Posted on 05/27/2016 10:00:33 PM PDT by detective
Today, President Obama visited Hiroshima. It was the first time a sitting president has done so. Of course, we’ve entered another arena of liberal debate: were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ethical/justified/moral? The answer is yes to all three. First, let’s delve into something a bit disconcerting, which is that an increasing number of Americans feel that the bombing was wrong (via WaPo):
In the first Gallup poll from 1945 just after the bombings, a huge 85 percent of Americans approved the bombings. However, figures from 2005 show a significant decline to 57 percent. Meanwhile, another poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press in the United States and Japan in 1991 found that 63 percent of Americans thought that the bombings were justified in a bid to end the war, while just 29 percent of Japanese did.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
” ... the people on this thread who are arguing morality are not dunces; they are fools, ... “
Charles H is concerned with verbal distinctions at a level I’ve not yet attained.
I said Claud, et al were moral ciphers.
Folks who win wars for our side impress me more than the likes of Claud, et al, who don’t actually do anything, but (having been made safe and free, then kept that way thanks to ongoing sacrifices courtesy of the first group) are pleased to breeze in three generations after, to lecture us on this or that aspect of morality, as decreed by them. They’ve no credibility: so I’ve no interest in what religious authorities they might cite, nor how upset they become.
Claud, et al are dunces, because they are incapable of recognizing mere reality when it walks up and slaps them in the face. To wit: win the war, then talk about morality. To believe any other sequence is possible, is the equivalent of believing gravity won’t cause them to fall, because their religious/moral belief is better than ours.
So if they’ve no moral heft, and no grasp of the simplest reality, why should the rest of us care what they think? Fools, dunces, ciphers ... does it matter?
Interesting. But guess you are assuming that ground troops would be met by civilians with various relative ineffective weapons. That still does not justify mass killing of elderly and children with devastating nuclear bombs. Use of force must be proportional to the force trying to eliminate.
Really hard to believe that America could not find less devastating way to handle such a threat.
That guy has no concept of ‘strategic’ warfare which has been around since the ancient times. They’d throw diseased bodies over city walls and so on. Sometimes if you want to win you have to play dirty. And the winners write the history. He doesn’t seem to have a clue how low down and dirty our firebombing and carpet bombing in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam were. Only after Vietnam did we really start to try and minimize civilian casualties on purpose.
“I notice unanimity among “conservatives” that dropping the bombs was moral.”
Didn’t both Eisenhower and MacArthur criticize the A-bomb drop in their memoirs?
You say it's hard to believe we couldn't fnd another way, but I note you haven't offered one.
I can offer one. Have Americans act as real men do. Fight women and children armed with knives and sabers with guns not devastation from the sky. My father had one of the crew in his care. The devastationo the men who flew those planes and dropped tose bombs was devastating.
Weighing numbers of deaths never justifies the intrinsic evil of direct killing of the innocent or inadequately armed women and children.
We were wrong. And I am a hawk.
So you think shooting women and children would be any less devastating on soldiers?
The use of the term “magic wand” was a metaphor. And if I do say so myself it was a very accurate and appropriate metaphor. The term magic wand was a metaphor for the fictional and non-existent strategy and/or series of events that would have ended the war against Japan with no casualties. I did not mean that you literally wanted to wage a magic wand.
If I was unclear or confusing I apologize.
I never suggested that there was a way to end the war without casualties.
So your “magic wand” metaphor was just what I said it was, a self-indulgent insult.
Yes. And American generals became almost violent in their opposition to the British bombing of civilians in Europe.
The notion that “conservatism” demands mass murder, as long as it’s for ‘Murica, is obscene. It’s why “conservatism” has collapsed.
What I mean is: Being a “conservative” in the sense of having something tangentially to do with Reagan or Buckley on one’s resume is dead.
Good question. For me no. Not real men. But. If only alternatives are atom bomb or guns against womenvand children the former never justifed, the latter perhaps justified.
Personally,I would think bommbing munition’s plants etc. with ordinary bombs best.
And what if munitions were located amongst the civilian population.
To me in that case, the blood is on the hands of those who put them there, not on ours’.
I used the term “magic wand” as a metaphor. It was a metaphor for the fictional and nonexistent strategy and/or series of events that would have forced the Japanese to surrender with no casualties. I did not mean that you literally wanted to wave a magic wand and end the war.
I tried to explain that all of the options would have involved massive casualties. The Japanese military had ordered all the civilians on the island to fight to the death and to kill as many Americans as possible. Dropping the atomic bomb was by far the best and least destructive course of action.
The officers in charge of the men serving in the Pacific had an obligation to protect the men fighting for America and not send them to be slaughtered in the millions in a costly invasion of Japan.
If you think it would have been more moral to invade Japan and have millions and probably tens of millions of American and Japanese casualties then say so.
But don’t pretend their was a way to force the military of Japan to surrender with no civilian casualties.
Well you have the luxury of seventy-plus years of hindsight to make your judgement call.
I stand with those who were in the arena and made the difficult call at the time.
“I never suggested that there was a way to end the war without casualties.”
You said that dropping the atomic bomb was immoral because it killed so called civilians.
I explained that the Japanese military had ordered these civilians to fight to the death and to kill as many Americans as possible. I explained the alternatives and showed that the atomic bomb was by far the wisest and least destructive possible course of action.
But you still claim it was immoral because it resulted in casualties. This implies that there was a way to end the war against Japan without any casualties.
I was not being self-indulgent. I was trying to show that your position was illogical and unrealistic. I did not mean to insult you in any way and I am sorry if my wording made you fell insulted. It was not my intent.
If munitions located in civilian population, rules of just war say warn and try to pinpoint. If women children hit is acceptable but not desired and crtanly lamented.
I understand your point. Perhaps were I there and not with a head full of just war theory and experience,I would have made the same misjudgment.
Acts of Terrorism and Atrocities by the Japanese in WW II are documented in many places.
I will never ever forget. Truman was right. I reject those who would re-write history...and anyone who whines about the internment camps. Learn how The japanese treated prisoners and POWs. Savages.
So, engaging as you descrbe is preferable, even if it results in 100x the casualties...why? Because the men get to look women and children in the eyes as they shoot, bayonet, torch them with flamethrowers...not to mention get blown up and maimed themselves in the process? Not really tracking.
I never said it was immoral because it killed civilians. I said it is immoral to target civilians. And I never said there was a way to end the war without killing anybody, or without killing civilians.
And I never discussed the question of who in Japan was or was not a civilian. It certainly is arguable that, at that point, virtually nobody was.
I objected only to the consequentialist argument that targeting civilians is moral if it “saves lives.”
In fact, I am not certain that dropping the bombs exactly where they were dropped was immoral. Japan was a psychotic, almost totally unbaptized society engaged in total war. Our government, from 1933 on, was in the hands of a megalomaniac whose administration was riddled with fascists and Communists. I don’t think of Truman as a criminal for using the bombs. He certainly and sincerely believed his first duty was to win the war without the unnecessary sacrifice of a million or more American men.
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