I see what you’re saying, but (1) they were dropped three days apart, so didn’t give the Japanese much of a chance to surrender, and (2) it still doesn’t negate the idea that the US could have done an opening gambit of devastating an unpopulated area first and then the next bomb on a more populated area if they didn’t surrender. Which is still evil, as is the whole idea of bombing civilians until the government surrenders. War is fucking stupid man.
Even then there wasn’t a consensus among the Japanese leadership, after Hirohito decided to surrender there was an attempted military coup that plotted to capture the recording of Hirohito surrendering and continue the war.
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Three days is plenty of time to surrender. The Japanese did not surrender after only one city was bombed. What do you do when you run out of bombs after dropping one in an unpopulated area and one on a city and the Japanese still do not surrender?
It’s also not clear if two bombs would have been enough if the Soviets hadn’t also declared war on Japan at the same time and started to attack in China.
I did not know that but I considered mentioning that Japan at the time was a fanatic cult that did not fear death.
That was hugely overstated in our propaganda. They were just people who lived under a pretty nasty dictatorship. Some of them were cultists, and a lot of them were just scared and keeping their heads down. The usual situation when things like this happen.
Truman dropped the bomb to stop the USSR from invading Japan. Let’s be clear. It had nothing to do with preventing more deaths via US invasion–that’s horseshit.
Obama is probably around 10th but could’ve been top 5. Too eager to compromise and didn’t realize how Republicans were changing the game, allowing his achievements to be largely undone. Didn’t go far enough on either healthcare or de-escalating our conflicts in the ME.
I get that Obama has problems but anyone ranking him very low or even mildly low should try to suggest 9 people who are better. There are a bunch of presidents who did a lot of good things like Teddy Roosevelt, but they also did a lot of horrible things like Teddy Roosevelt.