"Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation. "
(Catechism of the Catholic Church)
*ping your cowardly little crew, and I'll be delighted to answer each one of them, in dismissive order, about this matter.
Mrs. D,
That may be so; I won't quibble about the word "abomination".
What is absent from these discussions, regularly, frequently, and predictably, is condemnation of Japanese operations that were no less destructive or lethal as atomic bombs.
That absence suggests the anti-nuke folks prefer to ignore those in favor of highlighting, even villifying, America's actions
All of the special-pleading arguments pointing to the American lives saved skip over the question of just why an invasion would have been necessary in the first place. By the summer of 1945, Japan was whipped and powerless -- no longer a threat to American interests. Invasion of the home islands may have been a political necessity -- blood lust is insatiable in some, as this thread makes clear -- but it's hard to see how invasion would have made the USA more safe.
There are many factors that have bearing on the operative word, "indiscriminate".
A very informative article was cited in a recent FR thread entitled, Why Truman dropped the Bomb (Long but a very interesting read).
What ever side you come down on, it is clear that the decision to drop the A-bombs was not taken lightly.
Even with the benefit afforded to retrospective analysis, I'm not sure the decision was altogether wrong.
However, people can find themselves faced with a horrifying choice: either commit a terrible act or by omission commit an even more terrible act.
Such was the choice to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and commit a terrible act, or not to bomb them, and, by omission, commit an even more terrible act, i.e. prolong the war, invade Japan and commit even more carnage, or not invade Japan and allow the Japanese Empire to re-expand and commit even more horrible carnage.
Considering all options, bombing these two cities, as hideous and horrible as it was, was the least horrible of the choices and therefore the right thing to do--the most honorable thing to do-- and the only real choice.
On a global scale, it is comparable to killing in self-defense and defense of the innocent. Sometimes not to do so is a greater evil than to do so.
It is possible--in hindsite--that it would have been wiser to demonstrate, to the Japanese, the effectiveness of the bomb, by dropping it on Mount Fuji. However it is highly unlikely that this would have caused the Japanese warlords to surrender. They didn't surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima, necessitating the bombing of Nagasaki, and many of them wanted to continue the war until every Japanese man, woman, and child was dead.
Considering such intransigence and fanaticism, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the only option.
I agree with you that it is one of the most horrible events in all history, and I pray that such never occurs again.
However, even considering this, American forbearance, then and now, is magnificent. These cities were bombed only after the most careful consideration and with the utmost reluctance, and after her unconditional surrender the Americans were magnificently magnanimous in victory, treated the defeated and helpless Japanese with the greatest kindness, and rebuilt Japan into the miracle of modernity, prosperity, and democracy that it is today.
Such kindness and magnanimity astonished the Japanese after their defeat. They knew that if they had defeated the Americans, instead of magnanimity and kindness, the cruelty to which the conquering Japanese would have subjected the defeated Americans would have dwarfed the Roman destruction of Carthage.
War is always horrible. It is one of the greatest evils ever to afflict mankind and the world.
However, capitulation to aggression and tyrrany in order to avoid the evil of war is the commission of an even greater evil.
Such would have been the greater evil committed by the U.S. if she had refused to fight Japan after Pearl Harbor. Once committed to fighting, the U.S. had no choice but to defeat Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to winning the war, and therefore, to bomb them, as horrible as it was, was also necessary.
Pearl Harbor made Hiroshima and Nagasaki inevitable.
The Japanese warlords awakened the sleeping--and benevolent--American giant and forced it to commit to a terrible resolve. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the inevitable and unavoidable result of that terrible resolve.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were tragic victims of World War II, but they were not the only victims. Count among them the men who died in the war in the Pacific; the countless civilians in the Phillipines, in China--remember Nanking?--in Burma et al.; the American POWs who sufferred hideous torture, who were subjected to horrifying "medical experiments"; the Phillipine children in whose ears Japanese soldiers crammed sharp sticks for sport; the Korean women and other women forced into prostitution to provide "comfort" for Japanese soldiers; the Bataan Death March; the American families whose sons and husbands were never to return home. Do you think the Japanese would have behaved more kindly to conquered Americans???
Let's pray that such a necessity never again arises.
Let's also pray that if it should, we will have the courage and clarity to do what we must.
The real lesson of Hiromishima and Nagasaki is that the United States--the greatest and most benevolent nation the world has ever known--must remain benevolent and must remain powerful enough to deter--and to defeat if necessary--anyone who should seek to destroy her.