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Horror like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The correct of the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still being debated. Just because no one else had it did not make it more horrifying anymore than the Prussian posession of the needle gun at Koniggratz made their infantry more horrifying. Nukes were seen as a tool and a tool that would help save American lives. Truman did not spare more than a moments reflection for how horrible the bomb would be to the Japanese, he was more concerned with preventing the million American casualties predicted if Operation Olympic went off. It is only since WWII that the morality of weapons use has been debated and that is a specific outcome of American use of the bomb. That does not mean we would hesitate to use it. As I said in an earlier post, there are a specific set of circumstances under which the US has deemed the use of Nuclear weapons to be justified. It is limited but I believe it is effective.
I am not making my points very clearly - yes, points because there are two that you got mixed together. I don't think that it was more horrifying because no one else had it. I don't think the (widely perceived but not by everyone) horror of it was a factor in Truman's decision, but I think the fact that no else had it was a factor. But if you are going to list the other factors in Truman's decision, I think the Russian declaration of war against Japan and "invasion" was as big a factor as our planned conventional operations. We risk a tangential debate there, I know. You may be surprised to hear that despite my admittedly peacenik-chanchurmantra leanings, I think he made a reasonable choice from the limited options he had.
I think that the “hand wringing” did result in some good – the aforementioned UN declaration signed by much of the international community for example. But I don't see that quibbling over the numbers does any good. I think that unprovoked violence is morally wrong, whether the motive is conquest, hatred or madness. But if you start trying to right old wrongs, how many dominoes will fall? Do you blame the English or the Normans who conquered England? But Normandy was over run by Vikings… Our ancestors did things we would not condone now. We try to improve and we move on.
Ah, but our demonstrated willingness to use them is a deterrent in itself regardless of whether that was decades ago. I don't see how us using it when no one else did causes us to lose credibility, you are going to have to explain that one to me.
Actually, what I said was no else had any, which I think made it an easier decision. We were demonstrating to the world what we alone had in our arsenal. We did not truly know how devastating it would be; we had a pretty good idea, but there was no precedent to clearly illustrate the horror we were unleashing. Now others have it as well and we know what it does to a populated area. This complicates the decision tremendously. It isn't just reprisal we have to worry about if we use it, it is also setting the precedent of when it is okay to use a nuclear weapon. We can't expect the international community to keep the bar really high if we make an exception.
:- I don't know, given that the US is the only country that has ever actually used them in wartime automatically gives us a little credibility. I also don't think the threat of their use is made very lightly and there is a very specific set of circumstances under which nukes would be used. Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms Then again, nuclear war is not conventional by any stretch of the imagination.
I am definitely differentiating between nuclear and conventional war.Our use of the bombs has been followed by decades of avoiding using them again. I think we felt both justified and horrified. Just how much damage it would do to a populated city was theory until one was used. It would have been a very vague threat. Now it is very clear to us and to those we might have to threaten in the future. They have to take it more seriously and so do we. When we dropped those bombs, no one else had any, which is another reason that decision doesn't buy us ultimate credibility in threatening to do it again now.
My daughter is in a 9th grade World History class that will last one quarter. It's crazy; they spent one day each on most of the ancient civilizations, two if it was a more important one like Greece or China. They are working chronologically and will study many of them in different periods of course, but the pace is ridiculous.
Do American troops have to be threatened to make the threat of the use of Nuclear Weapons credible? I don't think so. We put troops there as a symbol of resolve, not as sacrificial lambs.
Exactly - we may be doing the semantic samba again. We will not let them be sacrificed and would not put them there unless we believe they can be effective and/or we are resolved to protect them by whatever means necessary. I do think that the threat of the use of nuclear weapons is only credible under a very select set of circumstances - a large number of American lives at stake either at home or abroad, the imminent threat of invasion of the US or our very close allies (Canada and the UK are the only absolutes, IMO, but there are others that are "maybes") or in retaliation for the use of a nuclear or similar (in terms of results in massive death and destruction) weapon against us. I am not saying that we wouldn't use it in other circumstances or that we always would in these, but I think that a foreign power would consider the threat very real under these circumstances and assume we are probably bluffing under other circumstances.
Whether or not the unit exists isn't as important as the concept. There are a couple of countries in particular that have large enough populations to put together an invasion force that could overrun any of their neighbors (except maybe each other) in conventional warfare. If we threatened the use of nuclear weapons to stop such an assault, I am pretty sure it would be perceived as a bluff. We could not place enough troops in their way to make a difference in a traditional war. However, we could place enough in their way to make the threat of using nuclear weapons legitimate. I don't know if we have an official policy about what constitutes “stepping over the line” where we would respond with nuclear weapons, but there have been plenty of precedents since WWII to indicate we practice restraint when the conflict is between foreign powers on foreign soil. But putting several thousand American soldiers at risk would alter the equation dramatically. I am still not sure we would use the nuclear weapons, and it will probably come as no surprise that I actually hope we would not, but the threat would have to be taken seriously.
This is becoming a Sociology thread isn't it? LOL
To a large extent, yes. I don't know whether I love or hate the semantics type arguments/debates.
I love the debates, but hate the arguments... 😀
Yeah, several shows have people jumping to conclusions I am skeptical about, but often present good information that is interesting in its own right. For example, those “Ancient Alien” shows visit several mysterious temples, pyramids and ruins and give a lot of in depth information about the complexity involved in designing and building such structures. They also show a lot of the artwork left behind in great detail also. The wild speculation portion is only about a quarter of their air time.
One thing I wonder about – how does the RDF (Rapid Deployment Force) figure into this? My understanding (which may or may not be correct; I am not sure there is an official position on this) is that the RDF was created with two goals. One was to quickly overpower a small opponent and the other was to be able to place enough lives in jeopardy to legitimize the threat of nuclear weapons. That was certainly not stated openly by President Carter when he created the RDF, but I remember some pretty thinly veiled hints about what we would do to protect troops once they were on the ground. I know the specific unit has undergone much change over the years and may not even exist as an entity now, but the concept certainly does. We have the means to place enough American lives in danger anywhere in the world to make the threat to use nuclear force very real, so massing a large army as an invasion force is one conventional tactic that is not nearly as effective as it once was (or at least the certainty of the effectiveness is greatly diminished, if that makes any sense).
yeah, the new guy is opening a thread from a few months back… ::)But I saw this browsing and I happened to see the show on the History Channel not long ago. I think they made a very strong case that some Israelites escaped from Jerusalem when it was being taken and ended up in southern Africa. The DNA tied them to a particular tribe that made it very plausible to assume that there were members of the party who were clergy at the temple in Jerusalem. The details about the object that the researcher seems to believe is based on the Ark of the Covenant are much sketchier. He was actually able to lay hands on it and get a small piece of wood, which turned out to be only around 600 years old (they tell you that last bit right as the credits are about to roll, after playing it up big time that he may have found the Ark). The object was a war drum. To their credit, they did show a short clip toward the end of another researcher (who they had interviewed and shown clips of during the show that seemed to support the theory) who looked at all the evidence and the artifact and said he thought it had no connection to the Ark. What annoyed me is that no mention was ever made of the tablets.Anyway, for the sake of completeness I thought I would post that short review of the show and add another vote to the "Possible, but I doubt it" tally.
A couple of Wiki articles indicate that I am right to call myself an amateur:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbowhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LongbowThe long bow was primarily European and the flat bow primarily NA, but there were some of each both places. The Wiki article also says that long bows were preferable because they are easier to make, but I don't agree. It may be because of the yew wood available to long bow builders in England. Given hickory and oak for raw material, I can make a working flat bow without a lot of effort and don't have to be nearly as selective about what pieces of wood will work. My experience with long bows has been that not nearly all staves are suitable and tillering (getting it shaped so that it bends in a proper curve that stresses the wood fairly evenly) is much trickier.I did think of one other thing I think is a difference - NA bows were often sinew backed. In other words, they used sinew, usually deer, on the "back" (what most people would consider the front, but "belly" and "back" are the terms bowyers use) to strengthen the wood and help prevent splintering. It would not be too much of a stretch to compare that to fiberglass.
It occurred to me that I should have said “mostly” with respect to being flat; some tribes did use more of a D shape in cross section. Also, as seems to be true in many crafts, uniformity did not seem to be a goal. The oral traditions say that many of the bowyers “listened” to the wood for instructions. They were “green” before their time also. They sometimes cut into a tree and split out a short section without cutting the tree down and the tree would usually survive. I have a chart in one of my books that describes some found artifacts; I will try to remember to get some info from it and a few European (mostly English) bows and put together a comparison. Stated roughly, most of the N.A. bows were in the 40# – 60# draw range, which is very suitable for hunting most game and were around 3' or less. European bows tend to be 4' or longer and 80# + bows are not uncommon. A few N.A. bows were made with high draw weights and low lengths that would make most bowyers cringe; there is no way they would get more than a few hunts out of one. But bringing down a buffalo would probably make the effort to build a disposable weapon worthwhile.
As an occasional amateur maker of bows (bowyer), I have experience with making them following traditional instructions from European and Native American cultures. There is an interesting difference or two. The European bow tends to be longer, thicker, capable of shooting further, more durable and *much* harder to make correctly. The Europeans made bows that might be passed down a generation or more and could fire an arrow a couple of hundred yards. Before you pass judgement, about the only thing a bow is good for past 80 yards or so is warfare; indiscriminately firing into groups hoping to kill or main is only something we do to our fellow man. The Native bow sometimes lasted a long time, but generally did not. However, it is hard to overstate the simplicity of building one; it was a trade-off that was not unreasonable at all. The were/are flat and can be split out and shaped quite quickly.
Is that like the argument about one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter? Of course that viewpoint was intentional, but it also may have been sincerely held given the cultural prejudices that existed at the time. Cultural prejudice is not a new phenomenon nor has it been eliminated.
Yes, it is largely the same argument. There is one major twist with respect to early Colonial/US history. Terrorists (or freedom fighters) often operate on foreign soil. By declaring the natives as savages, we eliminated the concept of foreign soil completely.I don't think the religion of the natives was or is relevant to calling them savages. Again, we may have some semantics at play here, but I don't think the difference between savages and a civilization whose ideology you disagree with is the least bit subtle. When expanding the frontier, no thought was given to where wildlife would relocate to when you ran off wolves who had been there for untold generations. Classifying the natives as savages allowed them to be treated the same way.I do think it is very probable that most people truly believed they were savages.
