Quote:
Originally posted by Jimmy4
Pop Quiz: You don't know anything about war, either that, or you'd be the worst general of all time.
In order to attack Japan, there would have needed to be an amphibious assault that would have dwarfed D-Day.
I don't think you understand the casualty count of D-Day. So let me explain it all to you. And if you think "No, he's exagerating" you're wrong. I'm probably underestimating it.
Imagine going to a beach. Got a nice beach in mind? Good. Now, imagine 5 more just like it. Got it? Good. Now imagine bodies up and down each and every beach and in the water. Got that? Now change the color of the ocean from blue to red. Got that? Now imagine more dead bodies the further you go up the beach. Got that? Now imagine that at least 10 times larger.
Now imagine this. We finally have the fleet assembled in Spring 1946, we can finally do this. We're going to lose probably 1/3 - 1/2 of our troops because of the way the Japanese fight. But we're ready to go. Now imagine almost all of our fighters from our air craft carriers getting shot down. Now imagine a large majority of our ships being sunk. Now imagine looking in the sky and seeing a huge air force of jet fighters flying under the red sun. See, the Japanese might have had bad guns and horrible fighting techniques, but they're masters at building. They created a jet engine from one, ONE photograph of a german jet engine that Hitler sent in the middle of the war. The Japanese used it to build a giant fleet of jet fighters hiding in the mountains of Japan with places to take-off and land drilled right into the cave.
But of course, with the way you put it, we shouldn't have gone through D-Day at all. No, that's way too drastic. We should have sat down with Hitler, kiss his ass, and politely ask him not to kill 6 million Jews. And that whole Pearl Harbor thing, we were way out of line. We should have never occupied that island. We should have listened the first time and let Japan take over all of the Pacific they wanted. The Japanese were just following their manifesdestiny.
Ignorance is one of the worst things in people, so please save us from showing yours with comments like "Pop quiz: what country is the only one to actually use a nuclear weapon during wartime."
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Indeed. approximately 350 000 japanese people were killed due to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings, and the after-effects of radiation continue to affect people to this very day.
By contrast, around 10 000 allied troops were killed due to D-Day.
It was estimated at the time that a direct assault on Japan would have resulted in up to one million American casualties and five million Japanese casualties, and the A-Bomb was considered the best way of settling the war with minimum casualties.
My personal view? perhaps they were a bit too hasty about deploying the a-bomb, and perhaps other alternatives should have been considered... but whats done is done, and it did effectively end World War II.
Anyway, back to the original thread matter.
Er, well, in all honesty, i almost am starting to respect Bush now. It would have been very easy to make sure that WMD's were found in Iraq, even if they had fallen out the back of a US convoy truck.
Anyway, similiar to my stance on WW2, whats done is done, and now we should look for a way of setting up a sustainable leadership in iraq, creating close ties to the new leadership regarding oil, and withdrawing from there as soon as we can.
P.S. (i really hate the term WMD, its one of the most annoying tautologies i've ever come across).