Being an accessory to murder as often as Anwar al-Awlaki was would earn you enough 20 year sentences to fill a hundred lifetimes. The man got what he deserved. Yes, the legal precedent that the Whitehouse set is a bit unsettling, but you can't argue that al-Awlaki didn't get what he deserved.

Yes, some of these quotes are evidence that hindsight is 20/20, but that still counters your claims in your previous post that the Japanese would have continued to fight on. And then there are the quotes like these:

When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb.

That's right, MacArthur said that if he was asked his opinion at that time he would not have seen a reason to use the bomb.

the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary

In this one Eisenhower said that he thought the dropping of the bomb was completely unnecessary as soon as he heard the news.

While the Emperor's safety and symbolic position was permitted to continue after occupation it was done so **after** an investigation into whether the Emperor was responsible for war crimes. We could not have determined the Emperor's status with respect to being a war criminal until after boots on the ground, i.e. after surrender.

The actual instrument of surrender said nothing about an investigation into war crimes. In fact, there was no mention of crimes at all. Regarding the Emperor, it said

We hereby undertake for the Emperor, the Japanese Government, and their successors to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration in good faith, and to issue whatever orders and take whatever action may be required by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers or by any other designated representative of the Allied Powers for the purpose of giving effect to that declaration.

There was also a tacit agreement along with the final surrender that the Emperor would not under any circumstances be investigated for war crimes:
http://www.pacificwar.org.au/J...
http://www.japanfocus.org/-her...

Your reference suggests no such thing, unless you are making a very strange interpretation of Halsey's flippant comment about scientists and their toys. While the value of deterring possible Russian aggression was a consideration it was secondary, and as history shows not necessarily an unfounded fear.

No, this reference does not suggest it, but it is widely known that Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing so that if it was attacked with a nuclear device, it would be easier to analyze the effects. Since several generals from the previous source said was of limited strategic value, this seems to be the only reason for the bombing Hiroshima over a more militarily significant target, or (if demoralizing the Japanese was the only objective) an unpopulated area.

You've gone from strange interpretations to just plain making up nonsense. In the future you may want to restate your irrational belief that Truman considered them experimental subjects into perhaps something like Truman wanted revenge.

I'll admit that this part was my own rant, but thanks for stuffing words into my mouth. I made no claims about Truman. But it is well established that the average American of the 1940s viewed the Japanese as subhuman, and odds are that many of the people involved with atomic bomb policy held such views. There is no direct evidence that this factored into the decision to bomb Hiroshima, but I suspect that it was a contributing factor. I don't think revenge was a factor.

Classic. Shift the blame on the country that got bombed. I'm sorry, but there are no circumstances in which the intentional killing of tens of thousands of civilians is justified. In this case, a simple show of force would have sufficed. Drop the bomb in a rural area or off the coast of Japan, far enough from urban centers to prevent damage, but close enough that it can be observed. Then spread reels of the event.

This is completely false. As for why Japan didn't initiate dialogue with the US immediately after Hiroshima, don't forget that the US bombed Nagasaki only three days later. They simply didn't have enough time between the two to formulate a response, especially since they had to deal with the Soviet invasion that began within that interval.

Read this page: The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan

General Eisenhower, Admiral Leahy, General MacArthur, General LeMay, and several other high ranking US officers said that the dropping of the US bomb was completely unnecessary. If the US simply allowed the institution of the emperor to stand (which we ended up doing in the end anyway), the Japanese would have agreed to surrender far before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Perhaps even before Okinawa. There were two main reasons for dropping the bomb: 1.) To gather data on how to maximize the damage that a nuclear weapon could cause on an urban environment. This would be useful in a hypothetical future war with the USSR. 2.) Racism. Many Americans of the time saw the Japanese as subhuman. We use lab rats in experiments. Why not Japanese?

Also, read this: The REAL Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan

Several members of US command, including Eisenhower said that dropping the bombs was not necessary for a surrender, contrary to your well-documented evidence. Historical revisionism is a real thing. Even in the US.

They could have achieved the same effect by dropping a bomb off the shore from Tokyo. Close enough that the extreme power of the weapon would be clearly evident to any Japanese observers, but far enough that the blast would not kill a single civilian. Let alone tens of thousands. But several US generals were afraid that the US would never again have the chance to see the effects of an atomic weapon on an urban area (something that could be vital in planning the use of nuclear weapons in a future war), so the decision was made to drop the bombs on major cities. This too is well documented.

I agree that it would be best if Japan removed those items from the shrine, but let's not be so quick to judge other nations. Jacob H. Smith, an American officer who ordered his troops to kill "everyone over ten" in a Filipino village is buried at Arlington. Where are the protests over that? David Cameron refused to apologize for the Amritsar massacre in India, and many modern British historians claim that the actions of the British commanding officer at the scene was justified because there was a danger of a riot. (Even though Winston Churchill admitted at the time that "the crowd was neither armed nor attacking.") Where are the protests over that? Chinese textbooks don't mention the Tungchow Mutiny, where Chinese soldiers in Japanese service defected and proceeded to slaughter and gang rape hundreds of Japanese civilians. Where are the protests over that? Don't be so quick to point fingers.

Why is this modded +4 insightful? Even though the Chinese government is a bigger fan of Realpolitik than most other nations and, they are also big fans of minimal risk.

While China would win a prolonged war with Japan, Japan is no pushover. It's an industrial powerhouse on a fairly defensible set of islands. Any full-scale conventional war against Japan would lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties at least. And while Japan is unlikely to use nuclear weapons over something as trivial as the Senkaku islands, they probably would not hesitate to use everything at their disposal if the home islands where ever in immediate danger.

The generation of Mao might have been willing to give their lives en-mass in Korea in the name of communism and for "Chinese values", but the modern Chinese population are not a rural stock who want to see land reform and the death of the bourgeois. They are increasingly middle-class families who want to be able to buy the latest American iPhones and European designer handbags. The modern Chinese people are much less receptive to the idea of giving their lives for the Party, and the modern CPC leadership is accordingly risk averse. They are opportunists who aren't afraid to unleash the military when they see low hanging fruit (as Mao did in Tibet in the 1950s and India in the 1960s), but they are also realists who also do not want to see a long, drawn out war (much less a retaliatory nuclear strike) in the name of empty ideals. The modern CPC is all for posturing as they have done recently in the Senkaku Islands and Arunchal Pradesh, but not so big on the actual fighting.

Yeah, in retrospect, I think I should have mentioned that there were other factors. The US was already a very large economy by 1900, mostly due to rapid population growth, absurdly cheap land, and a wealth of unexploited natural resources. (But not because of American Exceptionalism. That is a myth that needs to die.) My post mainly explains how the US beat out the other economic powerhouses of the pre-war world: the UK, France, Japan, and especially Germany. If it wasn't for the world wars, these nations would still be superpowers.

Those are terrible counterexamples, because US investments in Europe, South Korea and Japan easily payed themselves back a thousand fold. The cold war was really a form of modern mercantilism. Whereas 18th century mercantilist empires took raw materials from their dependent nations and sent back manufactured goods, 20th century mercantilists (the US, and to a lesser extent the USSR) built silos abroad and sold arms and bonds to their dependent nations. In return the US got enormous shares of stock in companies like Renault, Dassault, Volkswagen, Daimler, Samsung, and Nippon, sources of cheap manufactured goods, and Iranian oil (Saudi oil after the Shah was overthrown).

We Americans like to pretend that we have the largest economy in the world because our parents and grandparents were harder working, more intelligent, and more creative than foreigners. The reality is that we are on top because we were the only nation to come out of the second world war unscathed (thanks you, Atlantic Ocean), and we used that position to take advantage of everyone else.

Winning wars = winning money. Fighting 13+ year unwinnable wars = losing money, but that is a separate issue.

Domain names aren't easier to remember because they are a higher base. Domain names are easier to remember because they are based on words, which have meanings. Arbitrary strings of number and characters are not.

Quick, memorize these two things:

myfavoritecolorisorange32.com
3864278593974241

Which one was easier? Probably the first one, even though it is longer than the second string and draws from a larger character set than the second string.

This is the second time Docker has appeared on Slashdot and, as before, nobody knows what it is. Is this news for nerds or a sales pitch?

You still pay those when you use cash because the agreement between the credit card company and the merchant forbids the merchant from offering a lower price when goods are purchased with cash.

As others have already said, it's not the cardholder that takes the loss when fraud occurs. It's the merchant. Sucks for them, of course, but certainly not for the cardholder. So I'm not sure why you're still rambling on about the safety of cash. If a thug steals your wallet full of cash, it's gone for ever. Not so if they steal your wallet full of credit cards.

Why in the world would you want to check your email, etc. if you're in the middle of watching a movie? No, I completely agree with Alamo Drafthouse from this one. There are really no good reasons to want to use Google glass in the theater other than discreet piracy. And it's not like you're completely banned from bringing the glasses into the building. You just have to put them away before the movie starts, and if something urgent came up and you needed to use your glasses, you could step out into the lobby and take care of it there.

Back in 1776, the most sophisticated military weapon available was a cannon. Yes, in 1776, an individual with enough money could purchase his or her own cannon. But without a team of draft horses, it was impossible to move it around at any reasonable place. Without well-trained a fire team of a half dozen to a dozen individuals, it was impossible reload at any reasonable place. Or even to hit a target of any kind.

Compare this to a modern semi-automatic pistol. Pistols aren't anything near the most sophisticated weapons available, but compared to cannons, pistols are much cheaper (with a middle class income, you could purchase dozens if you wanted to), more portable, easier to conceal, easier to use (bare minimum of training required, no teams of support staff), more accurate, have a higher rate of fire. A single man with one or two pistols could easily kill 20+ people in a crowded building. A single man with a cannon would be lucky if he even managed to push it within shooting range of the building.

Apples and oranges, my friend.

You can repeat that as much as you like, but simply saying things doesn't make them true. Show me the facts.