Focus on the Family - Tim Tebow

No soldier/sailor/marine/airman truly enjoys what they do in war.
At least not the normal ones.
I admit there were some who worried me during the Gulf, but I thought a lot was all talk. Until a couple situations arose.

Even then war hurts the mind, justifiable or not. It does something to people and robs them of something inside once they've taken part.
What replaces it is something sick and sad.

Thor wrote: jeroboam wrote: The crew on the Enola Gay could see people working in their gardens below.   Whether or not the bombings were justifiable, I'd hate to have been the pilots/crew who dropped those bombs.  I'm not sure I could live with myself.  Oh well, moot point.

PaWolf wrote: jeroboam wrote: No soldier/sailor/marine/airman truly enjoys what they do in war... I consider that 'proper human nature'. My Father WILL NOT discuss his *many* different tours (from WWII to IRAQ). MY Son WILL NOT discuss AfgyLand. My Daughter WILL NOT discuss the 'Border Drug War'. MissyDWolf considers MANY subjects 'TABOO'. I just don't see the need, nor benefit to any living human, to discuss what I experienced. I firmly believe - and I have to - what happened was 'correct and rightous'; we can 'steer' others.

It is nice to know people who get that.
I don't even share that I was in the service much to people in person because then questions arise.
Though I had a friend in the coast guard and he and I would talk a lot. It was cathartic.
Thing is he sounds similar to your daughter. He did stuff in Florida. Scary stuff. Pirates, bandits, drug runners.
First time I ever heard of human trafficking was from him.

For the most part, as I have mentioned on here once before, my time in the gulf war was a lot of class room time and sitting in a barracks watching the war on CNN but eventually sh*t goes down no matter what they tell you they have planned for you.

I've wondered if we could've dropped the bomb on an unpopulated Japanese island, as a warning and as a demonstration of what could happen unless Japan surrendered unconditionally.  Thing is, I guess that could've backfired.  The Japanese were relentless.  Plus, "warnings" seems more a Cold War era idea. 

Tiz wrote:   IMO, I don't think dropping one off the coast of Japan as a scare tactic would've worked. One, nukes weren't that easy to manufacture back then. If they still did nothing, now our troops would have to navigate around that radioactive area for the invasion. Japan did get 6 days notice(warning) before Nagasaki was bombed.

Well, I guess they did, at that.  And even after Nagasaki, surrender still didn't happen immediately. 

Tiz wrote: That brings up a question. What if  the USS Indianapolis had been torpedoed & sunk before delivering her cargo of a nuclear bomb and not afterwards. Wonder if the explosion or fire would've set off the bomb.

jeroboam wrote: The whole "warning" aspect of WWII was rampant. It was a concurrent arms race as well as an all out war. Japanese, Germans and Russians all were in this rush to get the bomb. Germans were looking in the wrong direction and they were by this time devoting their trust to an eroding dictator and the the Russians were focusing more on man  power building up levels on border countries. Japan I guess was closer than many to the bomb and as Thor mentioned, were relentless. This is an ironic thing my great uncle stan admires about the Japanese. Aside from the horrors they caused he has more tolerance for his memory of them than he does Germans. I guess to this day he has a slight prejudice against Germans as he feels they were cowards and thugs. He felt the Japanese had their best interest in their intentions (albeit atrocious at times) He still didn't hesitate in shooting them out of the air.

 

Tiz wrote: jeroboam wrote: The whole "warning" aspect of WWII was rampant. It was a concurrent arms race as well as an all out war. Japanese, Germans and Russians all were in this rush to get the bomb. Germans were looking in the wrong direction and they were by this time devoting their trust to an eroding dictator and the the Russians were focusing more on man  power building up levels on border countries. Japan I guess was closer than many to the bomb and as Thor mentioned, were relentless. This is an ironic thing my great uncle stan admires about the Japanese. Aside from the horrors they caused he has more tolerance for his memory of them than he does Germans. I guess to this day he has a slight prejudice against Germans as he feels they were cowards and thugs. He felt the Japanese had their best interest in their intentions (albeit atrocious at times) He still didn't hesitate in shooting them out of the air.   I never knew that Jero........ the Japanese were closer to developing the bomb. I didn't think they were even in the race. Seems that if they knew that much about it, they would have known about it's enormous power and have given up after Hiroshima. But their country had never been conquered before and they were given an unconditional surrender. For the Japanese, surrender was the lowest a man could get. That's what they thought about the Brits in Singapore & the US in the Philipines when they surrendered.   The Germans as cowards. The SS somewhat more than the Regular German army. The SS knew, if captured by the Russians they wouldn't live long. The "higher-ups" in office knew this too and tried to flee to the Americans. What did your great uncle do, Jero? If I may ask.

Well, don't hold my data as gospel. There is chance I am in error. I am just gleaning from mindless hours of History channel junk (pre reality show History Channel) and casual readings and some mil history I had to sit in on.

I just remember hearing that EVERYBODY wanted in on this new bomb idea.
The Japanese I guess even was wanting to make "ghost bombs" where they wanted to harness spirits to haunt the enemy areas.

yeah.




My great uncle, Stan Newman was on the USS Fletcher, basically "fletcher class" is named for that ship. It was a Destroyer.
He was known as a tin can sailor mainly because they had to go so fast the hulls of the ships were very thin, like an 1/8 inch thick single wall.
He said at night one could feel the wall push in against them from the water on the other side as they bunked.

He was a gunner, in fact his "boot camp" was he walked in, joined and they put him on a bus down to California.
They then asked him what he did for a living and he said he was a mill wright.
They then took him to a 20 mm gun and said, "take this apart and put it back before lunch"
He did and they said that was his gun.


He did Guadal canal and some stuff off the Philippines and Guam and Borneo.

He is approaching 90 and he still makes it to the Fletcher and Tin Can sailor reunions every year. He and my aunt are very active and healthy. It is fun to be around him.

I have my grandfather's dogtag.
One of my aunts took the other one. Which made me quite cross, as I found them first.
Along with some old scary looking antibiotics.

FaithSF wrote: Yeah, you're right.  Although Planned Parenthood didn't have the money to run an ad during the Superbowl. This is the second time I can think of that CBS (not sure if it was the Superbowl) refused ads of a more liberal bent.

Shh. Don't ruin the comforting myth of "the liberal media." We all "know" how liberal most billionare media owners and their multinational corporations are.