I didn't feel that the war in Iraq was ever justified and have
heard interesting evidence that suggests that Saddam could have
been taken out of power through peaceful, political/diplomatic
means.
Probably not by peaceful means, but probably by means short of full war with the US. Either way, Iraq would have been left an economic basket case after a great deal of internecine warfare. No way to guess which would be easier on the average Iraqi or how long either would/will take to reach a state of peace within Iraq.
I also read an interesting article last year that said the Japanese
were ready to surrender before the bomb was dropped but the US went
ahead because they had to justify the huge resources they had
devoted to its development and also wanted to demonstrate their
power by using it.
The problem with those "interesting articles" is that they purport to read the minds of people long dead, and then present that suppositon as though it was fact.
Nobody knows any of the things you mentioned as being fact. There is no documentation of "the Japanese were ready to surrender." There is some scant documentation that some Japanese official might have sent a communique to the Russians that some Japanese officials were seeking a peace accord. But there is no record of the communique itself, there is no record of who that Japanese official was, nor any record of who in the Japanese government would have supported it. There are records, however, that Tojo himself was nowhere near surrendering. So we don't know what was in the minds of the various Japanese officials, except for the one who expressed himself openly--Tojo.
We know a little bit more about what was in the minds of the Americans, having more documentation. There is no hint in that documentation that any American officials thought or "knew" the Japanese were ready to surrender. What we do find (in discussions about the Japanese mindset) are references to the battle for Okinawa and other islands in which it was made graphically clear that to the Japanese no form of surrender was an option.
We also know that the Japanese government was actively preparing the people of Honshu to perform the same actions that the Okinawans performed--to fight to the last woman and child, and to commit suicide. We have ample testimony from women and children from that time.
There is documentation of what the officials expected if the US executed an invasion of Honshu. For instance, one War Department report estimated 1,000,000 US casualties, and that the invasion would take until 1954 before completion--that report is something we know Truman had read.
. They are not the enemy; and whilst Saddam was a
dangerous dictator I don't believe he posed a threat in the West
(where are the WMD?) - the whole "war on terror" is a
contrivance... we're going to have a lot more to worry about than
terrorists in the not too distant future if we don't do anything
about the environment, as I believe a recent Pentagon report
demonstrates.
Surely you don't think the WHOLE war on terror is merely a "contrivance." While I agree that Iraq never had any "stockpiles' of WMD (in fact, the US intelligence agencies always denied having any evidence of WMD stockpiles), 9/11 was no contrivance.
That Pentagon report, by the way, did not make any confirmation of "worst case" environment scenarios, but was a planning "what if" document of the sort the Pentagon does by the hundreds. When you have staffs of people whose job is to do nothing but create plans, you get plans for every possible scenario. They mean nothing in terms of whether that outcome is more or less likely than another.
I think the US would have done much better to spend the billions
$$$ they've spent on war on aid to 3rd world countries.
The US would have done better to follow President Carter's lead in 1977 to consider energy self-reliance "the moral equivalent of war," and get away from needing foreign sources of energy. It would be nice to consider events in the Middle East without having to consider the US dependency on the region. However, it would also be necessary for Europe and Japan to follow suit with energy independence.
Certainly the money now being spent on maintaining the status quo in the Middle East since 1977 would have gone along way toward energy independence.
And to those who have suggested that torture is an acceptable means
of getting information out of people I'd suggest that you are
simply condoning the enemy's use of torture.
If you will note, you don't hear the military suggesting torture. One of the benefits of adhering to the Law of Armed Conflict is that it prevents a soldier from falling to the depths of brutality that war would otherwise drag him to--it gives him a floor at which he can later say, "I did not become an animal--there were societal rules of behavior that I always obeyed."
Also they also provide a floor of confidence on which to build a peace treaty at some future time. If the enemy must acknowledge that we have laways obeyed certain minimum rules of civility even in the heat of war, he has reason to have confidence that we will adhere to the requirements of a peace treaty. But if the barbarity of the war reaches the depths of "give no quarter, take no quarter," then there is no reason for confidence in a peace--peace will become impossible.
--
RDKirk
'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'
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