page 3.

hezbollah is a legitimate army, using guerrilla tactics. Israelis call them terrorists. Hezbollah's problem is they dont know how to spin the media, like the terrorist Israelis can.

now see, when the US uses terror tactics we rationalize them like so: "we had to nuke them slant bastards, cuz a full invasion woulda cost a lot and hurt too much. so if we vaporize hundreds of thousands of innocent old men, women and children, that will scare the Japs into surrendering."

see? nice and tidy. just plug your ears while you repeat it 500 times. guaranteed to help you feel superior.

7/19/2006 1:33:05 AM

um, OK, so then I guess Al Queda is a legimate army too?

7/19/2006 1:38:49 AM

Legitimate army of the state of Terroristan

7/19/2006 1:43:27 AM

al-qaeda is not a military organization, and they dont engage other militaries. they target civilians

hezbollah is a uniformed military organization that engages opposing military units. when they are outgunned and/or underfunded, they move to guerrilla tactics.

assymetric warfare does not equal terrorism.





[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 1:52 AM. Reason : ]

7/19/2006 1:46:52 AM

Quote :

"thats the only way they can "bomb" american buildings. if they had aegis cruisers and tomahawk cruise missiles in the atlantic im sure they would have elected to destroy the wtc us captial and pentagon with those"

cool, I'd say it's an act of war and then we can go ahead and start bustin heads for it

hezbollah could have technology if they would get out of the 17th century and study something other than their holy book

hell they just quit throwing rocks and decided to shoot weapons recently

7/19/2006 1:49:04 AM

C'mon, schmoe, not again! You didn't have another bad day at work, did you?

Guess what, I didn't count all the Japanese that would have been killed in the planned invasion, too. And we STILL might have had to drop the A-bomb.

Yes, my late grandfather was a merchant marine--and he had two ships shot out from underneath him during WWII. But that is not where I got the info; it happens to be common knowledge. The subject is examined in _The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb_ by John Ray Skates and a number of others. You should check them out.

Yes, Hezbollah are terrorists. By the way, leave my loved ones out of any future posts.

7/19/2006 1:53:44 AM

PS, schmoe: Your logic: "hezbollah is a uniformed military organization that engages opposing military units." By your logic, the Montana militias--and others who prefer to fly the American flag upside down--are "legitimate arm[ies]."

Do you see how that doesn't work, man?

7/19/2006 2:08:45 AM

i thought hezbollah was a terrorist organization that does a lot of suicide bombs and kills a lot of innocent people?

7/19/2006 2:12:37 AM

Correct, drunknloaded!

7/19/2006 2:14:19 AM

mytwocents is a terrorist

7/19/2006 2:23:28 AM

no babzi, I'm not. And either you're just saying that to call me names like a 3rd grader does, or you honestly believe that and if that's the case, then you really are delusional. Either way, you're a very sad person and while I truly hope that your innocent family and friends in Lebanon, who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, make it through this ok, I also hope that you can one day understand that people who defend people like Hezbollah aren't doing this world any good.

7/19/2006 2:31:28 AM

^ no girl, just joking. Again, I am not defending Hezbollah and I hope it has no power after this is done. I just don't like what Israel is doing to Lebanon and neither do the rest of the Lebanese who have nothing to do with Hezbollah. Kill Hezbollah, eliminate it, but don't eliminate us all. WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE, BUT WON'T BE IF YOU BOMB THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY (PLACES NON-HEZBOLLAH RELATED) FOR NO REASON!

7/19/2006 2:35:42 AM

hezbollah was better off when all they threw were rocks

7/19/2006 2:36:26 AM

My two why do you ask the same question here that you asked in chit-chat

7/19/2006 3:24:44 AM

I couldn't make it all the way through this thread. Principally because it is just like 10 other threads that already exist in the SB. Threads where cxmai trolls by sympathizing with the terrorists, people taking his bait, and getting treated to even more inane comments from cxmai.

Over the last few days the soap box hasn't even been post worthy, or at the very least it's less worthy than usual. So John Walker Lindh was able to secure a user account on tww. That doesn't mean you have to pay him any mind or create 5 more threads where you just know he'll show up and troll some more about the same old stuff.

7/19/2006 7:32:22 AM

Quote :

"Over the last few days years the soap box hasn't even been post worthy"

7/19/2006 9:42:10 AM

so, according to hooksaw and others (including my dad), US dropping nukes on japan was okay, because:

it would have been too difficult to fight them in a conventional sense.

in other words, since we couldn't fight their military, we chose to fight their civilians. with the rationale that if we vaporized enough of their old men, women, and children, they would be forced to give up.

(yeah, hooksaw, my grandad fought in wwII also. i come from a long line of republican hawks. i wasnt attacking your family, just relating/projecting mine onto yours. because you basically spouted /verbatim/ what i regularly heard as a kid)

7/19/2006 12:17:30 PM

By the time we made it to Japan, the line between civilian and soldier would have been completely blurred. While not everybody was brainwashed, a good amount of people were fanatical and would have charged to their deaths.

I'm not exactly justifying the nuclear strikes, but I can see a rationale behind them. We could have pushed their military right back to their doorstep, but at that point we would have been fighting nearly the entire country.

7/19/2006 12:23:21 PM

its ok tho, japan got back at us and more with the invention of anime.

7/19/2006 12:26:35 PM

^ shaggy just won this thread.

7/19/2006 12:31:15 PM

Anime justifies a third nuclear strike, actually.

7/19/2006 12:32:12 PM

Quote :

"in other words, since we couldn't fight their military, we chose to fight their civilians. with the rationale that if we vaporized enough of their old men, women, and children, they would be forced to give up."

I always thought it was a use of disproportionate force as a means of facilitating the cessation of Japanese violence myself

Quote :

"By the time we made it to Japan, the line between civilian and soldier would have been completely blurred. While not everybody was brainwashed, a good amount of people were fanatical and would have charged to their deaths."

I wonder if there is a similar group of people in today's world

7/19/2006 12:33:43 PM

The main difference is, the Emperor was Japan's God. They'd only give up if they thought the Emperor was in danger of dying. In fact, the whole concept of him being in danger of dying/defeated was a bit foreign to them.

7/19/2006 12:36:51 PM

Quote :

"PS, schmoe: Your logic: "hezbollah is a uniformed military organization that engages opposing military units." By your logic, the Montana militias--and others who prefer to fly the American flag upside down--are "legitimate arm[ies]." Do you see how that doesn't work, man?"

all i see is that you dont grasp the concept of logic very well.

"montana militia" has never engaged any military unit. are you trying to tell me they are battling against the local National Guard? if they declared that montana was goign to seceed, mustered a batallion of uniformed regulars (no matter how scrappy), and fought against invading Federal Troops and targeted military installations, then yes, they would be an army.

if they just go and blow up some federal building fulls of civilians, then no. they're common criminals employing terror techniques.




[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 12:42 PM. Reason : ]

7/19/2006 12:38:50 PM

just to remind people:

we killed far more people with fire-bombing than nuclear weapons on some nights in japan

7/19/2006 12:38:56 PM

But firebombing isn't as sensational!

7/19/2006 12:41:15 PM

Plus the odd of surviving a firebombing raid have got to be higher.

7/19/2006 12:43:47 PM

well what you do is send in the firebombers, and follow it up with a frag attack.

so as soon as they think its safe to come out and start fighting the fires they get pwned by shrapnel.

7/19/2006 12:59:47 PM

Quote :

"it would have been too difficult to fight them in a conventional sense. "

This was not the only consideration then, nor should it be now.

1) As you say, we would have suffered high military losses with an invasion.
2) It is also projected to be quite likely that more Japanese civilians would have died during such an invasion, to say nothing of their military forces.
3) An invasion would have taken months to resolve the war, during which time the Soviet Union would almost certainly have gone after the northern parts of the country, forcing us to split yet another nation with Communists and making greater the prospect of another war. (To say nothing of the fact that living under a Soviet government for generations would have been unpleasant).

7/19/2006 1:03:00 PM

by that logic we should use tactical nukes in baghdad suburbs to rout the insurgents.

7/19/2006 4:15:11 PM

Hezbollah has been more succesful against Israel than any other arab force, i think they are clearly a legitmate army that has just made stupid provocations.

7/19/2006 4:50:16 PM

Quote :

"japan is a grand example of innocents being TARGETED. i know there are more and more recent cases (many) but i dont have complete knowledge or time so i won't go into them"

We did it in the Philippines long ago, and of course in Vietnam. Reagan's bombing of Tripoli is another clear example (it killed about a hundred noncombatants). And Reagan's Contras did it. Most examples of American bombing basically targeted noncombatants to one degree or another. At best, you can call it gross neglect for human life.

Quote :

"hiroshima and nagasaki were clearly the 2 MOST INHUMANE INSTANTS OF ALL TIME."

The firebombing of Tokyo was just as bad.

Quote :

"How can an event that happened over 60 years ago legitimize the inhumane and otherwise barbaric tactics of Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, etc.?"

Nobody's legitimate, chief. Just monsters fighting monsters. Gangsters fighting gangsters. Same deal.

Quote :

"Very few people fully understand the consequences of dropping a-bombs all of those many years ago and in hindsight it was a mistake."

What the hell are you talking about? Policymakers knew full well what the physical effect of the bomb would be. They'd already done the same thing with conventional weapons to many other Japanese cities.

Quote :

"Over the last few days the soap box hasn't even been post worthy, or at the very least it's less worthy than usual."

Either you haven't been here very long, or you have a very selective memory.

Quote :

"We could have pushed their military right back to their doorstep, but at that point we would have been fighting nearly the entire country."

Very unlikely, but perhaps possible. Anyway, the real moral question is whether bombing civies was okay in the Pacific War. The two atomic bombs were just an extention of our previous policy.

Quote :

"2) It is also projected to be quite likely that more Japanese civilians would have died during such an invasion, to say nothing of their military forces."

Such an invaison probably wouldn't even have happened. Certainly not a full invasion. Hell, recent scholarship on the subject suggests the Soviet entry into the war was just as important as the two atomic bombs, if not more important. Of course, it's quite possible that no using nukes would made the war last longer, which would have been hard on both Americans and Japanese.

7/19/2006 5:23:26 PM

Quote :

"The firebombing of Tokyo was just as bad. worse "

7/19/2006 5:28:12 PM

Eh, the numbers make it seem pretty comparable to the bombing of Hiroshima.

7/19/2006 5:34:15 PM

Quote :

"well what you do is send in the firebombers, and follow it up with a frag attack. so as soon as they think its safe to come out and start fighting the fires they get pwned by shrapnel."

As I recall the actual policy was to drop conventional bombs to knock down buildings, providing lots if rubble for the firebombs to ignite.

Quote :

"in other words, since we couldn't fight their military, we chose to fight their civilians. with the rationale that if we vaporized enough of their old men, women, and children, they would be forced to give up."

The slogan in Japan at the end of the war was "Ten million die for the emporer." Citizens were told that they weren't worthy to die for the emporer if they couldn't kill at least one american.

Quote :

"Plus the odd of surviving a firebombing raid have got to be higher."

Unless you create a firestorm like the one in Dresden where the flames sucked up enough air to create hurricane force winds that can suck people out of bomb shelters and into the fire.

7/19/2006 5:50:23 PM

For the record, I am NOT a Republican.

7/19/2006 6:39:12 PM

To GoldenViper: You'll pardon me if I don't jump up and down in agreement with "recent scholarship," which in some cases could be read "revisionist history."

7/19/2006 6:45:02 PM

Quote :

"Hell, recent scholarship on the subject suggests the Soviet entry into the war was just as important"

1) If memory serves, Hirohito mentioned the bombs in the reasons for his surrender, and nary about the Commies.
2) I notice that they didn't actually surrender until after the bombs, not in the period before them and after the Soviet declaration.
3) Assuming this statement is true, the fact that it has only become apparent through "recent scholarship" (of which, like hooksaw, I am at least a touch skeptical many times), then it follows that the information was not known conclusively (or at all) to Truman. He had, I think, a reasonably good understanding of the situation and acted in the way that produced the least loss of life between the choices of dropping the bombs or ordering landings. If his understanding was imperfect, I will not label him a war criminal for it.

7/19/2006 7:12:49 PM

Indeed.

7/19/2006 7:17:34 PM

Quote :

"The slogan in Japan at the end of the war was "Ten million die for the emporer." Citizens were told that they weren't worthy to die for the emporer if they couldn't kill at least one american."

That's just proganda. Yeah, maybe it would have happened if there had been a full scale invasion of Japan, but there wouldn't have been one, even without the bomb.

Quote :

"To GoldenViper: You'll pardon me if I don't jump up and down in agreement with "recent scholarship," which in some cases could be read "revisionist history.""

Revisionist history is often good history, though the revisionist camp does get a fair amount wrong on this subject (as do the traditionalists).

Quote :

"3) Assuming this statement is true, the fact that it has only become apparent through "recent scholarship" (of which, like hooksaw, I am at least a touch skeptical many times), then it follows that the information was not known conclusively (or at all) to Truman."

Uh, Truman knew well that the Soviets into the war would make a huge impact. He wrote, "Fini Japs when that comes about," referring to Soviet entry.

Quote :

"He had, I think, a reasonably good understanding of the situation and acted in the way that produced the least loss of life between the choices of dropping the bombs or ordering landings."

Least loss of American life? Sure. But the lives "saved" numbered in the low thousands, not hundreds of thousands. This is, of course, plenty of reason for any President to act.

Here a good overview of the "middle ground" position on the matter: http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/13737.html

Quote :

"If his understanding was imperfect, I will not label him a war criminal for it."

I probably would. U.S. policymakers decided to kill around a million Japanese noncombatants. If that's not a war crime, what is?

7/19/2006 7:39:27 PM

Quote :

"Uh, Truman knew well that the Soviets into the war would make a huge impact."

Of course he knew it would be a big deal, but apparently -- and as certainly would have seemed to be the case to anyone who watched the Japanese not surrendering after Soviet entry -- he didn't think it was a big enough deal to end the war.

And, again, a more major Soviet role in the victory would have quite possibly resulted in a partitioned Japan and thus the opportunity for yet another lovely Asian conflict between Communist and American puppets. There is a good deal to be said for preventing such an outcome.

Quote :

"Least loss of American life? Sure."

I didn't say "least loss of American life." I said "least loss of life," and I meant it.

If the Japanese main islands and its civilian population resisted with even a quarter of the intensity as they did on Okinawa, countless thousands more "noncombatants" would have died in an invasion than did in the A-bomb. Do you just want to ignore those civvies who killed themselves in droves, or has recent scholarly work now determined that the Okinawans were just more baller than the rest of the Japanese?

Our only experience with dealing with the Japanese on their home turf was Okinawa. Given what we saw there, I'm amazed that you can still blame us for expecting the worst from a full-on assault of the main islands.

7/19/2006 7:47:53 PM

Quote :

"I didn't say "least loss of American life." I said "least loss of life," and I meant it."

That's much less clear, and certainly wasn't a big deal to Truman.

Quote :

"Given what we saw there, I'm amazed that you can still blame us for expecting the worst from a full-on assault of the main islands."

There wouldn't have been a full assault of the main islands. How many times do I have to say this? Maybe Kyushu, though even that is doubtful. Of course, we would have kept up conventional bombing and such, and many Japanese would have died. Two hundred thousand of them? Maybe. Ten million? Certainly not.

7/19/2006 8:15:39 PM

Quote :

"There wouldn't have been a full assault of the main islands. How many times do I have to say this? Maybe Kyushu, though even that is doubtful."

The invasion of Kyushu was set for November 1, 1945. Once secured, the next move would have been another amphibious assault on the Tokyo area the following spring. The army air force and navy proposed a blockade and air campaign to force surrender, however this was seen as a course of action that could prolong the war indefinitely. Truman and everyone under him were committed to an invasion of the home islands, ideally within one year of the surrender of Germany.

If you have any evidence to the contrary I would love to see it.

Quote :

"EMPEROR HIROHITO'S BROADCAST TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE ON SURRENDER August 14, 1945 New York Times. TO OUR GOOD AND LOYAL SUBJECTS: After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their joint declaration. To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations as well as the security and well-being of our subjects is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which we lay close to the heart. Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to insure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement. But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone-the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the State and the devoted service of our 100,000,000 people-the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers."

7/19/2006 8:58:11 PM

you're not proving anything to him with real history

he already said that revisionist history on this subject seems more palatable to him

7/19/2006 9:36:31 PM

Quote :

"The invasion of Kyushu was set for November 1, 1945."

Japan would have most likely have surrendered by then. The Soviet entry was just as important as - if not more important than - the two nukes. Read Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book.

Quote :

"The army air force and navy proposed a blockade and air campaign to force surrender, however this was seen as a course of action that could prolong the war indefinitely."

LeMay thought air power and the blockade would be enough to end the war before November. Other thought it might take until the middle of 1946.

Quote :

"Truman and everyone under him were committed to an invasion of the home islands"

They didn't think going past Kyushu would be needed. They certainly didn't think the invasion would have cost a buhjillion lives. Do you really think they would have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Americans when they could have just continued a campaign of conventional bombing and blockade?

Quote :

"you're not proving anything to him with real history he already said that revisionist history on this subject seems more palatable to him"

Revisionist history is real history, you moron.

Though I must say, what I'm arguing in this thread is the middle-ground position, not the revisionist one.

7/19/2006 10:23:01 PM

Quote :

"Japan would have most likely have surrendered by then. The Soviet entry was just as important as - if not more important than - the two nukes. Read Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book."

Someone wrote a book that supports your opinion. Great. I have many more that support me. Read anything by Sadao Asada. He went through mountains of recently unclassified Japanese documents that support the fact that Soviet entry into the war had little impact on the surrender.

Quote :

"LeMay thought air power and the blockade would be enough to end the war before November. Other thought it might take until the middle of 1946."

I'm sure he did. Unfortunately, the commander in chief was prepared to pursue the path that the army wanted and launch an invasion of the home islands in order to bring a clear and decisive end to the war. The conditional surrenders that had been offered made it clear that Japan would not disarm, that the emperor would stay head of state, that there would be no war crimes trials, and many other concessions that would made the surrender more akin to a cease fire. None of the allies wanted this as it would have been too similar to the end of WWI and would have left the door wide open to another Japanese conflict 20 years down the road.

Quote :

"They didn't think going past Kyushu would be needed."

Kyushu is one of the home islands. They were already prepared to follow it with Operation Coronet that would have included the invasion of the Tokyo area the following spring. If a ground war had started on the home islands, the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered in the middle of the fight, especially after inflicting high casualties upon the invaders.

Their strategy was to inflict enough casualties on the allies to create a stalemate, and then hope that an armistice offer came.

Quote :

"Do you really think they would have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of Americans when they could have just continued a campaign of conventional bombing and blockade?"

Yes. A key objective was to end the Pacific war within a year of the German surrender so that national morale wouldn't be damaged. Bombing and blockade would not have guaranteed an end to the war.

Quote :

"Though I must say, what I'm arguing in this thread is the middle-ground position, not the revisionist one."

I'm inclined to label it a revisionist history. Pretty much anything that paints the japanese as the peacenik victims of WWII falls into that category.

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 10:57 PM. Reason : .]

7/19/2006 10:55:48 PM

Quote :

"Someone wrote a book that supports your opinion. Great. I have many more that support me. Read anything by Sadao Asada. He went through mountains of recently unclassified Japanese documents that support the fact that Soviet entry into the war had little impact on the surrender."

Hasegawa's research is more recent than Asada's, and his case more convincing. Asasda is a classic on the traditionalist side.

Quote :

"Kyushu is one of the home islands. They were already prepared to follow it with Operation Coronet that would have included the invasion of the Tokyo area the following spring."

Perpared, perhaps, but they figured invading Kyushu, or even the threat of it, would be enough.

Quote :

"If a ground war had started on the home islands, the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered in the middle of the fight, especially after inflicting high casualties upon the invaders."

That's certainly not at all what U.S. policymakers thought. The whole point of invading Kyushu was to get the Japanese to surrender.

Quote :

"A key objective was to end the Pacific war within a year of the German surrender so that national morale wouldn't be damaged."

So you think hundreds of thousands of dead American soldiers wouldn't have hurt U.S. morale? Huh? You realize we only lost around 300,000 men in all of WWII, right? They were prepared to go through with the invasion of Kyushu because they didn't think it would cost that many American lives (25,000 or so, maybe) and because it'd make Japan surrender sooner.

Quote :

"I'm inclined to label it a revisionist history. Pretty much anything that paints the japanese as the peacenik victims of WWII falls into that category."

What the hell are you talking about? Of course Japan wasn't "peacenik," though many Japanese were victims (of both their horrible goverment and our bombs). I'm only arguing against the rather insane lengths y'all traditionalists go to justify dropping the a-bombs. The idea that Truman had a clear choice between killing 200,000 people or killing millions of people is ridiculous.

The

7/19/2006 11:17:39 PM

As an aside:

I wish that whenever an engineer developed a new product, he/she was called a revisionist engineer.

Or when a scientist made a breakthrough that better explained the natural world than previous theories, he/she was called a revisionist scientist.

Because that's what people in the field of history need to deal with everytime they come out with new scholarship that ruffles anyone's feathers.

OMG RELATIVITY IS REVISIONIST PHYSICS!1

7/20/2006 12:34:13 AM

Quote :

"The idea that Truman had a clear choice between killing 200,000 people or killing millions of people is ridiculous."

I don't think it was a clear choice. It might have been very muddled. I just don't think it's justified to look at someone faced with such a difficult decision where there is so much evidence for either side and call him a monster for making a choice. Especially when nobody knows any more conclusively what the alternative outcome would have been today than they did at the time.

Quote :

"The whole point of invading Kyushu was to get the Japanese to surrender."

And there were no doubt a half-dozen other plans with the same goal that were supported by all manner of important people. That doesn't really mean much unless you can start providing some damn convincing evidence that your set of policymakers would have been right. Because, as I say, the only case study we have to look at for what invading home islands was gonna look like wasn't very fucking pleasant.

Quote :

"Hasegawa's research is more recent than Asada's, and his case more convincing."

The former doesn't necessarily mean much, and, as to the latter, well...I find it hard to believe that you were all about dropping some a-bombs before you picked up the book.

Quote :

"LeMay thought air power and the blockade would be enough to end the war before November."

LeMay had something of a vested interest in promoting air power, too. Of course he's gonna say that they could win it, it makes his branch look sharp.

Quote :

"The Soviet entry was just as important as - if not more important than - the two nukes."

Then why didn't Hirohito talk more about them when he gave his reasons for surrender? Why didn't they move quickly to meet our demands between the Soviet entry and the employment of the Bomb?

Quote :

"Because that's what people in the field of history need to deal with everytime they come out with new scholarship that ruffles anyone's feathers."

Look, there's some important things to be said about having some distance between a historian and the event he's describing, some of them good, some of them bad. I'm not suggesting we reject wholesale any new historical ideas, but they are going to have to prove themselves, especially when we're talking about a highly controversial topic being revisited after a massive shift in public opinion about everything related to it.

[Edited on July 20, 2006 at 1:58 AM. Reason : ]

7/20/2006 1:56:38 AM

Quote :

"I'm not suggesting we reject wholesale any new historical ideas, but they are going to have to prove themselves, especially when we're talking about a highly controversial topic being revisited after a massive shift in public opinion about everything related to it."

Fair enough. But all other fields get to debate the issues.

Historians can be dismissed with the D word, and that's the end of it.

7/20/2006 3:02:24 AM