US needs to beef up its Air Force. Thoughts?

[walrus]

Not my argument, but I don't think walrus is defending Vietnam, nor has anyone on this thread as far as I can tell. Personally I think it was a huge waste of time, resources, and human lives. It's the soldiers that went over there I mostly feel sorry for. Most of them were drafted, and were teenagers or just past teenage stage. The party line on the war was to keep Communism from spreading to South Vietnam. Flimsy excuse... the U.S. should've left well enough alone. One of those wars that stick out as not having a legitimate purpose. It also dragged and dragged and dragged. Finally the U.S. ended up withdrawing and you're right..... nothing was gained. A lot of deaths for nothing.

Your real point of contention is with the nukes dropped in Japan. I see both your points on that one, but if pushed I would probably side with Miles. The argument that a conventional war would've been drawn out and bloody is a good argument, but still fails to fully consider all possible scenarios. And why Japan and not Germany? 'Cause Germany is surrounded by other European countries? That would be a weak argument. Why didn't the U.S. just fly over and drop a big Fat Man on Germany to make the Nazis surrender quicker and avoid more life losses? I don't know...... the whole Atomic Bomb thing is just a bit much for me. Two entire cities incinerated. I think the U.S. was capable of a huge push against Japan that would've eventually defeated them. At the very least, why was Nagasaki bombed? I've read up on it and seen a lot of BS answers, but none of them seem to justify that second act of carnage. Don't get me wrong, I know the U.S. had to go to war with Japan after Pearl Harbor. I just have to ask whether it was really necessary to obliterate two cities.

it is difficult for us to grasp. It was a world war in the 40’s and we are trying to judge it with today’s eyes. I’ve said it before here, no one hates war more than those who have actually been through it. There is no such thing as a good war, maybe in some cases good reasons for it but never is war good. You could call what happened in Germany even after the surrender genocide. The allies wanted to punish them and 100,000’s died of starvation as they continued to be punished. Bad shit all around

You got a good point there and none of us here can speak about that from personal experience (I think no one here is THAT old). But c'mon, just like we can say now that segregation was bad in the 50's and 60's, we can also say the dropping of nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities was bad also. Back in the 50's and 60's, different water fountains for whites and blacks was probably a normal, accepted thing. Nowadays it would be looked at with indignation and disbelief. Maybe in the framework of the 40's, dropping atomic bombs on Japan was a good thing due to the "reducing casualties in the end" argument. But looked at now, a counter argument can certainly be made. But still, that 2nd bomb.........

I’m not sticking for the second bomb nor the first. It’s just people say it like we did it out of the blue. I’m not directing that at u tits just a general observation.