Harry’s Place

Graham,

The list of current HP posts can be increased by going into the Wordpress admin screen and doing:

Settings ->Reading ->Blog pages show at most [increase that, to say 15]

Also, I think it would help to post the most recent comments on the sidebar too:

Again the WP admin screen, Design->Widgets->drag over the Recent Comments widget to the sidebar

That should do it.

Mod - it should have fast become apparent to you that I have not even worked out how to get blockquotes to appear yet!

But hopefully Brett is around somewhere!

It hadn’t even occured to me to block quote, even though I had seen others do so.

Harry Truman was a mass murder. And Harry Truman saved millions of innocent lives. Good and bad, they both represent the face of the human race.

Ultimately Truman had to drop the bomb for the simple reason he had taken an Oath to do so. He swore to protect the constitution and the people of the United States of America and dropping those bombs was protecting US citizens from further death.

He had a conflicting moral choice: Keep his oath and murder hundreds of thousands or break it and be responsible for millions dying. Which was the better choice?

Ultimately morality is a set of rules that create a system so that people can get along and live with each other. If our system of morality does not maximize our ability to live and get along with each then it needs to be changed. I can’t think of a rule that would allow what Truman did. However, he did maximize the greatest number of people to live and get along with each other. That is morality in my book. The rules just need to be adjusted to include that.

Truman will always be a hero because he the guts to do the right thing.

I talked to my grandad about this. He was rejected for service in WW2 because he was too old, had too many kids, and was a manager at a tire factory.

He said that if Truman did not drop the bomb, and it was revealed that he had that option, he would have been dragged out of the White House and lynched. People were sick of that war, sick of the stories of Japanese atrocities, sick of Kamikaze attacks killing American sailers, sick of it all. It is damn easy for us grandkids too get all moral and scholarly about this, but we are not looking at at huge, gruesome invasion of which were just given a preview at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
It should be remembered that Germany and Japan became civilzed and responisible members of liberal civilization only after that were totally destroyed and, yes, humiliated.

Zdenek’s analogy is a standard example from the literature on the ethics of punishment. Many philosophy undergraduates will remember it.

In this case it is a false analogy.

zdenek’s example: X must choose between X killing an innocent person and Y killing many more innocent people.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki: X must choose between X killing people indiscriminately and X killing many more people indiscriminately.

Zdenek confuses these radically different decisions. The first involves a utilitarian dilemma. The second does not.

The claim that Hiroshima/Nagasaki requires a utilitarian moral justification is simply an error.

You neocons are such apologists for your war criminals it is disgusting, but you take it to another level with your apologism for gross human right violations. It is one thing to support an Iraqi getting a stick up his ass at Abu Gharib but a whole nother league to support the genocide of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What is worse is that you think you are scholarly for posting OPINIONS, an appeal to authority in its most obscene fallacious extent. I give you facts and you come back with what a facist bozo thinks.

The Japanese were quite willing to surrender, the arguments against your genocidal point of view:

1) They rejected outright unconditional surrender, yeah no shit Sherlock that is why they call it NEGOTIATION, But what really, really gets to me is that they got essentially what they wanted AFTER THE NUKE.

2) They were holding out for the Soviets to be third parties, which was shattered shortly after the first nuke and finished shortly before the second (which lead us to the real real reason the bomb was dropped, it was not aimed at Tokyo, it was aimed at Moscow).

3) That there were hardliners, this is remarkably racist as well, as if the japanase cannot have a single war nut (in reality they were afraid of being put on trial) or they are ALL war nuts. How do you deal with these elements? Do you:

A) Nuke an entire city full of unrelated civilians in order to change their minds? (which they never did)

B) Treat Japanese as a rational human beings, that would have sacrificed the war nuts in return for no invasion or blockade?

“He said that if Truman did not drop the bomb, and it was revealed that he had that option, he would have been dragged out of the White House and lynched”

As if I cared what a fascist mob thinks? GWB would get lynched if he gave undocumented workers amnesty, that does not make you guys right, just rightwing.

Probably best to ignore Flanker’s emotive childish tantrums I think.

As if I cared what a fascist mob thinks?

You seem to care a lot what the fascist mob in charge of Japan thought (as opposed to the working-class American soldiers and the Asian slave Labourers doomed to die with your blockade.)

Right-wing idiot.

“The claim that Hiroshima/Nagasaki requires a utilitarian moral justification is simply an error.”

It is actually reverse utilitarianism (do less wrong) but whatever, morality is exactly that but I can see why it is not really practiced. Human beings are just too stupid to do the calculations necessary to reach the moral solution.

They make shit up, modify the variables unreasonably, treat different races as unreasonable, heck even involve the supernatural to justify their extremist POV. You pro-nuke neocons are just the latest trend in this extremist world.

“You seem to care a lot what the fascist mob in charge of Japan thought (as opposed to the working-class American soldiers and the Asian slave Labourers doomed to die with your blockade.)”

To tell you the truth I really don’t care what they all think, but the point remains, anybody that supports this is a fascist genocidal prick QED.

You pro-nuke neocons are just the latest trend in this extremist world.

As the title of the first post was “the least abhorrent choice” and the title of this one is “Instrument of surrender” I find it hard to work out who Flanker is rather amateurishly trying to label “pro-nuke neocons.”

Does he actually think nobody else is capable of reading what people are actually saying?

One HUGE thing not mentioned is the coup attempt (that failed and certainly had an effect on the emperor pulling the plug on the war).

Anyone ever marvel at all the female emotion on display by males today?

Fuck it, they got what they deserved.

This is a bit naughty but if the only thing that determines whether a military policy is morally justified is how many people are saved by it ( a la Michael Ezra ) then if the Japanese had discovered how to make an Atomic weapon in 1944 say and dropped it on say San Francisco killing thousands of Americans and thus shortened the agony of war ( assume not unreasonably that US would capitulate ) it would have been the right thing morally speaking to do.

That is to say , the Japanese would not only have been victorious but they would also be kind of moral heroes according to our own moral framework ( some sort of crude consequentialism ) which is indifferent to ideas of justice and human rights.

But since this is absurd the moral framework which has or would have such consequences has to be flawed !

“Does he actually think nobody else is capable of reading what people are actually saying?”

“But also that, given that nobody has proved conclusively that Japan would have surrendered without the bombings I am glad Truman did.”

I am sure a neonazi out there is glad of the final solution as well. You are all the same sack.

There were actually several coup attempts (I presume you mean the one when a group of fanatical army officers assassinated the commander of the Imperial Guards division on August 14th and tried to stop the broadcast of the Emperor’s surrender message but there were assassination attempts on Kojo, Suzuki and many other members of the government and Kido was certainly very fearful that the outbreaks would turn into something a lot bigger.

What mesquito said.

Well thank you Flanker for that demonstration that you are not capable of reading what someone is saying and thus missing out:

My own instincts tell me that I could never have ordered that the bomb was dropped. But also that, given that nobody has proved conclusively that Japan would have surrendered without the bombings I am glad Truman did.

Millions of Asian slave workers were glad as well but to you they were just scum because you admire the rapists of Nanking.

Dirty little mass-murderer wannabe.

then if the Japanese had discovered how to make an Atomic weapon in 1944 say and dropped it on say San Francisco killing thousands of Americans and thus shortened the agony of war ( assume not unreasonably that US would capitulate ) it would have been the right thing morally speaking to do.

Only if you can prove that the Americans were likely to kill millions of Asian slave labourers in the next few years! This relativism is not like you Zdenek!

zdenek:

if the only thing that determines whether a military policy is morally justified is how many people are saved by it (a la Michael Ezra)

Michael Ezra made no such argument. His position (which I share) is that the policy is justified (indeed obligatory) if the alternatives are equally indiscriminate but far bloodier.

But since this is absurd the moral framework which has or would have such consequences has to be flawed!

I.e., the moral framework which you’ve erroneously attributed to defenders of the bombings. It’s a textbook straw man argument.

Well we at least know where Flanker stands on the Asian slave Labourers. He has told us plainly above by including them in the statement:

To tell you the truth I really don’t care what they all think

BOOGSKI has hurt my feelings (sigh), as I made the exact same point as MOSQUITO further back/up the original thread, but get no credit. Sob……

Question for Zdenek,

In your opinion, why was the dropping of the atom bombs uniquely horrific for that time in history? Was it the speed with which that many people were killed? I can’t quite grasp exactly why this attack deserves special attention compared to others of the time.

Virgil has hurt my feelings by referring to me as “mosquito” which, like “Flanker,” is an annoying insect.

Apologies, virgil. :D

That really was a cool thread and I had a “blast” participating in it.

MESQUITO: Having been “stung” by your complaint, let me offer my abject apologies.

Those wanting to argue that the 100,000 casualities of Hiroshima could have been avoided if the US had just continued the conventional B-29 bombing of Japan, should be aware that in the six months previous to the dropping of nuclear bombs such raids had killed nearly 300,000 people and displaced or rendered homeless over 8 million more. Those wanting to argue that a blockade would have been more humane should note that the US was already blockading Japan at this point and that according to the US Strategic Bombing Survey of Japan “the calorie count of the average man’s fare had shrunk dangerously” without any sign of surrender.

Paul , thanks for your thoughts ; will be back shortly to show you that your is a consequentialism of some sort and that it is open to exactly the same criticism I have been making all along.

True story: Near the end of the war a U.S. sub worked its way at great peril into the sea of Japan to harass Japanese shipping from Manchuria. After getting by the pickets and the mines, was recieved the message that the war was over and they must come home.

The captain was having none of it. He decided to machinegun and and shell Japanese villages. His crew mutinied, locked him in his cabin, and returned to Hawaii.

The captain was already a very famous war hero, so the Navy finessed the the mutiny and the skipper’s illegal orders, and the whole incident disappeared forever.

“My own instincts tell me that I could never have ordered that the bomb was dropped. But also that, given that nobody has proved conclusively that Japan would have surrendered without the bombings I am glad Truman did.”

I am sure there are plenty of coward neonazis that are glad as well…

Why do I bother with you sick people I will never know, at least before I could just laugh at your faschtick, but you had to push it and make me all emo.

At the risk of stereotyping going by some of the stories we read about ‘loss of face’ and humiliation resulting in suicides in Japan and it does tell us a bit about the society and the possible emphasis of shame, honour and pride. So rather than lose face some would prefer suicide, a similar mindset could explain the aggressiveness in the face of defeat and reluctance to surrender even after the first bombing.

Would this have been taken into account giving the Japanese a way out without loss of face. Of course this is hindsight and there are multiple complication’s on how to achieve this and if infact it is possible and whether humiliation intentional or non intentional would be inevitable. Compared to pre second world war the Japanese character appears to have become subdued or is the nationalism boiling beneath the surface? There is a bit of a vacuum of how the current and generation before perceives the incident, that would be a useful perspective in this debate.

The point apart from loss of life is also using a weapon of this scale has to be the last resort, today we have a better idea of its impact but then it was new science and the step to use would have been a huge decision with many implications beyond ending the war.

Is there any rationale for using an atomic bomb apart from mutual deterrence, a crazy dictator with no particular concern for his people or destruction of his country uses it, do you then drop a nuclear bomb, what does that achieve? Prevent him from dropping another one? I can understand the need to end the war and stop Japan but I am not convinced the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were the only way. The thing is the alternatives are speculative and we have no way of knowing the consequence either way and what would have worked to curb the extreme aggressiveness of Japan then but we all agree it was essential to accomplish that, was the bomb the only way? I suspect most of the posters here would not drop the bomb until all other alternatives were fully explored and found to be inadequate.

Why do I bother with you sick people I will never know

Oh come on be glad for the poor Asian slave labourers who the bombing saved from certain death. We know you think the lower classes are scum but you could at least make the effort not to be such a reactionary.

I am sure there are plenty of coward neonazis that are glad as well…

Wouldn’t most neo-nazis be against Hiroshima as the Japanese were on the same side as Hitler?

Or am I missing some in-joke in Flanker’s comments?

There is a bit of a vacuum of how the current and generation before perceives the incident, that would be a useful perspective in this debate.

We did touch on the mix of nationalisms and religion (shinto) and how it first demanded complete loyalty to the emperor and then after the loss of WW2 produced a feeling of hubris in the other thread.

RE: “Loss of Face” and the “no surrender” tactics of the Japanese. I wonder if anyone here knows that {as of 1966 at least) the only memorial
gift of any kind from a formal Government displayed inside the Alamo was a pre-WWII “gift of the Japanese people” to commemorate the bravery of
those who fought to the last man?

Raul asks:

Is there any rationale for using an atomic bomb apart from mutual deterrence, a crazy dictator with no particular concern for his people or destruction of his country uses it, do you then drop a nuclear bomb, what does that achieve? Prevent him from dropping another one?

That’s nice. So the fact that some people simply can’t be deterred means you should just throw up your hands and surrender? What exactly are you suggesting, Raul?

“Oh come on be glad for the poor Asian slave labourers who the bombing saved from certain death. We know you think the lower classes are scum but you could at least make the effort not to be such a reactionary.”

Certain death? prove it, prove there was a policy of eventual extermination and you win, under reverse utilitarianism the deaths of 100,000 civilians saved the lives of a larger number of slaves that would have been executed by a period longer than a freaking week. You would win, but you would have to prove it, even if Truman did not give a fuck about them (he didn’t) I would eat my words.

Aside from that you got nothing, and you know it! but are too much of a coward to buck the groupthink in this site.

Coming in a bit late on this discussion, but would like to follow up on a few of the comments made here.

My reading of the history of the time (I especially recommend McCullough’s Truman biography) suggests Truman was under pressure to end the war ASAP. I think it’s underestimated how war-weary Americans were, having finally defeated, with the Allies, Nazi Germany and still having to fight in the Pacific. Don’t forget the huge number of casualties on both sides (but especially the Japanese sides) in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Truman and other leaders were certainly mindful that there would be even greater losses if a full-scale land invasion of the Japanese islands had to be undertaken. The battle of Okinawa, which had already been raging for weeks when Truman took office, ran for three months, resulted in over 10,000 killed and 10s of thousands wounded on the US side. Importantly for this discussion, over 100k soldiers and (probably ) over 100k civilians were killed on the Japanese/Okinawan side. (The battle of Iwo Jima had just ended, only weeks before Truman took office).

So Truman was faced with a bad set of choices. He didn’t even know about the atomic bomb project until he became President (though there are some suggestions he knew or suspected of a major secret weapons program in the context of chairing a Senate oversight committee investigating wasteful military spending.) The first successful test occurred one day before the beginning of the Potsdam conference.

The other point, already brought up here, is the allied bombings of Japanese cities had already destroyed major cities in Japan and killed 100s of thousands of civilians. Bringing the regime no closer to surrender.

So on one level, if the criterion for judgment is the number of people killed by a weapon, the atomic bomb was just another weapon, albeit a powerful one. If the criterion is purely *numbers* of casualties (civilian or military) then arguably the use of the atomic bombs saved lives. We will never know for sure of course.

The other point which should be kept in mind is the number of casualties among civilians in areas Japanese forces still occupied toward the end of the war. Bear in mind incidents of massacres of civilians by Japanese troops in places still occupied by them, even when they were presumably retreating.

My own view is that all this has to be viewed in the context of the time.
I think Truman picked (to paraphrase Churchill) the worst option except for the others. Would I have done any different in his situation? I don’t know.

Flanker:

Certain death? prove it, prove there was a policy of eventual extermination [of Asian slave labourers] and you win

Please clarify. Are you denying that Japan’s fascists perpetrated the mass murder of Asian slave labourers? Or are you claiming that they terminated the mass murders before the decision to drop the atom bombs?

Flanker can’t get his little insect head around the idea that anybody fighting the United States might, in fact, be bad.

It seems to me that it is a very good test of whether something is moral, is that one is happy for it to be legal.

We could avoid a lot of human suffering by allowing police to shoot known criminals on sight in the street. True- and the idea might appear briefly attractive, especially if we or a loved one have just been the victim of an horrendous crime - but would we really like it to be legal for the police to do that?

Similarly with nuclear bombs. Would we really like a situation where it was considered perfectly legal in terms of international law to eliminate millions of civilians in nuclear attacks?

Although it would be perfectly possible for us to have laws which say allowed families of hostage to kill the families of hostage takers, or threaten to do so, we do not consider such laws should be permitted.

So am I puzzled that many people here seem happy to do a mathematical sum of lives lost versus lives saved. I don’t think it works like that. Although war appears completely chaotic and rule-less, there are in fact a lot of formal and informal rules with respect to how we behave or at least think we should behave.

I think there are at least two important factors we should take on board:-

Firstly, there is a moral basis for the distinction between combatants and civilians. To specifically target civilians in huge numbers cannot be justified in view of this distinction.

Secondly, even in terms of consequences one also has to factor in the possibility that your immoral action will be the basis for further, grosser immorality. Hiroshima was certainly followed by Cuba when the world came very close to a nuclear exchange that might have killed 200 million people.

Of course, just as in our individual lives we sometimes have to resort to illegal acts when faced with existential dilemmas (it might be strictly speaking illegal for me to lock my 16 year old daughter in her room to prevent her setting up home with a violent heroin addict but I might decide it is still the choice I should make) so too in international relations, we may decide to act illegally.

In terms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seems difficult to justify the choices made.

There was no demonstration of the weapon and it was not focussed primarily on military targets.

It would have made more sense to target the invasion landing areas, port areas and so on.

However, even that should perhaps have been a last resort. The impact of the Soviet invasion had a devastating psychological impact I think.

The reality of course is that group psychology takes over from cool ethical analysis in these sorts of situations. One can see why the decisions were taken as they were in relation to the war in the Pacific,
given a number of pressing factors:

*the small number of A bombs available (I think I am right in saying there were only potentially four available within a six month time frame - there weren’t huge numbers coming off a production line),

*war weariness - people in the democracies were fed up with war and democratic politicians had to react to that.

* a desire to show the Soviet Union that the West had this new powerful weapon.

* the desire to justify the huge investment of resources in the Manhattan project

* genuine desire to save soldiers’ and POWs’ lives and to avoid suffering of Japanese civilians.

In terms of present day dilemmas I would not have a problem with a nuclear bomb being targetted on an Iranian nuclear facility, given the nature of the regime and its genocidal ambitions in relation to Israel and possibly the non Muslim world in general. Of course there are issues of collateral damage which must be assessed but in principle I do not rule it out. A nuclear bomb is a weapon of terrifying device but its limited use does not signal the end of all civilisation.

My own instincts tell me that I could never have ordered that the bomb was dropped. But also that, given that nobody has proved conclusively that Japan would have surrendered without the bombings I am glad Truman did.

“I’m a nice guy, but I am glad that there was some tough guy American to order this thing, I assume that it forced those inscrutable Japs to surrender; that makes me feel better”

Blimey, I would have thought one post outlining HP’s position of support for this nuclear bombing would be enough; but let the genuflection continue! As Michael Ezra says, morality does not come into this - its all about necessity.

@Boogsky Mutual deterrence with no first use will only work with rational players, so the strategy will have to change with irrational players and dropping a bomb in a reprisal attack may not be the best response unless you expect another nuclear attack.

Here we have first use with a weapon based on new science, and the justification for its use will have to be as a last ditch desperate attempt to stop Japan and end the war, but after exhausting all other possible options. There is consensus on the urgent need to stop Japan but were all options exhausted? And this is a grey area because these options are speculative, out of context and based on hindsight and Japan may not have been a rational player making it difficult to reach any sort of conclusion. We can only support or justify the decision to use the bomb by presuming it was a last resort, if it was not a last resort then it becomes a difficult decision to support.

“We can only support or justify the decision to use the bomb by presuming it was a last resort, if it was not a last resort then it becomes a difficult decision to support.”

Spoken like a true civilian. I guess an invasion would have been preferable in that it would not have caused the Airmens’, Marines’ and GIs’ grandchildren nearly as much angst.

“Why do I bother with you sick people I will never know”

Because you are terribly lonely?

To borrow Cromwell’s words about the beheading of Charles I, the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hirsoshima and Nagasaki were “a cruel nececisity”. Hopefully such a situation will not occur again.

And for the record, I do not think that trying to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons would justify using nuclear weapons against them at least without any clear and definite evidence that Iran was going to use their own nukes or give them to terrorists.

And no, saying Israel will soon disapear or should be destroyed, does not by itself indicate such plans. What those inflamatory remarks indicate is a desire for Israel and/or the US to launch air strikes against Iran, the result of which would be the discrediting of the pro-Western Iranian Opposition as traitors and the securing the rule of the Mullahs for the next generation. Given that the Iranians have had 25 years to hide and harden their nuclear production sites, I am extremely dubious that any air campaign, even one conducted over several months by the US would result in anything more then setting back Iran’s nuclear ambitions for several years.

“The other point, already brought up here, is the allied bombings of Japanese cities had already destroyed major cities in Japan and killed 100s of thousands of civilians. Bringing the regime no closer to surrender.”

Lies, they were negotiating surrender, of course they were closer by that time, and they were closer because their military was being crushed, not because of civilian massacres.

“lease clarify. Are you denying that Japan’s fascists perpetrated the mass murder of Asian slave labourers? Or are you claiming that they terminated the mass murders before the decision to drop the atom bombs?”

Of course they had to be terminated in the near future. For one painfully obvious reason: Ending the war would not bring them back. But ending the war would save the fate of the supposedly marked for immediate extermination. That is the same miscalculations the neocons did with Iraq, Saddam was a monster when he was an US ally, and subdued after GW1 but their justification in manslaughtering a million Iraqis was that Saddam was committing crimes against humanity when Reagan was prasing him…

You guys are making me regret teaching you about true morality, you are simply not ready for the calculations needed to reach a logical conclusion, so go on an return to your christian influenced virtue ethics. Just tell me Truman “meant” well and stop wasting my time.

field:

it was not focussed primarily on military targets.

It would have made more sense to target the invasion landing areas, port areas and so on.

Hiroshima was the headquarters of Japan’s Fifth Division and its Second General Army. It had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any major city. American planners considered it an “army city”:-

The entire northeast and eastern sides of the city are military zones… In addition, there are the following military targets: Army Reception Center, large Military Airport, Army Ordnance Depot, Army Clothing Depot, Army Food Depot, large port and dock area, several shipyards and ship building companies, the Japan Steel Company, railroad marshalling yards and numerous aircraft component parts factories…

Nagasaki contained the biggest shipyard in the country as well as the torpedo factory that manufactured the weapons used at Pearl Harbor.

See Richard Frank, Downfall (Penguin, 2001), pp262-3, 284.

RAOUL: Did it ever occur to you that hundreds if not thousands of
American and Allied servicemen would have died while “other alternatives” were being explored? The British and ANZAC troops were fighting in Malaya and Burma, Indo-China was still an active front(not to mention China itself) and the aerial and sea bombing and interdiction campaign continued unabated. Almost forgotten is the fact that fully one-half of the Japanese Army was sitting in China/Manchuria and getting them out of the war without the Russians looked to be just as bloody an affair as would be the contemplated landings in Japan. (And the Russians came in only AFTER the bomb was dropped). Not to be
forgotten also is that the British were planning two landings to take Hong Kong and Rangoon–each of which was going to be larger than
Normandy–although historians and many planners at the time didn’t
think they had enough transport ships in theater to pull it off.

Being well into my geezerhood (aged 64–GEEZER POWER!–will you still love me?) I well remember my Father (who fought in Europe as an Inf. Co. Commander and as a Regimental Intelligence Officer with the 42nd “Rainbow” Div.) telling me how the war ended for him. He was sitting in a mile-long troop train in Union Station, St. Louis, Mo., with the HQ elements of nine divisions (an entire Corps) on their way from the East Coast to the West Coast and thence to China for the land-war to kick off simultaneously with the invasion of Japan. He heard a muffled roar from inside the station, then loudspeakers blared: “All officers with orders for China disembark and await ground transportation to Fort Leonard Wood,” followed shortly thereafter by an official announcement of the war’s end. Now, my Father went on to be a Hall of Fame coach in three sports, a member of the US Olympic Committee and National Director of the NAIA (US small colleges) tennis committee for ten years. The number of young men whose lives he influenced both directly in the classroom and on the playing fields/courts numbered in the many hundreds, and by extension of those he influenced, thousands. One, a former #! tennis player in the 50’s went on to a long career as Dean of Men at Indiana Univ. and thus influenced thousands more. The testimonial he wrote upon my Father’s retirement was touching in reflecting as it did upon the positive influence my Father had upon him. My Father’s story is/was replicated many times by those in all walks of life who might never have lived to contribute to Western Civilization absent Truman’s decision. So I (and my Father) were damed glad indeed that the bomb was used–it meant he would live and that I would have a Father and my Mother a husband of 55 yrs.

“You guys are making me regret teaching you about true morality, you are simply not ready for the calculations needed to reach a logical conclusion, so go on an return to your christian influenced virtue ethics.”

Sure, Flanks. Give us some learnin’ in Leninist morality.

“Hiroshima was the headquarters of Japan’s Fifth Division and its Second General Army. It had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any major city. American planners considered it an “army city”:-”

Lies, if this were the case it would have been a target rather than left relatively untouched prior to the nuke.

“Nagasaki contained the biggest shipyard in the country as well as the torpedo factory that manufactured the weapons used at Pearl Harbor.”

Nagasaki was not even the primary target, it was Kokura

“Sure, Flanks. Give us some learnin’ in Leninist morality.”

I said, return to your bible moskit.

Flanker: Saddam was a monster when he was an US ally, and subdued after GW1

Saddam massacred tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds after GW1.

Just tell me Truman “meant” well and stop wasting my time.

Yeah, we wouldn’t want you to miss your appointments with the Prime Minister and the Secretary-General of the United Nations :-)

I’d also point out that the Allies were in fact the good guys during WW 2.

Some people in this thread seem a little confused on that point.

Flanker states:

“Hiroshima was the headquarters of Japan’s Fifth Division and its Second General Army. It had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any major city. American planners considered it an “army city”:-”
Lies, if this were the case it would have been a target rather than left relatively untouched prior to the nuke.

“Nagasaki contained the biggest shipyard in the country as well as the torpedo factory that manufactured the weapons used at Pearl Harbor.”
Nagasaki was not even the primary target, it was Kokura

Paul Bogdanor is completely correct. He has taken his information from Richard Frank’s book Downfall which is the definitive book on the matter. Frank explains (p.263n) the likely reason Hiroshima was not targeted earlier was because:

while it was a huge training, storage, and transportation center for the Imperial Army, it lacked significance in manufacturing war material, particularly aircraft production.

Flanker is correct in that for that run Kokura was the primary target and Nagasaki secondary, but there was only one Official Bombing Order. The order named four cities including Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki and does not state a preference for one city against another.

Hey look flanker! We’re on our way to doing it again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/us/13brfs-FOURMILITARY_BRF.html?ref=us

The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month, enlisting 2,233 people, which was 142 percent of its goal, the Pentagon said. The Army recruited 5,681 people, 101 percent of its goal. The Navy and Air Force also met their goals, 2,905 sailors and 2,435 airmen. A Defense Department spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said that if the Marine Corps continued its recruiting success, it could reach its goal of growing to 202,000 people by the end of 2009, more than a year early.

Oh dang. :D

Certain death? prove it, prove there was a policy of eventual extermination and you win

Who said anything about eventual extermination? The Greater east-Asian co prosperity sphere could have gone on treating people they considered subhuman as cheap Labour for decades, working hundreds of thousands to death each week and this would according to you) be more moral than the deaths of one hundred thousand Japanese. It is a weird and very fascistic morality which you posses Flanker.

Likewise Benjamin whose limited reading skills interpret what I said as:

I’m a nice guy, but I am glad that there was some tough guy American to order this thing, I assume that it forced those inscrutable Japs to surrender; that makes me feel better

When of course we can equally say that he is saying: I’m a nice guy so I am not even going to consider all those Japanese civilians, Asian slave workers and American GI’s who would have died without the bombs. I can’t give a convincing alternative to what happened in 1945 but I don’t need to as my primary concern is to mock a blog! My 1980s morality tells me that everything done by Americans is bad, bad, bad and like Flanker I am going to spend my life making this simplistic point over and over again rather than actually discuss the issues.

but are too much of a coward to buck the groupthink in this site.

Blimey, I would have thought one post outlining HP’s position of support for this nuclear bombing would be enough

Of course! To everybody else in the world we are having a discussion about Hiroshima but to you two it is all part of a giant conspiracy to do nasty things to your worldview carried out by undifferentiated droids from HP!

What a giant pair of tits!

Out of curiosity, was it always this difficult to tell if a post was flanker or a faker? When two of his most used nouns (neo-con and genocide) are words entirely beyond his comprehension, yeah, there will be some confusion about his statements, but he’s simply beyond parody at this point

working hundreds of thousands to death each week

A hundred thousand a week, Graham? The sheer logistics of that are ..questionable. Dead people break no ground.

It could be an enormous underestimate Boogski.
Robert Newman has estimated that 400,000 people were dying each day in the Japanese zone in East Asia and that over 17 million died in the Japanese occupation zones in East Asia between 1932 and 1945.

http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/10660.html

Paul Bogdanor , just very quickly, of the three choices that were available to the US government, why did they go with dropping the A-bomb ? Well, because dropping the bomb was the right thing to do of course. But why was it the right thing to do ? That is, what made the dropping the bomb right ( i.e. how does such an action acquire the property of ‘rightness’ )? Three possibilities :1) dropping the bomb was right because such acts are intrinsically valuable and pass the test of the categorical imperative,(Kant ). 2) dropping the bomb was right because a virtuous person drops bombs,( Aristotle). 3) dropping the bomb was right because it killed fewer people than non bombing (Bentham/Mill/Railton). As you will appreciate the problem is that your understanding of the morality of the Hiroshima does not seem to fit any known moral theory and that calls for some reflection does it not ?

Just to reiterate what has, despite what Flanker and Benji may say, been said above. If I could put myself in Truman’s shoes, I, personally, would not have ordered the bomb be dropped.

Then again, I am operating with 60 years of hindsight and my own prejudices. Also, in the highly unlikely event I was transported back to the period, I’d be more likely to find myself as a foot soldier in Guadalcanal.

In the even more unlikely event I could choose to be Truman, I would choose to be him several years earlier and thus avert to series of events which gave rise to his decision and not wait until the final weeks of war so I could prove myself virtuous by not ordering the bomb be used.

Nagasaki was not even the primary target, it was Kokura

You wouldn’t even know that without HP. Now tell us if Bush’s primary target was his Reichstag.

But Alec don’t you realise that you are not just discussing the history of the first A bomb but in fact that you are a neocon who has a small part in the impending (been impending for years now) attack on Iran?

Watch next week when I will state that had I been Hitler I would not have invaded Russia but that all in all I am very glad he did.

Benji and Flanker will blow a gasket.

As you will appreciate the problem is that your understanding of the morality of the Hiroshima does not seem to fit any known moral theory and that calls for some reflection does it not ?

I would have thought that Michael Ezra’s positing of the dropping of the bomb as “the least worst scenario” was a reasonable moral theory? As far as I could see nobody was saying that it was a good thing but they were asking for a better alternative if there was one.

You’re right, Graham. Also, let us not forget, that Truman dismissed MacArthur for, amongst other reasons it has to be said, calling for the bombing of the Korean/Chinese border.

Responding to some points:

1. You would have been hard pressed not to fund some part of Japan that could not be described as a military target. To the extent that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military bases then that improves the case. To the extent that the civilian population were killed, that detracts from the moral case.

2. Cruel necessity is not the same thing as morally justified action. Morally justified actions often involve more pain and suffering that the alternative. Britain could plausibly have sat out the second world war as Spain following the fall of France - as a sort of semi detached ally of the Nazis. Much pain and suffering would have been avoided, but it is doubtful that it would have been the more moral course of action.

3. If people want to argue that the decision to drop the A bombs is understandable and that it offered the quickest way to end the war, that is OK by me. But it is not legitimate to then say that that was the more moral action. There are lots of examples of this. We might well have been able to cut short the end of the war in Europe by a few months if we had offered a general amnesty to all leading Nazis from Hitler down and guaranteed their safe exit to neutral countries. Would that have a been a moral course of action? Of course not, even if it saved a million lives.

If people want to argue that the decision to drop the A bombs is understandable and that it offered the quickest way to end the war, that is OK by me. But it is not legitimate to then say that that was the more moral action.

Two posts and about 200 comments in Field may have finally begun to grasp that Michael Ezra was saying not that it was the moral option but the least worst one.