Why didn't America nuke Vietnam and Iraq?

Question

why is it ok to nuke Japan, while it is wrong to nuke Vietnam in Vietnam war, or Iraq today?

Answer 1

New day and age...we don't target civilians to change a government anymore.

Answer 2

nukes are Shields not weapons, so its more of a "if you attack us your getting nuked" rather then "were attacking you so were wiping out your populace and making your land uninhabitable for 30 years"

Answer 3

It is not "OK" to nuke Japan.  The decision to use atomic weapons on civilian populations to end WW2 is still being debated by philosophers and historians.  Nuking civilian populations in Iraq today would do very little to "win the peace" in Iraq and would legitimize other nations who have weapons to use them.  A simular argument can be made in the Vietnam war scenario.

Answer 4

'Nukes' are usually bad for health...

Answer 5

Because we learned the consequences of nuking Japan. That lesson was that we killed many innocent people. Its a new time, and nuking countries really isnt popular.

Answer 6

Lessons learned from the past. This should never ever happen again.

Answer 7

No need too.

Answer 8

President McCain will Nuke all brown people because they're not really people anyways.  Then we will send all of our welfare mothers to collect the oil

McCain 08

Answer 9

Vietnam - fear of escalation and creating WWIII.

Iraq - Only there to remove Sadam and to establish a democracy in the exact center of the middle east.  Big Gamble, appears to be paying off.

Answer 10

Hey Alex.. It is obvious that you are not old enough to have been here during WW2.

We nuked Japan because the only alternative would have been to invade the Japanese home islands and that could have cost as many as 1,000,000 allied lives and another 2,000,000 Japanese lives.

By dropping the bombs we saved those US and allied lives and about 1,800,000 Japanese lives.

There was no similar situation in Iraq or Vietnam.

The US used the bomb to rid the world of a fanatical militaristic government and save the lives of our kids, 480,000 of whom had already been killed in WW2. We lost as many kids every 2 weeks in WW2 as we have in 5 years in Iraq.

Try reading history.