Split Thread: Atomic bombing of Japan (Split from "To my Republican friends")

[RandFan]

Originally Posted by drkitten

Who are the good "conservative" presidents?

Who are the "good" presidents? Define "good"? Moral?

FDR? See Japanese internment.
Truman? See Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." --Baron Acton

To suppose that there are "good" or "great" presidents is to be blind to something. You just need to pick your confirmation bias and rationalize or ignore the bad.

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by RandFan

Who are the "good" presidents? Define "good"? Moral?


Truman? See Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Huh? Truman's determination to carry out FDR's plan to use the atomic weapons on Japan was the man's finest hour. What was immoral about this decision? It would have been immoral to not use everything in the arsenal that would stop the further loss of American lives and that would cause the Japanese to unconditionally surrender, even if Hirohito was allowed to remain in the imperial palace.

[RandFan]

Originally Posted by Cicero

Huh? Truman's determination to carry out FDR's plan to use the atomic weapons on Japan was the man's finest hour. What was immoral about this decision? It would have been immoral to not use everything in the arsenal that would stop the further loss of American lives and that would cause the Japanese to unconditionally surrender, even if Hirohito was allowed to remain in the imperial palace.

I can't agree. Intentionally killing civilians is immoral. Intentionally forcing a child to endure horrific pain and suffering and/or dying is not justifiable in my opinion. See my sig.

One can always justify atrocity. The trick is to find a way not to justify it.

[applecorped]

Originally Posted by RandFan

I can't agree. Intentionally killing civilians is immoral. Intentionally forcing a child to endure horrific pain and suffering and/or dying is not justifiable in my opinion. See my sig.

One can always justify atrocity. The trick is to find a way not to justify it.

What would you have done if you were Truman?

[Undesired Walrus]

Originally Posted by applecorped

What would you have done if you were Truman?

I don't think Randfan is saying that he wouldn't have done it (That said, I should probably let him speak for himself). Just because the dropping of the bomb is the only thing you can do, it doesn't stop it being immoral.

[chipmunk stew]

Originally Posted by applecorped

What would you have done if you were Truman?

Send Hirohito footage of the test detonations. If that didn't slow them down, orchestrate a live demonstration that doesn't kill a cityful of civilians. Tell them that the imperial palace is next.

Make some attempt to ratchet up the pressure before decimating two cities.

You ask the question as though Truman had no choice.

[mhaze]

Originally Posted by Undesired Walrus

I don't think Randfan is saying that he wouldn't have done it (That said, I should probably let him speak for himself). Just because the dropping of the bomb is the only thing you can do, it doesn't stop it being immoral.

You don't exactly get an unconditional surrender by sending your enemy video of your secret weapon. You would have got some sort of partial withdrawal in the Pacific, Japan would have kept the oil fields and kept China.

Remaining a sovereign nation, Japan would then have had the bomb by 1947.

[WildCat]

Originally Posted by chipmunk stew

Send Hirohito footage of the test detonations. If that didn't slow them down, orchestrate a live demonstration that doesn't kill a cityful of civilians. Tell them that the imperial palace is next.

Make some attempt to ratchet up the pressure before decimating two cities.

You ask the question as though Truman had no choice.

There were only 2 bombs in existence. Not likely film of the test would do much, since the one on Hiroshima didn't convince them.

eta: we did tell them Tokyo (what was left of it) was next, but that was a bluff since no more bombs existed.

[WildCat]

Originally Posted by RandFan

I can't agree. Intentionally killing civilians is immoral. Intentionally forcing a child to endure horrific pain and suffering and/or dying is not justifiable in my opinion. See my sig.

One can always justify atrocity. The trick is to find a way not to justify it.

Look at the invasion of Okinawa and the numbers of civilians killed there (which amounted to 1/3 of the population) using only conventional weapons.

Scale that up to Japan proper and compare/contrast.

I don't see how someone could argue there would have been less civilians killed in a conventional invasion than the 2 atomic bombs killed. Not to mention American casualties finishing a war Japan started.

[dudalb]

That the first bomb on Hiroshima did not convince the leadership is a fact overlooked by a lot of people.
And even after the second bomb, a coup by elements of the military to overthrow the government after it agreed to accept the Potsdam declaration damn near suceeded.

[dudalb]

Originally Posted by chipmunk stew

Send Hirohito footage of the test detonations. If that didn't slow them down, orchestrate a live demonstration that doesn't kill a cityful of civilians. Tell them that the imperial palace is next.

Make some attempt to ratchet up the pressure before decimating two cities.

You ask the question as though Truman had no choice.

Nice sounding but totally unrealistic.

[dudalb]

Quote:

we did tell them Tokyo (what was left of it) was next, but that was a bluff since no more bombs existed.

And the Descison had been made if the First Two bombs did not convince the Japanese Government, more would not and the future bombs would be reserved for use in support of the invasion of Japan.

[mhaze]

Originally Posted by dudalb

And the Descison had been made if the First Two bombs did not convince the Japanese Government, more would not and the future bombs would be reserved for use in support of the invasion of Japan.

Thus the reality engendered by pacivist vision leads to...

Paratroopers into the blast zone!

Wheeee!!!

[Rob Lister]

[quote=RandFan;4184067]I can't agree. Intentionally killing civilians is immoral. Intentionally forcing a child to endure horrific pain and suffering and/or dying is not justifiable in my opinion. See my sig.

That was happening anyway. We firebombed them continuously. I believe our justification was that the urban population centers was where they moved their war industry.

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by RandFan

I can't agree. Intentionally killing civilians is immoral. Intentionally forcing a child to endure horrific pain and suffering and/or dying is not justifiable in my opinion. See my sig.

One can always justify atrocity. The trick is to find a way not to justify it.

I suppose we could have pelted Japan and Germany with platitudes, but that would have only resulted in Pat Buchanan's father being Gauleiter of Washington D.C.

But why single out Truman? I guess my problem with the Truman reference is that you could have made the same objection about the 8th Air Force bombing of Germany, or the conventional fire bombing of Tokyo, or German bombing of Coventry,London, etc, rather than condemn the dropping of the atomic bombs as the pinnacle of immorality in war. Civilian deaths during military actions in WWII was a common occurrence.

[mhaze]

Coventry....What would modern pacifists think of Churchill's decision not to give away crypto machines codes broken, thus allowing Coventry to be destroyed?

[lionking]

Originally Posted by mhaze

Coventry....What would modern pacifists think of Churchill's decision not to give away crypto machines codes broken, thus allowing Coventry to be destroyed?

A tragic, but correct decision, in the same way the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was.

[RandFan]

I have condemned the fire bombing of Dresden specifically and carpet bombing of Europe generally. Targeting civilians is immoral. Period. End of story.

Was 9/11 immoral? Is the killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers moral? What can't be justified?

There is a famous moral dilemma that goes, if we had to choose a single 6 year old child, take that child into the center of town and torture and kill that child to save the human race, would that be moral?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Make no mistake, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the death of 200,000 civilians. Those who died instantly were the lucky ones and I say that without any degree of exaggeration.

Are the lives of a million Americans soldiers worth the lives of those citizens? Did Truman have a high degree of confidence that the bombing was the only way to spare all of those lives? I'm not at all convinced that it is so.

I sleep better at night with the belief that the intentional killing of civilians is immoral. Oddly enough that is the current position of the United States.

[roger]

Originally Posted by RandFan

Targeting civilians is immoral. Period. End of story.

Why?

[Nogbad]

As I recall, the US military were not convinced of the necessity for the use of the bombs in Japan at all and spoke against the idea. It was a political decision to go ahead with the bombing.

It has been mooted (not unreasonably) that the use of the bombs was as much as a signal to Stalin as it was to obtain the final surrender of Japan (surrender negotiations had already been sounded out). Stalin's troops were ready to attack Northern Japanese islands (indeed took a couple) and there was concern that there should not be a significant footprint of Soviet troops on the main Japanese territories. There was in short a hurry to finish the war before Stalin spread his influence further. An argument in favour of this view is that we did not insist on a completely unconditional surrender. Originally we wanted the Emperor to abdicate but an accommodation was reached that allowed some Japanese face to be saved. This was almost certainly as important a factor in bringing the war to a close as the bombs.

Was containing Stalin through the sacrifice of innocent Japanese civilians acceptable?

One of the reasons so many churches were built by kings in medieval times was that it was considered almost impossible for a ruler to enter heaven because real politik required so many immoral decisions. The bequeathed churches prayed for the king's soul. I don't believe Truman gave the order because frying one of the few Christian communities in Japan filled him with a sense of irony. He made a decision which he thought made political sense. Stalin was indeed impressed and had his own bomb and nuclear programme surprisingly quickly.

[RandFan]

Originally Posted by roger

Why?

Why is anything immoral? Why is killing immoral? When is killing justified? I don't mean to patronize but I think you can work it out. What do you think?

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by RandFan

Are the lives of a million Americans soldiers worth the lives of those citizens?

Yes. Especially considering that roughly 900,000 of those American soldiers were draftees and didn't particularly want to be there anyway. I'd say roughly all 1 million were citizens too.

[Safe-Keeper]

Quote:

Quote:

Targeting civilians is immoral. Period. End of story.

Why?

Are you saying it isn't? If so, do you hold the stance that killing civilians is OK, but only during war-time? If so, wouldn't it be correct to say that the only thing immoral about 9/11 was that Usama didn't declare war in advance, sending Bush a letter in which he stated that a state of war existed between Al-Q'aida and the USA and that American cities would within hours come under attack? I ask because I hear a lot of people saying that for various strange reasons, the intentional killing of civilians in wartime is perfectly okay, if not something that should be encouraged. Oddly, these same people react negatively when this kind of logic leads to the death of their own civilians. The above question stumps a lot of people, strangely.

My view on the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings, though, are one of my very few exceptions to the rule. As has been stated, battles such as the one for Iwo Jima proved to the Americans how determined the Japanese were to fight to the bitter end. When the Soviets entered Berlin, they were met not only with ordinary soldiers, but also with children and elderly citizens who had been drafted by a madman as a last-ditch effort to save a kingdom that only ever existed as a feasible reality within said madman's head. The American leadership strongly suspected that their troops would face similar resistance if Japan was to be invaded conventionally.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared hundreds of thousands, if not over a million lives. It can be defended.

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by Nogbad

As I recall, the US military were not convinced of the necessity for the use of the bombs in Japan at all and spoke against the idea. It was a political decision to go ahead with the bombing.

You recall incorrectly. That is all revisionist ********. At no time did Truman consider anything other than ending the war with Japan as quickly as possible in order to save American lives. The decision to use the weapons on Japan was actually FDR's long before the Soviets had made any moves into coming into the war against Japan.

The only reason why MacArthur was saginst dropping the bombs was because he figured it would hurt U.S. Army appropriations after the war if a single aircraft could determine the outcome of the war in the Pacific.

[RandFan]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

Yes. Especially considering that roughly 900,000 of those American soldiers were draftees and didn't particularly want to be there anyway. I'd say roughly all 1 million were citizens too.

Not sure what being a citizens has to do with anything. Not sure what being a draftee has to do with anything. Of course there is no absolute certainty that 1 million would have died.

But that is beside the point. If you think that killing 200,000 civilians to be moral then fine. Please don't complain about 9/11 or suicide bombers, if you want to be consistent that it is.

And let's not rule out torture and we should forget the Geneva Convention. It's rather dishonest to pretend that we are going to bring some level of civility to our warefare and then purposely kill civilians.

Let's just be consistent.

"War is hell" -Sherman

[lionking]

RandFan, I'd really like to know how you see the bombing of Hiroshima during war being analogous to 9/11.

[Cicero]

Originally Posted by RandFan

I
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Make no mistake, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the death of 200,000 civilians. Those who died instantly were the lucky ones and I say that without any degree of exaggeration.

Approximately 90,000 died at Hiroshima and 70,000 at Nagasaki. That means that the March 10, 1945 conventional fire bombing of Tokyo that killed approximately 100,000 should be the quintessential damning example of American immorality. But without the caveat that the U.S. is the only country to use atomic weapons in anger, the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not be used by the revisionist to make America the evil incarnate of the nations fighting in WWII.

To say that there were deaths attributed to radiation poisoning after the H & N bombings is no different from saying many Tokyo residents succumbed to their burn wounds days or months later after the bombing. Dead is dead.

I doubt the victims of the bombings in any of the three cities saw the fine distinction between dying from a nuclear blast or a firestorm.

[Cainkane1]

Originally Posted by RandFan

I can't agree. Intentionally killing civilians is immoral. Intentionally forcing a child to endure horrific pain and suffering and/or dying is not justifiable in my opinion. See my sig.

One can always justify atrocity. The trick is to find a way not to justify it.

Like the japanese did in nanking

[Undesired Walrus]

Wasn't Lemay's utter desecration of Japan a month or so the nuclear bombing immoral? Even McNamara said both of them were behaving as war criminals.

[Nogbad]

Originally Posted by Cicero

You recall incorrectly. That is all revisionist ********. At no time did Truman consider anything other than ending the war with Japan as quickly as possible in order to save American lives. The decision to use the weapons on Japan was actually FDR's long before the Soviets had made any moves into coming into the war against Japan.

The only reason why MacArthur was saginst dropping the bombs was because he figured it would hurt U.S. Army appropriations after the war if a single aircraft could determine the outcome of the war in the Pacific.

I am not sure I buy that. It suggests MacArthur was a scoundrel and Truman wasn't looking past his nose. I think both judgements too harsh.

The huge Soviet Army in Manchuria was part of the move agreed at Potsdam to finish Japan. The Russians invaded Sakhalin (which they have never relinquished) and intended to invade Hokkaido. In securing Manchuria and the North of Korea, Stalin set the political scene in the region for decades to come. Is it unreasonable to think that Truman might have wanted Japan to be secured into the hands of the West as quickly as possible? The situation in Eastern Europe was already apparent by August 45.

Also, is it really revisionist to say that Truman was looking at the bigger picture? Is it more morally acceptable to kill tens of thousands of civilians to save soldiers lives than say preventing an entire country falling into the hands of a fairly ruthless dictator with a track record of wholesale slaughter? These arguments are not some trendy new fad - I read them in text books at school in the late 60s early 70s. Obviously, not having to fight was a great thing for the US troops but is it so unreasonable to suggest that world leaders were frying bigger fish?

[Zep]

Indiscriminate killing of those not being direct combatants, especially en masse, is immoral. In wartime, that does not change, just the justification.

There were a number of factors decided the use of atomic weapons, all listed above, which made the decision highly complex and subjective. I'm sure historians will also note that Operations Olympic and Coronet, the invasions of the Japanese home islands, were budgeted (if that's the right term) to cost the lives of about 1 million fighting US troops to achieve success. That is, the bloodbaths of island-hopping up to that point, like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan and Iwo Jima were just little spats by way of prelude to the main event.

Of course, there was no guarantee that the bombs would even go off successfully anyway (the one on Nagasaki actually went wrong - it exploded on impact with the ground, not at 2000 feet in the air). There were those on Project Manhattan who argued that dropping them on Japan might give the Japanese a free leg-up to the technology which they could retaliate with...successfully.

Another factor for the area commanders was that they were not in on the secret. They were only aware of some super weapon...which was widely tipped to be some new explosive, possibly new technology captured in Germany months before. This at a time when napalm was first being used (to firebomb Japanese cities). Their scope of thinking did not extend beyond relatively conventional weapons of the day - atomic explosives were Buck Rogers stuff, and besides was ultra top secret.

[bobdroege7]

Immoral as compared to the principle of self-determination, even of a nation that provoked the war in the first place?

Gracious winners we were.

And all that nogbad said.

[RandFan]

Originally Posted by lionking

RandFan, I'd really like to know how you see the bombing of Hiroshima during war being analogous to 9/11.

Fair enough, you asked first but humor me, why do you think they are different?

[geni]

Originally Posted by mhaze

You don't exactly get an unconditional surrender by sending your enemy video of your secret weapon. You would have got some sort of partial withdrawal in the Pacific, Japan would have kept the oil fields and kept China.

Stalin might disagree on the china bit. Japan was a mess. Waiting a couple of months would probably have resulted in much the same effect.

Quote:

Remaining a sovereign nation, Japan would then have had the bomb by 1947.

Doubtful. Their infrastucture was a mess they would have had a massive drain on their hands simply trying to hold china.

[WildCat]

Originally Posted by mhaze

Thus the reality engendered by pacivist vision leads to...

Paratroopers into the blast zone!

Wheeee!!!

A few years ago I did a job for a WWII veteran who was stationed in Hiroshima within a few weeks of the bomb going off there. His was a black unit btw, I wonder if they sent any white troops there so soon?

[WildCat]

Originally Posted by RandFan

Why is anything immoral? Why is killing immoral? When is killing justified? I don't mean to patronize but I think you can work it out. What do you think?

So what would you have done after Pearl Harbor? Cede the Pacific to the East Asia C-Prosperity Sphere and wait and see what happens in Europe and congratulate the winner?

Because there simply wasn't a way to fight that war without civilian casualties.

[Rob Lister]

Originally Posted by RandFan

Not sure what being a citizens has to do with anything.

You used the term 'citizen'...

Quote:

Are the lives of a million Americans soldiers worth the lives of those citizens?

...first so you tell me what it has to do with it.

Originally Posted by RandFan

Not sure what being a draftee has to do with anything. Of course there is no absolute certainty that 1 million would have died.

That was the projected estimate. It might well have been more.

Originally Posted by RandFan

But that is beside the point. If you think that killing 200,000 civilians to be moral then fine. Please don't complain about 9/11 or suicide bombers, if you want to be consistent that it is.

I never said it was moral; war never is. I do think it more moral than the alternative.

Originally Posted by RandFan

And let's not rule out torture and we should forget the Geneva Convention. It's rather dishonest to pretend that we are going to bring some level of civility to our warefare and then purposely kill civilians.

Should we ever again get into another real war (as opposed to the latest couple of trivial spats), the first book thrown out the window will be the Geneva Convention.

[Safe-Keeper]

Quote:

Should we ever again get into another real war (as opposed to the latest couple of trivial spats), the first book thrown out the window will be the Geneva Convention.

Conventions. If you're going to diss one of the most important rule sets of our time, you should at the very least read its label.

[lionking]

Originally Posted by RandFan

Fair enough, you asked first but humor me, why do you think they are different?

One was part of a declared war between two combatant states. Key words "declared" "war" "states".

I am sure you will respond that all acts of aggression which result in civilian deaths are equivalent. I don't agree and I'm certain that most governments do not agree. Motive is all important. The motive for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to end the war. The motive for 9/11 was terrorise the USA.

[Jeff Corey]

I'm puzzled about the innocent civilians bit. I think it is a consequence of living in a country which perpetrates the Rape of Nanking (earlier mentioned) You live in a country whose leaders commit atrocities and provoke retaliation, you get dead.