I have nothing to say about your opinion of the US. But those pictures you attribute to the Atomic Bombing of Japan are actually of the Kanto earthquake in tokyo 1923. Don't take my word for it, visit the site yourself http://www.hoover.org/hila/announcements/news/18935014.html It would be a shame for a small error to ruin your credibility.

Not to burst your bubble dude, but when I went to that first link you posted up here on the site, I found this text: "NOTE: The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University contains ten photographs purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. Mr. Capp was assigned to the occupation forces outside Hiroshima after World War II. According to to Mr. Capp's oral history (available along with the photographs in the Robert L. Capp collection), he found these photos among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside of Hiroshima. Since making these photographs publicly available, I have received reliable proof that at least two of these photos are actually of the 1923 Kanto earthquake. While I cannot speak for the entire collection, this evidence raises doubts about all of the photos and raises the strong possibility that the identification provided by the Hoover Archives is incorrect. I take full responsibility for my own failure to take additional steps to verify that the original archival designation was correct. I have removed the photographs until and unless their source can be verified by further research." The photos that I saw on your post looked to be in relatively bad shape, though the bodies are clear enough (some which would appear to have evident burns), so it's tough for me to tell if they're from the bombing sites or not. I agree with you on a number of points. I do believe we had it coming on 9/11...not in the sense that we "deserved" to be attacked, but that we left ourselves wide open to attackers and I think, to a certain degree, we still do have it coming. I'm surprised we haven't been attacked already, but I wouldn't be surprised that one will come at a politically opportune time for one of our major political parties. Let's face it, if al Qaeda wants to attack us, they can (unless the government's doing an uncannily good job at getting them, which I doubt) and probably will. Enough said there. I'm of two minds regarding the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bomb is a horrific invention; in my opinion, it's the most repulsive creation in the history of the human race. I wish it had never been built, never mind dropped on people. However, the awful truth of it all is that it probably wound up saving more lives than it took (similar to what MrV said). My grandfather was a Seabee in the Navy during World War II, and he would have been part of the invasion force to land on Honshu. The Japanese mindset in WWII was quite fanatical (we all know about the kamikaze pilots, but a lesser known fact is that on islands like Okinawa, Japanese women used to jump off cliffs with their babies in-hand because they had been told that American Marines would rape them and eat their babies). The Japanese would have fought for every square inch of that island, and the toll would have registered in the millions, on both sides...with their own sets of barbaric human atrocities by both sides. Our foreign policy record is checkered to say the least, and that's a generous understatement. However, here have been many monsters throughout the history of the world: the Crusaders that slaughtered Jews on their way to the Holy Land, the Nazis, the Japanese soldiers and officers at Nanking, European imperialists. I'm not trying to equivocate or anything like that--it doesn't make our actions any better or any more justified. There are monsters everywhere, and that's the sad reality of our world. We still go by "eye for an eye." The tools may have changed, but the game is still the same, and the question is: how do we change? I sorely wish I knew, because this world is run by old men (and some women, let's be fair) who seem to be more concerned with killing each other over things like religion and oil than in finding ways to advance our race and save our planet. A complete breakdown and overhaul of the system is needed, but people who are too set in their ways will react harshly to that, so how do we do this without destroying everything--including ourselves and our world--in the process?

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I think I understand the difference in what you mean between "deserved" and "coming it's way." I'm sure you can see how I could make the mistake in what you mean, and for that I apologize. However, there still some points I would like to make. First I agree with you that post 9/11 Americans needed to evaluate their current position on foreign affairs. I personally feel their is a problem not with those who are for or against war, but that we still have many people who feel some sort of apathy to the situation. (That is subject for another time) I do not agree with you on the notion that Americans are avoiding self-criticism by blaming it on "irrational people." There are many Americans who are happy with their way of life and feel that they should not change they way they are because of people in another nation who are willing to commit violence for their goals. Secondly, I can compare the events of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were both surprise military attacks. I believe the fault in your argument is that you see the bomb droppings as only what happened instead of looking at what the possible alternative was. If the US did not drop the bombs, we would have then gone into a land war in Japan. The battles would be fought in their cities with their civilians there. It would have gone on longer and gone through more of their country than only two cities. It would have been just like the war in Europe. We would not be talking about tens of thousands of lives, but millions of lives. And after the war, Japan would have gone through an even worse period of rebuilding. Now it goes without question that death of this magnitude is terrible, but wouldn't it have been better than the alternative? One last point. You have written about many things that you believe America has done wrong. That's perfectly fair, but why don't you have any opinions on what needs to be done in the future? I have read a few of your other articles and they all have the same issue. You criticize, but you just leave off saying that America is wrong and awful. Why don't you say what you believe needs to be done to rectify the problems you present?

To respond to the above (or below) comment: I didn't say that America deserved 9/11, but rather that it had it coming its way. Claiming 9/11 came out of the blue and that the people who did it are just irrational people is a way of avoiding self-criticism. By denying any rationale to the event, many Americans have missed an opportunity to re-evaluate their country's foreign policy. 9/11 or Hiroshima are not "deserved", the point is that what America did that day was the lowest form of human behavior and what they have done since has not been very inspirational. Second, you cannot compare a surprise military attack (although some historians claim that there is evidence that members of the US government knew an attack was eminent) on military personnel to the an atomic bomb on civilians with radiation levels that are still above normal today. Because if you do, then, using your argumentative construct, I could claim that 9/11 was a legitimate response to US military intervention throughout the world.

Do you really think that America deserved what happened on September 11? You don't think that it was o.k. for the US to end war in Japan without costing US soldiers lives, but that it was o.k. for all those people to die in New York 56 years later for an unrelated cause? I don't want to go saying your some sort of hate-monger or Un-American bastard, cause you would probably feed on that and turn it around on me in some sort of way. But for you to say one form of destruction justifies some other one, is hypocritical. How do you feel justified saying 9/11 is deserved but Hiroshima wasn't (didn't they declare war on us first by bombing Pearl Harbor?) You're really sick bro.