Say it a little louder for all the dipshits trying to argue that a trump presidency would be better for Gaza than Biden is.
If Trump wins I'm going to be too preoccupied with the climate disaster and end of American democracy (in that order) to give a single fuck about what happens in Gaza, Ukraine, or anywhere else.
Reverse order for me, the climate distaste I worry about with a Republican dictatorship is a nuclear winter. But that might be growing up during the Cold War talking.
Maybe nuclear winter blocks out sun for so long we solve global warming and enter a new ice age. So many humans will be dead we won’t be able to carry on with our global warming activities, as the small handful remaining return to an agrarian society. Maybe Putin and the republicans will save us all.
Yup. Russia takes Ukraine and funds Iran in the inevitably escalated Israel-Iran direct conflict, while China attacks Taiwan and Trump preaches isolationism. Good start to WWIII.
I mean, am I wrong? Should I care more about what happens to Gazans or Ukrainians than the fact that we're living in a kleptocracy of science-deniers who are openly taking $1 billion bribes from the oil industry? I don't think so...
I mean, it is possible to care about yourself while caring about others, yes.
If you're just abstractly posting about shit on the internet, sure. But if a wildfire burns my neighborhood down (a real possibility where I live, even now, and increasingly likely as the climate slips into the irredeemable zone over the next decade or so) I'm not going to be thinking about global politics and wars happening in countries that I will never step foot in. That would be borderline pathological.
I'm just being honest. You need to live a life of privilege to have the time, freedom, and emotional capacity to worry about what is happening in Gaza. And, should Donald Trump become president again, he will do whatever he feels like doing in Gaza, nobody will hold him accountable (as nobody seems willing to do right now for the things he's done in the past), and I'm not going to have the willpower to care because, mark my words, WE will have real problems of our own.
If you want to see what unchecked genocide, mass civil unrest, climate disaster, and American autocracy looks like, by all means, allow Donald Trump to take over our country. 2024 is our last stand, and what happens next is a matter of individual survival.
Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud.
What do you mean? I don't follow, so can you elaborate?
Are you really saying that you care more about what happens to people in countries half way across the world in regions that you'll probably never step foot in than yourself, your country, or the world at large?
So we hand America over to a criminal autocrat because Biden hasn't managed to solve world peace adequately enough for your liking. Doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Maybe I'm not understanding something here.
"Hasn't managed to solve world peace adequately" is quite the euphemism for "is supporting an ongoing genocide with billions of dollars of weapons."
You didn't elaborate on what you meant when you said "saying the quiet part out loud". Can you tell me what you mean by that? I don't follow.
“Hasn’t managed to solve world peace adequately” is quite the euphemism for “is supporting an ongoing genocide with billions of dollars of weapons.”
Biden is "supporting an ongoing genocide". He's doing what every President in modern US history has done by arming Israel because they are (a) our ally and have been since Israel and Palestine were both created, and (b) under attack from multiple groups including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Since October 7th 2023, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have launched well over 11,000 missiles and drones at Iran, the vast majority of which were intercepted and nullified by Israeli defense systems. On top of the 1,500 people that Hamas killed and kidnapped on October 7th, had those missile and drone attacks not been defended against, how many more innocent people do you think could have been killed in this war? Would you have been happy to see thousands of missiles hit Israel as well as what's going on in Gaza?
I personally feel that we need to put stronger restrictions and conditions on the weapons we send to Israel in light of the war, and they have started doing that, which is good. But let's not pretend that American defense spending in Israel hasn't saved thousands of lives and prevented further escalation. Hamas are a terrorist organization founded on an explicit call for genocide against Israeli Jews, and they killed more people on October 7th than Israel is killing per day on average over the last 8 months.
On top of that Biden has spent more money and sent more aide into Gaza than the UN or anyone else... You think Biden is happy about this war? You think he wanted any of this shit to happen, during an election year of all times? C'mon...
Listen, I don't care what you do, but go ahead and help elect Trump if you want to see what actual, unmitigated genocide in Gaza looks like, because unlike Biden he will not give a single fuck what Netenyahu does to the Palestinians. In fact, just like Trump will do what the oil lobby wants if they give him $1 billion, Trump will be more than happy to help Netenyahu flatten every inch of Gaza if he can get some kind of "deal" (read: bribe) in return.
He's continuing with decades of US policy on Israel, pretty par for the course for a do-nothing president.
Every bill he signs off on gets cut down without resistance. The moment he doesn't have to worry about the politics of a veto.
Somehow 4 years of that is somehow better than the alternative so he gets my vote.
Considering nuking Gaza could easily lead to everyone nuking everyone else, you might change your priorities a bit.
Nobody is starting a global thermonuclear war over Gaza. Iran doesn't have a capability, NK doesn't give a fuck, and if Russia was going to elevate the world into a nuclear war they would have already done so over Ukraine.
Meanwhile climate change is here and American democracy is in peril, and these are things that actually affect people in this country and the entire world.
If Trump wins, Gaza is his to do as he pleases. If we didn't hold him accountable for his crimes against the United States, I have serious doubts that we're going to hold him accountable for crimes in the middle east.
Over a nuked Gaza? I wouldn't be so sure.
Let's imagine Trump wins in 2024. He's leading in a number of polls and Biden's popularity is down, so there's a REAL chance...
Who exactly do you think is going to hold him accountable for anything he does at home or abroad?
Congress? (Maybe in some kind of weird scenario where Trump wins the presidency but loses the House and Senate. Not very likely...)
The courts? (Trump has personally appointed 33% of the current SCOTUS, and we have seen that they will tie themselves into knots to do his bidding. Another 33% of SCOTUS are other highly political conservative judges who have proven to be on Trump's side. And then we have to consider that Trump has also appointed a huge number of judges at every different level of our legal system. They aren't going to do anything to him, ever.)
And if Netenyahu was to kill every last man, woman, and child in Gaza, do you think a Trump administration would push back even in the slightest? This is a guy who sides with Putin and Kim Jung Un. He does not give a fuck about humanity or anybody's life other than his own.
I once had hope that someone, somewhere would hold Trump accountable for things like January 6th, but I guess hope doesn't spring eternal after all because I'm just not seeing it. Trump's right about one thing: he could shoot a guy on 5th avenue in broad daylight and nothing would happen to him. One third of this country would be evil enough to still vote for him, and another third of the country would be to stupid to hold him accountable.
What on Earth does this have to do with Trump?
You responded to a post that mentioned Trump in the last paragraph
I feel like the narrative surrounding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has changed enormously since I was a kid.
I remember learning that, while tragic, the number of lives lost in the bombing paled in comparison to the numbers of lives being lost and that would be lost in winning the war by conventional means. That it was a way to minimize further bloodshed.
I'm not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?
I'm mostly just trying to figure out what caused the shift.
Some disclaimers
I am a 50+ year old American
Up until 10ish years ago I had at least a better than average understanding/knowledge of WWII
My ex's grandmother's family was from Hiroshima and they had family members killed in the bombing.
All that said as tragic as they were I still think those bombs were the correct military decision at that time. I would be willing to have a rational conversation about it though.
The situation in Gaza is completely different and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the GOP are fucking ghouls.
Also, I have always thought that, as horrific and tragic as what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, the fact that the world was able to view the aftermath has been what has prevented a larger nuclear exchange. I don't know if the Cuban Missile Crisis would have gone the same way without everyone knowing exactly what an atomic bomb does.
Is your argument for bombing being the right decision the same (that it resulted in less bloodshed overall)? If so, how can you estimate the body count of the alternative (a prolonged conventional war, I assume)?
I mean, you could project based on the casualties already incurred I suppose.
Looks to be about 65k Americans military members died in the Pacific theater, and we were still a long ways off from reaching mainland Japan, and the fighting was only gonna get worse the farther in we got.
And that's just Americans. It doesn't count the Japanese casualties, which by all accounts dwarfed the American numbers.
200k civilians were killed in the atomic bombings. Now, it's worth noting that those are civilian deaths, which one can argue have a higher moral weight than combatant deaths.
So, all that said, in plain numbers I think it's an extremely safe bet that far more than 200k more people would have died in a blockade/land invasion scenario. But, you could argue that it's apples to oranges since the bombs were on civilian targets.
It's also worth noting to that the 200k dead to resolve the war were all non-American, which doesn't make it any less of a tragic loss of life, but matters in the "political" sense. If you are at war, and you are handed a solution that can end the war without sending any more of your own people to die, do you as the leader have a moral responsibility to do it? Like, if you have the choice in front of you to either bomb a civilian target, killing 200k "enemy" civilians but ending the war, or sending even 100k American's to their deaths, knowing that you are the one responsible for making sure those men and women get home safe, can you in good conscience choose the latter? Is it better to choose the latter?
I wouldn't want to have to make that decision, but I also am loathe to second guess the decision of the person who has to make it.
To this day gaman or Japanese stoicism is a big part of Japanese culture. The Japanese had already lost the war, but the ruling class was willing to sacrifice scores of people to fight to the bitter end.
In an episode of Hardcore History, it detailed that the Allied ships couldn't dock in Okinawa because of all the corpses in the water. The Japanese had inundated Okinawa with propaganda that the Americans were going to rape them all. Many families killed themselves. And the invasion of the mainland was only going to get bloodier.
A terrible as it is to say, dropping the nukes was the more humane option of the two.
Back in HS, I think I was told that it was a regrettable ending and we probably went a bit overboard.
I highly recommend this video from Shaun on the matter. It’s long but you can listen to it instead of watching it and you won’t miss much. Excellent video on this subject that really put a lot of the propaganda around the bombing in a new light.
I remember watching it. The problem with the video is that they seriously overestimate the willingness of the Japanese to surrender without giving any evidence to back this up. The Japanese were absolutely not willing to surrender. I mean, just look at their reaction after Hiroshima. There was a lot of debate AFTER an entire city had been razed to the ground. Japan was absolutely not going to surrender without a nuke being dropped.
The Japanese were attempting to negotiate surrender with the "neutral" USSR prior to the nuclear bombs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan The US wanted an unconditional surrender which included the destruction of the Japanese emperor, who at the time, was the head of the Japanese religion. To put this into perspective, consider the United States request similar to requesting the destruction of the Pope within the Vatican. Because of this, the Japanese were seeking better terms of surrender which did not involved the removal of their religious leader. What the Japanese did not know at the time was the USSR was not a neutral party, and they were secretly mobilizing their forces on mainland Asia due to an agreement Stalin made with FDR prior to the US entering the war in Europe.
The reality is, once Japan learned that the USSR was not neutral and they were going to be fighting the US and the USSR in a two front war, this is when the emperor forced Japan to surrender.
To put things into perspective, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were sadly, just another two cities leveled by the US. The US were performing night carpet bombing on Japanese cities as soon as 1944. Many of these raids leveled several square km of urban areas. https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=217. This is why people argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably not the catalyst to Japan's surrender because the US have been leveling Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, long before the two nuclear bombs were dropped. None of these raids caused Japan to surrender before.
Yikes 2 hours and 20 minutes. I'll try to watch as much as I can today, but probably can't get through the whole thing. Any high points I should watch?
Been a while since I watched it, like I said I’d recommend listening to it. Treat it like a podcast, for me the time flew by and I ended up listening to every video he has over the following weeks. 😂
I wasn't planning on spending my morning watching a 2 and a half hour YouTube video, but here we are and that's exactly what happened. That was a fascinating watch. I'd say for others that the TLDW is this:
The narrative that the atomic bombs were dropped to prevent an invasion of Japan is false and was constructed afterwards as a plausible and easy to understand solution that allowed all parties (both the US and Japan) to come out looking good in the end.
The reality of the situation was much more complicated. At the time, there was never a US plan to invade Japan.
Japan was already thoroughly defeated militarily and was looking to negotiate a surrender. Japan was hoping that Russia would be useful to negotiate peace with the US.
The US had previously asked Russia to enter the war, but then later realized it was not necessary to bring about an end to the war. The US actually realized having Russia involved would complicate the post-war logistics and would bolster Russia as a world super power. When sending terms of surrender to Japan, the US removed Russia as a signer of the terms, leaving Japan a false hope that Russia could still be used help them secure better terms.
Russia informed the US that they would be declaring war with Japan on August 15. The US dropped the bombs on Japan a week earlier in hopes of accelerating Japan's surrender before Russia entered the war.
As a result, Russia declared war on Japan in the days between the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan issued their surrender shortly afterwards. In all likelihood, dropping the bombs accelerated the surrender timeline by about a week. Though it could be argued that had Russia's signature been kept on the surrender terms sent to Japan, it would have also ended the war earlier.
Isn’t he fantastic? His videos are so well-researched and well-written that I’d listen to his vaguely monotonous scouse voice talk about pretty much anything.
Yeah it really was a good watch. The length and minimal use of graphics at first were intimidating, but he still kept it interesting so it was easy to absorb.
It depends whether you think killing 200,000+ civilians is a defensible act.
300,000+ if you include the bombing of Tokyo.
Nobody knows how a conventional war would have played out. To assert civilian deaths would have been higher is pure speculation and a gross attempt to justify the slaughter of noncombatants.
Though it is likely that even without nukes, the US would have still razed these cities with conventional munitions, given the events in Tokyo.
There is a book I liked about this, it is about Allied civilian bombing in WWII in general.
It's by the philosopher A.C. Grayling, needless to say 'Responses were divided.'
I highly recommend this video from Shaun on the matter. It’s long but you can listen to it instead of watching it and you won’t miss much. Excellent video on this subject that really put a lot of the propaganda around the bombing in a new light.
There's also the possibility that because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapons have never since been used. What would cold war been like in that case?
The cognitive dissonance is fascinating. The Hammas attack on 10/7 is all but universally condemned in public discourse because civillians were targeted. Even die-hard militant anti-Zionists will not attempt to justify the Hammas attacks because they know it will only turn the public against them. When a brown force attacks civillians, it is terrorism and reviled.
Here on lemmy.world condemnation of Israel's indiscriminant bombing is also prevalent. Maybe 5%-10% of commenters support Israel's conduct. But of the at least eight people who have expressed an opinion on nuking Japan here in this thread, roughly 75% of them defend it as justifiable and no one has outright said it was wrong.
There are over 100,000 American WWII veterans alive today. They saved the world from the Nazis. We love that for us. Coming out of WWII, we dove right into the cold war. We were battling the USSR for the hearts and minds of the globe. McCarthyism silenced internal criticism. We had no patience for second-guessing our actions in WWII. It was our patriotic duty to convince the world that ours was the side of freedom, democracy, and justice.
So for 80 years now our culture has been saturated with propaganda promoting our glorious, righteous role in WWII. You, your parents, and your parents' parents have been told the same thing in school and have seen the same messages in TV, books, and movies. And I'm not saying it's all a lie. Sure, the defeat of Hitler was a high point in American history. But our understanding of our role lacks any nuance or self-criticism. For example, the Russian front was arguably more crucial to the fall of Germany than the Western front. Churchill is hailed as a hero, but he was an antisemeticracist. E.g.:
WINSTON CHURCHILL published a newspaper article. It was February 8, 1920. Churchill had a different enemy now. Now his enemy wasn’t Germany, it was the “sinister confederacy” of international Jewry.
“This movement among the Jews is not new,” Churchill said. It was a “world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality.” He listed Marx, Trotsky, Béla Kun, Rosa Luxemburg, and Emma Goldman as some of the malefactors. The conspiracy had been, he said, the “mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century.” It had played a recognizable part in the French Revolution. All loyal Jews, he advised, must “vindicate the honour of the Jewish name” by rejecting international bolshevism.
And:
“I think you should certainly proceed with the experimental work on gas bombs, especially mustard gas, which would inflict punishment on recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury on them,” Churchill wrote Trenchard. Churchill was an expert on the effects of mustard gas—he knew that it could blind and kill, especially children and infants. Gas spreads a “lively terror,” he pointed out in an earlier memo; he didn’t understand the prevailing squeamishness about its use: “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” Most of those gassed wouldn’t have “serious permanent effects,” he said.
And likewise, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unconscionable acts of evil. It is never acceptable to target civillian populations. It wasn't acceptable on 9/11/2001 or 10/7/2023 when brown Arabs did it, and it wasn't acceptable when white Americans did it either.
This is obvious to anyone who wasn't raised inside the Western bubble.
My understanding is that even after Hiroshima, the Imperial Army attempted a coup to avoid surrender.
The Japanese were not stopping. The only alternative at hand was a full invasion, which would have killed many, many more.
I’m not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?
The issue is that unconditional support of past American actions is no longer acceptable, and so all America's past actions are being re-evaluated. This is good! However, this also often results in people simply taking the reverse position than the accepted one. This is bad.
The atomic bombings were less bloody than a blockade or an invasion would have been, and the people who claim the Soviet Union was going to successfully invade the home islands or that Japan was about to surrender under any terms that would have been considered reasonable, pinky-promise, are just misinformed or deluded.
Back in 2017 or so, I had a full on MAGA coworker who was ecstatic about the migrant detention centers at the border. If anything, he felt we weren't torturing them enough. One day, he dropped a line that was so heinous it still sticks with me to this day: "we used to do the same to the Japanese and no one cared about it then, so why is everyone up in arms about it now?"
All this to say I'm not at all surprised they're saying this now. They've always felt this way, and they know how despicable it is.
Fwiw, the dude was a 50-something year old Israeli immigrant. He also joked about wanting to join the military to "practice on live targets"
I hate this timeline so much
"we used to do the same to the Japanese and no one cared about it then, so why is everyone up in arms about it now?"
One of the many shameful moments of American history conveniently left out of grade school history classes.
This was definitely mentioned multiple tribes even i was in school.
What'd you say back to him or do?
I knew better than to engage. The guy was a nutter. He got laid off shortly after that thankfully.
Bonus story about this fucker. When I adopted a dog, he told me that "in five years you won't give a shit about the dog and will only care about your boyfriend". Eight years later, my girlfriend and I co-parent the same dog like she's our daughter.
Not to defend the viewpoint, but I assume he was referring to interment camps and not nuclear bombing. That would be more analogous to the border detentions.
Your coworker has serious mental health issues. I hate the party but I also hate that our mental health system won't address the negative impact religion plays in forming negative views and that our laws prevent therapists and those in mental health from doing their actual jobs.
I gotta give these people credit. It must take a massive amount of effort to try and be this consistently on the wrong side of history. Like, at some point, it has to be deliberate...
So… he knows that… like… Israel would be in the blast radius and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv probably affected by a shit ton of radiation….
Its literally him
You assume that these guy know much about anything except corruption, graft, and drug fueled sex orgies.
At Farmers, they know a thing or two about drug fueled sex orgies.
He knows that he's not the one who's going to be pushing the button, but that his rabid out-for-blood base won't even think about that. He's just throwing them meat.
"The left are the real violent racists! Anyway, we should nuke Gaza. Filthy animals."
-Magamorons
You can't be a racist if they're not real humans!
Nevermind all the other obvious reasons this is terrible but I'm sure Egypt would have some objections to being blasted by a nearby nuke.
Israel is rumored to have tactical nukes that are much smaller yield than the large ICBMs we hear about all the time. Super destructive force in only 1 or 2 km blast radius, which would even fit inside a small area like Gaza. Of course, in addtition to devastating Gaza, there would still be fallout and issues over Israel, and using them in this manner is definitely Not OK. However, I can believe that there are some deluded people in government (both in Israel and in the US) who would view that as acceptable.
Russia would immediately nuke them. It would be the end game for Israel. Hopefully they aren't that stupid.
Russia wouldn't get involved. Many of the Jewish Mafia reside in Israel and are essential to maintaining Putin's power in the country. Russia in many ways would be more inclined to encourage Israel to use nukes to cause destabilization in US politics.
Ghouls like him love Israel, it’s just all those… you know, those people who live there
Maybe the cunt is waiting for suitable wind direction before nuking.
How fucking Christian of him. Jesus would be sooooo fucking proud.
I can't hardly take them or anyone that tosses the xtian mythology around. Why should we? History hasn't shown us a "god". Only shifty humans arguing over imaginary friends.
Can we stop letting them in positions of power already? They obviously aren't fit for leadership or power.
That's because he's a performative Christian, or "Christian." He doesn't believe in anything unless it help him get ahead in life - just like most politicians and other moderate-to-high functioning psychopaths and sociopaths.
I mean, he's not wrong, he's just an asshole. By most historians accounts, Fat Man and Little Boy caused less death than an actual war with Japan would have.
They were also retaliatory strikes after a direct attack on an American base, at the tail end of a global conflict, and we just got a new toy. The bomb was basically telling Japan to fuck off with their bullshit, and it did a pretty good job of it.
That doesn't make it the right answer, per se. Glassing the strip probably would net less death and destruction than continuing the genocide or especially allowing it to escalate more. I still have a hard time calling that "the good choice"
And what happens after the glass hardens? We all gonna be honky dory or is somebody else gonna star lobbing nukes?
Um, Actually, I would hardly call it settled or that most historians agree.
The senator continued to call the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the right decision” by the U.S. That decision ended the war with Japan, but killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians between the initial blasts and the deadly radiation that followed.
“Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose, and work with them to minimize casualties,” Graham insisted.
He didn’t directly suggest nuking Gaza, but he made multiple parallels between ending the war in Japan by using nukes and then basically says we should give bombs to Israel to finish the job without specifying what he means.
So while someone might argue black and white letter of what he said isn’t “nuke Gaza”, he’s still implying something along those lines - the quick finish and a method that can do it.
He is, in fact, saying "nuke Gaza", just in a way that allows him to deny it.
When his male lover is revealed, it will be a glorious day.
It'll never happen. He's doing exactly what they want gay people to do, being "decently" quiet about it.
what exactly will be glorious about that in your mind?
Hypocrisy.
when has that ever mattered to a republican?
Exactly
Lindsey is part of the swamp. He's a Christian Zionist, a doomsday Christian. These types of Christians want to hasten the Day of Judgement. Pretty much they're psychopaths thanks to the Scofield Reference Bible.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why, if you believe in Christian Mythology, even to the point of wanting Judgement Day to come during your lifetime, why you would personally take efforts that you know are going to end in mass civilian deaths.
Assuming you are right and Judgement Day is on the horizon, are you not damning yourself to the deepest pits of Hell by spending your time leading up to the Rapture ordering the slaughter of innocent people, rather than say glorifying and spreading the word of God?
I don't believe in any of it, but if I did, I sure wouldn't be advocating for mass-murder right before God shows up to judge me for the way I lived my life on Earth.
Number one rule of Christian Narcissism: That rule was written for the others. It doesn't apply to me. I'm not doing anything wrong.
I am christian because I say I am, therefor everything I do is christian and thus righteous.
I agree with you 100%. In my belief, it is God who wills when Judgement Day comes. It is not the will of a human. Christians and Zionists together think they can some how bypass the will of God.
I'm getting a little tired of people using "Zionist" when they actually mean "Jew". Jews don't even have a "judgement day" or even the concept of Hell for that matter, so I quite frankly have no fucking clue what you think you are saying here...
If you have criticism of religion, go for it. If you have criticism of a nation, go for it. But one by one I keep watching people like you knock down the "criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic" house of cards by making it clear you don't see a difference between an Israel apologist and a Jew, and are just using the term "Zionists" as a placeholder for "Jews" so you can make weird blanket statements about Jews...
I wasn't criticizing Jews exclusively. If I want to criticize a Jew or a group of Jews, I will. Idgaf quite frankly.
Judaism =/= Zionism. I'm criticizing the secular political ideology in which cherry picks from Judaism and incorporates it into it's political ideology. Some of the things they cherry pick when it comes to human relations.. is pretty fkin Nazi-like, who am I kidding.. worst than Nazi's treatment of their opposition. Reference the Talmud regarding gentiles.
Neturei Karta is the only Torah practicing Jews that I recognize as my brethren. Because they actually practice the teachings of the Torah. If you're a "practicing Jew" in Israel.. you're doing it wrong. Not because I say so, because your Torah says so.
You are giving them way too much credit. Any combination of “god wants me to” with “God works in mysterious ways” and “the will of God is 100% infallibly and unerringly good” can justify pretty much any heinous act you can think of.
I bet they would be off the rails no matter of the literature choices
I can't reinforce the idea enough that they believe god is eal and that they can trick a prophecy to being fulfilled by naming a british colony "Israel".
The biblical Israel is long gone and the current Israel is obviously a different state; you can "fulfill the prophecies" the same way by naming your dog "the kingdom of Israel"
Nuke Jerusalem; piss off everyone. It's the only truly even-handed action.
Hit Mecca, Medina, and Haifa as well to really piss off all the Abrahamic religions.
And Rome to piss off the pastafarians (and Catholics some more too)
This should disqualify him from ever holding office again. I know it won't, but it should.
Couldn't ask for a better positioning of titles.
There's really no reason to ever report on or pay attention to things Lindsay Graham says. He has no real values or stands of his own. He is a spineless jellyfish that goes with the tide wherever it allows him to keep the most power.
I have never seen any evidence of him ever voicing and sticking to an actual personal belief.
On the other hand, we should keep outing these Nazis whenever we can so that the decent part of society doesn't collectively forget who punched down and who punched up.
Also, social consequences are IMPORTANT for fighting fascism. Making them feel unwelcome at every table, every party, every workplace, EVERYWHERE is a time-tested and actually fairly effective way to fight the spread of fascist thought. It won't get rid of the most entrenched, the true believers - but it can help the knock-on effect of "hey maybe that guy has a real point".
In case you're wondering, these religious freaks believe that they can force Jesus to return by instigating WW3. So long as Israel is involved, they consider that to be fulfilling prophecy; and the nuclear, the better. I'm sure some of them even consider Trump to be the actual Antichrist, while as usual, most of them think it's whoever the Democrats have in office.
its also stupid because old country of Israel is gone and making a new colony and calling Israel also isn't fulfilling a prophecy - its cosplaying. Might as well call your dog "Israel" and say it fulfills the prophecy
Well, if they continue this way, we all may get to know Jesus together pretty soon
How's the mental illness going Lindsey? oh ok.
Brain worms.
It's not clear how low these people will truly go. The bottom fell out long ago and we are going to see these guys get a lot worse. There are no boundaries to guide them. They will continue to reach no lows time and time again. It's infinite.
I don't understand why Republicans are so strongly on Israel's side at this point. I think almost everyone was on Israel's side on Oct 7th but since then there have been over 35,000 Palestinian deaths, including women and children, and their infrastructure has been obliterated. Israeli losses since Oct 7th only come to 260 soldiers.
Why would anyone suggest nuking Gaza? Oct 7th was terrible but it wasn't perpetrated by the millions of people in Gaza. It was perpetrated by the terrorist group that rules Gaza and, at this point, it seems they aren't much of a threat.
The only reasons I could see for nuking Gaza are:
To kill all Gaza s before the new crop of radicals being cultivated by Israel's brutality become ripe.
To try to create a broader conflict with the Islamic world.
They literally believe every single man, woman, and child in Gaza is part of Hamas, and therefore a terrorist.
They have no capability for empathy and can’t imagine a world in which a citizen of a foreign nation can disagree with the ruling party, despite about half the country he is part of ruling disagreeing with him.
They are also financially motivated to unconditionally back Israel because of lobbying, or corruption, whatever you prefer to call it.
This is the same reason that Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, and former Australian prime minister, a devout evangelical Christian, tried to.
I don’t understand why Republicans are so strongly on Israel’s side at this point. I think almost everyone was on Israel’s side on Oct 7th but since then there have been over 35,000 Palestinian deaths, including women and children, and their infrastructure has been obliterated. Israeli losses since Oct 7th only come to 260 soldiers.
Because it's turned from a real issue with it's real horrors and complexities into a partisan/cultural wedge issue.
Why would anyone suggest nuking Gaza? Oct 7th was terrible but it wasn’t perpetrated by the millions of people in Gaza. It was perpetrated by the terrorist group that rules Gaza and, at this point, it seems they aren’t much of a threat.
Might be important to note that it's still an ongoing thing, with civilians still captive or missing. So talking about it in the past tense might be missing an important reason for Israel's extreme behavior.
Racism. They don't view brown people, especially brown muslims as human beings.
Somebody got dumped.
this sort of homophobia isn't helping.
out of all the queer guys I'm friends with, exactly zero of them have detonated nukes in response to their boyfriends breaking up with them.
so all that's left is you bashing a piece of shit, not for being a piece of shit, but because he kinda seems gay.
kindly, respectfully, fuck off with this shit.
Better?
And this guy is considering sane compared to Trump.
But yes please don't for Biden so that we see what nuclear genocide looks like I guess?
There's a Facebook tag group called "OP getting hammered harder than Lindsay Graham's tonsils at a truck stop" and that's what I think of when I see his name.
Democrats love being as homophobic as possible to stick it to a Republican.
There’s nothing homophobic about acknowledging that two or more enthusiastically consenting adult gentleman may jackhammer upon each others’ tonsils in the privacy of their own bedroom and/or truck stop.
I think it’s also not homophobia, and perhaps even being an ally, to point out when the people constantly trying to demonize the LGBT+ community are being hypocritical about it. And it’s not because they are gay or bi, it’s because it reveals how twisted their motivations are.
That's not what happened though. Nobody called out hypocrisy. They just went straight for gay-bashing.
If you don't see the problem, you're a part of the problem.
It also plays up the trope that any older unmarried man must secretly be gay
Japan was completely blockaded, which is such a profound thing in war that it's really all you need to defeat "nuking was necessary" arguments.
And they were completely resource starved, another profoundly important detail of a war machine.
And the fanaticism + "they will die to the last man, woman, and child" is grossly misrepresented in the context of nukes.
But these details aren't relevant to how Palestinians and the situation in Gaza is portrayed. No siree.
Good thing he brought that up, so we all can debate again how awfully bad is to use a nuke, and to nuke civilian targets.
Gaza should not be nuked.
Gaza should not be nuked.
I'll even be so bold as to say nobody should be nuked.
Wow I can't believe mods let antisemitism like this go unchecked!!
the policy makers of the united states of America
Voted in by a generation of entitled, narcissistic boomers that were unfortunately exposed to leaded gasoline and paint at an early age, who know about as much about world history as their IQ counterparts: third graders.
I've been saying we should nuke South Carolina for years.
The US has already dropped two nukes on South Carolina.
What more do you want?
For the nukes dropped to explode? I dont think its a good idea.. but the nukes dropped accidentally didnt explode, which greatly reduces the effect.
That's true.
But the chickens didn't notice the difference.
I want them to explode.
Would this be before or after Israel is able to control the direction the wind blows?
Didn’t you get those powers at your bar mitzvah? It’s supposed to be right after we get the codes for the space lasers.
I didn’t get a bar mitzvah, personally, so I’m a shitty Jew who doesn’t have those powers.
I sort of got a bar mitzvah, but the asshole Israeli who was supposed to teach me Hebrew sucked at it and I never learned. So I read my passage with a crib sheet that told me how to pronounce everything. My cousin, who was the rabbi officiating, took me aside and said, "they may not know what you're doing out there today, but GOD KNOWS!" My dad and I had a good laugh about that for years.
I only did the whole thing for my grandparents' sake.
Ignoring... just everything so very very wrong with this statement by Trump's favorite sock-puppet... how does this even make sense as a plan? I'm pretty sure this would be the first case of one-sided nuclear mutually-assured destruction.
It's like setting off a fertilizer bomb in your nextdoor neighbor's house because you hate them and want to burn their house down: you don't get to be surprised when your house catches on fire too.
Counter-counterproposal: Let's drop Lindsey on Gaza
Why would they want him?
Tens of thousands of calories!
I can't imagine they would. I'm merely suggesting that he be placed in an exit row seat on a recalled Boeing 737, fly it through their air space, at let nature take its course.
Yeah, nuke countries that can't nuke back.
you figured out the entire point of nuclear weapons! Congratulations!
Well it is also used as a deterrent.
that's what happens when you have two powers who have nuclear weapons. Otherwise what are they going to do, bomb you? They literally don't exist anymore.
Her congrats Lindsey, you figured out the path to peace that I thought was a good idea (briefly) when I was a stupid teenager.
Hint: the idea of stupid and you're stupid.
Hey yo linds, i don't think they wanna render the area uninhabitable, o ye lord of the dipshits
only your science denying base might think it was a good idea to go be settlers then
Why is the answer always more murder?
He’s really gone of the deep end. I mean, he’s always been a bit all over the place, esp wrt to Trump, but wow…
This really isn't all that different from his old friend and former presidential candidate John McCain (dodged a bullet there), singing 'Bomb Iran' to the tune of the Beach Boys' 'Barbara Ann.'
I'm pretty sure that McCain was referencing this 1980 spoof:
"Bomb Iran" (or "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran") is the name of several parodies of the Regents' 1961 song "Barbara Ann", originally written by Fred Fassert and popularized in a "party" cover version by the Beach Boys in 1965. The most popular of the parodies was recorded by Vince Vance & the Valiants in 1980. "Bomb Iran" gained a resurgence in notoriety in 2007 during John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.
I think Graham is just a sleazy politician and knows it will give him more clout. Republicans who have taken a stand against Trump have mostly ended their careers; it's been a surprising amount of courage from some individuals I didn't think were capable.
Lindsey Graham doesn't have brain worms, he is the brain worm.
If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.
5:03 PM · May 3, 2016
Yep. And he was plenty eager to flop like the spineless worm he is when the time came.
You go girl.
i mean to be fair, nuking japan was definitely one of the options. Japan during that time was smoking some good fucking shit
absolutely not
It's crazy to me that to this day Americans still pat themselves on the back about nuking entire cities filled with children, by using the completely fictional and hypothetical propaganda pushed by the government since they did it. "there would have been more death if we hadn't"
It's not really propaganda, the Japanese lost their navy and air force. They were basically prepping for Armageddon and they got it, just not how they planned... with fewer US service men dying.
It's sad but they FAFO.
We killed cities full of children so our soldiers wouldn't have to fight their soldiers. Why didn't anyone think of that before? Kill the women and children. It's easier, they don't fight back, and if you kill enough of them, their soldiers will surrender just to stop the slaughter. Brilliant!
entire cities filled with children
Matt Gaetz is moving there immediately!
So he infact did not suggest nuking Gaza.
Why is media like this? Someone says something stupid and then they lie about it claiming they said something even more stupid. How am I supposed to take these articles seriously? What else do you lie about?
She? Lindsey is a dude.
Oh. Sorry about that. This is how much I pay attention to American politics.
So he infact is an old man, not a she.
Why are Israeli trolls like this? Someone points out something stupid genocidal Israeli supporters said and then when people get outraged, they pretend they didn't say it.
How am I supposed to take these Israeli trolls seriously?
Why is it ok for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war, why was it ok for us to do that? I thought it was ok. So Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state.
The journalist didn't even mention nuclear bombs, Senator Graham brought it up themselves and then suggested it would be 'ok' to nuke Gaza if it ends the conflict. Yeah, the article is shit, it's The Daily Beast... watch the actual interview.
He did not say the specific words "We should nuke Gaza," but for anyone to read the article or watch the interview and not understand that is exactly what he is suggesting... That person would have to be an utter moron or be arguing in bad faith.
EDIT: Missed a space
Takes quite a bit of mental acrobatics if that's the conclusion one pulls out from that. That's motivated reasoning and partisan thinking. I seriously doubt even he is dumb enough to suggest for someone to use nuclear weapons literally on their back yard. That doesn't make any sense. What he said is stupid as it is. No need to start making shit up.
About every reply here is taking the headline at face value. Imagine that.
Say it a little louder for all the dipshits trying to argue that a trump presidency would be better for Gaza than Biden is.
If Trump wins I'm going to be too preoccupied with the climate disaster and end of American democracy (in that order) to give a single fuck about what happens in Gaza, Ukraine, or anywhere else.
Reverse order for me, the climate distaste I worry about with a Republican dictatorship is a nuclear winter. But that might be growing up during the Cold War talking.
Maybe nuclear winter blocks out sun for so long we solve global warming and enter a new ice age. So many humans will be dead we won’t be able to carry on with our global warming activities, as the small handful remaining return to an agrarian society. Maybe Putin and the republicans will save us all.
Yup. Russia takes Ukraine and funds Iran in the inevitably escalated Israel-Iran direct conflict, while China attacks Taiwan and Trump preaches isolationism. Good start to WWIII.
All according to the plan...
I mean, am I wrong? Should I care more about what happens to Gazans or Ukrainians than the fact that we're living in a kleptocracy of science-deniers who are openly taking $1 billion bribes from the oil industry? I don't think so...
I mean, it is possible to care about yourself while caring about others, yes.
If you're just abstractly posting about shit on the internet, sure. But if a wildfire burns my neighborhood down (a real possibility where I live, even now, and increasingly likely as the climate slips into the irredeemable zone over the next decade or so) I'm not going to be thinking about global politics and wars happening in countries that I will never step foot in. That would be borderline pathological.
I'm just being honest. You need to live a life of privilege to have the time, freedom, and emotional capacity to worry about what is happening in Gaza. And, should Donald Trump become president again, he will do whatever he feels like doing in Gaza, nobody will hold him accountable (as nobody seems willing to do right now for the things he's done in the past), and I'm not going to have the willpower to care because, mark my words, WE will have real problems of our own.
If you want to see what unchecked genocide, mass civil unrest, climate disaster, and American autocracy looks like, by all means, allow Donald Trump to take over our country. 2024 is our last stand, and what happens next is a matter of individual survival.
Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud.
What do you mean? I don't follow, so can you elaborate?
Are you really saying that you care more about what happens to people in countries half way across the world in regions that you'll probably never step foot in than yourself, your country, or the world at large?
So we hand America over to a criminal autocrat because Biden hasn't managed to solve world peace adequately enough for your liking. Doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Maybe I'm not understanding something here.
"Hasn't managed to solve world peace adequately" is quite the euphemism for "is supporting an ongoing genocide with billions of dollars of weapons."
You didn't elaborate on what you meant when you said "saying the quiet part out loud". Can you tell me what you mean by that? I don't follow.
Biden is "supporting an ongoing genocide". He's doing what every President in modern US history has done by arming Israel because they are (a) our ally and have been since Israel and Palestine were both created, and (b) under attack from multiple groups including Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Since October 7th 2023, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have launched well over 11,000 missiles and drones at Iran, the vast majority of which were intercepted and nullified by Israeli defense systems. On top of the 1,500 people that Hamas killed and kidnapped on October 7th, had those missile and drone attacks not been defended against, how many more innocent people do you think could have been killed in this war? Would you have been happy to see thousands of missiles hit Israel as well as what's going on in Gaza?
I personally feel that we need to put stronger restrictions and conditions on the weapons we send to Israel in light of the war, and they have started doing that, which is good. But let's not pretend that American defense spending in Israel hasn't saved thousands of lives and prevented further escalation. Hamas are a terrorist organization founded on an explicit call for genocide against Israeli Jews, and they killed more people on October 7th than Israel is killing per day on average over the last 8 months.
On top of that Biden has spent more money and sent more aide into Gaza than the UN or anyone else... You think Biden is happy about this war? You think he wanted any of this shit to happen, during an election year of all times? C'mon...
Listen, I don't care what you do, but go ahead and help elect Trump if you want to see what actual, unmitigated genocide in Gaza looks like, because unlike Biden he will not give a single fuck what Netenyahu does to the Palestinians. In fact, just like Trump will do what the oil lobby wants if they give him $1 billion, Trump will be more than happy to help Netenyahu flatten every inch of Gaza if he can get some kind of "deal" (read: bribe) in return.
He's continuing with decades of US policy on Israel, pretty par for the course for a do-nothing president.
Every bill he signs off on gets cut down without resistance. The moment he doesn't have to worry about the politics of a veto.
Somehow 4 years of that is somehow better than the alternative so he gets my vote.
Considering nuking Gaza could easily lead to everyone nuking everyone else, you might change your priorities a bit.
Nobody is starting a global thermonuclear war over Gaza. Iran doesn't have a capability, NK doesn't give a fuck, and if Russia was going to elevate the world into a nuclear war they would have already done so over Ukraine.
Meanwhile climate change is here and American democracy is in peril, and these are things that actually affect people in this country and the entire world.
If Trump wins, Gaza is his to do as he pleases. If we didn't hold him accountable for his crimes against the United States, I have serious doubts that we're going to hold him accountable for crimes in the middle east.
Over a nuked Gaza? I wouldn't be so sure.
Let's imagine Trump wins in 2024. He's leading in a number of polls and Biden's popularity is down, so there's a REAL chance...
Who exactly do you think is going to hold him accountable for anything he does at home or abroad?
Congress? (Maybe in some kind of weird scenario where Trump wins the presidency but loses the House and Senate. Not very likely...)
The courts? (Trump has personally appointed 33% of the current SCOTUS, and we have seen that they will tie themselves into knots to do his bidding. Another 33% of SCOTUS are other highly political conservative judges who have proven to be on Trump's side. And then we have to consider that Trump has also appointed a huge number of judges at every different level of our legal system. They aren't going to do anything to him, ever.)
And if Netenyahu was to kill every last man, woman, and child in Gaza, do you think a Trump administration would push back even in the slightest? This is a guy who sides with Putin and Kim Jung Un. He does not give a fuck about humanity or anybody's life other than his own.
I once had hope that someone, somewhere would hold Trump accountable for things like January 6th, but I guess hope doesn't spring eternal after all because I'm just not seeing it. Trump's right about one thing: he could shoot a guy on 5th avenue in broad daylight and nothing would happen to him. One third of this country would be evil enough to still vote for him, and another third of the country would be to stupid to hold him accountable.
What on Earth does this have to do with Trump?
You responded to a post that mentioned Trump in the last paragraph
Why aren't the "But Biden!" people in this thread? It's so very strange they seem to be absent (no, it really isn't).
I feel like the narrative surrounding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings has changed enormously since I was a kid.
I remember learning that, while tragic, the number of lives lost in the bombing paled in comparison to the numbers of lives being lost and that would be lost in winning the war by conventional means. That it was a way to minimize further bloodshed.
I'm not super well read on the subject, but is that not true? Or, if it is true, does it not matter?
I'm mostly just trying to figure out what caused the shift.
Some disclaimers
I am a 50+ year old American
Up until 10ish years ago I had at least a better than average understanding/knowledge of WWII
My ex's grandmother's family was from Hiroshima and they had family members killed in the bombing.
All that said as tragic as they were I still think those bombs were the correct military decision at that time. I would be willing to have a rational conversation about it though.
The situation in Gaza is completely different and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the GOP are fucking ghouls.
Also, I have always thought that, as horrific and tragic as what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, the fact that the world was able to view the aftermath has been what has prevented a larger nuclear exchange. I don't know if the Cuban Missile Crisis would have gone the same way without everyone knowing exactly what an atomic bomb does.
Is your argument for bombing being the right decision the same (that it resulted in less bloodshed overall)? If so, how can you estimate the body count of the alternative (a prolonged conventional war, I assume)?
I mean, you could project based on the casualties already incurred I suppose.
Looks to be about 65k Americans military members died in the Pacific theater, and we were still a long ways off from reaching mainland Japan, and the fighting was only gonna get worse the farther in we got. And that's just Americans. It doesn't count the Japanese casualties, which by all accounts dwarfed the American numbers.
200k civilians were killed in the atomic bombings. Now, it's worth noting that those are civilian deaths, which one can argue have a higher moral weight than combatant deaths.
So, all that said, in plain numbers I think it's an extremely safe bet that far more than 200k more people would have died in a blockade/land invasion scenario. But, you could argue that it's apples to oranges since the bombs were on civilian targets.
It's also worth noting to that the 200k dead to resolve the war were all non-American, which doesn't make it any less of a tragic loss of life, but matters in the "political" sense. If you are at war, and you are handed a solution that can end the war without sending any more of your own people to die, do you as the leader have a moral responsibility to do it? Like, if you have the choice in front of you to either bomb a civilian target, killing 200k "enemy" civilians but ending the war, or sending even 100k American's to their deaths, knowing that you are the one responsible for making sure those men and women get home safe, can you in good conscience choose the latter? Is it better to choose the latter? I wouldn't want to have to make that decision, but I also am loathe to second guess the decision of the person who has to make it.
To this day gaman or Japanese stoicism is a big part of Japanese culture. The Japanese had already lost the war, but the ruling class was willing to sacrifice scores of people to fight to the bitter end.
In an episode of Hardcore History, it detailed that the Allied ships couldn't dock in Okinawa because of all the corpses in the water. The Japanese had inundated Okinawa with propaganda that the Americans were going to rape them all. Many families killed themselves. And the invasion of the mainland was only going to get bloodier.
A terrible as it is to say, dropping the nukes was the more humane option of the two.
Back in HS, I think I was told that it was a regrettable ending and we probably went a bit overboard.
I highly recommend this video from Shaun on the matter. It’s long but you can listen to it instead of watching it and you won’t miss much. Excellent video on this subject that really put a lot of the propaganda around the bombing in a new light.
I remember watching it. The problem with the video is that they seriously overestimate the willingness of the Japanese to surrender without giving any evidence to back this up. The Japanese were absolutely not willing to surrender. I mean, just look at their reaction after Hiroshima. There was a lot of debate AFTER an entire city had been razed to the ground. Japan was absolutely not going to surrender without a nuke being dropped.
The Japanese were attempting to negotiate surrender with the "neutral" USSR prior to the nuclear bombs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan The US wanted an unconditional surrender which included the destruction of the Japanese emperor, who at the time, was the head of the Japanese religion. To put this into perspective, consider the United States request similar to requesting the destruction of the Pope within the Vatican. Because of this, the Japanese were seeking better terms of surrender which did not involved the removal of their religious leader. What the Japanese did not know at the time was the USSR was not a neutral party, and they were secretly mobilizing their forces on mainland Asia due to an agreement Stalin made with FDR prior to the US entering the war in Europe.
The reality is, once Japan learned that the USSR was not neutral and they were going to be fighting the US and the USSR in a two front war, this is when the emperor forced Japan to surrender.
To put things into perspective, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were sadly, just another two cities leveled by the US. The US were performing night carpet bombing on Japanese cities as soon as 1944. Many of these raids leveled several square km of urban areas. https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=217. This is why people argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably not the catalyst to Japan's surrender because the US have been leveling Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizens, long before the two nuclear bombs were dropped. None of these raids caused Japan to surrender before.
Yikes 2 hours and 20 minutes. I'll try to watch as much as I can today, but probably can't get through the whole thing. Any high points I should watch?
Been a while since I watched it, like I said I’d recommend listening to it. Treat it like a podcast, for me the time flew by and I ended up listening to every video he has over the following weeks. 😂
I wasn't planning on spending my morning watching a 2 and a half hour YouTube video, but here we are and that's exactly what happened. That was a fascinating watch. I'd say for others that the TLDW is this:
The narrative that the atomic bombs were dropped to prevent an invasion of Japan is false and was constructed afterwards as a plausible and easy to understand solution that allowed all parties (both the US and Japan) to come out looking good in the end.
The reality of the situation was much more complicated. At the time, there was never a US plan to invade Japan.
Japan was already thoroughly defeated militarily and was looking to negotiate a surrender. Japan was hoping that Russia would be useful to negotiate peace with the US.
The US had previously asked Russia to enter the war, but then later realized it was not necessary to bring about an end to the war. The US actually realized having Russia involved would complicate the post-war logistics and would bolster Russia as a world super power. When sending terms of surrender to Japan, the US removed Russia as a signer of the terms, leaving Japan a false hope that Russia could still be used help them secure better terms.
Russia informed the US that they would be declaring war with Japan on August 15. The US dropped the bombs on Japan a week earlier in hopes of accelerating Japan's surrender before Russia entered the war.
As a result, Russia declared war on Japan in the days between the bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan issued their surrender shortly afterwards. In all likelihood, dropping the bombs accelerated the surrender timeline by about a week. Though it could be argued that had Russia's signature been kept on the surrender terms sent to Japan, it would have also ended the war earlier.
Isn’t he fantastic? His videos are so well-researched and well-written that I’d listen to his vaguely monotonous scouse voice talk about pretty much anything.
Yeah it really was a good watch. The length and minimal use of graphics at first were intimidating, but he still kept it interesting so it was easy to absorb.
It depends whether you think killing 200,000+ civilians is a defensible act.
300,000+ if you include the bombing of Tokyo.
Nobody knows how a conventional war would have played out. To assert civilian deaths would have been higher is pure speculation and a gross attempt to justify the slaughter of noncombatants.
Though it is likely that even without nukes, the US would have still razed these cities with conventional munitions, given the events in Tokyo.
There is a book I liked about this, it is about Allied civilian bombing in WWII in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Among_the_Dead_Cities
It's by the philosopher A.C. Grayling, needless to say 'Responses were divided.'
I highly recommend this video from Shaun on the matter. It’s long but you can listen to it instead of watching it and you won’t miss much. Excellent video on this subject that really put a lot of the propaganda around the bombing in a new light.
There's also the possibility that because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapons have never since been used. What would cold war been like in that case?
The cognitive dissonance is fascinating. The Hammas attack on 10/7 is all but universally condemned in public discourse because civillians were targeted. Even die-hard militant anti-Zionists will not attempt to justify the Hammas attacks because they know it will only turn the public against them. When a brown force attacks civillians, it is terrorism and reviled.
Here on lemmy.world condemnation of Israel's indiscriminant bombing is also prevalent. Maybe 5%-10% of commenters support Israel's conduct. But of the at least eight people who have expressed an opinion on nuking Japan here in this thread, roughly 75% of them defend it as justifiable and no one has outright said it was wrong.
There are over 100,000 American WWII veterans alive today. They saved the world from the Nazis. We love that for us. Coming out of WWII, we dove right into the cold war. We were battling the USSR for the hearts and minds of the globe. McCarthyism silenced internal criticism. We had no patience for second-guessing our actions in WWII. It was our patriotic duty to convince the world that ours was the side of freedom, democracy, and justice.
So for 80 years now our culture has been saturated with propaganda promoting our glorious, righteous role in WWII. You, your parents, and your parents' parents have been told the same thing in school and have seen the same messages in TV, books, and movies. And I'm not saying it's all a lie. Sure, the defeat of Hitler was a high point in American history. But our understanding of our role lacks any nuance or self-criticism. For example, the Russian front was arguably more crucial to the fall of Germany than the Western front. Churchill is hailed as a hero, but he was an antisemetic racist. E.g.:
And:
Churchill's War Cabinet ignored the repeated pleas of the British colonial government in India for food aid, allowing between one and four million people to die of hunger in 1943 and 1944.
Churchill was a horrible person.
And likewise, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unconscionable acts of evil. It is never acceptable to target civillian populations. It wasn't acceptable on 9/11/2001 or 10/7/2023 when brown Arabs did it, and it wasn't acceptable when white Americans did it either.
This is obvious to anyone who wasn't raised inside the Western bubble.
My understanding is that even after Hiroshima, the Imperial Army attempted a coup to avoid surrender.
The Japanese were not stopping. The only alternative at hand was a full invasion, which would have killed many, many more.
The issue is that unconditional support of past American actions is no longer acceptable, and so all America's past actions are being re-evaluated. This is good! However, this also often results in people simply taking the reverse position than the accepted one. This is bad.
The atomic bombings were less bloody than a blockade or an invasion would have been, and the people who claim the Soviet Union was going to successfully invade the home islands or that Japan was about to surrender under any terms that would have been considered reasonable, pinky-promise, are just misinformed or deluded.
My man, read the fucking room
That's the scary part... If you have been following the Republican Party recently, you'll realize that he is reading the room.
What's his stance on puppy-murder?
Being a sociopath is apparently a positive trait for these sick fucks.
He's staunchly against it.
Until Trump picks Noem as his VP, then he'll tell you that it's no big deal and it's just simple farm livin'.
Dude is illiterate regardless of the room he's in.
Back in 2017 or so, I had a full on MAGA coworker who was ecstatic about the migrant detention centers at the border. If anything, he felt we weren't torturing them enough. One day, he dropped a line that was so heinous it still sticks with me to this day: "we used to do the same to the Japanese and no one cared about it then, so why is everyone up in arms about it now?"
All this to say I'm not at all surprised they're saying this now. They've always felt this way, and they know how despicable it is.
Fwiw, the dude was a 50-something year old Israeli immigrant. He also joked about wanting to join the military to "practice on live targets"
I hate this timeline so much
Btw, people cared about it back then, especially the Japanese-Americans being interned.
One of the many shameful moments of American history conveniently left out of grade school history classes.
This was definitely mentioned multiple tribes even i was in school.
What'd you say back to him or do?
I knew better than to engage. The guy was a nutter. He got laid off shortly after that thankfully.
Bonus story about this fucker. When I adopted a dog, he told me that "in five years you won't give a shit about the dog and will only care about your boyfriend". Eight years later, my girlfriend and I co-parent the same dog like she's our daughter.
Not to defend the viewpoint, but I assume he was referring to interment camps and not nuclear bombing. That would be more analogous to the border detentions.
Your coworker has serious mental health issues. I hate the party but I also hate that our mental health system won't address the negative impact religion plays in forming negative views and that our laws prevent therapists and those in mental health from doing their actual jobs.
I gotta give these people credit. It must take a massive amount of effort to try and be this consistently on the wrong side of history. Like, at some point, it has to be deliberate...
So… he knows that… like… Israel would be in the blast radius and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv probably affected by a shit ton of radiation….
Its literally him
You assume that these guy know much about anything except corruption, graft, and drug fueled sex orgies.
At Farmers, they know a thing or two about drug fueled sex orgies.
He knows that he's not the one who's going to be pushing the button, but that his rabid out-for-blood base won't even think about that. He's just throwing them meat.
"The left are the real violent racists! Anyway, we should nuke Gaza. Filthy animals."
-Magamorons
You can't be a racist if they're not real humans!
Nevermind all the other obvious reasons this is terrible but I'm sure Egypt would have some objections to being blasted by a nearby nuke.
Israel is rumored to have tactical nukes that are much smaller yield than the large ICBMs we hear about all the time. Super destructive force in only 1 or 2 km blast radius, which would even fit inside a small area like Gaza. Of course, in addtition to devastating Gaza, there would still be fallout and issues over Israel, and using them in this manner is definitely Not OK. However, I can believe that there are some deluded people in government (both in Israel and in the US) who would view that as acceptable.
Russia would immediately nuke them. It would be the end game for Israel. Hopefully they aren't that stupid.
Russia wouldn't get involved. Many of the Jewish Mafia reside in Israel and are essential to maintaining Putin's power in the country. Russia in many ways would be more inclined to encourage Israel to use nukes to cause destabilization in US politics.
Ghouls like him love Israel, it’s just all those… you know, those people who live there
Maybe the cunt is waiting for suitable wind direction before nuking.
How fucking Christian of him. Jesus would be sooooo fucking proud.
I can't hardly take them or anyone that tosses the xtian mythology around. Why should we? History hasn't shown us a "god". Only shifty humans arguing over imaginary friends.
Can we stop letting them in positions of power already? They obviously aren't fit for leadership or power.
That's because he's a performative Christian, or "Christian." He doesn't believe in anything unless it help him get ahead in life - just like most politicians and other moderate-to-high functioning psychopaths and sociopaths.
I mean, he's not wrong, he's just an asshole. By most historians accounts, Fat Man and Little Boy caused less death than an actual war with Japan would have.
They were also retaliatory strikes after a direct attack on an American base, at the tail end of a global conflict, and we just got a new toy. The bomb was basically telling Japan to fuck off with their bullshit, and it did a pretty good job of it.
That doesn't make it the right answer, per se. Glassing the strip probably would net less death and destruction than continuing the genocide or especially allowing it to escalate more. I still have a hard time calling that "the good choice"
And what happens after the glass hardens? We all gonna be honky dory or is somebody else gonna star lobbing nukes?
Um, Actually, I would hardly call it settled or that most historians agree.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/debate-over-bomb-annotated-bibliography/
He didn’t directly suggest nuking Gaza, but he made multiple parallels between ending the war in Japan by using nukes and then basically says we should give bombs to Israel to finish the job without specifying what he means.
So while someone might argue black and white letter of what he said isn’t “nuke Gaza”, he’s still implying something along those lines - the quick finish and a method that can do it.
He is, in fact, saying "nuke Gaza", just in a way that allows him to deny it.
When his male lover is revealed, it will be a glorious day.
It'll never happen. He's doing exactly what they want gay people to do, being "decently" quiet about it.
what exactly will be glorious about that in your mind?
Hypocrisy.
when has that ever mattered to a republican?
Exactly
Lindsey is part of the swamp. He's a Christian Zionist, a doomsday Christian. These types of Christians want to hasten the Day of Judgement. Pretty much they're psychopaths thanks to the Scofield Reference Bible.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why, if you believe in Christian Mythology, even to the point of wanting Judgement Day to come during your lifetime, why you would personally take efforts that you know are going to end in mass civilian deaths.
Assuming you are right and Judgement Day is on the horizon, are you not damning yourself to the deepest pits of Hell by spending your time leading up to the Rapture ordering the slaughter of innocent people, rather than say glorifying and spreading the word of God?
I don't believe in any of it, but if I did, I sure wouldn't be advocating for mass-murder right before God shows up to judge me for the way I lived my life on Earth.
Number one rule of Christian Narcissism: That rule was written for the others. It doesn't apply to me. I'm not doing anything wrong.
I am christian because I say I am, therefor everything I do is christian and thus righteous.
I agree with you 100%. In my belief, it is God who wills when Judgement Day comes. It is not the will of a human. Christians and Zionists together think they can some how bypass the will of God.
I'm getting a little tired of people using "Zionist" when they actually mean "Jew". Jews don't even have a "judgement day" or even the concept of Hell for that matter, so I quite frankly have no fucking clue what you think you are saying here...
If you have criticism of religion, go for it. If you have criticism of a nation, go for it. But one by one I keep watching people like you knock down the "criticism of Israel isn't antisemitic" house of cards by making it clear you don't see a difference between an Israel apologist and a Jew, and are just using the term "Zionists" as a placeholder for "Jews" so you can make weird blanket statements about Jews...
I wasn't criticizing Jews exclusively. If I want to criticize a Jew or a group of Jews, I will. Idgaf quite frankly.
Judaism =/= Zionism. I'm criticizing the secular political ideology in which cherry picks from Judaism and incorporates it into it's political ideology. Some of the things they cherry pick when it comes to human relations.. is pretty fkin Nazi-like, who am I kidding.. worst than Nazi's treatment of their opposition. Reference the Talmud regarding gentiles.
Neturei Karta is the only Torah practicing Jews that I recognize as my brethren. Because they actually practice the teachings of the Torah. If you're a "practicing Jew" in Israel.. you're doing it wrong. Not because I say so, because your Torah says so.
You are giving them way too much credit. Any combination of “god wants me to” with “God works in mysterious ways” and “the will of God is 100% infallibly and unerringly good” can justify pretty much any heinous act you can think of.
I bet they would be off the rails no matter of the literature choices
I can't reinforce the idea enough that they believe god is eal and that they can trick a prophecy to being fulfilled by naming a british colony "Israel".
The biblical Israel is long gone and the current Israel is obviously a different state; you can "fulfill the prophecies" the same way by naming your dog "the kingdom of Israel"
Nuke Jerusalem; piss off everyone. It's the only truly even-handed action.
Hit Mecca, Medina, and Haifa as well to really piss off all the Abrahamic religions.
And Rome to piss off the pastafarians (and Catholics some more too)
This should disqualify him from ever holding office again. I know it won't, but it should.
Couldn't ask for a better positioning of titles.
There's really no reason to ever report on or pay attention to things Lindsay Graham says. He has no real values or stands of his own. He is a spineless jellyfish that goes with the tide wherever it allows him to keep the most power.
I have never seen any evidence of him ever voicing and sticking to an actual personal belief.
On the other hand, we should keep outing these Nazis whenever we can so that the decent part of society doesn't collectively forget who punched down and who punched up.
Also, social consequences are IMPORTANT for fighting fascism. Making them feel unwelcome at every table, every party, every workplace, EVERYWHERE is a time-tested and actually fairly effective way to fight the spread of fascist thought. It won't get rid of the most entrenched, the true believers - but it can help the knock-on effect of "hey maybe that guy has a real point".
In case you're wondering, these religious freaks believe that they can force Jesus to return by instigating WW3. So long as Israel is involved, they consider that to be fulfilling prophecy; and the nuclear, the better. I'm sure some of them even consider Trump to be the actual Antichrist, while as usual, most of them think it's whoever the Democrats have in office.
its also stupid because old country of Israel is gone and making a new colony and calling Israel also isn't fulfilling a prophecy - its cosplaying. Might as well call your dog "Israel" and say it fulfills the prophecy
Well, if they continue this way, we all may get to know Jesus together pretty soon
How's the mental illness going Lindsey? oh ok.
Brain worms.
It's not clear how low these people will truly go. The bottom fell out long ago and we are going to see these guys get a lot worse. There are no boundaries to guide them. They will continue to reach no lows time and time again. It's infinite.
I don't understand why Republicans are so strongly on Israel's side at this point. I think almost everyone was on Israel's side on Oct 7th but since then there have been over 35,000 Palestinian deaths, including women and children, and their infrastructure has been obliterated. Israeli losses since Oct 7th only come to 260 soldiers.
Why would anyone suggest nuking Gaza? Oct 7th was terrible but it wasn't perpetrated by the millions of people in Gaza. It was perpetrated by the terrorist group that rules Gaza and, at this point, it seems they aren't much of a threat.
The only reasons I could see for nuking Gaza are:
They literally believe every single man, woman, and child in Gaza is part of Hamas, and therefore a terrorist.
They have no capability for empathy and can’t imagine a world in which a citizen of a foreign nation can disagree with the ruling party, despite about half the country he is part of ruling disagreeing with him.
They are also financially motivated to unconditionally back Israel because of lobbying, or corruption, whatever you prefer to call it.
Part of it is due to fundamentalist evangelical Christians, who believe that Israel needs to firmly own the region in order to bring about the apocalypse. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/half-of-evangelicals-support-israel-because-they-believe-it-is-important-for-fulfilling-end-times-prophecy/
This is the same reason that Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, and former Australian prime minister, a devout evangelical Christian, tried to.
Because it's turned from a real issue with it's real horrors and complexities into a partisan/cultural wedge issue.
Might be important to note that it's still an ongoing thing, with civilians still captive or missing. So talking about it in the past tense might be missing an important reason for Israel's extreme behavior.
Racism. They don't view brown people, especially brown muslims as human beings.
Somebody got dumped.
this sort of homophobia isn't helping.
out of all the queer guys I'm friends with, exactly zero of them have detonated nukes in response to their boyfriends breaking up with them.
so all that's left is you bashing a piece of shit, not for being a piece of shit, but because he kinda seems gay.
kindly, respectfully, fuck off with this shit.
Better?
And this guy is considering sane compared to Trump.
But yes please don't for Biden so that we see what nuclear genocide looks like I guess?
There's a Facebook tag group called "OP getting hammered harder than Lindsay Graham's tonsils at a truck stop" and that's what I think of when I see his name.
Democrats love being as homophobic as possible to stick it to a Republican.
There’s nothing homophobic about acknowledging that two or more enthusiastically consenting adult gentleman may jackhammer upon each others’ tonsils in the privacy of their own bedroom and/or truck stop.
I think it’s also not homophobia, and perhaps even being an ally, to point out when the people constantly trying to demonize the LGBT+ community are being hypocritical about it. And it’s not because they are gay or bi, it’s because it reveals how twisted their motivations are.
That's not what happened though. Nobody called out hypocrisy. They just went straight for gay-bashing.
If you don't see the problem, you're a part of the problem.
It also plays up the trope that any older unmarried man must secretly be gay
Japan was completely blockaded, which is such a profound thing in war that it's really all you need to defeat "nuking was necessary" arguments.
And they were completely resource starved, another profoundly important detail of a war machine.
And the fanaticism + "they will die to the last man, woman, and child" is grossly misrepresented in the context of nukes.
But these details aren't relevant to how Palestinians and the situation in Gaza is portrayed. No siree.
Good thing he brought that up, so we all can debate again how awfully bad is to use a nuke, and to nuke civilian targets.
Gaza should not be nuked.
I'll even be so bold as to say nobody should be nuked.
Wow I can't believe mods let antisemitism like this go unchecked!!
the policy makers of the united states of America
Voted in by a generation of entitled, narcissistic boomers that were unfortunately exposed to leaded gasoline and paint at an early age, who know about as much about world history as their IQ counterparts: third graders.
I've been saying we should nuke South Carolina for years.
The US has already dropped two nukes on South Carolina.
What more do you want?
For the nukes dropped to explode? I dont think its a good idea.. but the nukes dropped accidentally didnt explode, which greatly reduces the effect.
That's true.
But the chickens didn't notice the difference.
I want them to explode.
Would this be before or after Israel is able to control the direction the wind blows?
Didn’t you get those powers at your bar mitzvah? It’s supposed to be right after we get the codes for the space lasers.
I didn’t get a bar mitzvah, personally, so I’m a shitty Jew who doesn’t have those powers.
I sort of got a bar mitzvah, but the asshole Israeli who was supposed to teach me Hebrew sucked at it and I never learned. So I read my passage with a crib sheet that told me how to pronounce everything. My cousin, who was the rabbi officiating, took me aside and said, "they may not know what you're doing out there today, but GOD KNOWS!" My dad and I had a good laugh about that for years.
I only did the whole thing for my grandparents' sake.
Ignoring... just everything so very very wrong with this statement by Trump's favorite sock-puppet... how does this even make sense as a plan? I'm pretty sure this would be the first case of one-sided nuclear mutually-assured destruction.
It's like setting off a fertilizer bomb in your nextdoor neighbor's house because you hate them and want to burn their house down: you don't get to be surprised when your house catches on fire too.
Imagine wanting to glass nearly a million kids.
Counterproposal: let's nuke Lindsey
Counter-counterproposal: Let's drop Lindsey on Gaza
Why would they want him?
Tens of thousands of calories!
I can't imagine they would. I'm merely suggesting that he be placed in an exit row seat on a recalled Boeing 737, fly it through their air space, at let nature take its course.
Yeah, nuke countries that can't nuke back.
you figured out the entire point of nuclear weapons! Congratulations!
Well it is also used as a deterrent.
that's what happens when you have two powers who have nuclear weapons. Otherwise what are they going to do, bomb you? They literally don't exist anymore.
Her congrats Lindsey, you figured out the path to peace that I thought was a good idea (briefly) when I was a stupid teenager.
Hint: the idea of stupid and you're stupid.
Hey yo linds, i don't think they wanna render the area uninhabitable, o ye lord of the dipshits
only your science denying base might think it was a good idea to go be settlers then
Why is the answer always more murder?
He’s really gone of the deep end. I mean, he’s always been a bit all over the place, esp wrt to Trump, but wow…
This really isn't all that different from his old friend and former presidential candidate John McCain (dodged a bullet there), singing 'Bomb Iran' to the tune of the Beach Boys' 'Barbara Ann.'
I'm pretty sure that McCain was referencing this 1980 spoof:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Vance_%26_the_Valiants
Yeah, the Wiki page says so too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8hEtI9AI0U
I'm not sure why that makes a difference.
Team Trump obviously has the goods on Lindsey. There is literally no other good explanation.
This really isn't off the deep end for him. He's said atrocious things for decades.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/376548-lindsey-graham-war-with-north-korea-would-be-worth-it-in-the-long-run/
I think Graham is just a sleazy politician and knows it will give him more clout. Republicans who have taken a stand against Trump have mostly ended their careers; it's been a surprising amount of courage from some individuals I didn't think were capable.
Lindsey Graham doesn't have brain worms, he is the brain worm.
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/727604522156228608?lang=en
Yep. And he was plenty eager to flop like the spineless worm he is when the time came.
You go girl.
i mean to be fair, nuking japan was definitely one of the options. Japan during that time was smoking some good fucking shit
absolutely not
It's crazy to me that to this day Americans still pat themselves on the back about nuking entire cities filled with children, by using the completely fictional and hypothetical propaganda pushed by the government since they did it. "there would have been more death if we hadn't"
It's not really propaganda, the Japanese lost their navy and air force. They were basically prepping for Armageddon and they got it, just not how they planned... with fewer US service men dying.
It's sad but they FAFO.
We killed cities full of children so our soldiers wouldn't have to fight their soldiers. Why didn't anyone think of that before? Kill the women and children. It's easier, they don't fight back, and if you kill enough of them, their soldiers will surrender just to stop the slaughter. Brilliant!
Matt Gaetz is moving there immediately!
So he infact did not suggest nuking Gaza.
Why is media like this? Someone says something stupid and then they lie about it claiming they said something even more stupid. How am I supposed to take these articles seriously? What else do you lie about?
She? Lindsey is a dude.
Oh. Sorry about that. This is how much I pay attention to American politics.
So he infact is an old man, not a she.
Why are Israeli trolls like this? Someone points out something stupid genocidal Israeli supporters said and then when people get outraged, they pretend they didn't say it.
How am I supposed to take these Israeli trolls seriously?
The journalist didn't even mention nuclear bombs, Senator Graham brought it up themselves and then suggested it would be 'ok' to nuke Gaza if it ends the conflict. Yeah, the article is shit, it's The Daily Beast... watch the actual interview.
He did not say the specific words "We should nuke Gaza," but for anyone to read the article or watch the interview and not understand that is exactly what he is suggesting... That person would have to be an utter moron or be arguing in bad faith.
EDIT: Missed a space
Takes quite a bit of mental acrobatics if that's the conclusion one pulls out from that. That's motivated reasoning and partisan thinking. I seriously doubt even he is dumb enough to suggest for someone to use nuclear weapons literally on their back yard. That doesn't make any sense. What he said is stupid as it is. No need to start making shit up.
About every reply here is taking the headline at face value. Imagine that.