Was nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki the right decision?

[Eddie Teach]

I've been considering them.  The similarities between modern fascist China and late Imperial Japan are a little uncanny, although Japan faced much sterner opposition then China does today.

What about the masses of citizens daring to buy umbrellas? China is beset!

[Tamas]

We can talk about what could have happened, but what did happened not only worked, it deterred future wars.  While there are still wars in the world today, they aren't between great powers, and the frequency of warfare has decline since the Atom bomb has been used.  Pax Atomica has kept the world safe.  I think for that peace to hold people need to be terrified of what a nuclear weapon can do.  The world needed to see the victims.  It needed to see the destruction.

For once, I agree with Raz. We are humans, so there will be a day when somebody goes apeshit and burns the world in a nuclear holocaust. But in the meantime we have avoided at least one world war and several regional conflicts between great powers.

[Razgovory]

I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Hopefully I'm wrong in this case.

You probably shouldn't have let the Republicans condition you like that.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Obama's presidency has really killed the free market:

S&P 500 1/20/2009: 805
S&P 500 5/12/2016: 2062

Regular Hugo Chavez that guy.

[Barrister]

I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Obama's presidency has really killed the free market:

S&P 500 1/20/2009: 805
S&P 500 5/12/2016: 2062

Regular Hugo Chavez that guy.

I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

[Valmy]

I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Because we were transitioning from Bushitler to Obamahitler?

[The Minsky Moment]

I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Massive financial crisis that erupted at the end of the previous administration whose core economic and social policy was the "ownership society."

[Martinus]

Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

So the bombings wouldn't be justified to save Japanese and American lives, but they would be to save European lives?  Disconcerting.

It's not an easy moral choice.
Even if you could guarantee you are killing a million now to save 10 million later you're still killing a million innocents.

Though the japanese would have been amongst that number too. No race dimension from me. Though there was in American reasoning of the time

Wait, are you actually implying that if, in a war, you are prioritising lives of your own citizens over lives of the enemy citizens, you are being racist?

[Duque de Bragança]

I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Because we were transitioning from Bushitler to Obamadolf?

Please brush up your classics Valmy.