Would you wear a CND badge?

Chaos-Engine

I don't like war. I almost dayly wear my CND badge.
Nukes are bad and so is war.
Perhaps some nutter out there wears an ANTI-CND badge... lol

Gordon

I wish that there were no nuclear bombs on this planet but I hate wearing badges these days similarly to the fact that I hate wearing labels on my clothes.

No.

/edit Just because I am pro-nuclear disarmament does not mean I am anti war. I wish that war could not exist but I also wish that people should be able to walk out of their houses freely without some bugger coming up to them and kicking the tit out of them.

Chaos-Engine

Put it this way gordon. Alot of people my age don't really know what it means. they think its about the 60s and Nam... When they ask why i wear such a thing they get educated about its real meaning and then feel that it is something that they have forgotten about. The fact that there are just as many nukes now as there was in 1974...

I'm not trying to be cool or non-cool or anything. Its just like an aids day ribben or the likes. Its about making people aware

Gordon

I understand, CND is a very catchy phrase and symbol but most people think that it stands for "Peace" when it stands for "Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament". It's cool that you do that and it is cool that people wear it I must admit , I for one don't tend to wear any badges or signs these days (though in my 'youth' I plastered the cnd logo everywhere I could).

Interesting note for you by the way. I saw a TV program where they had the flagship nuclear submarine of the US navy and they said that this one sub had more explosives on it than all of the bombs used in the first world war!

I'm all for nuclear disarmament and wish that the US would ditch its nukes as much as Iraq (if indeed Iraq has any).

For you Chaos - if you decide to have a CND badge day I will deffo wear one.

PH01

No, nukes are good as long as they're in the hands of the right people.

Though the fact that a lot of former Soviet states, Pakistan, India and North Korea have them and they look loke they're willing to use them is a scary prospect.

daveirl

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sceptre

Originally posted by PH01
No, nukes are good as long as they're in the hands of the right people.

Ah, the old deterrant justification.

The corollary is that if no-one has them, no-one needs them.


(though I'll agree that it's better to have both sides of a cold war with them rather than just one side. We don't have two opposing sides any more though - a gaggle of idiots in Asia and South America is hardly an opposing side (and then there's Israel, just handed the stuff on a platter))

Typedef

Originally posted by PH01
Though the fact that a lot of former Soviet states, Pakistan, India and North Korea have them and they look loke they're willing to use them is a scary prospect.

The only State that has shown itself willing to use Nuclear Weapons is the United State of America, though I'm sure somehow the incineration of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians is somehow a justifiable act in the minds of people who rant about who is (fit) to have Nuclear Weapons, because hey, it was the benevolant Americans who droped the bomb and being America it 'has' to be right, that's how mass murder via Atomic explosion when it's perpetrated by the good old US of A is ok.

/Thanks for calling.

Yes I'd wear a badge to campaign for Nuclear disarmament.

JustHalf

World War II had to end. With the information the Americans had at the time, there were two ways of doing this: nukes or a full on land invasion.

The latter would have caused approximately one million deaths, far more than the attacks at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And I doubt that America knew at the time just how bad nukes were. Sure they were still setting them off in the 50's right next to their own troops for combat training.

Typedef

See that's just a justification for use of Nucelar weapons, ostensibly because it was the Americans who did it and the Americans are thought to be infallable.

Thus the logic is only the Americans have sufficient judgement to use Nuclear Weapons? I think not. It showed a serious lack of judgement to incinerate tens of thousands of civilians with Nuclear Weapons. A military target should have been chosen, the point would have been conveyed and the war still won.

The use of Nuclear Weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a message to the Soviet Union and to the world that proved America posessed Nuclear Weapons and was fully prepaired to use them, also the Americans got to evaluate how their new toy the Atomic bomb would fair up against a city. That piece of experimentation certainly paid off.

Somehow I honestly don't buy, that 'somehow' having two Nuclear Weapons dropped on Japan was in the Japanese best interests, now call me a leftist whinger for that if you like, but the reality is the Americans could and should have picked a soley military target if frightening the Japanese into submission was the idea. It makes it easy for Westerns to rationalise the useage of Nuclear Weapons by our benevolant, vaunted iconic masters the Americans to say that a 'full scale invasion was the only alternative', but the fact is that the alternative to deploying a Nuclear Weapon against a military target only was never debated or considered desireable by the Americans. If the target had been simply military, it wouldn't have sent out the same message to the Soviets and future generations of opponents that the Americans desired. Namely that America posessed a devestating weapon of mass destruction and was ready to use this terrible weapon against civilians to expadite American victory in war.

Forget about it though, I'm sure as soon as you are finished eating that cookie you'll feel fine.

Theres equal merit in both arguments above.
Somebody had to create the weapon first and then use it.
Luckilly that was the U.S and not Hitler.
Unluckily for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it's been nearly 60 years and sensible nations haven't used those weapons.
That sensibility might be lacking in Bagdad or North Korea though.

It did send a painfull message to the whole world and especially the U.S.S.R that these weapons would end civilisation.
I suppose the old addage applies,the man who never made a mistake, never made anything.They could have and should have got the message across in a less populated area.

Proliferation of these weapons means a greater chance that they are controled by those that have no understanding of that mistake.
mm

ozt9vdujny3srf

no need to wear cnd badge in ireland, our nation is completely anti-nuke any ways,

#this may be off the point slightly but i would also like to point out that we are definitely not neutral

ozt9vdujny3srf

Originally posted by Typedef
now call me a leftist whinger for that if you like, .[/i]

Bloody Pinko

mike65

Originally posted by sceptre
Ah, the old deterrant justification.

The corollary is that if no-one has them, no-one needs them.

We don't have two opposing sides any more though - a gaggle of idiots in Asia and South America is hardly an opposing side

er a gaggle of idiots could still blow us to Kingdom Come. I don't know if these idiots would take notice of a deterrent though.

Mike.

bonkey

Originally posted by PH01
No, nukes are good as long as they're in the hands of the right people.

The right people being nations who can democratically elect a madman, as opposed to nations where a madman can become leader through despotism?

Yeah...that makes me feel a lot better.

As for the US dropping nukes on Japan....I'm with Type on this one. I think the "war would have dragged on" argument carries some weight, but the simple fact is that there is a difference between saying "using nuclear weapons was necessary" and "using nuclear weapons on a densely-populated civilian area".

The only arguments I've ever heard as to why it had to be a city are :

1) These were civilians aiding the war anyway, and had it come to an invasion they would have taken up arms, so they weren't really innocent civilians

or

2) Only killing a city would have the necessary impact - it was the only way to prove the offensive capability to the Japenese.

If thats the only justification out there, then these are definitely the "right people" I'd like holding the bombs. NOT.

As for the original question.....I have no objection to the CND campaign, but its a doomed cause. I'd rather spend my time promoting something else.

jc

aine

No, nukes are good as long as they're in the hands of the right people.

Thats possibly the most insane statement Ive ever heard!

D-Generate

You could almost justify the first nuke dropped on Japan to end the war but dropping the second was just a message to the Soviet Union. Japan were going to surrender in a week or so of the first nuke, they knew that the war was over and that they had lost.

daveirl

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Shinji

The fact is that conventional bombing on Toyko was having almost as high casuaties as the nukes did

Indeed - people talk about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukes in disgusted tones, but there's not a lot said about the firebombing of residential districts of Tokyo which were almost entirely built out of wood. Hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives in those bombings.

I don't pretend to know the exact thinking in Tokyo and Washington that led to the dropping of the nukes on Japan, but I'm personally convinced that it was flawed; an excuse for nuclear testing on a "real" target, and a warning to the Soviets, rather than a military necessity. If the USA wanted to scare Japan into capitulating (which they were pretty close to doing anyway; the conventional history tells us that Japan would have fought tooth and nail against an invasion of their own country, but the fact is that they had sod all left to fight with and not a lot of will to fight anyway) then surely a nuclear detonation on a military target or less inhabited area would have worked just as well?



As to the general discussion on CND badges - no, I wouldn't wear one. I agree wholeheartedly with the concept of nuclear disarmament but I don't want to be associated with a lot of the baggage that the CND symbols have gathered over the years.

Turnip

Originally posted by daveirl
The axis would have won the war without the US. I think they made some mistakes but to be honest I'd have prefered that than to be part of the German empire right now.

Rubbish. Hitler was basically too nutty to be a proper commander and he got progresively worse as the war went on. The Germans lost the war by 1942 at Stalingrad. They went backwards from then on due in no small part to the numerical superiority, superb weapons and high productivity levels of the Russians. It's more correct to say that Europe would have gone communist if the allies had not landed at France in time. However some people reckon the Russians were at the end of their tether by the time they'd got to Germany. They had to use horses to drag artillery back and so on. One can hate Stalin and communism but discounting the staggering contribution of the Russians to the outcome of the war is stupid.

The Japanese got what they deserved in my view.

JustHalf

I hope we all consider America less of a problem than Nazi Germany; if not, pull your head out your ass.

bonkey

Originally posted by daveirl
The fact is that conventional bombing on Toyko was having almost as high casuaties as the nukes did so it is fact that it did save lives. The Japanese were going to fight to the last man so how could this possibly have been a worse outcome.

As was pointed out the last time that this topic surfaced, there is much evidence to show that the Japenese, indeed, would not have fought to a last man.

At the very least, its questionable....so neither side should be presenting it as "fact".

Secondly, I wasnt aware that condemning the nuking of a city somehow implied that firebombing a city was actually ok. Neither were acceptable, but one has had far longer-reaching impacts than the other. Fire, after all, has a relatively short half-life

Finally, if you take your two arguments together....you are implying that firebombing the capital and killing tens of thousands of people wouldnt stop the Japs defending to a last man....but killing tens of thousands of people with a different weapon would and did stop them.

Exactly what was it that stopped them then? It sure as hell wasnt fear of superior firepower, nor of the fact that the US could rain death and terror on them from above.....because the firebombing of Tokyo had already proven these points.

jc