Having read several books on the use of the bomb, what went on in the Japanese government at that time, and the end of the war in the Pacific, I'm pretty multi-layered on this subject. I only hope everyone else is as open, rather than having made up their minds that all other opinions must be wrong because of some national myopia.

Having been built in the U.S., the Norden must be the best.:-P

binky9

well it surely didn't help calming things down. We know that historically an embargo is a declaration of war in disguise (2012 will probably be the year of Iran). I wonder if the average American ever wonders how comes that every single generation after the Secession War has been involved at least in one conflict, and all of them outside their territory.. isn't it a bit weird?

ah believe me, us Europeans have a well structured multi-layered view of the thing, we were all at the receiving end of the Norden bombsights here, or the Lofte or the others..

I have American friends and I'm happy they're all fellows that believe and stand for the same values that we have here, but sometimes one wonders whether we've pushed things too far with this idea of "exporting democracy by means of suppressive fire". The expression "Economy of war" springs to mind more and more often unfortunately :(

For me, the problem with exporting democracy is we shouldn't. We should allow other countries make up their own minds, and give them whatever help they ask for. In Iraq, I think we did a great job of winning the war, and completely f'ed up the peace. We need a government organization that handles everything other than war. A Sys Admin group.

binky9

I agree, and I think it's an issue that travels on two parallel lines: one is that what we perceive as "helping others" is seen as arrogance by others, and maybe we should just stop pretending we care about certain countries and come clean ("hey, we don't care about your living conditions, all we want is your oil/territory/get rid of your leader"). The second issue is that since WW2 the US economy has become so strongly bonded to military industry that you need to make use of the stuff you produce, there's no other way to keep your economy running: 1 trillion dollars for the Iraq war.... one.trillion.dollars.