If you, apropo of nothing, bomb one of our aircraft carriers, you have declared war on us.

[closeupready]

Really is that simple. If you're not prepared, at the time, to fight and win, OR fight and lose, then don't bomb our aircraft carriers/Pearl Harbor.

Okay?

[Phillyindy]

1. And we will nuke your children.

[closeupready]

2. Not necessarily, but if you are imposing thousands of casualties

on us, despite incurring thousands of losses of your own, it's either the very definition of Total War or I don't know what.

[Phillyindy]

4. You just justified

Every suicide bomber in Iraq.

[Orsino]

13. The decision to nuke civilians in another country was certainly popular here.

Even today, not so many are prepared to question it.

This shouldn't be mistaken for moral authority.

[Jenoch]

3. Just to get the facts correct,

the Japanese did not bomb or torpedo any U.S. aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor. That is why we were able to do so much damage to the Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway.

[cleanhippie]

5. Real Nice. Way to ruin a perfectly good nonsensical rant.

[quinnox]

6. I thought so, perhaps the OP should check their history

first.

[Junkdrawer]

9. I think it's a warning to Syria and/or Iran....

We bomb their radar sites in prep for a No Fly Zone, they takeout an aircraft carrier, we nuke in retaliation.

Or something like that.

[Lurker Deluxe]

21. Yea ... they being the key word.

They ...

Iran? No

Iran and Syria? No?

Who? Hellifiknow. But it would surely be a they.

A sneak attack? Doubtful. A direct attack? Even more doubtful.

Some sort of planed diversion which leads to an incredible chain of mistakes that leaves a carrier vulnerable and a lucky attack by "them" which somehow leads to the vessel being damaged enough that is eventually scuttled? Good luck with that.

"they take out an aircraft carrier" would most likely leave them in such bad shape militarily that the US would not need to retaliate more than simply putting another vessel in the same spot and offering up a "round two?" sign.

A direct hit by a modern nuke would not sink a super carrier, which is all we have floating now. Attacking it with conventional means is suicide by anyone less than ... well, us.

[geek tragedy]

11. It wasn't over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor nt

[Rex]

12. True we got lucky that they went after the battleships.

Had they sunk our aircraft carriers, the war would have been completely different imo. I say lucky...not so for all the sailors and soldiers that drowned that day.

War is a racket.

RIP to both my grandfathers; one was a soldier and ended up on the Bataan death march and the other was building destroyers in the Navy. Both made it out in one piece, but mentally one was ravished by WWII and could never get over it. Not even up to his dying day.

War is total bullshit.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. They sank the Arizona

And other assets, leading to fleet modernization...ironically. The carriers, considered not ships of the line, but auxiliaries, were out of port at the time.

I understood his meaning, even if a battleship is different from a carrier

[Jenoch]

20. I understood his point as well.

Do not forget the Oklahoma. It too was a total loss with 429 dead. The Oklahoma was lucky enough to get more of their personnel off ship. Six other battleships were hit (one was run aground intentionally) but they returned to service.

[cpwm17]

7. That logic can go both ways

We have a terrible history of aggressive actions against foreign nations. I guess we should not then complain when some foreigners ram some aircraft into our buildings. Like you said, more or less: if you're not prepared, then don't bomb their cities, overthrow their governments, and support fascist dictators.

Here's the English transcript from Al Jazeera of Osama's October 29, 2004 speech: http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html

This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages.

So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary?

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.

This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before September 11th.

Or is it not terrorism when we do it?

[treestar]

16. Really? We should have taken 911 as just due for our "aggressive foreign actions"

Easy to say from behind a keyboard and not one of those affected by 911 directly.

what are these "actions?" Are you referring to Vietnam or what?

[cpwm17]

17. No, I'm saying what Osama did to the towers and the US did to cities in Japan are both terrorism

The US has a long history of many immoral and aggressive actions, including: support for dictators (including Saddam before the first Gulf War), support for Israel's destruction of Palestine, constant bombings of Iraq from Saudi soil both during and after the first Gulf War, and genocidal sanctions against Iraq:

[geek tragedy]

8. They bombed everything but our aircraft carriers--they bombed the United States itself. nt

[quinnox]

10. America started a war and invaded a country under false pretenses

So our moral authority has been utterly destroyed. Try and keep that in mind. This is 2013.

[hobbit709]

14. NONE of our carriers were at Pearl that day.

That screwed up the whole Japanese war strategy. All they really did was wipe out some obsolescent battleships and piss off the United States.

[awoke_in_2003]

15. Don't bomb Pearl Harbor...

Tell that to the Germans

[CBGLuthier]

19. How about blowing up passenger jets or murdering elected officials

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

There is no fucking high road in this racket of war. Just as the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not get to decide to wage war neither do we.

[Socal31]

22. Actually, the OP is understating reality.

I can tell by the replies that most people are not aware of our nuclear doctrine (that has been hidden since it was made public). We leave the option open to use either Tactical or Theatre nuclear weapons for a wide range of reasons, some intentionally ambiguous.

&quot 1) The US defense strategy serves the national objective of peace with
prosperity. The strategy aims to achieve four key goals that guide the development of US
force capabilities, their development and use:

(a) Assuring allies and friends of the US steadfastness of purpose and its
capability to fulfill its security commitments.

(b) Dissuading adversaries from undertaking programs or operations that
could threaten US interests or those of our allies and friends.

(c) Deterring aggression and coercion by deploying forward the capacity to
swiftly defeat attacks and imposing severe penalties for aggression on an adversary’s
military capability and supporting infrastructure.

(d) Decisively defeating an adversary if deterrence fails.

(2) The size, composition, and readiness posture of US nuclear forces contribute
to each of these four goals."

Scary stuff.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/jp3_12fc2.pdf