And a miss!
Much more at the link. Refutation in effect.
I'm still not seeing anything that says that Truman would violently oppose a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido while the US is at war with Japan, which is what you are claiming. I'm not sure why it is so difficult for you to grasp that "Potsdam began a change in US policy towards the Soviet Union in mid-1945" is not the same thing as "the US is willing to fight the Soviets in response to invading Hokkaido while the US is still at war with Japan in mid-1945". Hell, I even did a quick search: the word Japan doesn't even appear.
An ad hominem is an attack the man, not the man's argument. (Point raised to derail from the actual point which was that ON was wrong about evolving US policy in 1945. Claiming that someone does not know the history as it was is not proving that the counter-claim is valid.
So you admit raising the ad hominem stuff was you trying out a red herring then? I don't know what to make of someone being honest about dishonest debating practices.
On the contrary, it seems the data does not support ON in his "point". Of course this is not a debate. It is a correction of errors, assertionsz and wrong impressions trotted out as "facts".
What data? Nothing you've provided supports the claim the US in 1945 would fight the USSR over the USSR invading Japan.
My opinions can be wrong, but the historical record is not my opinion.
That is true. Unfortunately, you are flatly ignoring those parts of the historical record that contradict the neat and extraordinarily simplistic little narrative you are clinging too. The development of containment was a much more prolonged and complex program that did not suddenly spring into being in mid-'45 and there is absolutely zero evidence that Truman would go so far to fight the Soviets had they invaded one of the Japanese Home Islands pre-surrender. Indeed, the actual evidence in terms of actions taken and words spoken (or written) rather suggests the opposite: landing craft sent to the Soviets, amphibious assault training provided, carrier air strikes with the explicit intention of aiding future Soviet actions, and an explicit expression of great relief at news the USSR was coming into the war. Against this weight of evidence the most you can muster up is "US policy towards the Soviet Union was
starting to change in mid-1945!". Well yeah. Unfortunately, there's a
big fucking leap between "starting to change the policy towards" and "willing to go to war with".
If they wouldn't in 45, why would they in 1950?
Gee, maybe because a situation in which they had spent 5 years steadily coming to perceive the Soviet Union as an enemy and then one of the Soviets client states
is not at all the same as a situation when they perceive the Soviet Union as an ally coming in to help them fight a hated enemy which has been killing Americans for the last four years.
The American people were not thrilled by Korea.
Actually they were at first. After the previous five years of increasing anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda, fueled by both real and perceived Soviet slights, steadily changing their opinion*, the US public supported Truman's initial decision to fight in Korea enthusiastically. It was only later, following Chinese intervention, when the fighting bogged down. Fact is, the American people were already primed to fight the Korean War before it started. Such was not the case five year earlier against the Soviet Union. Maybe you don't grasp that five years is actually quite a bit of time and a lot can change in that, so let me try to help you: if some random stranger in 2011 walked up to you and told you that Donald Trump would be elected President of the United States, what would you have thought then?
*The big breaking point seems to have been the Berlin Blockade.
A nation goes to war when its leadership decides.
Which is why the US entered World War 2 right in 1940 when France fell, I suppose? Or why George W Bush was able to move straight to invading Iraq at the start of 2002 instead of taking a year marshalling public support and making his case for the invasion of Iraq? In reality, a democratic state first has to spend considerable amount of time convincing it's people to go to war before it can, indeed, go to war. And while even in democracies the leadership can eventually bring the people around to it's way view, the key word there is
eventually.