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Is the United States a terrorist nation?

Is the United States a terrorist nation?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 15.9%

  • No

    Votes: 36 81.8%

  • Other

    Votes: 1 2.3%
  • Total voters
    44
TheDemSocialist said:
No it didnt

"Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s.

Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals."

Was Hiroshima Necessary?
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Despite all the talk, the only Japanese who could have enforced a surrender decision were determined to fight on until the bombs were dropped. Recent scholarship makes this clear. The book "Hell to Pay" makes an irrefutable case that the Japanese not only would resist an invasion, but could very well have defeated a U.S. invasion. The bombs were necessary to win.
 
Jack Hays said:
Despite all the talk, the only Japanese who could have enforced a surrender decision were determined to fight on until the bombs were dropped. Recent scholarship makes this clear. The book "Hell to Pay" makes an irrefutable case that the Japanese not only would resist an invasion, but could very well have defeated a U.S. invasion. The bombs were necessary to win.
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Well saying that the Japanese were looking a way out of the war, we knew they were about to surrender, and the Japanese themselves even admitted that they were ready to surrender even before the bombs dropped, it seems it wasnt...
 
pbrauer said:
How can you say it's not terrorism if there is no basis for that conclusion?
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There is a professional definition of terrorism that satisfies everyone but obsessed propagandists, and conventional military operations don't qualify.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Well saying that the Japanese were looking a way out of the war, we knew they were about to surrender, and the Japanese themselves even admitted that they were ready to surrender even before the bombs dropped, it seems it wasnt...
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You have to be careful which "Japanese" you're citing. Those who claimed they were ready to surrender were not the ones who could have surrendered. The book I cited has really ended the debate among historians.
 
Jack Hays said:
There is a professional definition of terrorism that satisfies everyone but obsessed propagandists, and conventional military operations don't qualify.
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citation please.
 
Jack Hays said:
You have to be careful which "Japanese" you're citing. Those who claimed they were ready to surrender were not the ones who could have surrendered.
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Based off that logic what makes you think dropping the bomb made a difference or not? If they were so brainwashed by the Emperor why did the bombs make a difference? The Emperor and his Generals were ready to get out even before the bombs dropped and were looking for a way to get out and our government knew this...

The book I cited has really ended the debate among historians.
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Well you care to quote a part of it?
 
Goshin said:
Ok. So YOU tell me how we stop ISIS from beheading women and children and generally creating misery for millions, WITHOUT using violence. I'm all ears.
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I'm not a magician, I don't claim to have a catch all answer. What I said is that we should strive for non violent solutions. In the original post you replied to, Paschendale said "we need to find nonviolent solutions". Focus on 'we', as a nation.

Finding nonviolent solutions isn't a quick easy process and I can't just produce one for you out of thin air, you know that. It takes work and perseverance, it takes good people to throw effort at the problem, not throw lives at it. Violence is the lazy solution, one that has never worked over there in the long run, time to try something different.
 
Absolutely no.
The United States has no policy to target civilians for murder, nor does it have a policy to sponsor such targeting.
 
MadLib said:
I see such a role reversal as improbable, since the US could and would squash such elements (assuming, of course, that the foreign government isn't openly hostile with us). Nevertheless, I agree that war is an ugly thing, and it's too common that the impact upon civilians is a mere talking point in discussions about military action overseas rather something that people empathize with.
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My post wasn't pointed to whether or not such a scenario was particularly likely, but how we would feel if a foreign power liberated us of a government we didn't like and we suffered massive civilian casualties and infrastructural damage in the bargain.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Again. Anything specifically from the book or is it just a summary and review of the book from NPR?
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The book is a detailed work of history drawing on sources never used before. There is no internet-style brief passage such as you apparently seek. Nonetheless, it makes its case conclusively. I suggest you read it.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Again. Anything specifically from the book or is it just a summary and review of the book from NPR?
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Worth your time . . .

Why Truman Dropped the Bomb

From the August 8, 2005 issue: Sixty years after Hiroshima, we now have the secret intercepts that shaped his decision.

Aug 8, 2005, Vol. 10, No. 44 • By RICHARD B. FRANK ... The Japanese called this strategy Ketsu Go (Operation Decisive). It was founded on the ... land on Southern Kyushu in November 1945 (Operation Olympic). American planning for the Kyushu ... World War II, is the author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese ...

". . . .Togo's initial messages--indicating that the emperor himself endorsed the effort to secure Soviet mediation and was prepared to send his own special envoy--elicited immediate attention from the editors of the "Magic" Diplomatic Summary, as well as Under Secretary of State Grew. Because of Grew's documented advice to Truman on the importance of the Imperial Institution, critics feature him in the role of the sage counsel. What the intercept evidence discloses is that Grew reviewed the Japanese effort and concurred with the U.S. Army's chief of intelligence, Major General Clayton Bissell, that the effort most likely represented a ploy to play on American war weariness. They deemed the possibility that it manifested a serious effort by the emperor to end the war "remote." Lest there be any doubt about Grew's mindset, as late as August 7, the day after Hiroshima, Grew drafted a memorandum with an oblique reference to radio intelligence again affirming his view that Tokyo still was not close to peace.


Starting with the publication of excerpts from the diaries of James Forrestal in 1951, the contents of a few of the diplomatic intercepts were revealed, and for decades the critics focused on these. But the release of the complete (unredacted) "Magic" Far East Summary, supplementing the Diplomatic Summary, in the 1990s revealed that the diplomatic messages amounted to a mere trickle by comparison with the torrent of military intercepts. The intercepts of Japanese Imperial Army and Navy messages disclosed without exception that Japan's armed forces were determined to fight a final Armageddon battle in the homeland against an Allied invasion. The Japanese called this strategy Ketsu Go (Operation Decisive). It was founded on the premise that American morale was brittle and could be shattered by heavy losses in the initial invasion. American politicians would then gladly negotiate an end to the war far more generous than unconditional surrender. . . ."
 
Nilly said:
I'm not a magician, I don't claim to have a catch all answer. What I said is that we should strive for non violent solutions. In the original post you replied to, Paschendale said "we need to find nonviolent solutions". Focus on 'we', as a nation.

Finding nonviolent solutions isn't a quick easy process and I can't just produce one for you out of thin air, you know that. It takes work and perseverance, it takes good people to throw effort at the problem, not throw lives at it. Violence is the lazy solution, one that has never worked over there in the long run, time to try something different.
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I'm ok with "striving for non-violent solutions"... as long as we recognize that sometime there isn't going to be one, and sometimes we need to act and use violence before it is too late.

Violence DOES solve problems. It solved Hitler and Japanese imperialism quite decisively, when there is very little if any reason to believe any non-violent solution could have. Is it my preferred solution? No. But let's not pretend "violence never solves anything". It does if you do it right.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Again. Anything specifically from the book or is it just a summary and review of the book from NPR?
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An excellent short review:

Bellum » Review: Hell to Pay by D.M. Giangreco

bellum.stanfordreview.org › Book Reviews
Feb 23, 2010 - This is two books woven together. The main theme as seen from the subtitle is a dissection of the command decisions leading up to the ...

Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947
by D.M. Giangreco
Naval Institute Press, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1591143161
HC: 416 pages
$36.95 ($24.39 on Amazon here
ir
) This is two books woven together. The main theme as seen from the subtitle is a dissection of the command decisions leading up to the invasion plans for Japan and the detailed military reasons why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not merely necessary but unavoidable. If this were still an issue subject to rational historical analysis and debate it would mark the effective end of the Revisionist critique that the bombs were aimed as a diplomatic statement to the Soviets.


The critique consists of taking comments out of context. Giangreco puts back the context by connecting the dots as the US military discovered the depth of the Japanese defensive plans for Kyushu. In effect, the proposed landings were looking more and more as a quite possibly unwinnable blood bath for the US forces. In reverse, the Japanese militarists were not insane in thinking they had finally found the field of battle and style of warfare that could force the US to settle for far less than unconditional surrender. The author does a step-by-step analysis of what each level of command knew and when they knew it. He then shows how behind the curve they were on what the Japanese had in fact done, such that post-surrender inspections of the defenses were a most nasty shock.


Woven into this is the best single book survey of the manifold manpower problems the US had in the summer of 1945. Relative to the other major combatants US losses in WW2 were quite low. This tends to blind current readers to the strain the final year of the war placed on US military personnel systems. Transoceanic warfare eats up manpower for transport and other line of communication functions. In addition, our entire personnel system was geared to finding specialists for our many technical functions and tended to treat ground combat forces and their immediate support elements almost as an afterthought. The escalating US losses from D-Day to V-J Day strained this structure. It came near to breaking at the time of the Ardennes, when expedients such as closing down the large military educational establishments pushed war bodies with little real ground forces training into front line units. Now, with the German surrender a second problem arose — the US government had promised partial demobilization with the war still on. An individual points based system which was beyond the clerical capacities of a wartime military produced near chaos. Without getting lost in the weeds, this book explains how we managed to still field the forces that would have had to invade Japan had the A-bombs not brought surrender and how quickly the huge losses from that invasion would have created a new manpower crisis.


A note of caution: the book is done in staff study style. Those not used to such presentations may find the presentation quite dry and somewhat repetitive.
 
Cardinal said:
My post wasn't pointed to whether or not such a scenario was particularly likely, but how we would feel if a foreign power liberated us of a government we didn't like and we suffered massive civilian casualties and infrastructural damage in the bargain.
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Sorry, are we talking about drone strikes (what we were originally discussing) or Iraq/Afghanistan?

I'm sure we'd be resentful of the ensuing, but if the situation paralleled either Iraq or Afghanistan, we would largely be in favor of the initial invasion - as polls in both countries have suggested.
 
MadLib said:
If we randomly dropped area-of-effect bombs on civilian populations, that would be terrorism. Since we use extremely precise bombs against specific targets, it doesn't qualify.
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And we don't cause civilian casualties ever, yeah? Hahahah. Not terrorism if the bomb is dropped from a plane.
 
Ikari said:
And we don't cause civilian casualties ever, yeah? Hahahah. Not terrorism if the bomb is dropped from a plane.
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If the plane has US military markings and is ordered on the mission by the US military, and especially if the personnel are wearing legitimate US military uniforms, it's not terrorism. You may still object to the mission and call it whatever, but it's not terrorism.
 
Ikari said:
And we don't cause civilian casualties ever, yeah? Hahahah.
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Nice strawman. Not what I said.
Not terrorism if the bomb is dropped from a plane.
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Not terrorism if the bomb isn't dropped in order to kill as many civilians as possible. You have to establish an actual equivalence if you're going to assert they're morally the same thing.
 
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