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Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?[W:296, 650]

Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?


  • Total voters
    118
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

If everyone has them then someone will use them.

They were used when only one country had them.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Then everyone has them. Nobody is going to use them for anything but saber rattling, just like now and if they do... they'll become an ex-nation and a glass desert.

Hey, I don't disagree with you on that. I've stated repeatedly that everyone has them, or no one has them, with the preference that no one has them.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

If everyone has them then someone will use them.

Nobody has used them since 1945 and that was us. Actually, nobody on the planet but us has ever used them. Why are we somehow more trustworthy than anyone else?
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Hey, I don't disagree with you on that. I've stated repeatedly that everyone has them, or no one has them, with the preference that no one has them.

But since that will never happen, the other alternative is better than a fantasy. It's like saying that pollution would go away if nobody had cars. That's a ridiculous proposition though.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Name the ONLY country that's ever used a nuclear weapon on humans?

Name the country that has been the most active in starting/fighting wars in the last 100 years?

Who exactly can be trusted and who can't? And who decides such lists?

I have zero doubt that Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union would have during WW2 had they been able to. The fact that the US was the first, and thus so far only, is more a matter of timing than anything else.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

But since that will never happen, the other alternative is better than a fantasy. It's like saying that pollution would go away if nobody had cars. That's a ridiculous proposition though.

Waitaminute! Pollution could go away (or at least be significantly reduced) with the use of renewables. And it's not a fantasy. But you can't expect to be taken seriously if your in possession of contraband that you wish to deny others.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

And the world is a better place because of it.

Yes, in your ****ed up twisted mind in which any kind of atrocity can be justified, I'm sure.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Nobody has used them since 1945 and that was us. Actually, nobody on the planet but us has ever used them. Why are we somehow more trustworthy than anyone else?

the 1945 use was essential to the defeat of imperialist tyranny. In the 70 years since then our restraint has been admirable.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Waitaminute! Pollution could go away (or at least be significantly reduced) with the use of renewables. And it's not a fantasy. But you can't expect to be taken seriously if your in possession of contraband that you wish to deny others.

But we're not talking about renewables, which still have major problems, we're talking about people who magically want cars to go away tomorrow. It just isn't going to happen, any more than nukes are going to go away. They're here to stay. Now we have to find a way to deal with them. Pretending that some magical anti-nuke fairy is going to come around and make them poof out of existence is silly.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

the 1945 use was essential to the defeat of imperialist tyranny. In the 70 years since then our restraint has been admirable.

I'm not arguing, I'm just saying that the paranoia that someone is going to use them is a bit hypocritical considering that in the 70 years since they've been around, the only people who have ever used them, for *ANY* purpose, has been us.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

I'm not arguing, I'm just saying that the paranoia that someone is going to use them is a bit hypocritical considering that in the 70 years since they've been around, the only people who have ever used them, for *ANY* purpose, has been us.

:shrug: that's a cute debate-line, but I've never found it anything but a "whattaboutism". The US leadership (generally) doesn't honestly believe that they can usher in the Glorious Eschaton and bring Jesus and the Ma'Dib Out To Rule Us All In Paradise by destroying other peoples. It is rational to worry about the ownership of the means by people who do.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Victory hung in the balance.

And, likely, millions of Japanese lives. Somehow that always gets left out.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

But we're not talking about renewables, which still have major problems, we're talking about people who magically want cars to go away tomorrow. It just isn't going to happen, any more than nukes are going to go away. They're here to stay. Now we have to find a way to deal with them. Pretending that some magical anti-nuke fairy is going to come around and make them poof out of existence is silly.

Who wants cars to go away, and why tomorrow. It's nukes we want to go away, today. But sense the nuke powers won't do that, then we're bound to have more nuke powers.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Victory hung in the balance.

As I said. If you can justify incinerating babies and children and women, you can (and do) justify anything.

The United States bombed Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.


READ MORE HERE
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
 
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Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

As I said. If you can justify incinerating babies and children and women, you can (and do) justify anything.

The Japanese sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

The Japanese sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Those innocents that you're so calloused about sowed no such thing. But they did reap their loss.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

As I said. If you can justify incinerating babies and children and women, you can (and do) justify anything.

The United States bombed Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.


READ MORE HERE
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan… Stalin Did | Foreign Policy

A US invasion would very possibly have been defeated, and Japanese casualties would have run into the millions. The bombs were critical for victory.

http://HELL TO PAY | U.S. Naval Ins...gic plans for the American invasion of Japan.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Those innocents that you're so calloused about sowed no such thing. But they did reap their loss.

'Hell To Pay' Sheds New Light On A-Bomb Decision


January 16, 201012:00 AM ET



Hell to Pay
By D.M. Giangreco
Hardcover, 416 pages
Naval Institute Press
List price $36.95


The atomic bombs that ended World War II killed — by some estimates — more than 200,000 people. In the decades since 1945, there has been a revisionist debate over the decision to drop the bombs.
Did the U.S. decide to bomb in order to avoid a land invasion that might have killed millions of Americans and Japanese? Or did it drop the bomb to avoid the Soviet army coming in and sharing the spoils of conquering Japan? Were the prospects of a land invasion even more destructive than the opening of the nuclear age?
D.M. Giangreco, formerly an editor for Military Review, has taken advantage of declassified materials in both the U.S. and Japan to try to answer those questions. He talks with NPR's Scott Simon about his new book, Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947.
Estimating Casualties
As U.S. military planners contemplated a land invasion of Japan in 1943, military units were being held back from possible action in Berlin because it was understood that they would have to be sent to the Pacific.
"There was a very, very tight timetable," Giangreco says. There were "clearly not enough forces in the Pacific."
The participation of other Allied forces in a Pacific invasion would have been limited — Great Britain, France, Canada and the Soviet Union had been fighting the war longer than the United States. They had just won, and they were ready to get back to normal life.
American military planners estimated that the invasion of Japan would "functionally be a duplication of the casualty surge in Europe," Giangreco explains. And that was "not a pleasant prospect."


American war planners projected that a land invasion of Japan could cost the lives of up to a million U.S. soldiers and many more Japanese. These figures, Giangreco explains, were estimated based on terrain, the number of units fielded, and the number of enemy units they would have to fight.
"Around 1944," Giangreco says, "they ultimately came to the conclusion that the casualties on the low end would be somewhere around the neighborhood of a quarter-million, and on the upper end, in through the million range."
The Difference Between Defeat And Surrender
The invasions and battles at Okinawa and Iwo Jima were ruinous for the Japanese, but Giangreco describes how the Americans and the Japanese derived completely different conclusions from the same conflicts. The Americans extrapolated that the battles were bloody and costly — but in the end it was worth it because they thought the Japanese understood that the U.S. would prevail. The Japanese looked at those same casualties and felt the loss of life was worth it because it sent a message to the Americans that the Japanese were prepared to suffer casualties at a rate the Americans were not.
Some historians argue that Japan was already essentially defeated in 1945, even if it didn't know that. Giangreco says there is a lot to that argument but that "defeat and surrender are two very different things."
Giangreco suspects it would have been much harder to convince the Japanese to surrender than it was to convince the Germans.
"The Germans at least surrendered in very large numbers when they saw a hopeless situation," he says. The only time large numbers of Japanese troops laid down their arms was in Manchuria, when Emperor Hirohito ordered them to surrender.

Giangreco says that many Americans and Japanese lives were saved by avoiding a land invasion of Japan.
"It's astounding," he says. "While we were looking at some of our own casualty estimates, the Japanese military was doing much the same thing, and the figure of 20 million appears again and again."
Giangreco says just the number "20 million" is horrific — but he is most stunned by the casualness with which it was used by Japanese military leaders who felt that the loss of life was worth it.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

'Hell To Pay' Sheds New Light On A-Bomb Decision


January 16, 201012:00 AM ET



Hell to Pay
By D.M. Giangreco
Hardcover, 416 pages
Naval Institute Press
List price $36.95


The atomic bombs that ended World War II killed — by some estimates — more than 200,000 people. In the decades since 1945, there has been a revisionist debate over the decision to drop the bombs.
Did the U.S. decide to bomb in order to avoid a land invasion that might have killed millions of Americans and Japanese? Or did it drop the bomb to avoid the Soviet army coming in and sharing the spoils of conquering Japan? Were the prospects of a land invasion even more destructive than the opening of the nuclear age?
D.M. Giangreco, formerly an editor for Military Review, has taken advantage of declassified materials in both the U.S. and Japan to try to answer those questions. He talks with NPR's Scott Simon about his new book, Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947.
Estimating Casualties
As U.S. military planners contemplated a land invasion of Japan in 1943, military units were being held back from possible action in Berlin because it was understood that they would have to be sent to the Pacific.
"There was a very, very tight timetable," Giangreco says. There were "clearly not enough forces in the Pacific."
The participation of other Allied forces in a Pacific invasion would have been limited — Great Britain, France, Canada and the Soviet Union had been fighting the war longer than the United States. They had just won, and they were ready to get back to normal life.
American military planners estimated that the invasion of Japan would "functionally be a duplication of the casualty surge in Europe," Giangreco explains. And that was "not a pleasant prospect."


American war planners projected that a land invasion of Japan could cost the lives of up to a million U.S. soldiers and many more Japanese. These figures, Giangreco explains, were estimated based on terrain, the number of units fielded, and the number of enemy units they would have to fight.
"Around 1944," Giangreco says, "they ultimately came to the conclusion that the casualties on the low end would be somewhere around the neighborhood of a quarter-million, and on the upper end, in through the million range."
The Difference Between Defeat And Surrender
The invasions and battles at Okinawa and Iwo Jima were ruinous for the Japanese, but Giangreco describes how the Americans and the Japanese derived completely different conclusions from the same conflicts. The Americans extrapolated that the battles were bloody and costly — but in the end it was worth it because they thought the Japanese understood that the U.S. would prevail. The Japanese looked at those same casualties and felt the loss of life was worth it because it sent a message to the Americans that the Japanese were prepared to suffer casualties at a rate the Americans were not.
Some historians argue that Japan was already essentially defeated in 1945, even if it didn't know that. Giangreco says there is a lot to that argument but that "defeat and surrender are two very different things."
Giangreco suspects it would have been much harder to convince the Japanese to surrender than it was to convince the Germans.
"The Germans at least surrendered in very large numbers when they saw a hopeless situation," he says. The only time large numbers of Japanese troops laid down their arms was in Manchuria, when Emperor Hirohito ordered them to surrender.

Giangreco says that many Americans and Japanese lives were saved by avoiding a land invasion of Japan.
"It's astounding," he says. "While we were looking at some of our own casualty estimates, the Japanese military was doing much the same thing, and the figure of 20 million appears again and again."
Giangreco says just the number "20 million" is horrific — but he is most stunned by the casualness with which it was used by Japanese military leaders who felt that the loss of life was worth it.

Rubbish. There was to be no land invasion. Stalin was as responsible for Japan's surrender as two US nuclear bombs. Look dude, spare me, I'm weary of your justification of American atrocities. If you can justify dropping nuclear bombs on two civilian targets your a sick freak and you can be sure that somebody will be justifying doing the same to us someday.
 
Re: Does Iran have a "Right" to Nuclear Weapons?

Rubbish. There was to be no land invasion. Stalin was as responsible for Japan's surrender as two US nuclear bombs. Look dude, spare me, I'm weary of your justification of American atrocities. If you can justify dropping nuclear bombs on two civilian targets your a sick freak and you can be sure that somebody will be justifying doing the same to us someday.

You just need to learn more.
 
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