The US was Wrong

Alperovitz believes the US is wrong based on two less devastating alternatives that he seems to think the US had at that time. The first was to clarify surrendering terms for the Japanese that would not remove their Emperor and the second was to wait for the Soviet Union to declare war. Alperovitz article leaves me highly unconvinced due to a number of assumptions he is making throughout the article. He references United States intelligence advice multiple times backing his second alternative with the idea that if the Soviets joined the war, the conflict was likely to end itself on its own. Although both "The US was Right" and "The US was Wrong" make their fair share of assumptions, it seems to me that the assumptions made in the ladder are much less convincing. Alperovitz seemed to be in the mindset that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped but I find that the Japanese fight to the death mentality disproves the idea.

The US was Right

Before reading "The US was Right," I was already fairly convinced that the US was indeed right so I needed little convincing to side with John Connor. I have had a few WW2 segments throughout my school career and I've always had a curiosity for the subject. My Grandfather was also in WW2 fighting in the South Pacific area against Japanese, and this is probably a significant factor on my "US was Right" bias.

In the article, Connor bases his opinion that the US was right on few key points: The Japanese savages that were willing to die before anything else for their country, more lives would have been lost had the US not dropped the bombs when they did, and that the Japanese had thousands of Kamikaze planes in reserve with only enough fuel for a 1 way death trip. To back up these facts Connor states the death tolls and soldiers accounts of what the Japanese were like during the war. He also had a friend at Kyushu University that gave him information.

I find Connor's argument highly convincing and I've used similar points when describing why I think the US was right. The inevitable fact that more lives would have been lost had the bomb not been dropped is evidence enough for me.

Blog #1 Question at issue

A "question at issue" is the part of an argument that makes the reader feel the need to further discuss the question. In my english class senior year, I had to write an essay on "Multitasking, is it really possible?" I find this to be a "question at issue" because there is no real way to prove it, yet everyone can relate and hopefully spark their interest and lead them to question the conundrum. When in class I tried my best to see if I could actually work on an assignment while listening to the class discussion and I found it very difficult to tell if I was actually paying attention to both things at the same time or rapidly alternating between the two. The one consistent I found was that I did seem to get more of the assignment done if I concentrated only on the assignment and the same went for the discussion. (I remembered more of what was discussed when I paid specific attention to it.)