Posted on 08/06/2013 7:48:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
August 6, 2013 marks the 68th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb, and August 9th the last. Japan did not surrender for five days after Nagasaki was bombed, during which time the Soviet Union declared war and the Americans conducted additional, conventional firebombing raids on a Japanese city. Emperor Hirohito was asked to break a deadlock in the imperial cabinet that had blocked an unconditional surrender up to that point.
To this day, Harry Truman is viewed by ardent critics as a war criminal and the United States is deemed as being stained by a sin as indelible as slavery. In fact, last November, a "documentary" on Hiroshima and its aftermath produced by Oliver Stone was shown on television and, as might be expected, it presented the standard apologist's take on the history surrounding Truman's decision to use nuclear bombs.
To quote Stone from an interview he gave to the Stanford Daily earlier this year, his production was intended to "cause Americans to rethink your history ... because you're not the indispensable, benevolent nation that we pretend to be." He might have gotten his facts straight before making such an arrogant and ignorant comment, but as we know from his past works, facts seem to get in the way of his agenda.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“I think the day is coming when the only thing they will teach kids about WWII are:
The Soviet Union won the war on their own, with little help from us
Dresden
The Internment of Japanese Citizens
Hiroshima and Nagasaki”
We’re farther down that path than most can imagine. Already.
In 1994, it was revealed that the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum was about to complete its decades-long restoration of the B-29 Enola Gay, from which the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. All was to be revealed in a special 1995 exhibit, as part of the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Some brave soul leaked the exhibit “script” to some veterans’ groups.
An unvarnished reading of the script gave the distinct impression that the average historical illiterate viewing the exhibit would come away with the distinct conclusion that it had been very unfair and racist, for the United States to start the war, by means of unprovoked sneak attacks with atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Reaction from veterans’ groups was strong, and prompt. Officials at the Smithsonian dissembled, delayed, lied, and tried to cover things up. Congressional inquiries were launched.
In late 1994 and early 1995, academics and media outlets rushed to the aid of then-NASM director Dr Martin Harwit and his curating staff. Academic talking heads appeared on special news reports, supporting the anti-nuke, anti-military revisionist view. Especially condescending were the latter-day “experts,” who acknowledged that it was “understandable” that WWII veterans might have “strong feelings” about the issue, but they simply didn’t know what they were talking about.
Spearheaded by the Air Force Association, a coalition of veterans groups got the exhibit corrected before its official opening date. Director Harwit resigned in May 1995; he never acknowledged that he and his minions had done anything wrong, nor even ahistoric nor misinformed. Liberals across the nation wailed in dismay, sniveling about the great unwashed masses frightening scholars into silence.
Leftist revisionists accepted their defeat with relative grace. Then their talking-head TV stars launched straightaway into heaping praise on NASM and legions of anti-nuke folks, for politeness and tolerance, in giving way to the veterans’ “whims” about the war. Learned opinions were advanced, that the towering intellects at NASM and in professorial posts nationwide, had caved in to political correctness (!), in giving way to a “special interest group.”
A few talking heads stroked their chins on camera, and pointed out that in a few short years the veterans would be gone. Then the Left/Progressive “professional historians” would have their way: the only story heard would be their Left revisionist one.
“... I have no moral objection to “targeting” the civilians with psy-ops. If you can help them decide to give up, so much the better.”
It’s a conceit that there can be noncombatants. Hasn’t been true since 1600 or so. Maybe earlier.
If you have qualms about the morality of killing the enemy, I can only conclude that you are incapable of judging the situation properly.
Moral arguments aside, most of you have gotten the sequence of events wrong anyway:
First, win the war.
Second, fuss about morality.
If Step One is not accomplished, all talk of morality stops.
You apparently think you have no Judge to face, when this brief life is over.
“You apparently think you have no Judge to face, when this brief life is over.”
Many posters are confused. They believe - apparently - that being moral is more important than being effective.
Though there may be times and situations where this is true, I submit that to do so while at war is to court disaster.
Have you ever noticed that those who criticize us for dropping the A bomb[s]on Japan are quite as a mouse concerning the Japanese terror bombing the Chinese cities, bombing Manila after it was declared an open city. Not one complaint do they make about the German bombing of Warsaw, Stalingrad, Rotterdam, London, or Coventry ?
Have you ever noticed that those who criticize us for dropping the A bomb[s]on Japan are quite as a mouse concerning the Japanese terror bombing the Chinese cities, bombing Manila after it was declared an open city. Not one complaint do they make about the German bombing of Warsaw, Stalingrad, Rotterdam, London, or Coventry ?
It seems to me that there are two possible answers to that question. Either:
If it's the first, then it hardly matters who wins a war. Our tenure on this planet is brief; always going, and soon gone; and has no significance; or...
If it's the second, that new perspective may not focus on who won a war.
My friend Mr. Barret, a shrewd, decent and experienced man of tremendous practical, applicable intelligence, who was born in 1926 and is now 87, was 19 and in the USAAF in the Pacific when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. It's possible that without those two bombs, J.P. Barret would have been n an excellent position to die at 19.
He knows that; but his perspective now is different than it was when he was 19; now he thinks the one thing necessary, is to do what is right in the eyes of God --- whose perspective he is persuing.
Thirty, fifty years from now, we will all three--- you, me, and Barret-- be dead. It's quite possible there will nobody on this planet who remembers our names. It will be interesting to see what matters then.
“... it hardly matters who wins a war. ... that new perspective may not focus on who won a war.
... It’s possible that without those two bombs, J.P. Barret would have been n an excellent position to die at 19. ... the one thing necessary, is to do what is right in the eyes of God -— whose perspective he is persuing. ...”
I am at a loss.
Are moral absolutists merely lazy?
Or are they overtoppingly arrogant?
Claiming that it never matters who wins and who loses enables the claimant to avoid any of the hard work of finding what is actually going on, of deciding what to do, and of actually doing it.
Or, in the case of WWII, what went on and why. “It was bad to kill people with atomic bombs” is easier to say, than actually going out and learning something useful about the times, the people who lived through them, and why they did this or that.
And moral absolutists exhibit hubris by claiming The Almighty has issued them direct orders. The truth of that can never be determined: doubt will exist. And as the late Roger Zelazny noted, doubt is the chastity of the mind.
All of the moral absolutists’ protestations are but to say, “We are more moral than the rest of you, therefore we can ignore you. Or order you about, as it strikes our fancy.”
Drop the bomb, the casualties are mostly the enemy.
By this doctrine then, Japan prevails in the war. See Manila for a city fight against the Japanese.
Ir was considered, it was rejected because it didn't meet the objectives. In this case it would take too long.
First, I never claimed that "it never matters who wins and who loses". I made a much more circumscribed observation: that this would not be the sole or uttermost consideration from a perspective of eternity.
Second, you argue as if against a pacifist. I am not a pacifist, not even a nuclear pacifist --- a position I consider defective --- and am assuming that war can be waged in deadly earnest, inflicting hundreds of thousand of fatalities (I'm thinking here of WWII) and be right and just; yes, even if atomic bombs are used --- after all, the different kinds of bombs and armaments per seare a technical, not a moral, distinction.
So you've spent your efforts to rebut points I did not espouse.
I did espouse a longer perspective, since this is a perspective we will be obliged to acknowledge at the point of Judgment. And this is a perspective we get, not from hubris, but from a certain ---to use Zelazny's word --- chastity, since it comes of not succumbing to lust, nor wrath, nor fear, but from a fidelity to the code of the just person, even the just warrior.
Not to get too lengthy about it, war must be conducted by focusing overwhelming destructive force on enemy combatants and their military (not social) targets, since we wish to annihilate the enemies' ability to project military aggression, not their ability to exist as a society. Just force destroys what needs to be destroyed; and it discriminates so that the infrastructure of civilization, and of biological life itself, is not selected as "target".
Discrimination is the key. A person who flicks off morality and is willing to engage in indiscriminate killing, is not engaged in war, but in murder; he is not defending his nation, but turning it into a nation of murderers; to the extent that this advances to completion, in the end he and his enemies are indistinguishable. They are the same, and he has destroyed his society in order to save it.
This is the Judgment of which I speak.
Xone: Not at all. Anticipating the invasion of the southern island of Kyushu, the Japanese prepared Operation Decision (Ketsu-Go) which envisaged the deployment of over 2 million troops along the coast to repel Allied landings. Using the atomic bomb on these massed troops, causing say ten times the amount of (military)troop deaths on Kyushu, than the number of civilian deaths at Hiroshima + Nagasaki, would have been justified.
This may clarify: #83.
The Hiroshima blast had a 3 mile diameter destruction zone. Kyushu is a big island. How were the Americans to determine within bombing accuracy standards the location of mobile assets? The bomb wouldn't have any effect on the artillery in caves dotting the hills. If there was no surrender, now the Allies have to attack across a radiation zone, or bypass that section and leave it as a salient. This is the problem with using a strategic asset in a tactical scenario. There was no real time targeting, horrible bombing accuracy compared to today, the atonic bombs weren't tactical weapons. It may have functioned as a demonstration, but it still took the Japanese 9 days to surrender with two cities destroyed.
I don't subscribe to the use of Just War theory in cataclysmic events. This particular post exemplifies why. The lack of knowledge of war, the naivete associated with its proponents is painful. Mass of troops means two different things to a JW proponent in this case and to a military person. One thinks that a atomic bomb could kill 2 million men in the defense on a 13000 sq mile island because they are 'massed on the coast'. History shows that that won't be the case but in their zeal for the JW theory rational thought is dissolved.
I believe in protecting civilians lives and property during a war but I won't sacrifice objectives to end the war to that protection as I don't hold that those action are faithful to the men that will be exposed to death/injury in order to accomplish the objective in a roundabout way. I will face judgement when I die, but the blood of my Savior is sufficient should I be found sinful in that case.
“...I never claimed that “it never matters who wins and who loses”. I made a much more circumscribed observation: that this would not be the sole or uttermost consideration from a perspective of eternity.”
This is an attempt to play it both ways.
Situations can be assessed differently, depending on perspective (time interval is only one example). As the time interval between “then” (for example, August 1945) and “now” increases without limit, it can be argued that it is moving in the direction of “eternity” (objectively defined as “limitless” but in subjective human terms, it’s only an interval sufficiently large that people have trouble imagining it).
Moral absolutists dislike a change of perspective if it chances to nudge results away from their preferences. How can they remain in control?
They declare that “eternity” is the more important concept; conventional wisdom reinforces their ploy, as nearly everyone is impressed by large numbers. Any moral concepts associated with an ever-unwinding time-stream get a free ride, gaining equivalent force quite independent of merit.
To tie it back to the disagreement, any immediate concerns (like, who wins or loses) cannot help but shrink, set against “eternity.” A mathematical quirk becomes a convenient excuse to hold the participants of “then” in moral disdain - a way to get one-up that few could resist. That includes moral absolutists.
Many who do not subscribe to such a view still deem it worthy, but it strikes me as odious. That’s on top of lazy.
I find protestations of “I’m not really a pacifist” a little difficult to swallow, when in the next breath the speaker condemns the employment of atomic bombs in August 1945 (extended verbalizings about “indiscriminate destruction” sure to follow). No better example can exist, of dire times and equally dire demands for the most serious of armaments. If not then, when? If not against the Axis, against whom?
Moral absolutists prefer being moral over being effective; everybody would prefer to be both, but some of us lesser mortals figured out that in this world (the one we do inhabit) tradeoffs must be made. In their pursuit of the moral (whatever that might entail), absolutists cannot help but diminish in effectiveness. In any war, they become dead weight that others must carry.
There is no way out of this dilemma.
” ‘By this doctrine then, Japan prevails in the war.”
” ... say ten times the amount of (military)troop deaths on Kyushu, than the number of civilian deaths at Hiroshima + Nagasaki, would have been justified. ...”
Don’t worry.
Americans have never felt bound to follow their own doctrine anyway.
Some claim that greater flexibility is thus afforded. There are downsides to everything, though, and the indiscipline thus invited has led to chaotic and sometimes deadly consequences.
None of which faces the question squarely. To wit: why are military deaths to be preferred to civilian deaths?
Distinctions cannot be made. This has been true for far longer than many are willing to believe; the last 500 years or so can be seen as one long effort by moralists to deny reality. Even our allies regard us as unrealistic, for merely thinking about making the effort. And our enemies think we’re morons ... noting their proclivities, any attempt to do so invites failure, if not outright disaster. That last word is a great deal stronger than defeat, and it was meant to be.
Arguing that the death of friendly forces is preferable to the death of enemy civilians is a leap into surreal territory. The difference is categorical, not one of degree. But that is precisely the argument made by those who disagree with the employment of atomic bombs in August 1945. No amount of moral posturing - the content of Post 83 is a mercifully short example of such - can dilute such foolishness.
Initial estimates from the previous island amphibious landings indicated 1 million Allied casualties in the initial actions with probably 100,000 to 300,000 deaths of friendlies.
Every island landing preceding the Mainland campaign had an exponential progression in causalities and fatalities. Unlike the island hopping campaign, the Japanese sentiment regarding their homeland was overwhelmingly more defensible amongst the common man. The public really didn’t care too much about the islands being lost as opposed to their homeland which had never been invaded or conquered by a foreign power.
Additionally, the American war fighting production machine was beginning to fatigue.
More devastating would be the prolonged campaign and risk of a second German Armistice after WWI promoting another war 20 years later by the Japanese people.
The American fight in the Pacific Theater in WWII is nearly a perfect study of a well fought war with a prompt conclusion and the vanquished being returned to self government and success within a generation after the conflict.
Rapatronic photos of atomic bomb detonations, some 1/100,000,000 of a second. “I am become death, the destroyer of world.” Hiroshima bomb - 100 billion atmospheres of pressure. Temperature at center was four times that at the center of the sun and more than 10,000 times that at the sun’s surface. Temperature at epicenter 9,000 degrees F, with 1,000 mile per hour winds. Nasty stuff. I know that it was necessary and it saved countless lives, including probably a million Japanese. But, horrific. I’ve never questioned the necessity of dropping those bombs. I did recently view a documentary White Light, Black Rain and it was absolutely heart rending. A portion can be viewed in the excerpt from YouTube below the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_58byuLBu0
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