[StBernard] New HBO documentary of the atomic bomb drops on Japan

[Westley Annis]

What I think many of the "enlightened" or whatever they want to call
themselves fail to realize is the number mission of government, SECURITY!
Whether it is from foes within or without.

When dealing with foes from outside of the national boundaries, the goal of
any war is inflict as much damage, whether human or not, as possible while
receiving as little as possible.  The Japanese of the time showed a
tendency, much like today's radical Muslims, to die in the process of
killing.  When faced with such an enemy, the prudent course of action of a
responsible government is to truly "shock and awe" in such a magnitude to
convince the enemy that their loses will be several factors greater than
ours, to the point where they will be reduced to a standard of living, if
there is anyone left alive, that will be several generations back.

Truman warned and then Truman acted.  No needless diplomacy or worrying
about what other countries might think.

Jump forward to today and the Iraq war.  Do we need to drop another atomic
bomb?  Probably so, but I don't think anyone would heed any warnings or that
the Taliban would care.

Much better is to simply take a battalion of tanks and just start blasting
every last hiding place to smithereens.  Go ahead and take out a mosque or
two.  Hell, we're already being blamed for their destruction.  If we have to
suffer the blame we might as well to the action.

I think if you start with a smaller, less "revered" mosque, warn them to
remove any artifacts they may wish to save, they may finally understand that
we do mean business and we are ready to get the job done and over so our
troops can come home.  A couple of small mosques followed by a larger one
will send the message loud and clear.

We should also put an embargo on all travel to Iraq, much like we have to
Cuba.  Then, when the likes of Sean Penn wants to go travel bad mouthing the
US, we have a reason to keep his sorry excuse of a person from reentering
the US again.

Westley

-----Original Message-----
Jer,

In regards to future scenarios and whether or not using nuclear weapons will
be justified, I'll worry about crossing that bridge when or if we get to it.
As for the past and the discussed specific situation the Japanese brought
upon themselves, it's a bit easier to discern between justified and
unjustified.  Still, I'm not sure how the concept of "justification" ever
got into the mix of decision making.  When anti-nukes talk about
"justification" for using nukes, what they really mean is they want some
sort of "rational" explaination to the justification - and there lies the
problem - because there is no such thing as an objective rationale to
justification.  Each person, each government takes action based on what it
deems or deemed necessary.  All one can do after the fact is either agree or
disagree.

Boy, I just knew all those philosophy classes the Jesuits forced me to take
was going to come in handy one day.

- John Scurich