What is the most devastating single terrorist attack in history?

[sirio11]

Dictionary.com define a terrorist attack as "the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature."

Some of the other threads make me think about this. The Guiness book list 9-11, but I think the #1 should be the bombing of Hiroshima (140,000 civilians killed) and #2 the bombing of Nagasaki (70,000 civilians killed).

What is your take on this?

[lehighguy]

The democrats are finished.

[lehighguy]

After reading the posts below, I reiterate even more convinced:
The left is finished.

[Il_Mostro]

well, we all are, you know [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

[Utah]

It was the fire bombing of Tokyo. Not only did the U.S. massacre an unreal number of people, but they hid the reality of what they were doing from the American public. The U.S. even worked out ways to make civilian homes and civilian burn better. There is nothing more disturbing to me in U.S. history.

[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
The U.S. even worked out ways to make civilian homes and civilian burn better.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course, they did. If you're going to make and use incediary bombs, you should make them as effective as possible.

[Utah]

It destroys the argument that it was blanket bombing to destroy the industrial base of Japan. The U.S. government wanted civilians to burn.

[andyfox]

The specific area of the city selected as the primary target zone was more than 84 percent residential. 334 B-29s dropped about 2,000 tons of bombs on a target area within a rectangle about three miles by four, containing a hundred thousand inhabitants per square mile, or roughly 1,250,000 people. Reconnaissance photographs disclosed that the firebombs had incinerated 1518 square miles of the city, consuming 250,000 buildings. Over one million people lost their housing.

The goal of the attack was to set the target zone completely on fire and it was accomplished. The temperature generated exceeded 1,800 degrees--hot enough to boil water in the canals that crisscrossed parts of the city. The wind created by the firestorm was "too strong for a man to stand up to" [U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey]. The B-29s themselves, due to the thermals that swept upward, were thrust upward in a few seconds from five thousand feet up to eight thousand feet.

Many people who sought refuge in the canals drowned and many others were boiled to death. So intense was the heat that people literally burst into flame, as superheated air burned their lungs and ignited their clothing. With many schoolchildren evacuated and younger males in military service, women and old people suffered a disproportionate share of the casualties, which were put at 87,793 by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. The removal of the dead took 25 days. U.S. General Thomas Power, who watched it from his observation plane called the Tokyo raid, "The greatest single disaster incurred by an enemy in military history. There were more casualties than in any other military action in the history of the world."

During the following months the B-29s came back to Tokyo, systematically destroying undamaged areas. During the last of these raids, the resulting firestorm burned the homes of about 570,000 people.

On September 1, 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an appeal to Great Britain, France, and Germany to abstain from using airplanes to attack cities and civilians:

"The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of the hostilities . . . has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity. I urge every Government which may be engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities."

But on November 15, 1938, three years before Pearl Harbor, General Marshall told a gathering of press bureau chiefs and senior correspondents that "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan . . . we'll fight mercilessly. Flying fortresses will be dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won't be any hesitation about bombing civilians--it will be all-out."

Indeed.

[Utah]

I have zero doubt that we would do it again without hesitation if we thought it meant our survival.

All the talk about targeting civilians as being immoral is complete b.s. We dont do it because we do not have to. However, it will always be a valid method of war.

[whiskeytown]

this gets into the old argument of lives saved vs. lives lost in a mainland invasion. It's been done countless times before in countless ways by people much better qualified then us, but let's go over it again.

the U.S. believed a mainland invasion of Japan would cost 100000 lives and over 1 million Japanese civilians. This is because once the mainland is invaded, every Japanese civilian becomes a combatant dedicated to fighting for his/her God, I.E., the Emperor.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and to a lesser degree, the fire bombings of Tokyo (no pun intended) were attempts to break that will/spirit and maybe, just maybe, force an early surrender.

the greatest bluff in the world was Roosevelt saying we would continue to drop bombs on Japan if they didn't surrender - we didn't have enough enriched material for another bomb and wouldn't have any for quite a few months. BUT it forced the early surrender of the country, and even then it was only cause the Emperor caved in...the military elite wanted to keep going.

I'd say both parties made out in the long term. And of course, there is the whole thingy of does a country's military wage war, or does the whole country do so? - I would argue that in some cases, (Iraq) it's the first instance, and in Japan/Germany's instance it was the second -

And this is old stuff anyways. Sherman started the tactic of terrorizing/razing civilian populations yrs. ago with his march to the sea during the civil war.

Thank god we now have the internet and discussion groups where we can take these age old debates and resolve them quickly in a bout of misleading statements and slippery-slope arguments.

RB