Posted on 08/06/2015 11:03:58 AM PDT by Biggirl
there are no innocents
the concept was developed to allow lawyers to control the military and the war process
I dunno. I think they’d probably be bitching about fire storms’ effect on civilians or whatever. As with Germany. They don’t need a logical reason.
Cheers,
Jim
They were not “undefended”.
“So if the Japanese hadn’t surrendered after Nagasaki, the U.S. would have been justified in bombing every Japanese city to ashes in succession — until there were no more Japanese people left alive?”
In a word, yes.
L
t My point is that to intentionally target civilians for indiscriminate slaughter, to force a response from their government, is murder. It's what the Chechens did at Beslan. It is what terrorists do.
A true Warrior Ethic is to smash the enemy and spare the innocent. One cannot always do this perfectly - and in the stress, terror and press or war, how to do it is not so obvious or so east - but to try to do that, to intend to do that, pertains to the difference between good warfare, and murder; and that is akin to the difference between the forces of Men of Middle Earth and the Orcs, if you want to put it that way; or the host of heaven and the demons of hell.
Tagline. It's from Psalm 72:4.
On the date Hiroshima was bombed, the submarine BULLHEAD was lost to enemy action. If the bombs had been dropped a week earlier, the BULLHEAD crew might have survived the war.
Always remember, simply because the US dropped two bombs, the war did not end but went on for a short time more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan
Hiroshima was attacked on 6 August. At 8:15 am local time the B-29 Enola Gay, piloted by Tibbets...
Two days later, daylight incendiary raids were conducted against the cities of Yawata and Fukuyama; these attacks destroyed 21 percent of Yawata’s urban area and over 73 percent of Fukuyama.[150] Japanese aircraft intercepted the force dispatched against Yawata and shot down a B-29 and five of the escorting P-47s for the loss of approximately 12 fighters.[235]
The second atomic bomb attack was made on 9 August.
[247] On 13 August, B-29s dropped copies of the Japanese government’s conditional offer to surrender over Japanese cities.[248] Negotiations appeared to be stalled, and on 14 August Spaatz received orders to resume the bombing campaign. Arnold requested the largest attack possible, and hoped that USASTAF could dispatch 1,000 aircraft against the Tokyo region and other locations in Japan. In fact, 828 B-29s escorted by 186 fighters (for a total of 1,014 aircraft) were dispatched; during the day precision raids were made against targets at Iwakuni, Osaka and Tokoyama and at night the cities of Kumagaya and Isesaki were firebombed.[249][250] While the Eighth Air Force units at Okinawa had not yet conducted any missions against Japan, General Doolittle decided not to contribute aircraft to this operation as he did not want to risk the lives of the men under his command when the war was effectively over.[251] These were the last attacks conducted against Japan by heavy bombers, as at noon on 15 August Hirohito made a radio broadcast announcing his country’s intention to surrender.[252]
No, you cited individual officer’s opinions, some of which were not directly involved with fighting Japan. The fact that the Japanese didn’t surrender even after the first A bomb was dropped shows their judgement was based on their own understanding of military science and not the twisted ethics of Bushido as it become in fascist Japan.
That's simply untrue.
Every ethic or law pertaining to war, going back to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and right up to and including the tribunals after WWII and the laws encoded in the UCMJ, features the concept of "discrimination" --- that acts of war must attempt to discriminate between armed and disarmed persons, between combatants and non-combatants.
Not that anyone could do this perfectly, since under the ambiguities and stresses of war, this can be devilishly difficult --- but that has to be the active intent. And it has been the active intent of every good soldier in American history.
It has been important to recognize that there are innocents -- in the sense relevant to matters of war and combat --- ever since God said "I hate the shedding of innocent blood." That takes you way back before lawyers, brother.
If you have no fear of God --- then go ahead and kill indiscriminately. But the man who has no fear of God and who kills indiscriminately, is not fit to be a soldier. Be aware of Whose law it is you're rejecting, and Whose power you are forfeiting.
trying to mix war and religion is a good way to get killed
It is well known that by late July, while publicly stating their intent to fight on to the last man, Japan's Supreme Council for the Direction of the War (the "Big Six") knew they were incapable of carrying on. Invasion being imminent, they entreated the "neutral" USSR to mediate peace on terms bearable to the Japanese. (All while the USSR was preparing to attack Japanese forces in Manchukuo and Korea per the promises they had secretly made to the US at Yalta.)
All the "what if's" have been hotly debated from that day to this, and will continue to be debated. The fact is that by choosing weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction of civilians, the Allies in fact intended indiscriminate mass destruction of civilians. There's no other non-hocus-pocus way to determine intent.
That intent --- to go after the civilians --- is, as Admiral William Leahy said, “barbarous” and a violation of 'every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.'"
We "proved" to the world that there are no moral absolutes, and it's OK to intentionally kill innocent human beings if you ave a good enough reason. We followed that up by killing 55 million of our own children, since everybody who chooses this --- ask them! --- has "a good enough reason." What goes 'round will come 'round. I see what's happening in the world. I think it's almost upon us.
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