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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

We were told by the Very Smart People we had to go into Vietnam, because otherwise Domino Theory assured that the Communists would take over the world. We lost Vietnam, and tens of thousands of lives, and nothing happened.

We were told by the Very Smart People that we had to invade Iraq, because otherwise the Islamists would consolidate control over the region. We invaded, and not only did we not prevent that outcome, we actually caused it.

I didn't even vote for Trump, but the one thing I'll side with him on is that I'm quite sick of being told that we have to take this or that self-destructive action for the sake of defeating the foreign-boogeyman-du-jour.

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I didn't really make any value judgements, simply described what's happening in the world.

>We were told by the Very Smart People we had to go into Vietnam, because otherwise Domino Theory assured that the Communists would take over the world. We lost Vietnam, and tens of thousands of lives, and nothing happened.

Please stop trying to dramatize reality. The truth is that withdrawing from a multilateral 'trade' deal has consequences, and those are worth analyzing.

>We were told by the Very Smart People that we had to invade Iraq, because otherwise the Islamists would consolidate control over the region. We invaded, and not only did we not prevent that outcome, we actually caused it.

I don't really understand what you're saying, to be honest - are you talking about the Iraq War, like the one that happened in '03? Do you think that's the reason that was cited, or the motivation of the administration?

>I didn't even vote for Trump, but the one thing I'll side with him on is that I'm quite sick of being told that we have to take this or that self-destructive action for the sake of defeating the foreign-boogeyman-du-jour.

Funnily enough, Trump gave up a great piece of leverage and instead needs to resort to threats ('China wont go into the north china sea', recognizing Taiwan). So the net result in the change in relations is much less effective and much riskier leverage.

> We were told by the Very Smart People that we had to invade Iraq, because otherwise the Islamists would consolidate control over the region. We invaded, and not only did we not prevent that outcome, we actually caused it.

This is incorrect. The primary justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein's regime had WMDs, and that his WMD programs were a growing threat to the region and the world. The majority of Americans thought that invading Iraq would increase the terror threat to the US.[1]

1. In a CBS/NYTimes poll, 62% of those polled said that if the US took military action vs. Iraq, the threat of terror would increase. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-talk-first-fight-later/

The fear of those polled was that Bin Laden's Al Qaeda would seek vengeance for an attack on Iraq. That's because the Bush administration successfully promoted the lie that Saddam was buddies with Bin Laden despite the fact that the latter publicly denounced the former for running a secular state and actively suppressing Islamist ambitions.

The Very Smart People said that invading Iraq was idiotic and would cause chaos throughout the Middle East. They were right.

The people advocating invasion did so on the basis that their WMD program represented a threat to the world. They were obviously full of crap to anyone paying attention at the time.

Nope, the plan to invade Iraq was created before 9/11 and information was faked to get us to go to war. No smart people told us we should go, it was only Bush, Cheney, etc. The smart people worldwide were pretty much all in agreement about what a bad idea it was.

> We invaded, and not only did we not prevent that outcome, we actually caused it.

Well yeah, who thinks you bring peace with war? There are ways we could have taken over Iraq peacefully, such as making it a protectorate and giving everyone health care (which would have been far cheaper than the war).

In fact, what you're saying is the second half of the traditional "We have to do something, and this is something, so we have to do this." fallacy. "Well, if bombing the the ungrateful fuckers didn't make them love us we're out of here."

No, you've got a lot of shit to fix before you get to quit.

As insane as it sounds, the brutality and extreme loss of life in the Battle of Okinawa was a deciding factor in dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to wikipedia, every male citizen over the age of 18 died over the course of the 82 day battle. Over 20,000 American soldiers died, and somewhere between 75,000-110,000 Japanese and Okinawan soldiers died.

The argument is that a land invasion would have resulted in far more than the 129,000 people killed by the two bombs.

The use of nuclear weapons wasn't expected to end the war; in fact even after Nagasaki the invasion of Kyushu was planned to be supported by at least seven such bombs, which were to be used to destroy beach defences and defenders. More were needed for the final jump to Tokyo.

Later it emerged that it was actually the Soviet delcaration of war on the 8th August that was the deciding factor for surrender; the Japanese had stocked around 10,000 aircraft in Manchuria which were now under threat and they couldn't fight a two-front war.

Yes, the two bombs ultimately saved untold thousands lives but that was more accidental than deliberate.

I've read about this theory as well. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were something like the 29th and 30th Japanese cities that had been completely leveled by bombings. Thus, the Japanese were not necessarily moved by more of what had been constantly occurring for quite some time.

Japanese leadership assumed they could negotiate with the Russians, and therefore still had an out. When this avenue was closed, the Japanese were forced to face the fact that they had lost.

It's somewhat ironic that the Russian army put forth the vast majority of effort and lives that defeated the Germans, yet it was America that reached Berlin first, resulting in Nazi surrender. This was reciprocated in the Pacific theater by the Americans expending the lions share of the effort and lives, yet it was the Russians that forced Japanese surrender.

Although, this is all theory by historians. It still stands to reason that in the moment, the Americans speculated that the use of nuclear weapons would end the war. After all, Truman issued an ultimatim that essentially spelled out what would and did happen if the Japanese did not surrender.

> yet it was America that reached Berlin first, resulting in Nazi surrender.

Um, no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin

I stand corrected. Thank you.

> Later it emerged that it was actually the Soviet delcaration of war on the 8th August that was the deciding factor for surrender

Emperor of Japan directly cited "a new powerful weapon" in a surrender address.

> the Japanese had stocked around 10,000 aircraft in Manchuria

Sources? Why Japan had to stock that number of aircraft so far away from the planned invasion points?

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