70 Years Since Hiroshima

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Originally posted by RahlMaclaren:

Also, a hell of a lot more cities than just Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

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Robert McNamara, once Secretary of Defense, did all he could to end the use of land-based strategic bomber aircraft. Being politically minded, McNamara never said it out loud, but he could not trust with nukes General Curtis LeMay, who he worked under when the two of them planned the bombing of Japan. LeMay was in charge of dropping nukes for twenty years and McNamara did not have the political might to fire LeMay and make it permanent. Instead, McNamara made LeMay obsolete.

The Kennedy Administration, under the aegis of McNamara, canceled numerous SAC modernization programs. This included the Mach 3 North American B-70 Valkyrie in 1961, the GAM-87 Skybolt missile in 1962, and the Rocky Mountain Deep Underground Support Center in 1963. Skybolt, an air-launched ballistic missile, was canceled following numerous test failures and the perceived by McNamara greater reliability of land-based and submarine-based ballistic missile systems.

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"If you're not with us, you're against us."

If you're not against it, you must be for it. (This twisted logic seems familiar somehow. Like akin to something from 2002.)

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So, you've said (with a straight face, it seems) that since I don't criticize Russia, I must be for it. I've been called anything from a Russian troll to a commie to a Putin-lover.

At least I didn't call you Nazi-lovers, but apparently I should have. That's pretty much how you guys roll: You're either crazy-ass hypocrites, complete imbeciles, or evil, or maybe "all of the above".


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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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The question is, in fighting such an enemy, what depths of gratuitous violence are YOU willing to countenance? -SIGNY

There were revenge killings of Germans all the way into 1950. The official positions of the German government and the German Red Cross are that the death toll resulting from expulsions ranged from 2 to 2.5 million civilians. At least 473,013 are confirmed deaths of Germans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_%281944%
E2%80%9350%29#Research_tracing_individual_fates_by_the_German_Red_Cross

Ordinary people killed German civilians. It was payback.-SECOND

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It's funny, I was thinking about KPO's tagline and what it means: "It's not personal, it's just war".

Imagine using that phrase in a realistic situation. It would, of course, have to be during war, and it would have to be in a relatively quiet situation- the person would have to be close enough to hear you, and you would have to have enough time to speak. So not a firefight. You'd have a person in your sights, and instead of taking a prisoner you're about to pull the trigger.

What do you suppose saying something like that is meant to accomplish? To comfort the soon-to-be victim? Hardly likely! I'm fairly certain it would NOT be a great comfort to know that you're about to be blown away by someone who's neither mortally angry or mortally afraid, but is doing his "due diligence" by cold-killing in warfare.

It's a comfort to WHO? Well, the shooter, of course. It's a way of maintaining a sense of distance in the face of doing something evil ... feeling neither guilt nor empathy nor remorse nor fear nor vengeance at the moment of killing.

The fact that KPO would use that as a kind of mantra for his POV has to make me wonder. In some twisted sense, maybe it seems like wisdom. To get back to your link, I can understand people killing from revenge, although I don't condone it. But to promote a sort of disembodied, casual violence is beyond me.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Dr. Strangelove: Major Kong Rides The Bomb 1080p

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Major Kong is a rube, a hick, the wrong character to choose for explaining the decision to nuke Hiroshima. The man really making the decisions about what day bombs drop is not Truman. It is General Curtis LeMay. LeMay's trademark cigar is stuck in the mouth of General Jack D. Ripper in Dr Strangelove (1964) http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/DrStrangelove

True that. But not as symbolic as Kubrick having a cowboy ride the bomb on the way down.

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