Would you have used the atom bomb on Japan in WWII if you were Prez?

I'm confused here. Are you trying to say that the Japanese were ready to just surrender before the US decided to invade the mainland and/or drop the bombs?

Where is the evidence of this? Everything I've read has pointed to the Japanese arming the populace to fight to the death to repel the US invasion of their homeland...I haven't read anything about them being ready to surrender . Source?

 

For one we haven't really had a reason to since then. And two those bombs were dropped in an era where we were the only ones who had them meaning somebody who had a problem with it couldn't nuke us back. And three nuking people is kind of messed up and we sort of agreed that we wouldn't do it again unless it was a last resort and absolutely necessary.

Vietnam was fought as a proxy war against the USSR. The USSR had nukes. Nuking Hanoi would have likely resulted in the Russians nuking Saigon or something thus starting a chain reaction that we did not want. Same thing with the Korean war.

After that we only had smaller conflicts then we had Desert Storm where we didn't need to nuke Baghdad because our military was so much more powerful than Iraq's that it was unnecessary as our conventional forces rolled right through them in a matter of weeks. The bombing campaign alone made the majority of Saddam's forces surrender on the spot once our ground forces came in.

As far as terrorism goes nuking them wouldn't work anyway. They aren't a centralized fighting force with a single leader who can surrender and make them all lay down their arms. So launching a nuke at Aleppo or something wouldn't work.

If tonight China attacked the US Pearl Harbor style and started a conventional war and America was the only nation on Earth with nuclear warheads then Beijing and Shanghai would probably be getting flattened in the morning if military intelligence said that would make them surrender at dust.

So to answer your question, the main thing that keeps nations from lobbing nukes is the fact that nobody wants nukes lobbed back at them. If only one nation on the planet had nukes then a whole lot more people would probably be getting nuked because there wouldn't be much anybody could really do about it. Military commanders all over the world all favor bombing the living crap out of you over sending in a ground invasion. It's safer for their own forces that way, less people on their side have to die to win the war.

 

No because as I said nuking terrorists doesn't work. They are not a unified centralized military with a single government and/or leader who can surrender. If we nuked Aleppo tomorrow that wouldn't make ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, etc all just say "Oh (*)(*)(*)(*)! They're nuking us, everybody law down your arms and quit!" All it would do is upset the majority of the entire planet and make even our most faithful allies likely turn their back on us.

Now granted if it would actually work and it would make all terrorists universally surrender then we'd probably consider doing it. But it wouldn't work, at all, it would have the opposite effect because sure we'd kill a bunch of ISIS guys in Syria then turn around and create about 50 million more terrorists and have every civilized nation on Earth pissed off at us for launching nukes at people.

 

Yeah that's kind of a hot debate going on right now....but that's a different topic. Needless to say, a lot of folks are starting to agree with that sentiment...

And yes we fought Vietnam and Korea, to try to stop the spread of communism because our main enemy at the time was a pretty large super power called the Soviet Union who was roughly as powerful as we were and we didn't want them spreading their influence and gaining more support.

The Soviets were loading up the Vietcong with Soviet weapons to fight the South Vietnamese and take over Vietnam and "unify" the nation under the banner of Soviet communism. We didn't want that, so in turn we loaded up the South Vietnamese with weapons and decided to fight along side them to hopefully prevent the North from doing that. It didn't work.

In laments terms, you don't want to nuke a country whose big brother is the other most powerful nation on the planet who has nukes pointed back at you. Not the best idea. We teetered on the brink of nuclear war for decades. If either the US or the USSR ever used nukes then it would very likely have resulted in retaliation from the other side. Just like if the USSR would have decided to just launch a nuke at Saigon to "unify" Vietnam then the US would very well have likely launched one at Hanoi to stop it.