RIP: Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, USAF (ret)

Considering some of the fools who attend those shows, can you imagine what some of those gun show conversations were like? If WWII propaganda posters could talk ... something along those lines. The Guns & Ammo crowd probably nutted themselves for the chance to talk to someone who took out 71,000 lives in one fell swoop.

 

The Germans were one step behind us in developing the A-bomb during WWII. Anyone doubt they would have used it, and in a more widespread, prolific pattern. Hell, they had already exterminated 6 million.

I also noted in the Tibbets wire story the phrase "despite widespread condemnation of the attacks, blah, blah." I never heard any criticism of the attacks until the Smithsonian flap a few years ago. And Fenian's shrillness doesn't add up to widespread condemnation ... although he thinks there should be widespread agreement.

And at the time we developed the bomb, was there anyone who knew the long-term affects of fallout?

No American should lose sleep over the use of the A-Bomb in Japan. We were on the side of the angels in that war, in both theaters. Anyone who has doubts as to how life would have been if Japan and/or Germany had won that war only need to take 30 seconds on the internet to find out what life was like in China under Japanese rule, and then keep repeating that number in your head: 6 million.

 

Well said. This is Hondo's best post ever.

Again, I refer to the Battle of Okinawa, which was the JV version of what Operations Olympic and Coronet would have been. Nearly 13,000 U.S. forces died -- 5,000 of those from kamikaze attacks -- trying to take an island 60 miles long and infested with more than 160,000 Japanese soldiers.

The U.S. Navy suffered the largest loss of ships in its history (36) and the largest loss of life in any battle.

Counting civilian losses (and no battle in WW II except Stalingrad had a larger loss of civilian life), more than a quarter-million people died.

Feel free to blow up those numbers on a grander scale, ponder the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the thousands of "comfort women" forced into prostitution and the other wholesome activities from the Japanese armed forces, take into account the wholesale eastward exodus of the Red Army angling for its spoils and Gen. Tibbets deserved to sleep easy -- as do all Americans.

Rant over.

 

Whether it was right or wrong, the above sentence was a bit over the edge. I've never met him, but I doubt God was high-fiving angels the day the bomb dropped.

 

Not high-fiving but chest bumping.

 

Brilliant. :

 

It was a joke, relax.

 

Obviously a figure of speech goes right over your head.

 

One step behind us?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838191,00.html

Pretty big step, thank god.
There was severe criticism about the notion of dropping the bomb all the way from the first test at Los Alamos, especially from some of the physicists.
Continue with the regularly scheduled high-fiving.

 

That's about the most optimistic casualty figure I've seen posited for an invasion of Japan. Most are at least 3 or 4 times that. Plus, from everything I've read, those "resourceful" Japanese seemed to exact a great deal more casualties from their enemies than anything the Allies were able to project. Sweet Jebus.

 

What did the angels say when we firebombed Dresden for no good reason?

That's why I don't like moral claptrap phrases like that, if you're really on the side of angels, act like it at all times or don't claim the mantle. WWII was one of the few just wars we've ever had, but let's not send book our ticket to heaven for it, we did plenty of things in that war that were somewhere far short of angelic.

Our moral high horse is going to be our undoing, perhaps sooner than later.

 

Okay brilliant ... what do you think we should have done?
Let's hear it.
I'm waiting with baited breath for the stunning diplomacy that would have ended WWII with no atom bombs used and no hundreds of thousands of soliders on both sides and civilians in Japan getting killed in an invasion.
Astonish me, pal.