They dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan to make the Soviet Union's invasion of Hokkaido unnecessary and as a performative act to horrify the world in to subjugation.

The whole 'saved more lives than it cost' is a bad argument unless the plan was to slaughter a hundred thousand civilians on landing. Note the Nazi invasion of France cost 60,000 lives in civilian resistance...this was at the beginning of the war.

Japan would have surrendered on the first day of invasion.

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
      14·
      4 years ago

      Well I've seen the light.

      Agreeing with Stalin makes me a lib, whereas agreeing with American military leaders makes you a leftist.

        • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
          10·
          4 years ago

          I’m pretty sure Stalin’s opinion on Japan’s surrender two years before the fact is pretty fucking irrelevant here

          Stalin adopted unconditional surrender as the goal of the war from the Casablanca conference in 1943 and restated it as a specific war goal against Japan in the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945. Unless you're laboring under the assumption that Japan surrendered in 1947, Stalin's position on unconditional surrender is pretty fucking clear.

          Sorry your broken Lib brain is incapable of understanding that we literally gave them that condition

          Oh cool, just let the right wing Imperialists have a conditional surrender so they can twist it into a myth of national betryal. That'll never come back to fuck up the world, except for that time it did.

          Fascists get the bullet. Not concessions. McAurthur fucked up after the fact by letting the Japanese keep the monarchy. That does not change the fact that negotiating with Fascists is absolutely lib shit.

          P.s. when American military leaders say things that run counter to the popular pro American imperialist narrative (that we “had to” drop the bombs to “save lives”) you should probably fucking pay attention, you absolute moron,

          Except dropping the bombs saved lives. Chinese lives, Korean lives, Vietnamese lives, and countless others. But hey, I guess my people should have just sucked it up for a few more months of being murdered by the fascists while waiting for America to muster up an invasion fleet.

            • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
              8·
              4 years ago

              The problem is not the unconditional surrender.

              The problem is that McArthur, the insane megalomaniac who had to be releived of duty, decided that the Japanese can keep the royal family.

              I can't state I any clearer than that, so if you still don't understand then I can't help you.

              I'm done being gaslighted on the history of my own people.

              Go negotiate with fascists, lib.

                • AlexandairBabeuf [they/them]
                  3·
                  4 years ago

                  "The choice" did not boil down to Emperor--not-Emperor. You sidestep the most substantive parts of Japan's early 'peace-feelers': supervising their own disarmament and persecuting their own criminals---absolutely, utterly unacceptable terms. Not to mention their absurd notion of keeping colonial possessions.

                  Further, the fact that the Emperor and his office remained after the fact has no bearing on whether the condition of keeping him was unacceptable. This is the head of state, an active member of a government responsible for countless atrocities---personally responsible in many cases. Hirohito should've eaten lead and MacArthur too for saving him (and other reasons, fuck MacArthur).

                    • AlexandairBabeuf [they/them]
                      1·
                      4 years ago

                      Not even arguing lives, you can't put your hindsight away for 5 minutes and consider the motives here and why Japan's terms for surrender were unacceptable. Amnesty up front for members of the fascist regimes is fucking insane. How would you feel about similar terms for senior Nazis? Both the WAllies and Soviets ended up letting nazis live after the war, but it was pretty essential they had full license to execute & persecute whoever.

                        • AlexandairBabeuf [they/them]
                          1·
                          4 years ago

                          The terms they surrendered with were and had to be unconditional. Whether the nuclear bombs were necessary ** for that goal** is arguable, not the unconditional surrender. This is the only goddamn point I'm trying to make to you. My argument can be true and the nukes can still be wrong, these are not incompatible.