I don't think the Nuclear Weapon is so bad, it was used to stop a war and save many lives in Japan. I think you're overdoing it actually and don't see the benefits of the good old A-bomb.

"If a nuclear winter is unthinkable etc etc" Dropping 2 bombs on Japan did not lead to Nuclear Winter.

It does not follow that the use of tactical or strategic nukes would lead to that either.

You may be exaggerating the problem, or as some see it, the solution - if the Americans were so bad, which is the undertext here, then why have they actually refrained from using nukes ever since that first time.

No one has used a nuke since WWII, where they were used to dramatic effect to stop a war where the alternative was a land invasion and the possible deaths of millions of Japanese and hundred of thousands of American troops. Thank goodness they had something so powerful it was able to convince the Japanese to surrender, and it took two bombs to do it.

For those troops and their families, it was a godsend.

"There is a very high probability etc etc." Says who? What on earth do you base that on, what is the basis of this "high probability?".

Lots of people were developing a bomb, Adolf Hitler amongst them, the Brits etc - it's not overly difficult once you know the principles.

When they developed the bomb, it was to end a war that they really didn't want to be in, like WWI they were reluctant and late to join in - it took the Pearl Harbor attack to bring them into the Pacific War.

They were/are the world champs, no doubt about it, is that a bad thing?

You clearly don't like Americans, I have met lots of them, they are good people mostly and there are some who are not so nice, just like here in Australia.

You may note the climate, so to speak, has changed now that President Obama is at the controls, the Americans are again the good guys.

Brian,

I doubt if the Menzies government's motivation for allowing atomic testing in Australia was to "share in the glory by being a test site",there is evidence that our government hoped to share in some of the UK's nuclear technology,perhaps they were promised some transfer of information by Britain. However,if this was the case,they were conned by the Poms, as usual, and officially at least, we received nothing.

I agree with 'rpg' the situation was not as clear cut as you suggest.
I'm not sure that Japan could have been starved into submission given the nature of the regime and Japanese culture at the time which rejected the concept of surrender. A blockade of the Japanese archipelago would have been extremely expensive to the war weary allies and would not have necessarily forced the Japanese to surrender. It's easy to make detached moral judgements from the grand perspective of history and the clarity of hindsight.

rpg....I think you missed a key point.
They did *not* drop the nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. That was already done and dusted and only needed a blockade.
They dropped the nukes as a demonstration of power, and have been following up this "respect my authority" act for the next 40 years.
It is not often mentioned, but is clear from the records that many in the US actually had sympathies with Hitler. The US very nearly fought for the other side!
You may see it as Yank bashing, but some of us think the US propaganda machine occasionally needs a reality check. It is kind of a citizens duty to second guess military and political propaganda. Too many of us acting like cattle just encourages the Lord mentality in the powerful.
Just like Iraq was invaded for "WMDs" in the media yet the officials have all but acknowledged that it was about oil after all, WWII has its own share of proaganda. It is not cynical or the desire to bash, it is just a desire not to be a sycophantic sucker.
Those who fail to learn from history...
It was probably inevitable that *someone* would invent nukes and whether the USA has handled it better or worse is really moot at this point. One clear thing is the national arrogance it has given the US is not in it's long term political or economic interests. The sheer chutzpah demonstrated in the last decade in relation to unlimited debt, outsourcing, and wars without end was bound to end badly.

The Wright brothers from the USA were the first to build and fly an aeroplane. If those evil Americans had not done so we would not have had the twin towers knocked down by the Muslims (sorry CIA) for the conspiracy theorist. The USA in some peoples eyes are the cause of every evil on the planet. I would suggest that the benign gutless UN who insist on allowing rogues such as Iran and North Korea nuclear weapons will be far more responsible than Mr Holden and his like blaming their whipping boy for every evil on the planet.

Ozandy, please check your facts. Your rant is as farcical as the original article.

as this is the most recent[still open posted topic]
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/search.asp?cx=partner-pub-0168091956504304%3Ayb7rk7-ta83&cof=FORID%3A11&ie=windows-1252&q=israel&sa=Search#1325
..that mentions israel[usa greatest deadly sin..seeing as how[they gave 400 nukes to israel,and over 1,3 trillion[over 60 percent of usa aid][and in the real reality that israel[or usa]..will attack iran over the self same nuke issue,i submit some background is in order
from
http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=1833
that has many other links

Secret Israeli database shows full extent of illegal settlements
http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/israel-settlements-all-en-2009.pdf
May 1, 2009
Summary

In late January,..WikiLeaks released a 186 page secret Israeli Ministry of Defense database,which showed the full extent of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.

A version of the document had first been obtained by the well regarded Israeli newspaper Haaretz.The leak made headlines,but its global political impact was limited by its presentation in Hebrew.
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Secret_Israeli_defense_database_shows_full_extent_of_illegal_settlements%2C_2009

Subsequently the United States commissioned the Central Intelligence Agency’s Open Source Center to translate the leak to English.

The translation was not released by the CIA,but a copy was obtained by Stephen Aftergood,editor of the US based Federation of American Scientist’s Secrecy News and is presented here.

According to Haaretz,“An analysis of the data reveals that,in the vast majority of the settlements-about 75 percent-construction, sometimes on a large scale,has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued,”,

and “The database also shows that,in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure(roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations)has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents.”

DOWNLOAD/VIEW FULL FILE FROM
fast site,
http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/israel-settlements-all-en-2009.pdf
current site,
http://www.wikileaks.org/leak/israel-settlements-all-en-2009.pdf

Context
Israel
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Israel
Military or intelligence (ruling)
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Military_or_intelligence_%28ruling%29
Central Intelligence Agency
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Central_Intelligence_Agency

Ozandy is right.
I think Trumans words are very illustrative of how the septics saw the promise of nuclear weapons.

"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."

Looks to me like revenge.

Ozandy is correct when he says that they did not need to drop the nukes to end the war.

The war was already lost and the Japanese were frantically looking for a way to surrender honorably. The Russian forces were returning from Europe and preparing to attack Japan from the north and this would has split their country in two, like Berlin.

Meanwhile the scientists were frantically trying to field-test their new toys (two bombs, two different models) before the war finished.

As the author suggests, it also put the Russians on notice and effectively started the cold war.

No amount of warm, fuzzy revisionism and noble excuse-making changes these facts.

The idea of dropping nuclear weapons on Japan to bring about a swift conclusion to WWII was a reasoned and logical decision.

Starting from the premise if one to decides or is forced to fight a war, do it absolutely and with all the weapons and craft at ones disposal because, you are not responsible for your enemy losses, only your own.

Any bull dust theory which does not recognise the above is merely the thinking of the sanctimonious,, lazy minded dullards who would have nothing to lose from defeat.

The benefits were

With the Japanese military machine determined to fight a fight to the death this would have meant significant allied losses and injuries. These losses were all averted.

Not to mention greater Japanese civilian losses through Japanese inflicted disease and starvation.

Having ended the war in Europe, the imperative was to conclude the capitulation of Japan so the world could move off a war footing and back to more normalised social practices.

Allied prisoners of war would likely be executed before they could be liberated in a fight on the Japanese homeland.

Now, maybe someone (Ozandy for instance) can comment on the benefits of a prolonged military invasion of Japan and I will make a proper analysis and disembowel it.

As for “There is a very high probability that without the USA’s image of itself in 1945 as being the world champ, there would not be a single nuclear weapon in the world today.”

Pure speculative bunkum based on personal bias and half-witted conjecture

Add to that there would be no nuclear power generation and we would be burning more fossil fuels for the greenies and other wannabes to whine about.

Oh and the cold war... the risk of a nuclear Armageddon is what stopped Europe being engulfed in a "hot war", initiated by Stalin & Co... or were the Berlin Airlift 1948, Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968 the figment of western media propaganda?

Col Rouge

“Speculative” – yes - but please not “bunkum”. Its an opinion - and OLO is about opinions.

Many believe that an invasion of Japan would have cost many US lives. But, why invade an enemy who is on the ropes?
It is to dismantle the regime so that there is no chance of it bouncing back.

What would be the chance of the Japanese or German people allowing their hawkish governments ever to get the power they once had which depended heavily on lies, when the lies can no longer be believed? We can speculate on that.

A blockade for 10 years would have cost far, far less than an invasion. This is not speculation as the 10 year blockade of Saddam’s Iraq was easily affordable. Some governments in the Arabic world would have liked to smuggle stuff into Iraq. After 1941, Japan had no friends. No government would have wanted to smuggle stuff into Japan once it was blockaded.

The essence of the article was that the Cold War was a very costly byproduct of letting off the first bomb. That is not speculative either as we witnessed its reality

There was a huge stockpile of weapons assembled on Okinawa that was intended for a possible land invasion of Japan.

Ever wondered what happened to them after the war?

Instead of the usual method of post-war disposal, some eventually went to arm South Korea but the rest were secretly sold to the North Vietnamese for the token amount of one dollar, to help them evict the French so that US companies would be free to drill for oil and gas off their coast.

Does that change anybody's outlook on the traditional view of the popular historical narrative? Things may not necessarily be as clear-cut as they seem and this topic is a prime example.