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Unpopular Opinions - General Thread
- Thread starter Carbonox
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- lipming
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As the saying goes History is written by victors. That's the official excuse Americans have swallowed to not see the worst criminal act on civilian population was perpetrated by an American government. I'll have to find the source but I remember clearly reading an article on this by Chomsky in which he not only questioned the official explanation for it but categorically showed that Japan was already on their way to surrender, the US had intel on this yet they still carried through.
I'm about to go to bed but I'll see if I can find it tomorrow. I read it over 12 years ago. Nonetheless a quick search showed me two articles that also oppose the necessary evil argument.
It's also sad that on the 70th anniversary of what should be considered a war crime Obama said "death fell from the sky". A rather passive and misleading tone in my opinion. It was a premeditated evil act.
Don't let the victors define morality – Hiroshima was always indefensible | Kenan Malik
The decision 75 years ago to use atomic bombs was fuelled not by strategy but by sheer inhumanity
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.
Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?
foreignpolicy.com
Edit: typos
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- United Kingdom
On the one hand, I agree.. on the other, I don't. The second article you posted highlights why... the atomic attacks on Japan were just a small part of the destruction Japan faced at Americas hands, and that kind of scale wasn't entirely unprecedented in Europe by the Allies. The fact is part of the allied response to the threat of the Axis was to slaughter civilians on a massive scale. That shouldn't be easy to stomach for anyone, and perhaps 'necessary' evil lets people off too lightly, perhaps unavoidable evil is better. Either way, I think it's unfair to single out these two missions given the context of bombing during WW2. We'll never know what the world would have become without them.
- 3,926
- St.Pete, FL
- NotThePrez
- NotThePrez
So, there's quite a few things to go over here, and I'm going to attempt to be as brief as I possibly can. Also, apologies for lack of links, as most of this information was read in various books and other articles over most of my life, most of which I can't easily link.As the saying goes History is written by victors. That's the official excuse Americans have swallowed to not see the worst criminal act on civilian population was perpetrated by an American government. I'll have to find the source but I remember clearly reading an article on this by Chomsky in which he not only questioned the official explanation for it but categorically showed that Japan was already on their way to surrender, the US had intel on this yet they still carried through.
I'm about to go to bed but I'll see if I can find it tomorrow. I read it over 12 years ago. Nonetheless a quick search showed me two articles that also oppose the necessary evil argument.
It's also sad that on the 70th anniversary of what should be considered a war crime Obama said "death fell from the sky". A rather passive and misleading tone in my opinion. It was a premeditated evil act.
Don't let the victors define morality – Hiroshima was always indefensible | Kenan Malik
The decision 75 years ago to use atomic bombs was fuelled not by strategy but by sheer inhumanityamp.theguardian.com
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.
Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?
Edit: typos
Firstly, there's some missing context in why these targets were chosen. Nagasaki was very much a legitimate military target, as it housed one of the largest naval industrial ports that Japan had to offer. It was a central hub for ship repair and naval ordinance production, making Nagasaki a big target in a theatre centered on naval warfare. The argument for Hiroshima was a bit more grim, though. Hiroshima did house a major headquarters and a served as a launching point for troops, but by most accounts it was chosen because it had remained largely undamaged, and therefor it would be easier to study the immediate effects of the bomb following detonation. There was some thought put into the eventual targets, and the US didn't pick these 2 cities just because.
Also, keep in mind that this was well before the age of precision bombing. The strategic bombing campaigns fielded by the US and Britain over Germany and her allies typically meant that a large number of civilians were going to be killed, as it was understood that civilians (forced or otherwise) were the ones working in the factories and building the weapons of warfare used by the Axis powers, not full-on military personnel. I have a feeling that this same thought process was used for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not trying to justify, just attempting to add some extra context.
Secondly, there's also the overall objective to consider. The plan was to basically force Japan to surrender unconditionally, and swiftly, to end the war as quickly as possible. To that end, the bombings were planned in conjunction with the Soviet invasion of Japanese territories (though Stalin didn't know about the atomic program). The USSR's invasion of Manchuria took place between the two bombings, which very much caught Japan off-guard, as they had signed a peace treaty with the USSR in '41. To that end, I would say that it was the combination of the Soviets and the bombs that forced Japan to surrender, not one moreso over the other.
This combined act is especially important because if one (or both) of these acts didn't force a surrender, the final option would've likely been a full-scale invasion of Japan itself. It cannot be overstated how much of a disaster this would've been in terms of casualties. It would not have been a surprise attack by any means, as Japan's geography and it's territorial situation at the time made it very obvious to the Japanese military that an invasion was likely, and would've centered on the southern island of Kyushu. The US Army also knew about this, and expected Japan to fortify their defenses on the island (Page 417).
It does have to be mentioned that plans for Operation Downfall were drawn-up without knowledge of the atomic bombs existence, and as such the Allies expected it to be a slaughter no matter what. Estimations vary quite a bit, but it's generally accepted that the invasion would've produced at least 1 million+ Allied Casualties, and at least 3-4 Million in Japanese civilian and military casualties at best. The war would've also been extended significantly, as Phase 2 of Downfall, which would end in the occupation of Tokyo, was planned to start in early '46. I also don't believe that the plans would've been taken off of the table even if the bombs were known about, or if Japan decided to keep fighting after their usage.
Now, make no mistake, there are many, many unsavory acts committed by the USA that do not get the "recognition," for lack of a better term, that they deserve (the bombing and chemical warfare campaign waged by the US over Vietnam and Laos springs to mind). Also, generally speaking, it's pretty much never ok to bomb civilians. But I very much believe that nuclear bombings were the "best bad option" that was available at the time, as while the immediate effects were horrific, it played a major role in stopping a lot of death later on, both militarily and civilian.
Also, not totally directed at you, but "History is written by the victors" is not a true statement. History is written by (good) historians who investigate a particular topic using a large swath of resources such as historical army reports, occasionally firsthand accounts from people involved, statistics regarding deployed personnel and casualties, other reports made by fellow historians, etc. If the saying were true, then we probably wouldn't have large swaths of information on topics like the the US Internment of Japanese-American citizens, the rampant sex crimes committed by the Soviet Army in the Eastern Front (US and Commonwealth Forces also committed these acts in their respective theatres), and the British-Soviet invasion of neutral Iran during the war, as these bits of history would've been suppressed by the victorious nations.
For a humorous, albeit quite aggressive, explanation of the historical process:
TL;DR: The nuclear bombings, while terrible, had some important context, and imo stopped a large amount of long-term bloodshed.
- 24,638
- Anoka, MN
I struggle to think of any country that has really been punished for their atrocities. North Korea is probably the closest on a global scale and that one is partially self-induced.
You also wouldn't have cases like Erwin Rommel, Heinz Guderian, Erich von Manstein and Wernher von Braun who were all high Nazi officials but are also respected in their fields.
- 3,926
- St.Pete, FL
- NotThePrez
- NotThePrez
Indeed they were. A pretty decent argument can be made that the Entente Powers guaranteed a Second World War when they drew up the Versailles Treaty, which heavily punished Germany for a war they didn't even start.
The treaty, in combination with the increasingly popular Stab-In-The-Back myth, the German Revolution, and the effects of The Great Depression reaching Germany, played a major role in Hitler and the Nazis rising to power, and eventually taking control of the country.
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The film Bullitt is so good and so immersive that I often forget there is a legendary car chase in it.
- 5,670
- Alabamistan
I don't think that's an unpopular opinion at all. I would agree with you.
- 13,077
- United Kingdom
(carrying on the above discussion about WW2)
When it comes to war and what constitutes a war crime, it's such a blurred line that everyone will have a different place to draw it.
Learning the history of WW2 from the British side, you get a romanticised view of the Blitz with the evil Nazis dropping bombs on our unsuspecting populace, but that glosses over the fact that the Allies peppered Germany with far more bombs, obliterating many cities. The attack on Dresden is very famous in British history, but was a short and sharp destruction of the city. The Dambusters is another example of extreme measures leading to massive collateral damage for civilians in the process of taking out some factories.
You then have to decide whether you think those civilians are complicit in the mess of the war. The citizens of Dresden weren't all commandant's of Concentration camps, but they were there to elect Hitler into power. Quandaries like that make it such a difficult decision. Like, the Nukes dropped on Japan were horrific, but was it as bad as the Rape of Nanking that the Japanese army did at the beginning of the year, and do you justify it as retaliation for the horrors or "if they can do it, we'll do it back at them". War is terrible because the innocent and those that oppose it will always be caught up. In essence, a war is really only caused by a few dozen people on each side who disagree, make decisions and then try to convince their population that what they've decided to do is right. Soldiers and Conscripts get on with what they're told regardless of opinion and they take the brunt for other people failing to do diplomacy.
The fact that "war crimes" and "crimes" have to be separated is already enough of an alarm bell, and where you draw the line is basically when you decide that the method doesn't justify the result. Mow down a line of soldiers shooting at you for months and months to take a city or bomb it once with civilian casualties and take it over in a day with much fewer casualties your side? It's a decision that nobody wants to make.
In the context of the Pacific Theater, the dropping of Nuclear weapons on Japan was possibly the only thing that was going to stop Hirohito, who had manage to whip the population into a "die for your country" mantra. Destroying two cities so massively was an horrific thing to do, but it stopped the war. America was going to have to do a land invasion of Japan and try to carve its way through a population dying for honour, and would likely have dragged the war on for years and left even more Japanese and Americans dead. Plus, the "research" we got from dropping nukes showed the absolute horrors of them, hence why they were the first and last times Nuclear bombs were dropped in a war, despite the advancements the Americans and Russians made to Nukes in the decades since. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were a tactical horror that produced short-term major suffering in place of a prolonged war of further horrors.
Both sides of a war will commit horrors and all have to be held accountable for it by history. War and ethics aren't really things that go together, because if they did you wouldn't have a war in the first place.
The Twelfth Doctor's war speech is one of the most powerful speeches against war I've ever heard, and it perfectly highlights the ultimate pointlessness of wars sometimes.
When it comes to war and what constitutes a war crime, it's such a blurred line that everyone will have a different place to draw it.
Learning the history of WW2 from the British side, you get a romanticised view of the Blitz with the evil Nazis dropping bombs on our unsuspecting populace, but that glosses over the fact that the Allies peppered Germany with far more bombs, obliterating many cities. The attack on Dresden is very famous in British history, but was a short and sharp destruction of the city. The Dambusters is another example of extreme measures leading to massive collateral damage for civilians in the process of taking out some factories.
You then have to decide whether you think those civilians are complicit in the mess of the war. The citizens of Dresden weren't all commandant's of Concentration camps, but they were there to elect Hitler into power. Quandaries like that make it such a difficult decision. Like, the Nukes dropped on Japan were horrific, but was it as bad as the Rape of Nanking that the Japanese army did at the beginning of the year, and do you justify it as retaliation for the horrors or "if they can do it, we'll do it back at them". War is terrible because the innocent and those that oppose it will always be caught up. In essence, a war is really only caused by a few dozen people on each side who disagree, make decisions and then try to convince their population that what they've decided to do is right. Soldiers and Conscripts get on with what they're told regardless of opinion and they take the brunt for other people failing to do diplomacy.
The fact that "war crimes" and "crimes" have to be separated is already enough of an alarm bell, and where you draw the line is basically when you decide that the method doesn't justify the result. Mow down a line of soldiers shooting at you for months and months to take a city or bomb it once with civilian casualties and take it over in a day with much fewer casualties your side? It's a decision that nobody wants to make.
In the context of the Pacific Theater, the dropping of Nuclear weapons on Japan was possibly the only thing that was going to stop Hirohito, who had manage to whip the population into a "die for your country" mantra. Destroying two cities so massively was an horrific thing to do, but it stopped the war. America was going to have to do a land invasion of Japan and try to carve its way through a population dying for honour, and would likely have dragged the war on for years and left even more Japanese and Americans dead. Plus, the "research" we got from dropping nukes showed the absolute horrors of them, hence why they were the first and last times Nuclear bombs were dropped in a war, despite the advancements the Americans and Russians made to Nukes in the decades since. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were a tactical horror that produced short-term major suffering in place of a prolonged war of further horrors.
Both sides of a war will commit horrors and all have to be held accountable for it by history. War and ethics aren't really things that go together, because if they did you wouldn't have a war in the first place.
The Twelfth Doctor's war speech is one of the most powerful speeches against war I've ever heard, and it perfectly highlights the ultimate pointlessness of wars sometimes.
- 30,006
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- TexRex72
A cellphone is a specific thing. If a device has complex web browsing and multimedia functionality, it's not a cellphone. It's a smartphone. Okay so this is kind of a nitpick, and it's easily bypassed in my mind when either is referred to as a "phone."
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As I keep my “phone” on flight mode and only communicate using internet functions, it technically isn’t a ‘phone’ anymore in the traditional sense.
I sometimes still call it a phone (“dog”*, actually) because it’s become a generic term for a mobile coms device.
* “dog” is a London term for phone (dog and bone) that my brother and I grew up with and still use to this day; “where’s me dog?” one might say.
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Personally I think it managed such a balance of cutesy fun-ness and semi-rude but harmless grossout humour that it was pretty much on an unstoppable trajectory towards stardom from day one.
I remember SpongeBob first appearing as a kid and can distinctly recall it being a cut above other kid's cartoons of the time. I enjoyed Dexter's Lab and other CN standard fare but I can remember SpongeBob felt more like the Ren and Stimpy VHS we had in tone - considering that cartoon had legendary status as having been 'too rude/funny for tv' (whether this had a shred of truth I've no idea), it seems pretty obvious SpongeBob was a surefire hit.
I don't recall with any other deep-within-the-sky-channel-list cartoon such an outpouring of love and consensus on the next day playgrounds as for those early SpongeBob airings... The only thing I can think of that generated so much chatter was the Gas Mask Kid episode from Russell T Davis' Doctor Who revival.
Looking back at it retrospectively I feel SpongeBob was a great kid's cartoon in the way episodes had morals and messages that were always imparted but very rarely got in the way of the episode's story or jokes.
I will admit the internet's "deep frying" of SpongeBob classics down the years and his general association with lo rent Twitter memes has taken the shine off it somewhat. But as a pure kid's show, I couldn't call it bad for a second. Hassehof is IN that movie, dude.
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- GranTurismo0517
- RandomCarGuy17
in my opinion, y2k era aesthetic is way more interesting and depthful than what people usually say. so many styles not just generic cute blobby bubbly stuff or that cliche XP wallpaper, for example greenish matrix aesthetic, depthcore and metalheart styles and so on. y2k is very unexplored, unlike eras until 90s. Also this might be unpopular but its harmless I guess: I greatly prefer y2k aesthetic to 80/90s inspired vaporwave or synthwave aesthetic for example!
