Here we go again. Much emotionally loaded fluff and little or no consideration of the actual circumstances.
This is not a question of whether or not dropping big bombs on civilians is good or bad. It is not a question of whether or not these events were brutal and terrible (as war tends to be). It is a question of whether or not it was, at the time, with the knowledge at hand, a defensible decision to use the bomb(s)*. This is a question of prospects, not consequences. Even then, people could not see the future.
It is very cheap and easy to sit sixty years later, with perfect hindsight and no responsibilities whatsoever, wringing one's hands and saying that under no circumstances should this particular weapon have been used. But it is both arrogant and false to extrapolate Truman's line of thinking at the time from our own knowledge and opinions and guesswork and pet theories of conspiracy or imperialism, or play armchair general and claim to have known with perfect clarity which would be the best option all things considered.
If you say that you would have been against use of the bomb under all circumstances, you must realize that you would have been for the alternative scenario. Of course, no one wants to think about or look too closely at that, and since it never actually came to pass - will you look at that, none suffered or died at all in it! There's nothing to take responsibility for! Wooo!
*I'm assuming here that "lust for revenge", "showing off for the Soviets" and "testing the bomb's impact on real live people" are accepted as Bad motives, and that "avoiding larger bloodshed or possibly smaller bloodshed but involving much more non-aggressor blood" is accepted as a Good motive.
This is not a question of whether or not dropping big bombs on civilians is good or bad. It is not a question of whether or not these events were brutal and terrible (as war tends to be). It is a question of whether or not it was, at the time, with the knowledge at hand, a defensible decision to use the bomb(s)*. This is a question of prospects, not consequences. Even then, people could not see the future.
It is very cheap and easy to sit sixty years later, with perfect hindsight and no responsibilities whatsoever, wringing one's hands and saying that under no circumstances should this particular weapon have been used. But it is both arrogant and false to extrapolate Truman's line of thinking at the time from our own knowledge and opinions and guesswork and pet theories of conspiracy or imperialism, or play armchair general and claim to have known with perfect clarity which would be the best option all things considered.
If you say that you would have been against use of the bomb under all circumstances, you must realize that you would have been for the alternative scenario. Of course, no one wants to think about or look too closely at that, and since it never actually came to pass - will you look at that, none suffered or died at all in it! There's nothing to take responsibility for! Wooo!
*I'm assuming here that "lust for revenge", "showing off for the Soviets" and "testing the bomb's impact on real live people" are accepted as Bad motives, and that "avoiding larger bloodshed or possibly smaller bloodshed but involving much more non-aggressor blood" is accepted as a Good motive.
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