Posted on 08/10/2005 5:15:47 AM PDT by RepublicNewbie
On the 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of D-Day, Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush traveled to Normandy to lead us in tribute to the bravery of the Greatest Generation of Americans, who had liberated Europe. Always a deeply moving occasion.
The 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, were not times of celebration or warm remembrance. Angry arguments for and against the dropping of the bombs roil the airwaves and fill the press.
(Excerpt) Read more at postchronicle.com ...
Whatever the mindset of Japan's warlords in August 1945, the moral question remains. In a just war against an evil enemy, is the deliberate slaughter of his women and children in the thousands justified to break his will to fight? Traditionally, the Christian's answer has been no.
I saw a fascinating show on the Discovery Channel last weekend, about the role the Emperor played in the planning and execution of the war. If not a direct planner, he signed off on everything, including the atrocities against the Chinese before the Japanese ever bombed Pearl Harbor, of which he was also aware.
Near the end of the war, when surrender of the armed forces was demanded by the Allies, there were some who wanted to do so, but the leader of the Army forces vehemently disagreed saying that he still had a million men who were ready to die for Japan and that they would kill all the Americans who landed on their shores.
That shows that they were willing to fight to the death of every soldier and civilian, if need be to repel and invasion. It would have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers, obviously, as well. My late father-in-law was one who was slated to have been sent in that invasion in the Fall of 1945, so he was grateful that the bombs were dropped.
That may be true, but it would have resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of civilians; many more than were killed in the initial dropping of the atomic bombs and even the cancer in their aftermath. For some to say that it was immoral to drop the bombs, then say that it was better to have starved them to death instead strikes me as a disengenuous argument.
Those military people, who wouldn't have been hitting the beach, are in the distinct minority. The opinion of the majority, particularly those who fought on Okinawa, holds much more weight.
The other aspect was the entry of the Soviet Union -- and the countries that they were going to seize and not give up control of.
The Soviet Union was slated to enter the war on August 15 or maybe September 1. Now Russia probably could have occupied most of the Northern Islands of Japan as well as all of Korea.
We had to paratroop troops in to prevent the Soviet Union from occupying South Korea after they moved into the Northern portion.
Stalin had signed a non-agression pact with Hitler and divided Poland with Hitler. When the Soviet Union was in dire straits during the time of the siege of Stalingrad, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Japan, and moved all the Far-Eastern troops to the German front. This was part of the Russian winter blitz that crippled the German advance.
The Cold War might have been different if most of Korea/Japan was in the hands of the Soviet Union. We might have even lost Taiwan.
One of my uncles was in the Philippines, and he probably would have been killed in a few weeks because of the attrition in his squad. They were paratroopers, so they had to earn their combat pay.
And they may be right about that. But one of my key points is that we did very similar bombing of German and Japanese cities. In fact, it was reported by the official historian of the US Navy in World War II (Samuel E. Morrison) that the fast battleship bombardment one night wreaked more terror on the Japanese civilian population than the aircraft bombings.
Why?
They never heard any air raids sirens or anythings. Just explosions going off with no sense of where they were coming from. I forget where this occurred.
But imagine not having any warning in the middle of the night and having explosions everywhere. If I was a small child, I would be affected by something like that for years to come.
Too many people, IMO, focus on the atomic bombings because they were atomic, but the conventional bombings did very similar things -- if you lost both legs from those or suffered extreme burns and died slowly, it is the same as some of the long term effects of the nuclear bomb.
This is a common mistake that people make when rendering a moral judgement on a subject -- going with the "lesser of two evils" on the basis that there are only two options available. This disingenuous approach to morality is precisely what convinces a lot of people that "safe, legal abortion" is necessary in this country because "thousands of women dying from back-alley abortions" is the only alternative scenario.
Sure -- I'd rather have pneumonia than tuberculosis if these are the only two options available to me. But a common cold would be better than either of them, and I don't know anyone who wouldn't prefer "good health" to all three of these!
On what basis do you make that statement (in terms of Christian moral principles, which is the basic premise of Buchanan's article)?
This is absolutely correct.
Japan surrendered before the third bomb could be readied.
Note also that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been warned well in advance via leaflets about bombs. That sort of changes the moral calculus because they could have gotten everybody out of there except those involved in the war industries, had they wanted to.
I would venture to guess that most military experts would tell you that invading Japan was not necessary at all. If this sounds outlandish, just consider this: the U.S. did not occupy all of Germany after World War II, and in fact made a very calculated decision to let the Soviets seize the capital of Berlin. General Eisenhower decided that extensive U.S. involvement in eastern Germany wasn't worth the cost in U.S. casualties.
Well what did they expect the US to do then. Simply lay siege to Japan for a few years? That would have been cruel to orders of magnitude more people than the two Bombs were.
Why do you assume that this would necessarily be the case? I'd have to do some research to confirm this, but I don't think Japan's agricultural base was incapable of feeding its own population. True -- it had to import natural resources from all over the Pacific Rim in order to maintain a modern state and a major military force. But eliminating a nation's affluence by laying siege to it is hardly "cruel" in any sense -- especially if the vast majority of that nation's citizens are delusional enough to believe that it is somehow a worthwhile price to pay for their obstinate "honor" in defending their country.
Well, from stories of what took place immediately after the surrender, they could only find one chicken egg in the entire land.
It was a just war.
Was that because they had no means of feeding themselves, or because a substantial portion of the nation's productive and agricultural capacity was needed to fuel its military machine all over the Pacific Rim?
Understood, but that doesn't mean by definition that every application of military force within that war is morally legitimate.
However you slice it, that's pretty bad.
It was a simple math equation.
Really? I should hope not -- because "laying siege" on an island nation is exactly what the U.S. has been doing to Cuba for 45 freakin' years!
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