[agarrett]

You and Sean Hannity get this one wrong. If a terrorist hides in an apartment building of 200 plus innocent people and the only way you have a 50% chance or better to kill him in the building is to kill everyone else in the building, do you kill 200 innocents just to kill one guilty. Sean Hannity says kill the innocent women and children to get to the terrorist, which is by definition committing a terrorist act or fighting terrorism with terrorism. So would Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Timothy McVeigh. What say you?

  I say it depends on who it is we're targeting, and how much military value his death will gain us. If we have bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein, hiding in an apartment building with 200 people, then those 200 people are toast. If it's some Hamas stooge, perhaps not, but it really does depend on what value we get out of killing him.

  It also depends on what our relations are with the country. If we're formally at war, then blowing up that apartment building to get some one of military significance becomes much easier. In a wartime situation, the leaders of the country are committing perfidy if they place (or even allow) military targets in a civilian environment, and the blame - legal and, I believe, moral, for the civilian deaths is on their shoulders.

  In the more likely case where it's a terrorist hiding in an apartment building in an otherwise neutral country, it becomes more difficult, and we're much less likely to blow up the whole building. However, as I'm sure you're aware, our sensitivity to civilian deaths encourages unfriendly nations to place military targets in civilian environments. If we wish to spare future civilian deaths, we may have to get over this, and start targeting military targets even if numerous civilian deaths are inevitable.

  In the specific case of the article - Hiroshima - we were at war with Japan. Hiroshima was a valid target, but we killed a lot more civilians than was necessary. It is certainly questionable as far as the morality of that strike is concerned. In retrospect, I think it actually improves. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war before the Soviets got involved. For all the horror those two cities endured, it is truly minor compared to what would have happened in a North and South Japan. Just look at North Korea for a shining example.

Drew Garrett

[rightwing2]

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war before the Soviets got involved. For all the horror those two cities endured, it is truly minor compared to what would have happened in a North and South Japan. Just look at North Korea for a shining example.

Wrongo. The bombings did not end the war before the Russians got involved. Even though the Russians did not invade until August 8, 1945, they were able to occupy the vast territory of Manchuria in northern China as well as Port Arthur, northern Japan including Sakhlain Island and ALL of the Kurile Islands which they promptly annexed and northern Korea. So there was a North and South Japan, but the Soviets annexed the northern part that they occupied. Their occupation of northern China and delivery of the tanks, artillery and aircraft from 41 Japanese Army divisions led to the Communist takeover of all of mainland China from the previously militarily superior brave Nationalist freedom fighters, a feat which would have otherwise been impossible.

Without the Russian intervention against Japan, there would have been no Communist China, no North Korea, no Communist Vietnam and no Korean and Vietnamese wars. Tens of thousands of American lives would have been saved over and above the tens of thousands that would have been saved had liberal Democrap President Truman dropped his demand for unconditional surrender and promptly accepted Japanese conditional surrender offers of the pro-peace, pro-surrender Suzuki government which took power from Tojo whom the Emporer sacked for starting the war in April 1945.