Lest we forget - Hiroshima & Nagasaki

[VarlosZ]

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By that logic everything is justified in retaliation. <font color="red">no, not everything. measured responses, taking into account the ability to win a war with different strategies, is justified when you are in a morally superior position.</font>

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Ok, but that's not what you said before.

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For example, if I throw rocks at an extremely violent man, knowing full well that he'll probably kill my kids in retaliation, that doesn't mean that it isn't wrong for him to kill my kids. I don't see how WW2-style strategic bombing is different from this situation in any way other than scale. <font color="red">because his response of killing your kids is neither related to nor commensurate with the attack on him. If you killed his kids instead of just throwing rocks at him, it would be much closer to the strategic bombing analogy.</font>

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Very well, suppose he killed my kids to dissuade me from throwing rocks at him in the future. Or, if you prefer, that he killed my kids so that I wouldn't kill any more of his. That still doesn't make him blameless.

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<font color="red">finish your thought..."regardless of what has come before, but in consideration that what might come after will be worse". </font>

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Right, which is why I said it might sometimes be justified, i.e. it might yield better results going forward. My point was that the fact that the Japanese started it does not, in and of itself, make seemingly barbaric acts of war on our part less bad. That they're likely to start more wars in the future, on the other hand, might make such acts less bad.

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<font color="red">Words dont change the fact that it was deemed necessary by good, moral men who would have much preferred a sanitary war.</font>

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That's turns out not to be universally correct, though I agree that the planners were on the whole acting in good faith with an eye toward limiting death and suffering to the degree that such possible.

[andyfox]

"Why is ok for other countries to use force to kill american's and it's no ok for us TO DO ANYTHING about it."

Where did Scheer say this? What leads you to believe that he believes this? The U.S. had plans to burn Japanese cities before Pearl Harbor.

[andyfox]

We had a one-on-one debate on whether the bombs ended the war a while back. While the morality of the bombs was a peripheral issue to our debate, there was a lot of discussion about this in discussion thread. Perhaps a better linker/arhive searcher than I could provide links to those threads.

[andyfox]

"They attacked us first"

And this justifies killing hundreds of thousands of children?

[John Kilduff]

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In a world where the people can't see shades of gray, there is only black.

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Well, as I alluded to in an earlier response to JK, I don't object to seeing shades of gray so much as I object to declaring that only your shade of gray is the right one and using violence to making everyone else adheres to your shade and your shade only. Do you see the difference?

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the only difference is that, as JK said, you are unable or unwilling to use your judgement to differentiate between moral and immoral, and in doing so reduce everything to equivalence.

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Not so - I just don't think that my individual view of morality is sufficient cause for me to justifiably attack someone else. Is it because I don't want them to act differently? No - it's because I don't believe that I can authorize myself to act based on my moral opinion without granting authority someone else to act based on their moral opinion. This does not mean I consider their moral code to be equally valid. Rather, it only means I don't have the hubris to think that my moral code is the one that all others should be FORCED to live by.

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I agree with you on that, mosdef. The special problem arises, though, when the other side thinks exactly that their moral code is the one others should be forced to live by (e.g. Nazis, Japanese Imperialists, Jihadi Imperialists) and they then take steps to violently force that code on others. Push sometimes does come to shove, and at that point we must be able to say: our moral code and way of life is better than theirs; they are aggressing against us or our allies; and we're going to fight like hell to see that they don't succeed.

By the way, I consider my position to be internally consistent, as I don't think the West should be trying to force democracy upon the Middle East (also, I don't think that experiment will really succeed, but that's another discussion).

[W brad]

OK, haven't read the whole thread yet. Has anyone suggested that the Arizona was sunk by explosives planted on board at FDR's order yet?

[mosdef]

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I agree with you on that, mosdef. The special problem arises, though, when the other side thinks exactly that their moral code is the one others should be forced to live by (e.g. Nazis, Japanese Imperialists, Jihadi Imperialists) and they then take steps to violently force that code on others. Push sometimes does come to shove, and at that point we must be able to say: our moral code and way of life is better than theirs; they are aggressing; and we're going to fight like hell to see that they don't succeed.

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Okay, but as soon as you walk into their country and start killing people, you're offside. The U.S. likes to fight wars on someone else's territory and call it self-defense so it sounds morally justified. It would be laughable if it weren't so evil.

[ctj]

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Stay tuned.
In 364 days, this debate will be repeated.

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This comes up a lot more frequently than once a year, for some reason. Below is a response I made in a similar thread in March 2007 (note the reference to an even earlier, similar thread). I think the point about civilian deaths that were ongoing in Japanese-held Asia (250K+/month!) is often overlooked.


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I posted this once before, but it seems apropos here:


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... By the time we decided to use the bombs, the US government was aware that Japan had made a decision to surrender, afaik.

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AFAIK, the militarists in control of Japan had not made a decision to surrender on any terms acceptable to the Allies. They were prepared to defend the Home Islands to the last man.

See Why Truman Dropped the Bomb by Richard B. Frank for a good summary of the evidence. The summation of the article states:

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There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995. But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.

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To those who say dropping the bombs was about saving American lives, here is another quote from the same article:
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This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations.

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Regards,

C.T. Jackson

[Copernicus]

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In a world where the people can't see shades of gray, there is only black.

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Well, as I alluded to in an earlier response to JK, I don't object to seeing shades of gray so much as I object to declaring that only your shade of gray is the right one and using violence to making everyone else adheres to your shade and your shade only. Do you see the difference?

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the only difference is that, as JK said, you are unable or unwilling to use your judgement to differentiate between moral and immoral, and in doing so reduce everything to equivalence.

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Not so - I just don't think that my individual view of morality is sufficient cause for me to justifiably attack someone else. Is it because I don't want them to act differently? No - it's because I don't believe that I can authorize myself to act based on my moral opinion without granting authority someone else to act based on their moral opinion. This does not mean I consider their moral code to be equally valid. Rather, it only means I don't have the hubris to think that my moral code is the one that all others should be FORCED to live by.

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I think we are on the same page up to your last sentence, which I would characterize as not having the courage of your convictions to defend what you believe is a morally superior position against those who act immorally against you. ie the French position. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Copernicus]

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By the way, I consider my position to be internally consistent, as I don't think the West should be trying to force democracy upon the Middle East (also, I don't think that experiment will really succeed, but that's another discussion).

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But what if you change the "mission" to "influence the Middle East to recognize and actively support our right to live without fear of terrorism"? (Which I assume you would agree is a morally superior position to one which would extend the Caliphate to the entire world through terrorism or other force).