Be Very Afraid

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Actually, more civilians were killed in one day of firebombing Tokyo than in Nagasaki; was firebombing Tokyo any more moral than nuking Nagasaki?

Why not get to the point and talk about Dresden? Or is it still difficult for you to talk about "German victimhood?" And why would that be?

 

This isnt about the morality of killing heaps of civilians as a means of warfare - in whatever manner - to demoralize a nation. I suppose we of this age all agree thats not acceptable. Its about the myth that some people are eager to create regarding Hiroshima.
But when there is no terrible significance to the use of ABC weaponry against civilians I dont know why the US – and in truth all of us – is so worried about proliferation, Bion.

I guess the dead dont care much - once they are dead. Be it burning Phosphor or the blast of a nuke that killed them. If anything its the moral of the attacking party and their choice of weapons thats in question. By that choice you can learn its true colors.

Dresden? Completely off topic, and yet another agonizing issue. But perhaps one that the societies of the UK and the US should concern themselves with, more so than we Germans. Namely what they became when they turned Dresden and its people into a flame.
Should regret be admitted by those nations they wont hear any complaint from us. Is it deemed something to be proud of, however, or something that can be justified – well, then, for once at least, it isnt our shame.
Same goes for Tokyo, Hamburg, Coventry etc.

Alas, can victors even be held liable for their deeds?

 

You miss the point. Probably my fault, so I'll make it clear: Okinawa convinced a large portion of the American leadership that the Japanese would not surrender even though they knew the war was lost. It convinced them that the Japanese would resist to the last. No surrender, no retreat. And so, six weeks after Okinawa, the bomb was dropped.

Of course the Japanese knew the war was lost. They knew that even before Okinawa. Unfortunately, the hawks within the Japanese government felt that a surrender could be avoided, even if victory couldn't be achieved. Hence Okinawa.

And from Okinawa sprung the American decision to avoid a repeat of Okinawa on the Japanese mainland by any means necessary. Nukes were the means chosen.

You're aware that the firebombings inflicted more casualties than the nukes did, yet you focus on the nuking. I don't understand why.

The Japanese had already experienced firebombing, and not surrendered. Why then would you expect them to surrender because of nukes, which, at the time, inflicted less damage?

There are those who say UFOs land on a daily basis as well.

Of course it was a factor in the decision. It was by no means a primary factor, however.

That nukes were used against Japan isn't of particular significance because America possesed conventional weaponry capable of doing more damage than the nukes were capable of doing at the time. See: firebombing of tokyo.

However, conventional weaponry is no longer even in the same league as nuclear weaponry--hence the concern with non-proliferation. If the USA and USSR had had a nuclear exchange, well...the destruction resulting would have outclassed anything their respective conventional militaries were capable of, by several orders of magnitude.

Note: I am not concerned with defending or condemning the decision to drop the bomb. I am interested in understanding it. Raging that it wasn't necessary doesn't aid understanding, any more than raging that the Holocaust wasn't necessary aids understanding of that atrocity.

 

Understanding. I dont want to understand this any more than I wish to understand Holocaust, AMaster. Which doesnt mean I dont want to know the details and facts.
Why strife to understand the minds of killers? Why allowing their murderous motives to become a part of our thinking and our reasoning? Before you know it understanding equals acceptance.
Why not just agree it was wrong. All of it. Holocaust, Hiroshima, Dresden, Coventry.
Everything back then was aimed at destruction, and harming people as much as humanly possible. You will probably say Hiroshima was actually meant to save lifes. The bright side of mass murder. What a sad notion.

I could go on and point out how I see a flaw in the argument that nuking Hiroshima wasnt as terrible as firebombing Tokyo, after all fewer people died in it. And how that cant be true when the US expected the atomic bombing to horrify the Japanese enough to surrender unconditionally. How it horrifies people to this day. Maybe for the wrong reasons, when thinking in numbers of dead – as some seem to do. And possibly all for the right reasons as the a-bomb is a symbol of disregard for life. In a way not unlike a KZ. A new dimension of murder was introduced in both cases.
By the way, dont you see how one atrocity isnt fit to put the other into perspective? That there is rather twice as much reason to feel regret?

I am also tempted to give word to my thoughts on US conviction of the Japanese situation, or what the true reasons for Hiroshima have been. Lets skip that. It wont do any good here anyway.

You insist to have no interest in defending Hiroshima, but in your upper post you do just that. By giving reasons, by trying to explain. You say you have not interest in condemning it, but perhaps you should have!

It appears that many Americans are unaware of the source of hostility shown towards their country. In my opinion the relation you have to your history is a major factor here. There is too much ambiguity in your past to be so confident. A confidence that sadly affects our presence in a poor way.

I realize how my arguments are vulnerable to all sorts of counters, and wont make me many friends. Again. Still, I figgured trying this approach could clearify my point of view.

Edit - typos and such.

[ February 22, 2005, 18:43: Message edited by: Dendri ]

 

@Dendri- I absolutely agree that war is inherently immoral, and that there really isn't any sort of justification for taking pride in the deaths of other human beings. I also absolutely agree that the focus of modern war on shutting down the enemy's productive capabilities, or on the use of terror in insurgency or counter-insurgency, all of which lead to the targeting of civilians, is deplorable. However, sometimes tyranny might be more immoral than war, though this is not a very happy choice to make.

So in the end (in an attempt to reroute the discussion), I can also say that I was very disappointed with the Bush administration's drumbeat to war, and in their habitual use of alarmism to get the outcomes they want. Krugman has a nice article in the NYTimes today telling opponents of Bush's social security privatization to wary of a switch to fear-mongering tactics by the Bushies, just as they did successfully to distract attention from corporate scandals in companies linked to the Bush admin in 2002-3. This is not to argue that concern over terror or despotic regimes is completely misguided, but rather to deplore the way the Bush administration has used fear as a cover for unrelated political maneuverings.

 

Just a few points that I feel need to be made about Hiroshima and Nakasaki.

One, the US only had 2 A-bombs avaliable at the time, "Fat-Man" and "Little-Boy". It would take the US several more months, if not a year to develop another atomic device. Droping one of the bombs on an un-inhabited location was discussed, but since only 2 devices were available, discarded.

Also remember that the Japonese had the opportunity to surender after Hiroshima, and didn't so later Nakasaki was destroyed.

Would the Japonese still have surrendered if they new that the US had no more atomic devices avaliable?

One also needs to give more credit to the Russians for Japan's decision to surrender. Had the Russians not declared war on Japan in late summer of 45, it's is very possible that the Japonese would have continued to fight even after the bombs were dropped.

 

All right, guys, now I'm even getting annoyed over how my topic has been hi-jacked. And I'm one to give (and take) a lot of latitude on how one wishes to approach a topic. What happened in WWII has nothing at all to do with George and his Middle East policies. If you wish to discuss America's use of nukes in WWII further, by all means craft a new topic on this, but for now please stick to the topic, which is how America is using the "nuclear threat" to promote its policies in the Middle East. And thanks to Bion for trying to turn this back to the orginal topic.

 

/me rolls up sleeves, attempts to get back on-topic

I'm more surprised that more people haven't seen past the initial commentary and attempt to establish a permanent sense of fear and foreboding. Surely not everyone is convinced that the United States is an innocent party under siege? While I do not believe that either side can claim to be blameless, and that everyone has a right to defend themselves, it seems that no-one is willing to examine why these people are so pissed off. One would expect any agency attempting to present itself as being fair and balanced should at least step outside its own assumptions and grounding to see what it is that these terrorists are so mad about. If someone would kill themself to get me, the first thing I'd do (after I made sure they were nowhere near me) is figure out why the hell they were willing to do that. Once I knew the answer, I could do something about it.

Of course, this point of view has been thoroughly avoided by the hawks and somewhat discredited by fringe elements of the left who have opted for the sensationalist approach, all to the detriment of the people in the middle. These are the people who are either shouted down or just don't give a toss about it any more and want to get on with their lives without listening to some ideologue babbling their manifesto. No major news network, service or mainstream paper in the US is going to take that middle-ground approach; few enough in the rest of the world have. People will take things like Fahrenheit 9/11 to heart for a while, but keeping public attention focused on the evils of the current administration is difficult even when you have near-concrete evidence (and no, I'm not only talking about Bush - Australia has its own problems, although those have not involved conflicts of interest or suspected electoral fraud).

To summarise: you can't trust anyone commentating on their own merits, because it's an inherently political issue. People need to be taught to ask why they're being told this, and to get an explanation. We're all too willing to accept things - it's easier not to have to think or worry about SEPs (Somebody Else's Problems). That's fair, to a point; you have to look out for number one. But we shouldn't be running around like mindless sheep while the dogs are barking at us - in this case, the more cynical you become, the better off you'll be.