Weaver

easy when you can explain what it was you burned me on and what my true motivation is. Until then I will assail you with asinine comments, what? you don't like how you are?

Bashing Weaver = America hating.

Weave

You have no qualms about calling someone liberal scum, or an America hater. Why don't you enjoy this?

Imperial Japan considered every Japanese citizen a member of the military and expected them to fight to the death or commit suicide. Surrender was not an option and was considered dishonorable. Even being captured was considered to be enough reason to commit suicide.

So to all the apologists and revisionists, who surprisingly make up a large number of posts here, all I have to say is Japanese civilians were military targets due to their militaristic society at the time. It was basically a nation of soldiers, every man, woman and child.

However, if you are referring to putting the plane on display as a "spike and endzone dance," I'll have to disagree. I think it's nothing more than displaying an aircraft that has much significant historical value.

I wasn't. I agree that the plane needs to go on display, because it needs to be talked about and discussed (hopefully more civilly than in this thread). Pretending it didn't happen does no good in any way.

I do shake my head when people say things like, as you put it, "Yeah, they farked with us, and we just showed them what happens when you mess with the U.S. Of A."

It's like if I say, "Weaver once phucked a fat hooker and now he can't stop talking about it"...I might as well be saying George Bush is an evil prick who deserves the same fate as his partner in facism, Saddam. Oh, and I hate America.

Here's a great interview of Paul Tibbets by Studs Terkel.

HonestIndian
What would they hyper-Liberals have dropped on Hiroshima?

Are you kidding me? Liberals never would have gotten to that point. After Pearl Harbor they would have apologized for restricting oil sales to Japan and probably signed a treaty promising to never put another US warship in the pacific ever again.

That's classic liberal shortsightedness fueled by the belief that if you just treat bad people nicely they wont want to murder you.

As a joke, I was going to say that the liberals would have dropped the nuke on San Francisco and then taken a picture and mailed to Tokyo with a message "surrender or we'll nuke New York too!"

I like when weaver pretends he's a badass. He's all like "Bomb the hell out of 'em!!" and shiat.

Some people think he's just a total pussy who talks tough on the computer.

Nobody is apologizing for the Japanese
Nobody is revising history.

We are stating two basic things.

One - that it is revisionist to not mention the damage caused by this plane, and how this massive loss of life brought an end to this war, AND shaped policy for the next 50 years.

Two - that it is understandable that a person who was actually bombed by this aircraft might not show the same sort of respect to it as you would. Pardon her for taking being bombed personally, and go lightly on her. She isn't some long-haired hippie making a political statement so much as an old lady who was actually hurt by the plane.

All this talk about civilians makes me think of a question. If Japan had the capabilities to bomb civilian targets in America during WW II don't you think they would have?

Hey CrazyCurt,
If you believe that stupid bullshiat then why did they surrender?

thetrenchcoat - All this talk about civilians makes me think of a question. If Japan had the capabilities to bomb civilian targets in America during WW II don't you think they would have?

I'm guessing...

gleefully.

Getting sick of these 'head in the sand' pansy peacenik LOSERS!! ALL OF 'EM!

There's a time and place for war, and its when someone else things there a time and place for war on YOU!

Are you kidding me? Liberals never would have gotten to that point.

I hate to enter this argument, but we were led into the war by one of the most liberal (by contemporary standards) presidents we've ever had. Both 'sides' voted to enter the war, with the sole 'nay' vote in Congress coming for a specific reason: to symbolically prevent a unanimous "we want war" vote.

Asshat "Peace" protesters. The Museum was peaceful until they showed up.

Japan no only deserved the nukes, they earned them.

CrazyCurt -

by that same reasoning can the Hammas type people say that all Israeli citizens, every man woman and child is going to do the compulsory military service and therefore they are all legitimate targets.

CrazyCurt:

Every man, woman, and child. Just as those of us here who got to wear dog tags to school and have nightmares after watching the eyeballs melt out of the faces of the mannequins in Vincent Price's House Of Wax, during the Cuban missle crisis. Everyone was part of the Target Pool.

Can't really complain though, `Atoms for Peace' worked out after all. I wouldn't have it any other way...

Weaver95

waffle95.

Oooookay there johnnyrocket. Thank you for that interesting and constructive post. I think Coach is calling, so you can leave arguing on the internet to us AV kids.

Some people throw shiat at old planes and some people post in threads like these.
Take your sad bitter pick

CrazyCurt
Imperial Japan considered every Japanese citizen a member of the military and expected them to fight to the death or commit suicide.

That doesn't mean all Japanese considered themselves part of the military. It's unfortunate, but there were people killed in Japan during the war that honestly didn't have anything to do with it, despite how their government viewed them.

Does that mean we shouldn't have dropped the bomb? I can't say. My point is just that I think it's difficult to try to rationalize and then dismiss what happened by saying something like "they simply were a military target." I think that, on some levels, that's a moral cop-out. Morality can't begin and end with a certain situation's rules of engagement, and I think that our dropping of the atomic bomb at best can be considered morally ambiguous.

Enave,

My sentiments exactly.

I'd camp outside the voting booth for two days if the Dems could give me a viable alternative to "Dubya." Someone in the old JFK mold....a guy that wanted to reward people that worked hard with lower taxes and a guy that wasn't afraid to pi$$ the world off if he felt his country was in danger.

Instead all I get is this white-guilt laden, socialist, anti-Western, anti-freedom, let's do what France does garbage.

I have more problems with "Dubya" than I could shake a stick at.....but think about this.

I am willing to have my phones tapped, surrender my rights to due process under the law, give up my rights to overtime wages, and a wide array of other infringemntrs on my rights.....why?

Because compared to what guys like Dean and Billary want.....Bush isn't the one that most similarly resembles the Gestapo. How F--ed up is that?

Attacking something is an interesting form of protest for "peace."

enave
Are you kidding me? Liberals never would have gotten to that point. After Pearl Harbor they would have apologized for restricting oil sales to Japan and probably signed a treaty promising to never put another US warship in the pacific ever again.

That's classic liberal shortsightedness fueled by the belief that if you just treat bad people nicely they wont want to murder you.

As a joke, I was going to say that the liberals would have dropped the nuke on San Francisco and then taken a picture and mailed to Tokyo with a message "surrender or we'll nuke New York too!"

Pardon me for bringing up history, again, enave, but wasn't FDR considered "liberal"? Didn't he get Congress to declare war on Japan the next day or so?

Weaver95

you call that thinking?

"They ask me whether or not we should drop the A-bomb on Japan, my reply would be 'Yes sir, by all means, drop that farker... twice!'"

/paraphrased, Capt. Ramsey, "Crimson Tide"

HonestIndian

I'd camp outside the voting booth for two days if the Dems could give me a viable alternative to "Dubya."

I'd camp for a week, maybe two.

honestindian,
What did you like so much about JFK?

wiggiebear
we were led into the war by one of the most liberal (by contemporary standards) presidents we've ever had.

FDR was a great president and he was a democrat and a social liberal. But he was nothing like what modern liberals have become. Modern liberals are basically communists and FDR, Truman, and Kennedy would have nothing to do with them.

A little late, and rather tangential, however I had to correct something I saw:

djplaidyak
(concerning what you said to ceremony_1968)

Werner von Braun was not the head of the SS, that was Heinrich Himmler. However, von Braun was in charge of the V-2 project which used slave labor in Camp Dora to build the rockets. It is pretty much undeniable that von Braun had to know about the slave labor used in the camp (10,000's died, being worked to death). However, the US decided that von Braun's knowledge was too important to be "wasted" by having him executed after being put on trial. So, they snuck him away and put him to work building first out military rocket program, and then later our civilian space program. So, was von Braun a war criminal? Most likely. Was the US govt's circumvention of justice justified in the face of the gains we made over the Soviets and in our own space program? Dunno, that is what is up to debate. Of course, personally, that von Braun got off scott free (in fact, he was rewarded) when Admiral Karl Doenitz was convicted of war crimes (and sentenced to 10 years) for using unrestricted submarine warfare in violation of the Naval Protocol of 1936 (meanwhile, the US firebombs Dresden and Tokyo, both of which I think were justified under the tenets of total war, which both Japan and Germany were operating under as well) is pretty bogus, and this is coming from a Jew (just so you know that I am not really prone to defending WWII German officers). But that is just my opinion.

Here is a little blurb on it:

"When the American troops liberated Camp Dora they found 6000 corpses on the ground. It is estimated that about 20,000 people were worked to death out of Camp Dora building the V2 rockets. Werner von Braun is documented as being on site at the Mittelwerk at least 20 times, and being at meetings of V2 oversight personnel where the use of prisoners being worked to death was discussed and condoned, and the workers would sometimes attempt to sabotage the rockets by urinating a part or tampering with the rocket.

The typical response to that was that the entire work crew would be instantly hung in their work tunnel. He was also a member of the S.S. and there is correspondence on US Space Program stationery to a journalist where Werner von Braun admits he was an SS Officer. So he was a Nazi war criminal who couldn't be brought in through a normal kind of visa process..."

- http://www.karenlyster.com/mindb.html

Weaver95

I managed to make that statement without villifying half of the population or making any personal attacks against other farkers. Wow, what a concept.

So you can agree that this group are probably slightly extreme and detatched from any real mainstream political affiliations?

Well shiat I didn't know we were quoting movies.

Here's one..."thou shalt not kill"...The Ten Commandments, or is that in the constitution?

enave - Modern liberals are basically communists and FDR, Truman, and Kennedy would have nothing to do with them

That's moronic... Stop listening to Rush.

Same side, stretch, but this one example of asshattery does not have to be used an example of how political ideology on a more general basis can be slammed.

It's the asshattery on both sides that is causing all the hate and discontent amongst those who would usually be discussing things in a more productive manner.

We like to think we're so advanced and powerful.

But we keep being reduced to "our Air Force is better than yours" war.

The day we can force tyrants, dictators, and anybody else with a blatant disregard for life to drop their weapons is the day we will truely have an advanced weapon.

haplo53

Pardon me for bringing up history, again, enave, but wasn't FDR considered "liberal"? Didn't he get Congress to declare war on Japan the next day or so?

see my reply to wiggiebear above. If I can't call Lincoln a modern conservative then you can't call FDR a modern liberal.

You what to know what modern liberalism is? Look at the major media. Imagine how they would have reported Pearl Harbor

"Japan Responds to US Embargo with Raid on US Military Base"
"Warhawks in Congress call for escalation of US/Japan tensions"

Imagine the posts to democraticunderground.com (especially if a republican happened to be in office)

"The President sacrificed all those people at Pearl Harbor because he wants to go to war!"
"Someone should be looking at how much General Motors stock FDR has and asking questions about what he stands to gain from this war!"

I'm only partly joking. Liberals today would *not* support war on Japan. I'm sure of that.

Enave,

Do you really think modern democrats are like communists?

Examples?

Like I said before... Example...

We allie with another country and say "Hey, let's take over russia/asia/etc." And we attack them, And if they strike back we'd not be like "Oh that's fair, we hit them first" We'd be enraged, (Double standards are not your friend) Even if Japan did the first strike, of course people are going to be angry about their own people dying. Just like ANY nation would.

Farking idiots. Some of you are no better than the neo-nazi wannabes in the somethingawful racists forums article.

It was the first day of school and a new student, the son of a Japanese businessman, entered the fourth grade. The teacher greeted the class and said, 'Let's begin by reviewing some American history. Who said 'Give me Liberty, or give me death?'

She saw only a sea of blank faces, except for that of Toshiba, who had his hand up. 'Patrick Henry, 1775,' said the boy.

'Now,' said the teacher, 'Who said 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth?'

Again , no response except from Toshiba: 'Abraham Lincoln, 1863.'

The teacher snapped at the class, 'You should be ashamed. Toshiba, who is new to our country, knows more about it than you do.'

As she turned to write something on the blackboard, she heard a loud whisper: 'fark the Japanese.'

'Who said that?' she demanded.

The whole class: Harry S Truman, 1945

enave,
Are you talking about the same liberal media that embedded themselves in our military while we attacked Iraq.

enave
see my reply to wiggiebear above. If I can't call Lincoln a modern conservative then you can't call FDR a modern liberal.

That's why I wrote "wasn't" instead of "isn't." Though I think FDR is closer to being a modern liberal than Lincoln is to being any kind of conservative. Trying to end a centuries-old American institution seems to me to be the opposite of being conservative.

"Just as soon as you show me how you can condone the destruction of priceless historical artifacts. As I said, i'd throw the book at this woman were I the local prosecutor."

As I have said... for her this is not a historical artifact- at least not any more then she is. She has a direct relationship with this plane - something you clearly cannot understand. Incidently she didn't "destroy it" - she dented it. I agree. She should be charged, and in the end I hope she is let off by a judge who can understand the emotional trauma of being nuked. I'm sure that it is a very hard thing to go through when you are 13, and may cause lasting emotional damage.

"This woman is protesting an event that happened over 40 years ago."

Actually it was almost 60 years ago, but that hardly matters cuz she was there when it happened, so for her I'm sure it remains firmly in her mind even if you can dismiss it as part of history.

"We can't change it, it's over and done with and it was done for complex reasons that none of the protestors are addressing. The ENITRE excercise smacks of revisionist history....and attacking the plane that dropped the bomb is stupid, accomplishes nothing and didn't change past events."

No. It won't change anything, but it will demonstrate that for the people who's lives it destroyed it is not a symbol of freedom, or ingenuity, but simply of horrible loss. There is nothing revisionist about this situation - save for the fact that the Smithsonian wants to make not only the plane all nice and clean, but also its mission by leaving out the messy fact that it killed so many people.

"This woman was interested in doing something ONLY to make her sad, bitter life a bit brighter - and defending her is pathetic and sad."

Actually the only thing sad and pathetic is the fact that you can't for a second appreciate what it must have been like for her. You can only whine cuz the shiny airplane has a wee dent in the side. You consider this an "assault", but you don't consider the bombing - even under the circumstances of war - to be an assault. It is horribly sad that she felt that she needed to attack the plane, but to throw a woman in prison under these circumstances is repugnant.

Here's the thing. I think the bombs needed to be dropped. But I don't need to clean it up, and not think that what we did was still mass murder. I simply try to understand the circumstances, and accept them for what they are.


Okay... now you. Show me how this is "America Bashing".