To: 1stFreedom
Context is ever thing. Liberals ignore context regarding the dropping of the of the atomic bomb. It does not suit their purposes.
It has been estimated that approximately 250,000 civilians were killed each month by the Japanese in their conquered territories. English and Australian prisoners of war were used as slave labor on the Burma Thailand railway,some 100,000 or so died of, illness, malnutrition, and unrelenting labor and abuse. The Bataan Death march took what? The lives of 40,000 American prisoners of war? And of course, the Japanese initiated the whole war by bombing Peal Harbor, invading china, Korea, the Philippines, etc, etc.
The Japanese had their own nuclear bomb program, but you don't hear much about that. They had a bio weaponds program in Manchuria, and tested the biological agents on Chinese and Americans prisoners of war. The Japanese were vicious killers. But the people they killed somehow don't count.
We saved countless lives and without doubt saved the lives of American, English, and Australian soldiers who were horribly mistreated in their camps. But in the liberal calculus we were the war mongers and vicious killers because we made a tactical devision to drop the atomic bomb.
To: Pete from Shawnee Mission
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were centers for the war industry. This is true. I have seen lists of military targets in both cities, and they didn't look insignificant to me.
Focusing on the destruction of these military targets would have been morally justified -- yes, even if there was quite a bit of honestly "collateral" damage. I would go so far as to say the USA was morally obliged to destroy as much of Japan's war-making capacity as possible.
However, the killing of civilians was certainly part of the U.S. strategic intention. The shock of seeing an entire city, together with its inhabitants, turned in a moment into a raging inferno, was decided upon in order to break the Japanese will to resist.
The number of casualties isn't what makes it murder. The choice of weapons (conventional or atomic) isn't what makes it murder. It's the fact that the decision-makers decided to indiscriminately kill civilians as a means to an end.
By the way, it's very much to America's credit that we DON'T do that in places like Iraq. The USA forces (as far as I know) have strained every muscle to protect civilians, even under the most desperate circumstances.
That's what constitutes the one of the main differences between the USA and the Islamo-fascists. I'd like to keep that distinction clear.
90 posted on
08/05/2005 9:50:59 AM PDT by
Mrs. Don-o
(Human beings: created in the image and likeness of God.)
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