Pope Frances uses picture of Nagasaki Victim for propaganda

[Jered]

It's called 'The Fruit of War.'.

It's like everyone forgets about the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731, or the atrocities that the Japanese visited on any other people unfortunately enough to be occupied by them.

If you consider the fanaticism of the Japanese in both their fight to death mentality and in some cases refusal to surrender years or decades after the war ended, the atrocities that the Japanese engaged in, the likely consequences of an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, and the Japanese use of what we could describe as "weapons of mass destruction" on civilian targets, quite frankly, they deserved to be nuked.

Oh, and by the way, they started a war with a superior power.

Oh, and, we warned the Japanese of our targets, too.

[skb12172]

This Pope...

[Langenator]

His Holiness would do well to read a book by one of his one Jesuits: https://smile.amazon.com/Controversial- ... +miscamble

Also available from Prager U for those of short attention span: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmIBbcxseXM

BLUF:
- dropping the bombs saved tens, if not hundreds of thousands of American lives, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Japanese lives, which would have been lost if an invasion of the Japanese home islands had been required.

- up to 250,000 civilians were dieing in Japanese-occupied Asia each month. So, just in the gap between dropping the bombs and the scheduled landings on Kyushu in October, 1945, you're talking about up to half a million lives saved. The scheduled landings on Honshu were sometime in the late spring of 1946, IIRC. You can do the math.

- not mentioned by Miscamble (to my recollection), but Stalin had planned to invade Hokaido. Stalin called off the landings only on 22 August, 1945, a day before they were to take place. So the bombs saved a big chunk of the Japanese population from having to live under Communist rule for a couple of generations.

His Holiness would also do well to read Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Yes, war is terrible. "War is all hell, and you cannot refine it." Thus the moral thing to do is to end it as swiftly as possible, and with the least suffering. That usually means inflicting enough pain on the other side that they say Uncle. When you're talking a war of national survival, that can mean it requires a whole lot of pain and suffering.

[Rod]

They started it, we finished it. Get over it you socialistic asshole.

[MarkD]

It's a good thing was is so terrible, otherwise we might enjoy it too much.

One problem many Christians,. especially clergy, have is they forget that we don't actually live in the Kingdom of Heaven yet, we live in a fallen world. Sometimes that requires doing something terrible in order to avoid something worse. 30k dead vs millions dead is a terrible choice to have to make but there's only one correct choice to make. So while the people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may mostly have had little to do with Pearl Harbor, Nanking or Bataan, they were under a government that DID. Too bad, so sad. I'm likely alive today because my Dad took part in the post war occupation of Japan instead of the invasion.

[randy]

I put this in the same category as the bleatings from the Mayor of Dresden complaining about a statue to Bomber Harris. Conveniently forgetting places like Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry....

Or for that matter Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka...

Don't start a war if you can't take a joke.

[Termite]

This Pope...

At some point, the question needs to be asked: "Is THIS Pope actually Catholic?"

Seriously..........

[Rod]

Facebook feed on this story, guy says " Im pretty sure you need to open up some history books. FDR didnt give a shit about China (until it was politically necessary), Japan didn't bomb Pearl Harbor over the American oil embargo, and the US already had surrender terms by the Japanese a month before we nuked them twice. That was a show of force for the Cold War that had started forming in 43 from the inactions of Churchill and FDR.". Not that knowledgeable about China but it was an important base, it's true that Japan didn't attack Pearl Harbor over oil (they attacked over embargoes on almost everything), and there weren't any inactions by FDR.Japan DID try to surrender but on THEIR terms. Now he's parading a bunch of books that "support" his thesis. Just the pictures, nothing about the content.

American Military History and the Evolution of Western Warfare by Robert Dougherty

The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture) by Richard D. Polenberg

Major Problems in American Military History: Documents and Essays (Major Problems in American History Series) by John Whiteclay Chambers II

[g-man]

RE:Facebook arguments. Don’t try and wrestle with a pig in his pen. It annoys the pig, and you just end up covered in shit. If dude doesn’t understand the difference between “We’ll quit if...” and “Fuck it, we’re out, you win...”, maybe HE should crack open some history books. Wouldn’t hurt anyone who thinks the continual negotiations for “Peace In The Middle East” have gotten anybody anywhere substantive in the last 60-odd years.

Come to think of it, unconditional surrender is a pretty good starting place for building a checklist for one’s exit strategy.

[randy]

quoting some internet twit... FDR didnt give a shit about China (until it was politically necessary),

So the atrocities and war crimes committed by a country don't count so long as the leader of the US doesn't care, or give the appearance of caring. Nice to know.

Japan didn't bomb Pearl Harbor over the American oil embargo

You could make a case that they did, given there was an oil (and others as Rod points out) embargoes, and part of the reason for taking out the US Pacific Fleet was to prevent it from interfering in their operations to seize the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies.

and the US already had surrender terms by the Japanese a month before we nuked them twice.

I think Rod and G-Man covered this

That was a show of force for the Cold War that had started forming in 43 from the inactions of Churchill and FDR.".

What "inactions" were those? Refusing to invade France too early with too few troops and not enough logistics just to please Uncle Joe? Try cracking open a book about a little place in France called "Dieppe".

ETA: I'm sure that troops from the Italian campaign that tied down a multitude of the German's best units to keep them from heading east are glad to hear they were "inactive". Hate to see what Anzio, Salerno, Monte Casino etc would have been like during an active operation. That might have been rough!

And glad that the 8th AF and Bomber Command were inactive during this period tying up thousands of FLAK 88 guns and Fighter aircraft that were not available to shoot holes in T-34s or shoot down Stormoviks. That would have been dangerous work otherwise.

Not to mention the pleasure cruises of the Merchant Marine to Murmansk.