This is a scary scenario. We've know for more than a decade that the potential for certain terrorist groups working with the cartels to move people and weapons along the drug routes was a win-win for both parties, and a lose-lose for us.

A low-yield (relatively) tactical warhead taking out a chunk of a near-border city scenario needs only the bad actors acquiring one, and I didn't think anyone was going to take border security seriously until it happened.

Until a couple of years ago, I would never have thought The US government might do something at that level as a false flag. So many things that were believed to be tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories about rampant corruption and rouge 3-letter agencies are being proven true that it might not be that big a surprise if it happens.

We see things in agreement. Sadly.

I think what makes this sort of scary is the fact that a very select group of people can wipe out entire cities on a whim. That is a kind of power NO human should have.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”

- Robert Oppenheimer

I'm not sure Truman gets off that easily. With total U.S. air supremacy over Japan after the taking of Okinawa, the only conceivable necessity for nuking Japanese cities was as a threat to the Soviet Union as it began its invasion of Japan. Nor do I think we should blithely assume later psychopathic U.S. presidential administrations get off that easily. The U.S. may not nuke first lately, but I'm long past thinking there is something governments would never be stupid enough to do.

Warning the Russians certainly played into it, but it wasn't the only factor. The US casualties (and to a lesser extent, the Japanese casualties) in the Invasion of Okinawa played a large part. After the brutal island hopping campaign, the prospect of up to another 4 million American casualties in invading the home islands was hard to stomach.

A little moral relativism may have factored in as well. Killing 100,000+ in the atomic bombings vs. up to perhaps 10 million might have been seen as a lesser evil.

Something that 25 airbases on Okinawa each with a wing of 25 B-29s couldn't've done? To a Japan with nothing left to fly? Now pull the other one.

I don't think you understand how inaccurate bombing was in WW2. THE CEP using the Norden bombsight in combat conditions was 1200 meters. That means 50% of the bombs landed within 1200 meters of the target (and 50% were outside that circle, ranging out to twice that). Carpet bombing by hundreds or even a thousand bombers had to saturate an area to take out a target.

All 25 of those airbases utilizing all 25 B-29s would have a reasonable chance of taking out a single military target per day. Not that there were that many military targets left by late '45.

The air war in Europe didn't end the Nazis. It took boots on the ground. You blow up an armaments factory one day, and in a relatively short period pf time, it's turning out war materiel in the bombed out hulk.

The majority of the casualties in invading the home islands were expected to come from, and be on the civilian population. They were fanatical. banzai charges were frequent from Guadalcanal onwards. Civilians jumped off cliffs rather than be captured.

Sure, they could have firebombed multiple cities into burned out hulks (like Dresden and Hamburg, and Tokyo), but again, moral relativism played in. Millions, perhaps even tens of millions of civilians would have died in your scenario.

See Operation Downfall

edit: corrected link

When, exactly, was it the U.S. became concerned with possible loss of life in Japan?

So you're saying the should have firebombed multiple cities rather than using the only 2 nukes they had? Or should they have let Japan stall until the Russians came in to take half the country?

I've seen that nonsense that they were trying to arrange a surrender through Russia. They were trying to negotiate a surrender that would have left the emperor as a divine being, and left their society living under the Bushido code. The US position was simple. Unconditional surrender.

Looking at that other articles by that author, I'm not surprised he either didn't know that, r simply left some facts out that didn't fit his biases.

So you're saying the should have firebombed multiple cities

No, I'm not. The link, however, shows you U.S. brass at the time saying in perfectly clear language that nuking those cities had nothing to do with defeating the Japanese. One giveaway, Japan endured the nukes and didn't surrender.

The US position was simple. Unconditional surrender.

You say the Japanese people were reluctant to accept those terms? Fanatically resistant, even? No mystery there.

Unconditional surrender meant unconditional surrender, until it didn't. After the Soviet invasion began in earnest, the U.S. gladly accepted conditions. It was accepting the survival of the Chrysanthemum Throne, the world's oldest hereditary monarchy, that won the Japanese surrender. Not nuclear war. It didn't even require enriching uranium. Wonder if it could've ended the war any earlier, if tried?

simply left some facts out that didn't fit his biases

Anyone could make that mistake. I'm not going to go with Gar Alperovitz on this tossup who's kidding themselves, though.

The Japanese where far gone as a power to deal with. The dropping of the bomb was warning to the Russians. A warning to all. It was well planned and well thought out, any president was just in a chair at the time.

I started getting my military history in PME in the 80's, when it was a lot closer to the events. Modern progressive revisionist history starts with the premise that the US was bad, wrong, misguided, and/or evil and seeks to apologize for it. It's seen through the lens of current morality and modern warfighting, which is of course evil in itself. (Can't we all just get along?) WWII was a war to the knife. Civilians were valid targets, not only because of their contributions to the war effort, but because bombs were so imprecise.

If the US had had 20 nukes, they would have been prepared to use them all. (One at a time, until surrender). Had Japan known that the US didn't have more, and wouldn't have another until at least November of '45, the war might have continued.

The US brass thoughts on the morality or even military necessity then are as irrelevant as yours or mine today. They advise, they don't decide. Military leaders tend to develop tunnel vision, especially during war. Odd that with Japan so defeated, they still were holding on.

Russia's "invasion" was limited to the Kuril islands, and was almost entirely unopposed. Not even in the same universe as what the US experienced during the island hopping campaign. It was mainly a political ploy to show they were ready to play too and could join in in invading the main islands.

the survival of the Chrysanthemum Throne, the world's oldest hereditary monarchy, that won the Japanese surrender

I don't know to respond to that, other than that was one of the face saving measures and the only way it was allowed was for him to step off the divinity plateau and become a figurehead.

What won the surrender was showing them that we didn't have to pay the cost of invasion. We could utterly destroy them with near impunity. Their last hope was that we would be so war weary that another 6-12 months of horrendous house to house fighting and more servicemen going home in boxes that we would give up and go home. Japan intended to make every city another Stalingrad. Two atomic bombs showed them that wasn't going to go that way.

Yes, the US made concessions, mostly minor ones face saving ones for the Japanese. The throne was retained, but only as a figurehead, and Hirihito didn't get his neck stretched. The US wrote Japan's constitution. War crimes trials were held. Japan was occupied and rebuilt. (And who paid for reconstruction?)

Edit, on reread, may have been a little harsh. Sorry.

Modern progressive revisionist history starts with the premise that the US was bad, wrong, misguided, and/or evil and seeks to apologize for it.

That’s some mean word salad you’ve got there. My main problem with this is that the sense you mean by the word ‘progressive’ has nothing whatsoever to do with Progressivism, progressives, what’s meant by ‘progressive,’ or anything like that. It’s a [PLACEHOLDER] for something else. One could as easily've used 'meddlesome kids,' 'longhairs,' 'libtard,' or 'Cultural Marxist.' Too quickly, this sentence conflates any critical thinking about American history with sedition, libels it with appeasement and then heaps on ladel after rich, steaming ladel of support of the enemy. Kind of a coversation chiller. Doesn't it seem a little bit on the nose, though? Like, whoever these modern progressives are you're talking about sure do seem to've set out for treasonous wreck and ruin the way you tell it, right? Let's agree to use the truer euphemism of the day for this, "The Blame America First Crowd," meaning anyone with an inkling of how different history is from how it's taught in Texas and California.

It's seen through the lens of current morality and modern warfighting, which is of course evil in itself. (Can't we all just get along?)

Yes, there is morality. Yes, war, whether yesteryear's now's or tomorrow's, isn't so far away from and certainly is not apart from evil. Fuckin' A. It's not working out. Let's just not. If we can help it. The stakes are too high. It is time to get beyond war. For real. Cheers.

WWII was a war to the knife.

I'm all for a good March to the Sea on an as-needed basis, but however sound the beating it's still cruel, still destructive, still waste — however little the regret.

Civilians were valid targets, not only because of their contributions to the war effort, but because bombs were so imprecise.

Let's not confuse targets with valid targets, if you're seriously claiming we cannot in any way judge events in the past through the veil of our times. Beyond our mere powers of consideration or not, make up your mind. If we get to have moral compasses of our own, then I didn't sign up for total war as the eternal condition of humanity. If I regard things like avoidable mass loss of life, forced relocation and collective punishment, enslavement, militarily attacking civilian populations, time and again nuclear sneak-attacking city after city to 'send a message' to some third country, ethnic cleansing, genocide, oh, mass organ harvesting, plus maybe bizarre sadistic medical and scientific research as war crimes and crimes against humanity then guess what, I may not be able to see eye to eye with you around how 'valid' Dresden was.

So what?

Had Japan known that the US didn't have more, and wouldn't have another until at least November of '45, the war might have continued.

Huh. If there was only some way unprecendented air, sea and land power could be used in some way against an island or set of islands. Tk!, thought there was the germ of an idea there for a moment. Ah well, I guess the tide went out there. Guess I've got a memory blockade.

The US brass thoughts on the morality or even military necessity then are as irrelevant as yours or mine today.

What am I paying you for then?

They advise, they don't decide.

Ike did. Ike went to the wall against nuking Japan, didn't he? Ike knew better. Was that irrelevant? To whom? ...

Modern progressive revisionist history starts with the premise that the US was bad, wrong, misguided, and/or evil and seeks to apologize for it.

That’s some mean word salad you’ve got there. My main problem with this is that the sense you mean by the word ‘progressive’ has nothing whatsoever to do with Progressivism, progressives, what’s meant by ‘progressive,’ or anything like that. It’s a [PLACEHOLDER] for something else. One could as easily've used 'meddlesome kids,' 'longhairs,' 'libtard,' or 'Cultural Marxist.' Too quickly, this sentence conflates any critical thinking about American history with sedition, libels it with appeasement and then heaps on ladel after rich, steaming ladel of support of the enemy. Kind of a coversation chiller. Doesn't it seem a little bit on the nose, though? Like, whoever these modern progressives are you're talking about sure do seem to've set out for treasonous wreck and ruin the way you tell it, right? Let's agree to use the truer euphemism of the day for this, "The Blame America First Crowd," meaning anyone with an inkling of how different history is from how it's taught in Texas and California.

It's seen through the lens of current morality and modern warfighting, which is of course evil in itself. (Can't we all just get along?)

Yes, there is morality. Yes, war, whether yesteryear's now's or tomorrow's, isn't so far away from and certainly is not apart from evil. Fuckin' A. It's not working out. Let's just not. If we can help it. The stakes are too high. It is time to get beyond war. For real. Cheers.

WWII was a war to the knife.

I'm all for a good March to the Sea on an as-needed basis, but however sound the beating it's still cruel, still destructive, still waste — however little the regret.

Civilians were valid targets, not only because of their contributions to the war effort, but because bombs were so imprecise.

Let's not confuse targets with valid targets, if you're seriously claiming we cannot in any way judge events in the past through the veil of our times. Beyond our mere powers of consideration or not, make up your mind. If we get to have moral compasses of our own, then I didn't sign up for total war as the eternal condition of humanity. If I regard things like avoidable mass loss of life, forced relocation and collective punishment, enslavement, militarily attacking civilian populations, time and again nuclear sneak-attacking city after city to 'send a message' to some third country, ethnic cleansing, genocide, oh, mass organ harvesting, plus maybe bizarre sadistic medical and scientific research as war crimes and crimes against humanity then guess what, I may not be able to see eye to eye with you around how 'valid' Dresden was.

So what?

Had Japan known that the US didn't have more, and wouldn't have another until at least November of '45, the war might have continued.

Huh. If there was only some way unprecendented air, sea and land power could be used in some way against an island or set of islands. Tk!, thought there was the germ of an idea there for a moment. Ah well, I guess the tide went out there. Guess I've got a memory blockade.

The US brass thoughts on the morality or even military necessity then are as irrelevant as yours or mine today.

What am I paying you for then?

They advise, they don't decide.

Ike did. Ike went to the wall against nuking Japan, didn't he? Ike knew better. Was that irrelevant? To whom? God? The U.S. Secretary of State at the time? Both?

Russia's "invasion" was limited to the Kuril islands, and was almost entirely unopposed.

Wait, I thought we weren't allowed to put ourselves in other people's historical vantage point. Shouldn't it be about what Japan made of being invaded by the Red Army? Shouldn't it be about how long Japan thought they could hold, say, Hokkaido?

that was one of the face saving measures

The sudden, total reversal of the Allied negotiating position for the Second World War was a 'face saving measure?'

What won the surrender was showing them that we didn't have to pay the cost of invasion.

I feel like when folks like Dubya say things like "The lesson of Vietnam is you don't cut and run." I really really don't think that's the lesson here.

the only way it was allowed was for him to step off the divinity plateau and become a figurehead.

Sez you, and you're making it out like Truman's off the hook with no responsibility for his actions whatever they were because… Wait, why? I really don't want to be unfair sussing this out, but near as I can tell the get-out-of-historical-evaluation-free card is all about chain-of-command? The infallibility of leadership? Kind of a "My Country Right or Wrong" creed, or perhaps "Might Makes Right" in a nutshell? What, ancestor worship?

We could utterly destroy them with near impunity.

That's why we had to nuke them, nuke them hard, and go on nuking them as long as it took. Because we could destroy them and so we had to protect them. Got it. Responsibility to protect? Hey, you should check with those modern progressives you were talking about and see if they might be into 'r2p.'

The US wrote Japan's constitution.

I feel like we're soft-pedaling MacArthur's role here. I mean, since we were just talking about advising versus deciding.

War crimes trials were held.

Wow. Remember when we used to be decent enough to give people trials? I suppose all justice is victors’ justice, kind of like all bases are base 10. Still, can you imagine if we held ourselves to the standard we judged those monsters by? I don’t expect laws of war, but if laws are wisdom, does that mean there’s no wisdom in war? I suppose at least they got trials, but men were hung for things the U.S. now does all over the world. Are we still not allowed to make judgments about things that happened a minute ago and will happen again reliably at the same time tomorrow? That'd be a shame, or are we allowed to be ashamed of our society's military-fanatic cults?

may have been a little harsh

My ears aren’t too tender to hear. We’re good, right?

I'm not sure how thought out terror as a weapon is if it turns out people don't scare that easy.

By "progressive", I was referring to the self-described status of our education system. It is a fact that most 4-year Uni professors here have political beliefs that range all the way from from left to hard-left. I'm experiencing it now, any classes that aren't directly STEM related are as much about indoctrination as education. Their views infect what and how they teach. My views in this discussion in a US history 1112 class would likely lead to my failing it.

I think our viewpoints are irreconcilable. I'm second generation career military. My early reading was 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and the Time-Life series on WW 1 and 2. I later got into my father's books, Ghandi, Arendt, Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz and Kipling were the topic of many dinner table discussions. I've read a bit of the actual source material that your links are based on. Lengthy reading lists were part of the 4 different levels of PME I attended.

Ike went as far as he could, and lost. But that's what military leaders are supposed to do. Do what your stripes or stars can carry, pick your hill to die on, then shut up and color if/when you are overruled. History is written by the victors, true. but it also evolves over time as society changes. People in any era disagree on decisions made, especially in war. Later generations latch onto those disagreements as proof of their own thoughts. Times, morals, values change.

War is the natural extension of failed diplomacy. As long are there are humans with different ideas or ideology, there will be war. Don't misunderstand me, I was a war fighter, not a warmonger. I saw more than I wanted in '91 and didn't retire in time to avoid post 9/11. (I was retiring that December and had orders in hand when they went to stop-loss...I didn't get out until '06). The two-dollar bits of colored ribbon they pass out afterwards are expensively bought. I lost friends.

The fetishization of the military post 9/11 is sometimes hard to deal with, but people who have never seen the elephant will never understand those who have. I can't read this without crying

Let's not confuse targets with valid targets,

Civilians became valid targets in WWII the moment a lost BF-110 jettisoned bombs over London. That likely saved Britain and probably the war, because it shifted Hitlers focus. Because of the limits of air power that became evident in Europe, that didn't change between theaters. Today, with our smart bombs and GPS, drones and satellite surveillance capability, one plane with 2 250-pound bombs (with a CEP of inches) can take out a target that 500 planes with 1200 tons of bombs might have taken out then. And when, with all our gee-whiz capabilities, we still hit a wedding instead of a high-level meet of the bad guys, it's an atrocity. And because it is so, we put that on people who didn't have those capabilities.

There were so many pressures at the end of the war. The US didn't want the Russians in Japan, it was already apparent they weren't leaving eastern Europe. They (and the western powers) were already fully mobilized for total war and geography didn't favor the west. There was a lot more real estate to push them back than there was for them to push the allies back into the Atlantic. Russia got some of Germany's rocket, and nuke program scientists , and Truman wasn't sure how far along they were. It was inevitable that Russia would have nukes, possibly soon and a nuclear stalemate would have put the allies at an impossible disadvant...

By "progressive", I was referring to the self-described status of our education system. It is a fact that most 4-year Uni professors here have political beliefs that range all the way from from left to hard-left. I'm experiencing it now, any classes that aren't directly STEM related are as much about indoctrination as education. Their views infect what and how they teach. My views in this discussion in a US history 1112 class would likely lead to my failing it.

I think our viewpoints are irreconcilable. I'm second generation career military. My early reading was 30 Seconds Over Tokyo and the Time-Life series on WW 1 and 2. I later got into my father's books, Ghandi, Arendt, Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz and Kipling were the topic of many dinner table discussions. I've read a bit of the actual source material that your links are based on. Lengthy reading lists were part of the 4 different levels of PME I attended.

Ike went as far as he could, and lost. But that's what military leaders are supposed to do. Do what your stripes or stars can carry, pick your hill to die on, then shut up and color if/when you are overruled. History is written by the victors, true. but it also evolves over time as society changes. People in any era disagree on decisions made, especially in war. Later generations latch onto those disagreements as proof of their own thoughts. Times, morals, values change.

War is the natural extension of failed diplomacy. As long are there are humans with different ideas or ideology, there will be war. Don't misunderstand me, I was a war fighter, not a warmonger. I saw more than I wanted in '91 and didn't retire in time to avoid post 9/11. (I was retiring that December and had orders in hand when they went to stop-loss...I didn't get out until '06). The two-dollar bits of colored ribbon they pass out afterwards are expensively bought. I lost friends.

The fetishization of the military post 9/11 is sometimes hard to deal with, but people who have never seen the elephant will never understand those who have. I can't read this without crying

Let's not confuse targets with valid targets,

Civilians became valid targets in WWII the moment a lost BF-110 jettisoned bombs over London. That likely saved Britain and probably the war, because it shifted Hitlers focus. Because of the limits of air power that became evident in Europe, that didn't change between theaters. Today, with our smart bombs and GPS, drones and satellite surveillance capability, one plane with 2 250-pound bombs (with a CEP of inches) can take out a target that 500 planes with 1200 tons of bombs might have taken out then. And when, with all our gee-whiz capabilities, we still hit a wedding instead of a high-level meet of the bad guys, it's an atrocity. And because it is so, we put that on people who didn't have those capabilities.

There were so many pressures at the end of the war. The US didn't want the Russians in Japan, it was already apparent they weren't leaving eastern Europe. They (and the western powers) were already fully mobilized for total war and geography didn't favor the west. There was a lot more real estate to push them back than there was for them to push the allies back into the Atlantic. Russia got some of Germany's rocket, and nuke program scientists , and Truman wasn't sure how far along they were. It was inevitable that Russia would have nukes, possibly soon and a nuclear stalemate would have put the allies at an impossible disadvantage in the event Russia decided to take all of Europe. So demonstrating that we could drop one every three days (though we couldn't at the time) was a large factor as well, to stabilize that situation.

Allowing Hirihito to remain on the throne as a man was a minor concession. The larger one was not hanging him. Neither concession was probably necessary, but they were already looking forward to the next war, and again geography favored Russia.

Truman had political considerations as well. It's easier to kill a man if you dehumanize him first. After 3 1/2 years of propaganda about the "dirty Japs", blowing up cities with a single bomb probably bought Truman an election. He's not off any hook, but I can barely imagine the burden of his decisions.

My ears aren’t too tender to hear. We’re good, right?

Yeah, good and all,, but I *was" a little snappy. Lack of sleep and stressed trying to figure out networking and subnetting for a test.