If you're aiming at Mitsubishi, a military target, and a whole city goes up in flames because that's what cities do when they're made out of kindling, you can plausibly claim proportionality and justification, no matter how many died. One historian put civilian deaths caused by the Japanese military in Asia and the Pacific, at 400,000 a month, which makes almost any number of collateral fatalities proportionate, if one is aiming at military targets and one reasonably intends to end the war.
As it happens, Mitsubishi wasn't even damaged: but the bombing was a great success.
Because as it happens, Mitsubishi wasn't the target. The city was the target. But if city=target, it's what we call murder. The Church's teaching against this follows the same logic via Natural law, and has the same level of authortity--- exactly the same authority --- as the doctrine against abortion and infanticide.
Akin says it better than I do, and deserves more careful reading than anyone here has yet given him.
Our entire nuclear deterrence is based upon our Presidents willingness to (supposedly) commit war crimes.
I hate to break it to you, but international “law” has only one precept...
The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.
“Akin’s argument is that they were not collateral deaths: they were the target. Their deaths were not just foreseen, but intended for strategic psychological impact.”
I disagree with this premise. You don't warn folks to flee if your intention is to nuke ‘em in order to kill them.
It may be that the Japanese ultimately interpreted the Bomb as Akin believes it was intended. It may be that there were some folks involved in the execution of the attack who intended it that way. It may even be that it was an unavoidable secondary effect of the use of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But at least to me, it's tough to say that it was the direct, intended effect of the Bomb, considering that the American military dropped large numbers of leaflets warning Japanese to flee.
These actions suggest to me that the formal, direct, primary, intended effect was to demonstrate to the Japanese government that we could easily, readily destroy everything they had that could possibly be used to make war, every economic asset, every bit of infrastructure, every factory, every port, every airfield, every building that could possibly used in any tangential way toward the war effort, without even breaking a sweat, and therefore, further resistance was futile.
sitetest
I have been busy and not well so haven’t been able to follow up on many of your interesting pings.
I will try to read this in its entirety later. But for short, here is some view from the Vedas:
Warfare is meant to follow rules - combatants fight only with other combantants, and it was considered a great sin to kill unarmed men, the elderly, children or women or indeed anyone not equipped, trained and ready and willing to fight ; or to destroy fields, forests and other natural resources. Battles were fought in battle fields, not where civilians lived. There were many other rules that in ancient times were respected.
Now, with enemies who “fight dirty” in every sense of the word, following such noble rules would ensure loss and defeat.
There is no white and black here. Or in these “modern” degraded times.