Punch Up

You're right. But it was seen that because Syria was 'occupying'
Lebanon, that it stopped the country from deteriorating back into civil
war. That's why the UN did nothing about it. It took the Lebanese to
revolt after the death of Hariri to force Syria to withdraw.

Oh and just because Syria was in Lebanon, didn't mean that the majority
of the Lebanese people liked it. Syria was only there because the main
power players in the Lebanese government were pro-Syrian.

And? At least the Arab states will be happy.

 

Hmm, parties are at war. US drops two huge bombs. Japan surrenders
unconditionally. I would say that counts as a defeat by any definition
really.

It's unfortunate that the US couldn't see past the political rhetoric
though, or the war could have been over months before.

Oh hell yes. The US alone reckoned they would lose a million plus men if it
went to a mainland invasion. Plus there was the additional "benefit" of
demonstrating to the Russians that were heading eastwards that they should
probably stop their invasion, right now.

 

It was still the most unforgivable attack on defenceless civilians,
themselves victims of a military regime, in human history. Scientists
had very little idea of the long terms effects of external and internal
exposure to a wide range of radioactive materials. The long term studies
of what followed reminds me not a little of J. Mengele.

 

Pardon?

 

Any worse than (say) the Dresden firebombings?

That was equally pointless (in fact probably more so).

Phil

 

How many people, civilians and military, on both sides, do you think would
have died if the war had gone on to a conventional conclusion? Bearing in
mind that:

a) On August 8th Russia declared war on Japan and began an overwhelming
expansionist move/invasion to take over Japanese held territory in
Manchuria.

b) Prime Minister Suzuki announced that Japan would "fight to the very end
rather than accept unconditional surrender".

c) An invasion of the homeland would have resulted in huge numbers of
civilians fighting to the death to defend thier country and emporer. The
Japanese mindset simply could not comprehend the idea of shaming yourself by
being captured alive by the enemy.

Example: When the US recaptured Iwo Jima, the entire force of 21,000
soldiers were killed. At Tarawa island, they only took 17 soldiers prisoner,
from a garrison of 4,836. Scale that proportion up to the population of
Japan in the 1930's and you would be looking at killing 70 million people to
defeat them, 30 times as many people as Japan lost in the entrire war
*including* the two atom bombs.

Even given the long term effects of radiation sickness and the estimated
400,000 deaths that followed the two bombs, it was still the most
"effective" way to end the war with less casualties than conventional
combat.

 

I was reading something recently (in New Scientist I think) and also
saw a Horizon program about how little we really know about long-term
exposure to radiation. All the estimated death figures (from
Hiroshima/Nagasaki and Chernobyl) were wildly inaccurate because at the
lower end of the exposure curve the effects are extrapolated from the
higher-level graph.
Both the article and the program showed pretty conclusively that the
'estimated death' figure for Chernobyl was hugely wrong (far far too
high). It seems that long-term exposure to low levels of radiation does
not increase the cancer rate but actually decreases it by stimulating
the bodys natural defences.

So be wary of estimated death figures where radiation is concerned!
Mind you I suspect that the figures for Hiroshima and Nagasaki are
probably a lot more accurate than the future estimates that were given
out after Chernobyl.

Phil.

 

I think it probably proved a point. Was it ever meant to do anything
else?

 

Itym, 'they could only be arsed to take 17 prisoners'.

There was a disproportionate number of surrendering Japanese killed out
of hand - hardly surprising the US troops didn't take them at face value
as on many previous occasions the surrender was a fake.

I suppose it backs up your point, though.

 

Could be, could be.

Plus the fact that the Japanese had a habit of publicly executing captured
airmen. The fatality rate for captured US airmen in conflict with Japan was
40%, compared to 1.2% in Germany or Italy.

 

Oh I know. And that's still going on today in their treatment of the
Palestinians.

 

Dan White says...

29% of POWs in Japanese hands died, mostly from malnutrition and
tropical diseases despite a lot of people thinking they were murdered
outright. Compare that to less than 2% of POWs held by the Germans, a
fair few of whom were killed while escaping.

 

That'll be US and Empire prisoners only, I guess. The Soviet rate was
*much* higher than that.
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SD says...

It was US and Empire figures only. Jerry didn't like taking Russian
prioners and many were shot rather than captured, so the official
figures are way out anyway.

 

Can I just say that that was one of the most concise and
thought-provoking posts I remember reading here?

I can? Good.

 

Up, actually, yes, he did. He captured millions in 1941.

 

There's a sort of semantic differentiation as well; the Russians were used
far more as slave labour. As witness that wonderful Merkin hero, von Braun.
I visited the underground hospital on Jersey a few years back. Thousands of
Russians died building it, poor bastards.

Ali

 

The Older Gentleman says...

He murdered lots instead of accepting their surrender

 

Most Russian POWs died in captivity, of hunger, brutality, you name it.
I'd guess that far more died as POWs than were killed when trying to
surrender, but it's something that can never be proved either way.

More died than were taken prisoner, but that's not quite the same thing.

 

Can I just say that that was one of the most concise and
thought-provoking posts I remember reading here?[/QUOTE]

I'm sorry, there isn't time.

Oh.

As it happens I agree with what Simon says (although I've not looked
at the study in detail) but am always surprised, though by now I
shouldn't be, that anyone _doesn't_ think like that, with a healthy
dose of scepticism.

The way that most clinical[1] trials are done is intended to minimise
such inaccuracies, in that they're designed to prove the conclusion
wrong. That is to say, in order to show that a drug is safe and/or
effectyove, we have to do our absolute utmost to prove it is not. Only
by failing to do so, in an accepted, peer-reviewed,
regulatory-controlled fashion can we reach any positive conclusions.

This is a very important concept not present in many of the 'trials'
that are carried out in the wider scientific community - they seek to
demonstrate a point, rather than trying to disprove it, so many
possible negative, or uncontrollable, factors may be missing from the
analysis.


[1] That is, in a clinical environment, where environmental factors
can be observed and/or controlled.
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