Posted on 08/03/2005 10:49:43 PM PDT by manny613
The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time. In 1945, 85% of Americans approved of a step deemed necessary to end the war and head off a costly invasion of Japan. Only with the Axis threat long vanquished have numerous historians and philosophers come forward to claim that the use of the A-bomb was unnecessary and an atrocity that blemishes American honor.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
blah blah... we did it because it had to be done, the end
I believe that in the larger picture it saved even more lives. Russia had just entered the war against Japan and was eager for more than Manchuria.
In addition, the immediate postwar era, and the entire Cold War, was less costly in human lives and suffering because the bomb was used.
Agreed.
I don't feel a bit guilty about it. We killed several hundred thousand of the ENEMY to save a couple million of our citizen-soldiers.
We have nothing to be guilty about.
Guilty? Not me. I want to nuke a couple of countries now.
Too bad we haven't learned from this on the war on terror. If we had there would be mushroom clouds over some mosques.
just wait...it ain't over til it's over....</p>
If they, upon seeing the results continued, to resist....then we drop the bomb?
Punch drunk punctuation.
All the historical revisionists and distortionists rely upon widespread ignorance of the actual conditions and facts in 1937-45. Japan, Germany, and Italy had combined to kill tens of millions of civilians while waging the most colossal aggressive war in human history. Final death totals for WWII are estimated up to 50 million.
The US leaders knew from the island campaign leading up to Okinawa that the Japanese military had inculcated a fanatical drive to fight to the death, and there were almost no surrenders anywhere - on Okinawa virtually all of the more than 100,000 Japanese troops fought to the death, killing around 21,000 US troops in the process.
To invade just ONE of the four main islands of Japan would likely have cost 10-20 times as many US lives as Okinawa (200,000 - 400,000), not to mention Japanese military and civilian casualties in the MILLIONS. Even strictly from the standpoint of the Japanese, the atomic bombings did them the enormous favor of forcing the war's rapid end with vastly fewer casualties. Such comparisons sound ghastly, but all the people who rave against the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki need to understand that the alternative was a MINIMUM of 1-2 million Japanese fatalities.
Of course, US leaders were deciding to end the war as rapidly as possible with the (entirely rational and ethical) aim of saving hundreds of thousands of US lives, but even strictly from the Japanese standpoint it was a moral imperative to free the country of the stranglehold that a depraved military junta had on the government, and this was the ONLY way to do it.
When you have an enemy, whose intent is to destroy you, then all is fair in love and war. Our enemies sure live by the sword, and we are fools not to answer in kind.
Due to liberal hand wringing, propaganda, as well as our bought and paid for politicians, the movers and shakers seem to have forgotten this valuable truism.
They continued to resist AFTER Hiroshima... thats why there was Nagasaki. That should answer the question.
Doesn't answer the morality question. War is hell, fine but..
Read your history. We had Precisly TWO devices, one we were pertty sure would work, one we were not so sure.
Which one do you demo with, and which do you save for the real thing?
Why do people who make supprise and unprovoked attacks on a nation at peace deserve a demonstration? We were already at war - not trying to prevent one.
Oh I think it does answer the morality question. The ball was in Japan's court - their choice....their morality question.
Morality? Millions willing to die for a tyrant, Pearl Harbor. Millions of lived were saved by forcing them to surrender, that is the morality.
No feelings of guilt here. Like my father always said, "The Japanese started it (Pearl Harbor) and we ended it (Hiroshima & Nagasaki)."
Well said!
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