The use of DU weapons and armor is a neat way to get rid of a portion of one’s own nuclear waste stockpile. It is cheap and it’s properties (high density, pyroforic) are but a little short of ideal. No respectable army, navy, airforce or loose militia can go without it anymore. It’s a minimal standard and the next best thing to Tony Levin’s carrot cake, except maybe for the health of civilians who these weapons are mostly used against – and the smallest children are again affected disproportionally: http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/ – and for the imperial troops themselves and also their offspring. But who cares? Civilians are by definition collateral and for military personnel after they are no longer of any real use and become a burden, they’re all just liars and cowards and lefties anyway.

Well, except we learned to alter them significantly and still use them. Can you say depleted uranium?

Prof. Alperovitz is a left wing ideologue and former apologist for the former Soviet Union and has no credibility as a source of information. As Prof. Maddox of the Un. of Pennsylvania documents at great length (link below), Prof. Alperovitzs’ book is filled with truncated quote mines and is a pack of lies from beginning to end. Mr. Mark will have to do better then that.

http://books.google.com/books?id=A2Zv3VD6ptQC&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=“gar+alperovitz”&source=bl&ots=pixijB8HUe&sig=5HKOPnD21Faue_w2WsbH5WpGit8&hl=en&ei=HCxLTOGuCYL78Ab1r_Qy&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=97&ved=0CIUDEOgBMGA#v=onepage&q=”gar alperovitz”&f=false

The problem with this statement is the assumption that it was the dropping of the atomic bomb that ended the war without an invasion. Your own sources should convince you that the Japanese were prepared to die for their Emperor rather than surrender. In fact, what prompted surrender was not fear of death by either invasion or atomic bomb, but Truman’s belated acceptance of the condition to keep the Emperor. If the atomic bomb alone was enough to force surrender, surrender would have come after Hiroshima. It didn’t. And Nagasaki didn’t do the trick either. What did the trick was Truman agreeing to keep the Emperor.

Again, I recommend reading “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb” by Gar Alperovitz, which exhaustively documents what war leaders knew at the time, not just what hindsight has led us to believe. And they knew that neither atomic bomb nor invasion was necessary to end the war.

There were two factions in the Japanese Government and military, one that wanted to surrender and another that wanted to fight on to the bitter end. The emperor, Hirohito, had come down on the side of surrender faction, but the leadership of the fight on faction, which included most of the military, was planning a coup to remove him from power. Even as the Enola Gay was winging its way to Hiroshima, the plotters were finalizing their coup plans. At this point in time, no one can be sure as to whether the coup would have succeeded or failed. All we know is that the bombs were dropped, the coup died stillborn, and Japan surrendered soon after Nagasaki. Everything else is speculation and counter-factual history.

[..when one reacts rationally to a given threat, characterizing the aggressor in a way that accurately describes him and his intentions, and then takes steps to neutralize or eradicate said aggressor, he, or those who support him, immediately cry “racist.” A rabid dog is dangerous and must be put to death.]

As I said [...in order to legitimize any sort of violence against them.] QED.

I assumed and still do he or she and you are two different persons. It would be so disappointing if I were wrong about that.

” Am I to understand that equating Japanese with rabid dogs that should be put to death is your accurate description of the enemy that provides a rational explanation of the logic behind the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities?”

No.

I never said anything even remotely like that. Are you and I reading the same comments?

Japanese popular culture is good at portraying themselves as victims of nuclear aggression. Sounds good if you completely ignore the rest of the context. It’s victim politics played for a postwar audience.

Personally I’ve always found the conventional US story on the use of atomic weapons to be convincing. The alternative and unconventional theories, and in particular the Japanese take on the bombing (we were innocent!) just don’t have the sound of authenticity.

War is terrible and that’s a true statement. I have no doubt at all that wars will continue to be fought, both good and bad. I also have no problem in stating that even more destructive weapons than nuclear will be constructed and used at some point in the future.

There’s a lot to be gained by examining the socio-political reasons for conflict and war. There’s precious little to be gained by examining the current boogeyman of weapons. All claims that “weapon X is too terrible to be used and will end war on that basis alone” are vapid and specious.

You can add as a corollary that every nation inventing the new generations of weaponry, will eventually become a victim of that same weaponry at some point. Hopefully that will prompt humanity to change, but probably not.

In my opinion the fission bomb was not intended to be used as a weapon.
I believe a more positive use for it would be as an initiator to produce a gamma ray burst (GRB)

This is part of an intuitive concept I’m trying to develop into a theory that if proves true, should get anyone that wants to go safely to the nearest star.

31- Am I to understand that equating Japanese with rabid dogs that should be put to death is your accurate description of the enemy that provides a rational explanation of the logic behind the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities? Because if so then you proved me wrong about a difference in political correctness in propaganda during and after the war. Congratulations I suppose.

33 – “What if” histories are mostly futile exercises. If nuclear weapons were used against German cities instead of sticking up a white flag it might have convinced Hitler that nuclear weapons were militarily useful after all and who knows we might all be speaking German now in a few enclaves in the Gobi desert.

http://i974.photobucket.com/albums/ae223/casamurphy/dKos/Hiroshima.jpg

It is also interesting that when one reacts rationally to a given threat, characterizing the aggressor in a way that accurately describes him and his intentions, and then takes steps to neutralize or eradicate said aggressor, he, or those who support him, immediately cry “racist.” A rabid dog is dangerous and must be put to death. The Japanese first attacked the US, not the other way around. They had demonstrated repeatedly their intentions to kill Americans or die trying. You don’t have to look much farther than their treatment of prisoners of war to get an understanding of how they approach and treat “aliens.”

@21
“But then again they were Japanese and didn’t really count as human. Much like Arabs now, or Iranians for the cosmopolitans who can tell the difference.”

Speaking of disregard for human life, the eastern cultures value life much less than their western counterparts. This is an outcome of both cultural and religious beliefs. Very few countries have done more to help others throughout the world than has the U.S. There are, of course, times when the leaders of this country have made grave mistakes. The current isolation of Iran and the ending of WWII are not examples of those times, regardless of the debate regarding the reasons for the actions.

Oh, as for the distinction between Iranians and Arabs, or you referring to the original Persians or the current populace that is more of a mingling of several Mideastern cultures?

Usually the enemy in this scheme is not fully human at all (as was the Jap – meaning all Japanese people as counter to the distinction between Nazi’s and the German people – in US wartime propaganda) or if still human than so extremely backward, mentally, physically and culturally as to be completely unintelligible – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSIZanyY1mk&feature=channel – and can only be dealt with by their complete submission, unconditional surrender as Truman put it. But if this lack of concern with political correctness during wartime is over and the aftereffects of propaganda keep lingering as they often do, the more obvious racist aspects can be replaced with revised attributes that are better admissible in civilized conversation to keep the basic message (they cannot be reasoned with) intact.

The decision to drop nuclear weapons on Japanese cities had nothing to do at all with the nature of the Jap and their incomprehensible cultural inclination to fight until death in pointless battles or whatever.

It had to do with the cold, calculated logic of American postwar geopolitical interests. http://www.doug-long.com/debate.htm

Try reading some, and try to read what’s actually there instead of what you think is there.