Anytime the Dumpmonkiez start a thread by saying, "As a ________, my two cents on ___________.", you are insured to have a mind numbing ride along the crazy train.
It's like if I started every thread with "As a retired Army Officer and current Law Enforcement officer, my two cents on Late Term Abortion.
My prior and current job really doesn't give me insight into the later. I may have personal feeling on it but it doesn't somehow make me more intelligent on the subject fer Christ's sake...
redgreenandblue (1,465 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027047323
As a physicist, my two cents on the atomic bomb.
I'll leave the discussion as to whether to drop it on Japan was right to the armchair historians, but as a physicists I can say this:
I think the bomb should never have been built.
The people who built the bomb knew, or should have known, exactly what they were unleashing upon the world. This is a weapon of a quality never seen before in human history, that had, and still has, the potential to bring about the end of civilization, and nearly did so a few times in the twentieth century. It is a weapon that is by its very nature uncontrollable and indiscriminate. It has no purpose other than to inflict mass casualties on civilians. And as a scientist you should be aware that when you build such a device, the politicians will find a reason to use it.
I think participating in the Manhattan project will forever be a stain on the legacy of Richard Feynman and the others.
Since quite a few scientists who did work on the bomb felt the same way as our friend the Dr. , Dumpmonkie, and all around know-it-all, I would say that's a pretty safe statement. In fact, the people who worked on the bomb weren't really sure what would happen before the first tests.
Not knowing something is why you got into science.... at least I think so, as a retired military officer and current law enforcement officer....
Sherman A1 (16,161 posts)
2. You may be right,
However, it was a different time and vastly different circumstances in those days. Germany and to a lesser extent Japan were both working on their own versions of this weapon and we simply did not know if they would be successful. Would it not have been remiss by our leadership to proceed with development?
As you said there can perhaps be made an argument against dropping the bomb, I know this time every year many do post their thoughts on this subject, I personally believe it was a correct decision based upon the information at the time and what has since been made available. That said I understand there are those who will disagree with me and I believe they are fully entitled to their opinions, yet in any event none of us can dial the clock back 70 years and change those decisions. We can only hope and work for a world where these and hopefully all weapons will not be needed.
common sense. it won't work at the DUmp.
Whiskeytide (1,159 posts)
44. And that is really it in a nutshell...
If either the Nazis or the Japanese military had gotten it first, there is little doubt they would have unleashed it as far and wide as their resources allowed them to. Both had already demonstrated the capacity to commit atrocities. What would the extermination of cities have meant to them?
We got it first - and the debate of whether we should have used it notwithstanding - the fact that we had it meant that anyone else that got it had to consider their own destruction as a very real consequence of using it. MAD was - is - a twisted psychology, but it was probably the only way we could have moved into the atomic age without incomprehensible global damage.
MillennialDem (1,135 posts)
50. In a sense though, the Germans and Russians had it right - I read up on something that said both knew about the bomb but knew the war would be over by the time it was built. That's why they didn't commit much to it.
That whole statement doesn't make much sense.
Flying Squirrel (1,873 posts)
11. But they didn't. And even if you could know that for sure, it doesn't change the morality of doing so ourselves. Just like the fact that the Japanese tortured our soldiers wouldn't make it ok for us to do so to theirs.
Art_from_Ark (23,347 posts)
65. Americans sometimes tortured captured Japanese soldiers. One of my friends who had fought in the Pacific Theater told me of a time when some guys in his unit captured some Japanese soldiers, put grenades in their mouths and pulled the pins as they threw their prisoners off a cliff.
pnwmom (62,091 posts)
4. The problem is that we weren't the only ones working on the bomb. So were our enemies.
The ones who attacked us.
redgreenandblue (1,465 posts)
17. Who is that "us" you speak of? I find considering ones nationality as an important part of ones identity, dunno, creepy....
You, sir, are an idiot.
Martin Eden (5,992 posts)
15. I've made that argument for years
I also think the graphic devastation in Japan for all the world to see may have precluded subsequent use of this weapon. Once it became scientifically possible, construction of the bomb was almost certainly inevitable -- if not by us, then someone else. A first military use under different circumstances, possibly with the more destructive nuclear bomb, could have been worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I am of course speculating. What I am not doing is making a moral argument in favor of the bomb or dropping it on anyone. Given human nature and the history of war between nation states, I think what transpired is not nearly as terrible as other very possible scenarios.
Well,.... lets see what Iraq and the radical islamists think about using the bomb. They should have some shortly.
Unknown Beatle (1,656 posts)
7. The bomb didn't have to be used on Japan, twice.
Telling Japan that the US had an atomic bomb and then showing a demonstration of it's power to Japanese leaders would have been enough for them to surrender.
The US already had Japan on it's knees and it didn't need to use full force on them.
The US had to show the world what it was capable of doing with it's military might, so might as well incinerate innocent civilians.
Such a travesty.
Such a retard.
jeff47 (18,474 posts)
24. If this theory was correct, why didn't they surrender after Hiroshima?
They only surrendered after the second atomic bomb was dropped.
If a demonstration would have caused them to surrender, wouldn't the first bomb have done the same thing?
Star Member cherokeeprogressive (19,962 posts)
38. Were there other countries working on a similar weapon?
