
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regardless of whether or not the two cities had been the supply houses, we killed almost 200k people and permanently scared a lot more (and future generations).
i agree that civilians can be killed in a war, but how about killing 200k civilians + the infected people?
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I've just spent the better part of an hour typing a post in which I rail against the killing of civilians. Hiroshima was probably our nation's lowest point, militarily speaking. We knowingly sacrificed the lives of almost a quarter million innocents upon the altar of political expediency. What we may never really know is whether or not the alternative was, in fact, worse.
I wish I could find the post online, but Dave Barry (of all people) was actually in Hiroshima on the 50th anniversary of the bombing (August 6, 1995). It's a sobering, emotional piece, and I recommend it highly.