I'm not sure how many people have seen David Spade's The Showbiz Show on Comedy Central, it's a funny show. He has a segment called "There, I Said It" where he says something about Hollywood that will piss most off or at the very least start a debate. Well, I like that idea, and probably have some of my own thoughts that can start a debate, so I figured I should try this on the LPA, except you know, serious issues (religion, politics, social issues, ect). Discuss what I'm about to post your own, or say whats on your mind, as long as it's serious, coherent, controversal (since debates are good) and just isn't going to flat out offend anyone (no racism, ect). So whats on my mind today, is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. No doubt a tragic event, but if I hear one more person say how we should never forget and remember those who died, I'm going to go insane. Those were American soldiers who died, when they enlisted, they knew what they were in for. You've gotta pay to play. I wouldn't be pissed, in fact, I'd agree with most people, if it wasn't for what the US has done. In retaliation, we dropped a couple nukes on Japan. The difference is, we didn't just kill Japanese soldiers, we killed innocent, Japanese civilians. Where's the day of rememberance for them? Where's their memorial? Exact same thing with Iraq and Afghanistan. A couple US soldiers die, it's all over the news and people are upset. A couple thousand Iraqi civilians die. Oh, now it's no big deal. A little hypocritical, don't you think? Make up your fucking minds people. You can't mourn the loss of US troops and then priase the loss of Iraqi troops or civilians. Just some numbers here, in the Pearl Harbor attacks, 2,403 soldiers and 68 civilians were killed. The United State's retaliation attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well, I'll just quote Wikipedia here since they put it best: "At least 120,000 people, about 95% of which were civilian, were killed outright, and around twice as many over time." 240,000 people killed over time. Don't get me wrong, Pearl Harbor was a tragic event, but what the US did was worse, 100 times worse in fact. Stop mourning war losses people, that's the price of war. Instead, save your mourning for the anniversaries of the tragic murders of John Lennon and Dimebag tomorrow.
Hiroshima & Nagasaki's memorials are in each respective city. I don't think the US should mourn those events, since we had a play in them, and I don't think we generally mourn foreign tragedies/events, except for maybe a select few. And Wikipedia is hardly a good source for information, since I can edit it right now and say that George Bush is the friggin' head of Japan.
I don't usually respond to posts like this, but I'll give it a shot. Do you really expect the U.S. to mourn for the innocent Japanese civilans? The U.S. is going to mostly focus on the soldiers who died for the U.S., since this is our country. I'm sure over in Japan, they are mouring for the loss, atleast, I hope they are. I guess you can't expect the U.S. to be fair on both ends. Personally, I never looked at the anniversay of Pearl Harbor like how you've done. I respect your opinion though.
This is America Todd, we've been doing overreactive goofups for over 200 years. Firstly, I hardly think Roosevelt was all that good of a president as people made him out to be. Infact, he seemed to be a loose cannon. For starters, I knew about the internment camps before "Kenji" but right there is a sign of presidential incompetance. Just because Japanese people were behind the attack, instantly every Japenese citizen in the US was a suspect in the Pearl Harbor attacks. Not only is that one of the most asinine things the United States has ever done, but it's also known as a not-so-beautiful thing called RACIAL PROFILING. Jump forward to 9/11, and we're still pulling this bullshit. Even though it wasn't as public Muslims are still being labeled as bad people, thanks to the media crediting them as being terrorists. For starters, if you lead a deliberate attack that kills thousands of people..you don't have a religion. Say for a moment that this Evolution Vs God battle is wrong and that god really does exist. Would such a god tell these criminals to go out and kill loads of innoncent people? God never once gave the order to kill. These people don't have a religion and will (no pun intended) rot in hell. I dont get why America thought it was neccesary to drop two atomic bombs on Japan. While it caused Japan to immediately back out of the war, at the same it caused long lasting and irreversible damage to those areas that claimed lives for decades after, due to atomic radiation. So please, if any of you believe so, don't tell me how great of a president Roosevelt was and how well he handled Pearl Harbor cause he didn't. He handled the war poorly and now hundreds of thousands of innocent people are paying for his incompetance decades later. Then we have George Bush, and I don't even want you to get me started on him, because I voted for that asshole. We have a pointless war that we've been fighting for close to 3 years now. The irony of this is that Bush's whole emphasis for beginning the war was due to WMDs. Well where the fuck are they, and why are we there two years later if there's no bombs? I voted for dickface thinking that he'd bring out troops out in January of 2005. He never did. Now at the hands of the government we might finally have a FORCED withdrawal of US troops, and I can only think..thank god for that. The truth is I don't care if I fought for him during elections because my whole opinion of him changed when I found out my friend is going into Active Duty for the United States Military. She may have to stay a year over there, and for what? A war that has absolutely no ground or meaning to it. I feel like I'm disgracing the dead American soldiers by saying that but you ask half of the people over there and they say the same thing..."Why are we there?". We were doing the right thing in invading Afghanistan cause we had the support of their leaders to find and hunt Bin Laden. Now instead, our focus has been shifted off course to fight a war that should've ended after we captured Saddam Hussein. And I ask you once again, where is the point to all of this? I will mourn the lost souls of Pearl Harbor, and those who died on 9/11. But that does not erase the fact that our Presidents have been fucking up for over a century.
ok....what about all the innocent civilians that die every day in murders and things like that? no one mourns them either. americans, as a whole, are selfish. american society wants to prove that they did something heroic and they lost people while they were at it, all to justify their cause of whatever they are doing this time to wreck the world. it doesn't matter what we do as a result of what was done to us, if they didn't do it in the first place,we wouldn't have had to retaliate. (ex. if the japanese didn't attack us in pearl harbor, we wouldn't have dropped the bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki. therefore it is the japanese people's fault that this happened.) which is wrong. but that is how americans think. yes i am american, lived here my whole life, just to let you know i am not trying to be racist or anything but that is how i see things work around here.
There's nothing wrong with what you're saying Rosanna because that's the American way. We have to engage in "our balls are bigger than yours" battles with other countries or else we aren't satisified. We're a selfish, and greedy country.
Very good point, and exactly why I mentioned Dimebag and John Lennon, as the anniversaries of both of their deaths is tomorrow. Those are innocent civilians that die in every day murders, yet no one makes a big deal like Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was a wartime deal. That stuff is sort of expected. Whereas I know damn well John expected to make it safely to his apartment that night and Dimebag didn't expect to be shot on stage. Soldiers are in war, this kind of thing is expected. Sad, and tragic, but expected. Yet this is all anyone ever remembers, every other death is just a statistic.
Words cannot express how stupid I think mourning each and every death is. The reason we mourn shit like Pearl Harbour is because they died serving their country. We mourn 9/11 because it was a legit tragedy (let's put all the politcal bullshit on that subject aside, yeah?). If you want to spend each and every waking moment mourning every single death that occurs in the US due to murder, go ahead. As harsh as it may sound, I have better things to do. Like sitting on my ass and eating cheetos.
i'm not saying that we need to mourn every death. i am saying that we need to stop mourning only the deaths that further our political agenda.
How on earth does mourning something like Pearl Harbor further our current political agenda, some 60 years later?
makes us look like we are innocent, like we only do things to retaliate against harm done to us. like we are better than everyone else. like we did nothing wrong and they attacked us for no reason. (hello it is called WAR that is the POINT of it. but i digress.) people compare 9/11 to pearl harbor. about how we aren't going to let people do that to us, we will stand up for ourselves. and you can't tell me that bush is not using 9/11 to further his political agenda. (or at least trying to).
So what did we do to deserve Pearl Harbor? Aren't they generally considered the bad guys in that war, since, you know, they sided with fucking Adolf Hitler. I'm not the biggest fan of America, but Pearl Harbor wasn't called for. Our response wasn't called for either. And no, we don't get out of this situation looking innocent and clean, because Hiroshima and Nagasaki are etched into films, books, pictures, etc. for all of time. When you think World War II, you don't usually think Pearl Harbor, you think the atomic bomb, and Hitler. We're not innocent, every single American knows that. I have my own radical opinions on 9/11 that I don't want to discuss here. They're too far-fetched, even for Todd.
we all know we aren't innocent, but we still act like we are. so the japanese are worse because they killed 3000 american soldiers? we killed 240,000 (over time, taken from todd) civilians. to me, that looks worse. we killed 80 TIMES MORE PEOPLE. and like todd said, they were in a war situation. it is expected. we just coldbloodedly killed all those people while they were at home living their lives, oblivious. i think we are worse for that. in my opinion, both sides of a war are wrong. if you aren't mature enough to talk out your problems before blowing up countries, you have no place being a leader of one. we were all taught from the time we were born that fighting is wrong. i know that some problems can't be solved without fighting, but no one attempted to solve them. in the beginning, hitler was only trying to rebuild germany since we (once again) wrecked it with the treaty of versailles. i don't blame him for that, and no one really can. his country was falling apart in front of his eyes because it got blamed for the first world war. putting all the genocide aside, he was not a bad leader. but the genocide thing, yes, made him VERY evil.
I think they're worse by association to Hitler. They wanted to be in on Hitler's global domination plan, and they started with us. Japan was going to invade the US, then Germany was going to invade the opposite side of the US and take over. They killed less, we killed more, but their intentions were worse than ours. I see your point, though. The numbers aren't friendly to us. We shouldn't have created anything like the atomic bomb. There were other ways to get back at Japan, but everyone was in a panic because, well, Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack, all things considered. I don't think anything like that had ever happened to the US in a major wartime situation. Both nations are at fault, I just think Japan had the worse intentions.
You know what really grinds my gears? Religious people trying to shove their beliefs down other peoples' throats. I went to the fair a year ago and was given a pamphlet that read "So, you're going to hell. Take this quiz and see if you can be forgiven." I seriously blew a fuse. The guy there was nice, all things considered, but when I let loose that I am pre-dominately Buddhist he said, "Um yeah... you are SO going to hell." Then he let fly the prayers and asked for me to be forgiven. I mean, it's fine to have your own set of beliefs. I can live with that. I can even live with the fact that you believe that I'm going to hell. But when you try to CONVERT me, I just get sick. If someone is ALIVE, and they have a religion, keep away. Obviously, what they have works for them. Of course, this is considering that the religion holds all the basic tenets of most religions (i.e. do not kill, do not rape, etc.). If everyone would just follow their own religion and stay out of other's businesses, they would be fine. We're all going to die anyways and either we all go to our own ways in terms of the afterlife, or you are right, and we are all sinners and going to hell. Either way, let us make the decision. Don't try to convert me just because I'm going to hell. If I'm going to hell... fine, it was my choice. But I'm not going to change religions just because of the fact. If my religion makes me a better person, then STOP TRYING. Again, whatever I'm on is obviously working, so quit. And it would help if you weren't so adamant that you are right. That gets me too. Don't act as if your religion is right and we are all wrong. It's hard enough trying to look like a credible person when you say that a BELIEF SYSTEM IS WRONG. Can't we all be right? We all think murder is bad, right? We all believe that greed is bad, right? Is the road to the afterlife a one-way street? Can't we all get to enlightenment in our own way? Oh, and before I end my post, Buddhism is not a religion per say, but a way of life. We do NOT have a god, although Buddha is the figurehead. He founded the belief system, he did not create the Earth. Thank you, and good night.
They HAD to see if it would work. The only reason for it. Sure. America could have beaten Japan in a different way. Instead you chose to torture the innocent people that are BORN after aswell. Good for you. How about I nuke New York and see what happens? I have to see if it will work, don't you understand that? Plus, America should have got involved before they got attacked anyway. It seems america only police the world when it suits them. fastforward to 11/9. Americas fault in my opinion. They sold weapons to Sadam to beat t3h Russians and said they would help it rebuild as it were,after the war was finished. But they ditched him. Then with the special agent guys AMERICA TRAINED they flew planes into buildings.- Possible America flew planes into buildings to blame sadam because he wasn't doing what they wanted. 'Therefore' it was ok for them to invade. Then Iraq aswell, because 'they had wmds', just like you bush ,you hypocritical moron. You have more than anyone else. How about you invade the UK aswell hey?? No, you won't,because we don't have a chunky oil field. But if we did, you would wouldn't you?- My views.
The death of one man is a tragedy and a loss for his family and friends. The death of thousands of men is a statistic and a reason to go to war to kill thousands more. I mourn the loss of those close to me, of those who've affected my life on a personal level. I respect the loss of soldiers, no matter whose side they were on. I won't mourn the loss of soldiers.
Todd, I have to disagree slightly with you. Far too many people take for granted the fact that American soldiers died to save others, as anyone who has attended a high school Veterans' Day assembly will undoubtedly agree. However, I do think that we ought to be mourning for the civilians that were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, like you said. If you haven't read Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains", you really should. It is a memorial (of a sort) to the innocent civilians that died in those attacks.
And, if anything, people should also read Hiroshima by John Hersey. Like 6 first person accounts of the atomic bomb, collected by John Hersey. A real eye opener.