Reply #93: I finally agree with you - halfway

[Gringo]

Though I disagree with your feeble rationalization of the bombings, I do agree that MacArthur's handling of the occupation and the postwar rebuilding were fantastic. I say MacArthur, because he was well known for being at odds with the idiots in Washington. I think of him as a great American hero, and the Marshall Plan and rebuilding of Japan, along with the New Deal, are 3 of the reasons I'm most proud to be an American. It's sad that those kind of accomplishments are so few and far-between today. I wish we were were handling Afghanistan & Iraq half as well as we handled Europe and Japan.

"Sorry, America had been at war for four years, Britain for a lot longer than that. China and the rest of Asia the same. How long does one wait for a rabid enemy to stop fighting?"

This makes no sense. We were at their doorstep, we had taken Okinawa and they were crippled. We should have made strong overtures to get a surrender. If you find the use of that crap okay then, then I suppose you find it acceptable today? Things continue to go badly in Iraq, what the hell, move our guys out and nuke Baghdad? Hell, it would save countless American lives, right? Oh sure, the occupation force would be awfully hot in those radiation suits, but it would be worth it, right? Hell, we could have kept the illegitimate and widely hated Saigon regime in power in 'Nam, if we'd just leveled Hanoi, and we wouldn't have pissed away 50K lives there for nothing, either. We lost a half million in the civil war. Too bad we didn't have the bomb back then. Oh, then there's Indonesia. They've slaughtered hundreds of thousands of E. Timorese over the last 30 years, by your logic we should have leveled Jakarta, too.