Afganistan Collapse

HGCC

Well-Known Member
Will see if I can track something legit down, but I don't know if that can be proven. We can't know what would have happened and doubtful we would ever get real insight into the situation from either side. Japan fought fiercely, but they had to see they couldn't beat the US and Russia. Their allies were gone, it was clear they wouldn't win. Japan might have fought to the death, it seems crazy that a whole country would go that way.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-calls-deadly-kabul-strike-an-error-25e2b83a9a0ae9a95d1aac71fe5f4ca7Screen Shot 2021-09-17 at 3.23.49 PM.png
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon retreated from its defense of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing Friday that an internal review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believed.

“The strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference.

For days after the Aug. 29 strike, Pentagon officials asserted that it had been conducted correctly, despite numerous civilians being killed, including children. News organizations later raised doubts about that version of events, reporting that the driver of the targeted vehicle was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and citing an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

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McKenzie said the vehicle was struck “in the earnest belief” that the targeted vehicle posed an imminent threat.

“I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike,” McKenzie said. “Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K, or a direct threat to U.S. forces,” he added, referring to the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.
 

CunningCanuk

Well-Known Member
Will see if I can track something legit down, but I don't know if that can be proven. We can't know what would have happened and doubtful we would ever get real insight into the situation from either side. Japan fought fiercely, but they had to see they couldn't beat the US and Russia. Their allies were gone, it was clear they wouldn't win. Japan might have fought to the death, it seems crazy that a whole country would go that way.
This sounds like a lot of feels to me, sorry. Everything I’ve read indicates they were going to fight to the last man. The advent of Kamikaze bombers illustrates this.

Why would the Japanese people fight like that in the face of eminent defeat? Because the Emperor told them to.
 

HGCC

Well-Known Member
Couldn't tell ya. I wouldn't fight. Found this thing from the Atlantic, idk, it's interesting.

 

CatHedral

Well-Known Member
This sounds like a lot of feels to me, sorry. Everything I’ve read indicates they were going to fight to the last man. The advent of Kamikaze bombers illustrates this.

Why would the Japanese people fight like that in the face of eminent defeat? Because the Emperor told them to.
In the last months of the war, 28 million men and women were conscripted into the Volunteer Fighting Units. They received rudimentary training and equipment, including sharpened bamboo poles. They were also indoctrinated in “special fighting spirit”, a sort of terminal ferocity.

I find the idea that Japan would surrender without either the nukes or an invasion to be silly. The nukes made the desperation militia, and our likely brutal collision with them, unnecessary.

We needed the second nuke. There were plans iirc in case we needed more. By that time Hanford had the ability to turn out a bomb’s worth of plutonium every week. We did not need to invoke that “emergency capacity”.
 

CatHedral

Well-Known Member
Couldn't tell ya. I wouldn't fight. Found this thing from the Atlantic, idk, it's interesting.

I am glad LeMay did not need to test his concept. Killing millions using conventional area bombing is still killing millions.
 

CunningCanuk

Well-Known Member
I’m ambivalent. On the one hand he ran a very tight ship at SAC.
On the other, he was America’s righteous purveyor of megadeath. I am grateful we did not need to see what he would do when seriously challenged.
I was referring to his tenure on the joint chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crises.
 

CunningCanuk

Well-Known Member
A gap in my studies. Got a handy link?
This will give you some idea but any comprehensive examination of the crisis should cover it.

LeMay pushed some crazy shit and it actually rattled Kennedy.
 

schuylaar

Well-Known Member
This will give you some idea but any comprehensive examination of the crisis should cover it.

LeMay pushed some crazy shit and it actually rattled Kennedy.
he has that same Trump way of sitting kind of hunched over and on the toilet.
 
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