Sixty years ago- Hiroshima

[Jahakob]

1.Those people who command people to fight to their death... I could never be such a person, even if they sometimes are needed. The choices between killing that amount of people or killing that amount people are choices I hope I will never have to take.
That is kind of a 'god duty' IMHO.

Well just have someone else make that decision for you, then you can say how bad they are for making those choices for you. You should praise god you dont have to make and live whit those decisions.

2.Was the atomic bombing necessary?

If I was the general, and If I knew what kind of devestation the bombs would cause, I would choose the other option.

I would bomb Fuji as you said or I would try to end it in any way possible, just not dropping an A-bomb.

This far I haven't read any actual facts, only quotes taken out their books and articles.

The arguements that says that the option would have been worse are ones I don't quite grasp.
It seems the only option was to place soldiers there as they did in the D-day and get a slaughter.
How about turning the beaches the japanese would invade to meat grinders and turn everybody who steps on them to meat?

Yeah it's so simple by god, just ask the Japanise to place soldiers at the beaches and wahala war is won, no bombs are used and evryone wins
Tough what they would do when the invasion moves to cities and wahtnot? What is yer grand solution, that those mean generals didin't concider, to avoid masive devastation? Maby, when the invasion hapend, the Japanise could have put singhs on the beaches saying sumthing like "Evil Imerialist Yanke, take note war not hapen of bitches we is sluterd on bitches. Thank for understanding."
So simple yet those bloodtrusty genrals just wanted to flex their muscels.

3. Isn't the war that is raging in Iraq and Afghanistan now based on the hatred against america? Killing 70 000 people in a flash is something people don't take lightly.

Way to over simplify a conflict that has been going on since 600AD. Maby it failed to catch yer attention but the ones belonging to the radical wing of islam still have hardons for what happened during the crusades. The reason why the hate America is that is the most domint product of Europen Chrisitan collture. And is easy for all the crap heads in that region to point at America and say "hey the infadels are rich and sucesfull becuse we are poor" eat the rich sindrom is easy to justify. And not to forget the ease whit wich American collture can penatrate, iam sure it makes em feel small and insignificent and they beeing the "true belivers" it makes em rather pissed.

4.Isn't nuking someone just the same as shooting someone and then saying 'yea, and that's for all of you! Don't mess with the US!'

No, I am not an US hater even if I think the land is ruled right now by morons. Of course there are smart people in the US, as there are in any country, but I think if US should be our representant for the free world I think they should act with thought and not by desire for power, something they often do.

Ummm... it's 1945, the Japanise started the war by attacking America. What in the above is too hard for you to understand, i mean its not that hard even an American can sort of deduct the logical progresion there. Or is it just more of the America is evil cos they have more than me and are stupid on top of all. Jelousy is not nice btw.

5.Yes there are worse weapons but really, a dead man isn't relative. A dead man is never relative, you can say it is 'emotionally loaded fluff ' but that is what I think. 200 000 in a crowded city is enough.

How about just preaching some fuckin' Gandhi?

Yeah, the G-man would have done it, the only thing that scares bulies is passivnes

1. There are different kinds of people. I am thankful that I don't have to make those choices but does that mean I can't question the people who do? I never said that they are bad, I said that I think they made a mistake, in my opinion. Very human but still many people died because of that.

2. The 'meat grinder' thing was a joke. There are many ways to solve a problem besides from blowing it, if you have the position of general you should know that.
A teacher should know teaching, a general should know.. generalizing..
Even I could have thought of using a nuke. I don't have a grand solution but still, I am not a general. It is easy to say that the generals did the right thing and cross your arms, after all, they are generals. Almost every decision can be questioned and an order that costed 200 000 lives should be questioned if something should.

3. I don't like the muslim religion, as little as I like the jewish religion. I am not a big fan of 'religion' at all, but those religions I really dislike.
But the american hatred is existant in non-religious contries as well. You can't disagree that americas various deeds in history really is pouring water on the wheel.

4. I don't quite get you here... Nuking is not justifiable just because they attack first. At least in my point of view. I don't see what Hiroshima has to do with that Japan started the war?

5. Yea, more war-mongers would really make this world better. Gandhi wasn't the solution, he was a part of the solution. G-man is fiction.

 

[Tagaziel]

Seriously, it's like you were walking up to a SWAT member who had just saved a bunch of people by shooting a hostage taker through the head with his sniper rifle, puffing up your chest and preaching to him about not taking suffering into account and the unacceptability of sacrificing human life and how violence is not an option.

Per, I think you are confusing two totally different situations, my dear lizard.

A terrorist situation with hostages present is totally different from willfully obliterating two big cities.

 

[calculon000]

This has really degenerated into a flame war and/or off topic thread.

Ok, I, Calculon, feel that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was justified for the following reasons:

1. The Japanese were the aggressors and started the war in the Pacific.

2. The standard of attacking cities, and the civilians therein, has allready been set by many nations, including the Japanese, at this point in the war.

3. Dropping nuke would have caused LESS loss of life and devastation than a conventional invasion of Japan. Period. Less military and civilian lives would have been lost than the conventional urban war, and the conventional bombings that would have come with it, that would have resulted in all Japanese major cities to be in ruins.

This was an issue of
The nuclear destruction of two Major Japanese cities and the populations of them nearly all killed. The war ends almost immediately. Victory is guaranteed and immediate.

VS

The conventional destruction of all major Japanese cities, with much of their populations killed. The war drags on for what could be years. Victory become a distant, seemingly unattainable goal.

I simply don't know what else to say here.

 

[Bradylama]

Per, I think you are confusing two totally different situations, my dear lizard.

A terrorist situation with hostages present is totally different from willfully obliterating two big cities.

Only, you could say that the Imperial Japanese were "holding hostage" thousands of allied prisoners, as well as the people in all of their conquered provinces.

Sure, you could say that they were an enemy on the verge of defeat, but a hostage situation is already a no-win situation for the hostage taker. The impossibility of escape, in fact, is the pretext for hostage-taking in the first place. The prospect that you could bargain lives for your own freedom from the law.

 

[Jahakob]

This has really degenerated into a flame war and/or off topic thread.

Ok, I, Calculon, feel that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was justified for the following reasons:

1. The Japanese were the aggressors and started the war in the Pacific.

2. The standard of attacking cities, and the civilians therein, has allready been set by many nations, including the Japanese, at this point in the war.

3. Dropping nuke would have caused LESS loss of life and devastation than a conventional invasion of Japan. Period. Less military and civilian lives would have been lost than the conventional urban war, and the conventional bombings that would have come with it, that would have resulted in all Japanese major cities to be in ruins.

This was an issue of
The nuclear destruction of two Major Japanese cities and the populations of them nearly all killed. The war ends almost immediately. Victory is guaranteed and immediate.

VS

The conventional destruction of all major Japanese cities, with much of their populations killed. The war drags on for what could be years. Victory become a distant, seemingly unattainable goal.

I simply don't know what else to say here.

1. Revenge is the worst thing to justify anything.

2. Not with nukes, that is what the topic is about.

3. The war was over and Japan had already been bombed to destruction. And when the first bomb had landed japan was really down on its knees. What happens? Another bomb falls and devastates another city.

Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.

On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.

On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.

In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:

Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...

In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.

In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.

On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."

President Truman steadfastly defended his use of the atomic bomb, claiming that it "saved millions of lives" by bringing the war to a quick end. Justifying his decision, he went so far as to declare: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This was a preposterous statement. In fact, almost all of the victims were civilians, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

If the atomic bomb was dropped to impress the Japanese leaders with the immense destructive power of a new weapon, this could have been accomplished by deploying it on an isolated military base. It was not necessary to destroy a large city. And whatever the justification for the Hiroshima blast, it is much more difficult to defend the second bombing of Nagasaki.

Read everything on http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html .

 

[Bradylama]

1. Revenge is the worst thing to justify anything.

I can think of plenty of things that are worse justifications than revenge. The concept of revenge, in fact, is seeded in our concepts of justice. Criminals serve crime as retribution for their indescretions against fellow citizens, after all.

2. Not with nukes, that is what the topic is about.

Only, Nukes aren't all that terrible when you consider that their only impact is the scale of their destruction. American bombers could already inflict the same scale of destruction on Japanese cities.

The only other thing that sets nukes apart from other weapons is their environmental impact. It poisons the air and ground, and causes sickness and birth defects. However, there are people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are there not?

Radioactive impact also wasn't fully known to the Americans, either. Knowing what we know about atomic bombs, it's easy to say that they should never be used, however, from the perspective of policy makers in 1945, the only impact of the bomb was its scale of devastation.

How can there be moral outcry over injustices people didn't know they were commiting?

But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched."

Perhaps you don't understand what Unconditional Surrender means. Essentially an Unconditional Surrender means that the surrendering party has no right to dictate the terms of surrender. This could include, but is not limited to, the retainment of Japanese holdings on the Asian Mainland, and naval bases in the Pacific.

Of course, these conditions would never be accepted, but if we took the Japanese seriously and attempted peace talks, then we'd be embroiled in meaningless debate while people continued to die. Essentially the same situation regarding the Korean War.

 

[Per]

This far I haven't read any actual facts, only quotes taken out their books and articles.

Check out the Wikipedia article called "Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki", it's accessible and as objective as you can ask for although it doesn't go into too much detail or hypothetical scenarios.

G-man is fiction.

w00t !!1

This was an issue of
The nuclear destruction of two Major Japanese cities and the populations of them nearly all killed. The war ends almost immediately. Victory is guaranteed and immediate.

VS

The conventional destruction of all major Japanese cities, with much of their populations killed. The war drags on for what could be years. Victory become a distant, seemingly unattainable goal.

It wasn't as clear as all that; many factors were wildly uncertain and there were no guarantees for anything. But there was enough death in both prospects that the concept of life's sanctity does become somewhat irrelevant. Did I just expose myself as a soulless abomination again?

Istec, you shouldn't double-post either, and by the gods, use the spellchecker.

 

[istec]

You have not seen any of that, only heard of it, other wise you would had those silly idialistc notions out of yer head. Tough if yer nice story is taken at face value dosn't it show that indecision and idialistc lalywaging is not a solution to an aggression? If for nothing else but to prevent similar events in the future?
Or what is the point of that story?

Seen.
Just tried to explain myself, and rectify wrongly imposed notion im some -idialistc lalywaging- peace lover.

At least i know what im talking about. That should have been clear to any at least semy inteligent humanoid at once. But as your example show i was hoping for too much.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

also, we are not talking about begining of the war and justly retalitating , but the end....where the only enemy left was already beaten.

Duno, all yer yamering on the 2 other pages sounded like the idialistc molases so popular whit the ones whit higher intelectual capacity.
Tough yer higher intelct does confuse my poor lil ole brain. Let me see if i get this right. you are saying that the bombs would have been perfectly OK in 42? Intersting from what i read on the Pacific campain the surender was all done up on that one BB, now i may be too stupid to know it but wasnt that after the bombs were droped?
Or maby the "end" is some arbitrary point of time convinent for the america bashers... hmmm wonder if that is the case?

 

[4too]

Post Cold War Revisions

Post Cold War Revisions



What if 's.

Perhaps the U.S. should have paused, taken time to pull up it's socks, straighten it's collective bow tie, and let the Soviets - liberate - the Japanese home islands.

Imagine Japan singing it's version of "'The East Is Red"".

Douglas McArthur wouldn't have had the chance to play god in the japanese sand box, no, he might have "returned" to Virginia and run for President in '48, instead of
Wilkey....

Consider a 19th Century conservative in the White House as the Cold War bares "fruit'", fungi fruit, mushrooms.

Thanks for caring.





4too

 

[Lukus]

I haven't engaged in a debate of this sort in quite a while, but considering that I have an educated opinion in Japanese culture (as far as porn goes at any rate), I feel as if I might have something completely uninteresting to add to the topic at hand.

In my opinion, it is never a perfect solution to anything when it requires innocent human lives as the currency of payment. However, as you may have noticed by now, it's not a perfect world either, and so a 'perfect solution' isn't always possible. People die, and sometimes it's actually for 'the better' (not for utopia, but still 'better' considering the circumstances). The Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukings were of course sad events - since so many potential Japanese pr0n models were killed - but oy, it's not my place to judge weather or not those generals who ordered the bombings did the right or wrong thing to do, again, considering the circumstances. As far as my opinion goes, it was decided to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki in times of war, and doing the "right thing" (whatever that is) was apparantly not an option. Would it really have been better if the war had proceeded with both sides only using other means of - newsflash - killing people? The nukes killed a lot of people, but put a swift end to the war.

So yer, the event of a nuke being dropped on a town full of innocent and partially hot people with their various comings and going of the morning is quite a terrible thing. It was so, in my opinion, not just 'per definition' (not that I'm going to dig into the subject of what 'justice' is here and now tho') - but not completely wrong either. The year was 1945, it was during a war, and quite a big one too. The American generals were doing their job; fulfilling their task to win the war - newsflash again: just like the Japanese generals were trying to do. Debating weather or not it was morally right (or whatever) to drop those bombs 60 years ago is IMO quite fruitless. Might as well debate whether war in general is morally right or not. Just my 2 cents.

 

[SimpleMinded]

5 points go to 4Too on this topic, nice response. I'd add more but I don't know... it's a matter of personal feelings in most cases. Is the machiavellian approach proper? or the welllll we could have done it all nicer so it was evillll approach? Who knows? But 4too's right man. The soviets were comin a knockin and as for MacArthur, I'd never thought about that.

 

[Jahakob]

Perhaps you don't understand what Unconditional Surrender means. Essentially an Unconditional Surrender means that the surrendering party has no right to dictate the terms of surrender. This could include, but is not limited to, the retainment of Japanese holdings on the Asian Mainland, and naval bases in the Pacific.

By 'unconditional' I think they meant in a more traditional way, not disgrace the emperor and such things.
It was the emperor who ordered japan to continue fighting, his advisors did not. I don't know about the people, but as they were turned to black crackers I guess I can't ask them.

Of course, these conditions would never be accepted, but if we took the Japanese seriously and attempted peace talks, then we'd be embroiled in meaningless debate while people continued to die. Essentially the same situation regarding the Korean War.

Yea, this is the core. I think we should nuke israel, I mean, we have waited too long! If we had nuked them earlier not that many people would have died!

Japan had lost and were trying to surrender. Tell me where people would continue to die and why?

 

[Per]

By 'unconditional' I think they meant in a more traditional way

It was the emperor who ordered japan to continue fighting

Japan had lost and were trying to surrender.

If these are the premises you base your conviction on, you should revise it, as they are incorrect. There are things about the situation that are known facts and not matters of opinion.

 

[Jahakob]

Okay, then send me an article or something that says they wouldn't surrender if the bombs didn't fell. I've read both kind of stories, but as always, only based on opinions.

Emperor is the same as 'dictator' in my eyes besides that they may have the liking of the people.

A little known fact is that after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, a palace coup took place in the Japanese Imperial Palace. Emperor Hirohito wanted to surrender, but his generals were not going to let him. They took the emperor prisoner and held him for a few days. Hirohito prepared a tape recording saying that he wanted to surrender, but was not able to get it out so that it could be broadcast.

I've read somewhere that the leader(s) didn't wan't to surrender. Obviously this is the case, if this article is true. My apologies.

There are things about the situation that are known facts and not matters of opinion.

Not that the war would continue. What do you know? The war could turned even worse? Other countries would maybe see that as a sign to nuke. Enemies to the US could have launched everything they got in despair. They didn't knew what would have happened if they dropped the bomb just as little as they knew what would happen if they didn't.
There are only "what-if"s and a matter of what your opinions are.
I still think they wanted to test their toys on lesser human beings.

 

[Per]

Okay, then send me an article or something that says they wouldn't surrender if the bombs didn't fell.

Emperor is the same as 'dictator' in my eyes

You are making an assumption just based on a word; if nothing else that should give you a hint that your conclusions may need revision. The emperor was a figurehead, not a supreme ruler. The military effectively ruled Japan.

I've already linked to and extensively quoted one article, besides referring to the Wikipedia article. You can do some research on your own.

There are things about the situation that are known facts and not matters of opinion.

Not that the war would continue.

I have made no such definitive statement. You on the other hand claimed the Japanese were evidently about to surrender. You are the one making assertions here, so don't you think you should be the one backing them up?

 

[Jahakob]

I have made no such definitive statement. You on the other hand claimed the Japanese were evidently about to surrender. You are the one making assertions here, so don't you think you should be the one backing them up?

Well, you see, I got this golden parrot in my room that tells me those kind of stuff. I know. I also know who assasinated Kurt Cobain, it was the butler.

Well yea, from the Wikipedia article you can also see the other side. Guess... I won. No, no need to continue this, I won, yes, I did. This is the final solution. Just as I thought, I would reach it, the answer! YES! At long last.

 

[welsh]

That's a bit silly. No one wants to be nuked or the victim of such a horrendous and terrible act of violence. That said, when you choose to support a side that is in a war, than you take your chances that something terrible might happen.

Let's please not go there. There's a difference between the people working in the industrial war complex in Hiroshima and the ones who just happened to live there. Are you saying all Japanese were guilty of the war?

Well it could be argued that in a war in which the Japanese had high popular support for entering the war, that their people pay the price for it.

I would argue that point is even more true in a democracy- afterall the government is your representative.

I agree this blurs the lines between civilian and military death. But back in the 1940s (and much of the Cold War) that line was blurred.

-having a shell obliterate your family in sharpnel just before they go to church in Pearl harbor

That's a dumbass example in the middle of those others. Pearl Harbor was teh shock and all, but it's not exactly on of the most horrific things in WW II history. It was meant to hurt the military complex, all other attacks you mention were meant to terrorise through slaughtering civilians. There's quite a difference.

Well it was pretty damn shocking if it's your family that got blown to a thousand pieces. Horror is inherently a personal experience. For the Japanese the horror of Hiroshima is personal. But the Russian people have an equally horrific view of war that was visited on them.

Is this a comparison of "apples and oranges"- yes. But they are both the bitter fruit of war, and terror as psychological warfare has been used in many wars. Which is worse? The suffering and the horror done to civilian populations begins to become difficult measure. The thousands in Japan vs the thousands in Russia vs the thousands in Vietnam vs the thousands in Iraq vs the thousands in colonial wars across the world..... It's all damn horrific.

What is different in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the means- atomic warfare. But I am not sure how you can measure one terrible loss of life vs another. To do so begins to become just silly.

I think that the greatest value of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that it taught us a very real lesson of how terrible these weapons are

A bit of an over-the-top lesson. Atomic weapons aren't as scary as we make them out to be.

It's a good idea to be more scared of them than necessary, though, especially because of the scale in which they're available.

Over the top, yes. But human nature often requires terrible tragedies to get people moving. We can see that today in global warming- Ice sheets in the poles contracting, glaciers melting, increasingly intensive storms- and yet that dick in the White House still things we need to "study Global Warming" more- the same BS he gave us 5 years ago.

Also- the millions that are dieing in the current wave of African famine. The writing was on the walls on that one a year ago, yet no one noticed.

not only do we have the means but the will to do terrible damage unless you do what we want you to

Something consistently proven over the last 50 years

"Oy, world, do what we want you to do or we'll open up a can of whupass!"

Then again, that's modern international politics, ey. Stems from the Concert of Europe, I guess.

That's politics through coercion. The Chinese are playing that game too.

Works, sometimes. The Christmas bombings of North Vietnam got the Vietnamese back to the peace talks during that war.

What pisses me off is that no one, at least no one on this side, seems to be trying to figure out a better way of doing business.

But this also figures into deterrence and Cold War strategy.

Unless Truman was a holy guru who could foresee the next 40 years, I seriously doubt he was that concious of how having used the A-bomb first would enable people to build the military standoff we know as the Cold War.

Actually George Kennan was the architect of containment. The Atomic bomb was merely the stick that was meant to keep the Russian dog behind it's fence.

And don't forget the Cuba Crisis. Don't forget the fact that the Russians pulled their missiles out of Cuba under heavy pressure. Kennedy wasn't willing to back off, the Russians were.

Actually both sides made a face-saving deal. Kennedy pulled his missiles out of Turkey, and Russia pulled its missiles out of Cuba. Then Russian sent its subs off our coast (thus suggesting Cuba was not that important).

Maybe your praise of the American's willing capability of "going as far as we need" is a double-edged blade?

Live by the sword, die by the sword- people tend to forget that.

Is this use of coercion a throw-back to the Concert- yeah probably.

Terror, as was stated so clearly in Conrad's The Secret Agent, is fundamentally about character- the willingness to go the long way.

Who are you to say their deaths were just?

Ok, I'm going to jump in here because I think Per is getting rather unfairly accused of being inhuman at this point

Human death is never just or excusable, really, that's why it's death. It is also at times inevitable and balanced out.

One of the reasons WW II was so horrifying after the fairly neat soldier vs. soldier game of WW I was the fact that being a citizen was no safe-guard. This was true of everyone.

Now you can sit there and whine about the fact that the US was supposed to be the good guy and should've been on the higher ground.

Let's hypothesise. What if the Russians had been too nice to fight with the callousness of their own lives as they did? What if Great Britain hadn't been willing to bomb Germany, occassionaly hitting the Dutch? What if the US hadn't been willing to fight Japan and Germany with a certain disregard of civil lives (though still caring more than the Japanese or Germans)?

We would've lost. Moreso we would've lost at an enormous cost of human lives.

Now let's slide in your point of view here.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima were wrong because they killed innocent people. Ok, I can agree with that, just like Dresden, Berlin, London, Rotterdam, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Dead Earth and Pearl Harbor were wrong.

None of it is excused by "the other side was bad too".

They are excused by "it was a necessary evil".

I don't like the fact that sometimes people have to die to save other people, but I can't live with it. I can understand the fact that people needed to die in WW II to prevent further suffering.

Before you continue debating the point with per, please try to grasp that human suffering is sometimes a necessary evil to prevent further suffering. If you are incapable of grasping this point, you're incapable of debating it, and should stop running in circles.

I agree with Kharn's point. Sina, your point is a bit extreme. Also this thread is getting way to personal. You folks need to back off a bit.

What's debateable about Nagahiroshima was whether or not the horror caused balances out against what would probably happen if those cities weren't bombed. A kind of "we'll never know"-thing, but you can at least debate that, which is more relevant than just calling one another inhuman.

And much of this argument is really about bouncing opinions off against each other. If you want to know if it was necessary- look to the documents.

Saving lives of soldiers is the last thing on a military commanders mind which know everybody who are not children anymore.

...

Even *if* commanders were inhuman bastards that consider their soldiers puppets in a game, they still have to save lives of soldiers. Because the more soldiers you lose, the weaker you are. You need soldiers, as they're your strength

Seriously, what were you thinking?

Yeah.

Call it idealistic, but i would rather live in a world where some people atleast try to strive for what you call "ideals" than in a world populated by Motherf.....ers (in general) who can come up with an excuse for burning people.

GREAT!

But please keep far away from us. Go lives in some island were nobody is allowed to hurt one another and see how long it lasts.

I like idealism and all, but I prefer it be practical. Tying your hands against effectively striking back at a horrible enemy, like the Imperialist Japanese or the Nazi Germans, is pretty stupid and will only lead to your own death

According to your logic, the moment the Nazis and Imperialists started expanding everyone should just have rolled over and surrendered, because that'd give us the least human suffering?

Suffering is part of the joy of your idealism.

As i said before in a thread like this (and it didn't have any effect) they could have dropped the bomb on Fuji, which would be very visible (and very symbolic) to anyone in Japan, and maybe on a few other places. Then you only needed to make a phonecall and say: Tojo, next one is falling on Tokyo.
War ends.

FINALLY, an argument!

Per, I beg you, ignore the rest of the moral claptrap in this post and just reply to the final three paragraphs, perhaps we could get an actual debate going

I agree again. Per.. be careful not to take this personally and thus trade one punch on the nose for another.

In fact this idea was discussed by the makers of the bomb, and was discounted. Many felt that a display of the bomb would have been enough to convince the Japanese to cave in.

Part of the problem, I think, was that there were not that many atomic bombs at the time (I think we had a half dozen). Thus the problem- what if it takes more than 5 bombs to convince the Japanese that the war is hopeless.

ALso Per's point on the military ruling Japan is correct. Sina- read the documents. In fact the emperor had voiced opposition to the war prior to Pearl Harbor, but his position was essentially ignored as being naive by the military command- which had its own vested interests.

A different point would have been whether the commitment of the allies to unconditional surrender was a good idea. Both the Japanese and the Germans held out longer, in part, because they felt their backs were to the wall. For the allies, negotiated peace was politically impossible- they had already commited to complete victory.

Then again, let's compare this other wars that the US has been in- Vietnam and Korea. It can be argued that both wars continued, with great civilian and military death, in part because the goal of the war had changed from victory to a different compromise at the peace negotiations.

 

[Per]

A different point would have been whether the commitment of the allies to unconditional surrender was a good idea. Both the Japanese and the Germans held out longer, in part, because they felt their backs were to the wall. For the allies, negotiated peace was politically impossible- they had already commited to complete victory.

I think not only would less than unconditional surrender have been psychologically impossible, but it would have set a pretty damn awful (and hence deeply immoral) precedent: "All right, all right, we tried to kill and enslave you all, but it was a pretty bad decision and we see that now, really, we shouldn't have gone for Stalingrad for one thing, let's call this off before anyone gets hurt, shall we?" Conquering the world should not be something you commit to thinking you can just call it quits and go back to normal if things start to look bad for you.

 

[welsh]

Good point Per. The Germans and the Japanese could have said, "whoops, looks like the tide has definitely turned against us. Let's cut a deal and get off easy." Or, as I pointed out, the war could have gone on longer as the parties bicker about the peace terms.

Both regimes started those wars with desires for military conquest of territory, a clear violation to Kellogg-Briand Pact that essentially outlawed war.

 

[Bradylama]

Or, as I pointed out,

What am I, chopped liver?