Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Eloquently and perceptively put.
Were Hirosmima and Nagasaki Ethical actions?
- Thread starter jmpet
- Start date
The lost lives during the attack itself was maybe not so 'high', in your opinion, but the consequences for future generations living on these grounds were absolutely negative. Till today there are still crippled kids being born, because of those bombs, and so on. You may want to tell that this was 'ethical' to the disabled people who have to live with the bombs' consequences for the rest of their lives.
There's nothing ethical about targeting civilians, no matter how bad the situation is. The whole "but it was for the greater good so it's okay" ..it's like admitting to terrorism, to achieve a higher political goal we nuked some non-combatants..how 'cool', how ethical.
Wasn't it Eisenhower who later said that it wasn't necessary to hit them with the a-bombs because the Japanese were ready to surrender? Are you proud to win a war by unnecessarily destroying the lives of women, children, innocent civilians? Yeah, feel proud.
Respectfully admit defeat? Anything but that.
There's nothing ethical about targeting civilians, no matter how bad the situation is. The whole "but it was for the greater good so it's okay" ..it's like admitting to terrorism, to achieve a higher political goal we nuked some non-combatants..how 'cool', how ethical.
Wasn't it Eisenhower who later said that it wasn't necessary to hit them with the a-bombs because the Japanese were ready to surrender? Are you proud to win a war by unnecessarily destroying the lives of women, children, innocent civilians? Yeah, feel proud.
Respectfully admit defeat? Anything but that.
Last edited:
Well here is the death count for WW2:
http://www.hitler.org/ww2-deaths.html
Assuming you have read about it.
http://www.hitler.org/ww2-deaths.html
Assuming you have read about it.
superstring01
Moderator
One per month was available, per the conversations between the military and the POTUS.
~String
You know, I seem to remember skim reading that somewhere recently, I do believe you are correct. I think maybe it was once believed to be a long period of time before they could build a 3rd.
superstring01
Moderator
On this we agree.
It's pure speculation, but I tend to think that the US and USSR would have ended up using them against eachother had both nations not had the shit scared out of them at the end of WWII.
~String
Trekmonster
Registered Member
They had a new toy and they wanted to try it out on sombody a few times, anything else was weak justification.
The lost lives during the attack itself was maybe not so 'high', in your opinion, but the consequences for future generations living on these grounds were absolutely negative. Till today there are still crippled kids being born, because of those bombs, and so on. You may want to tell that this was 'ethical' to the disabled people who have to live with the bombs' consequences for the rest of their lives.
There's nothing ethical about targeting civilians, no matter how bad the situation is. The whole "but it was for the greater good so it's okay" ..it's like admitting to terrorism, to achieve a higher political goal we nuked some non-combatants..how 'cool', how ethical.
Wasn't it Eisenhower who later said that it wasn't necessary to hit them with the a-bombs because the Japanese were ready to surrender? Are you proud to win a war by unnecessarily destroying the lives of women, children, innocent civilians? Yeah, feel proud.
Respectfully admit defeat? Anything but that.
I don't accept that. Perhaps in other times, it is unacceptable to target civilians, but this was a special case, total war encompassing most of the world. It was also payback for Pearl Harbor and the hell that our troops went through in the Pacific. Not so fucking militant now, are they?
so strong deterrants and even revenge does work in some cases, and even justified in some cases though not all cases. but you do realize that if revenge for wrongs was equally exercised by every party, there would be a lot more of it. for instance, there are things others could justifiably from their point of view take revenge on america for but they just don't have the power to do it.
superstring01
Moderator
Thus the need to make the victory total and absolute as was done so effectively in WWII.
~String
yes, that is effective but that doesn't have anything to do with ethics. there are people who make victory total by commiting crimes where they leave no evidence or get away with it, still has nothing to do with ethics. in this situation, i don't think it was unethical from just what i know of it.
i was making the point that a lot of parties have legitimate 'payback' issues going way back. whether one has the power to carry it out is another matter.
A special case? Well, if everybody starts to justify their actions with "but it was a special case"...the victims of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had 0 to do with what happened on Pearl Harbour. So, going on a revenge tour against people who didn't do anything to you is..a special case, a justifiable one, an acceptable thing. That sounds like the ethical train of thought a barbarian would have. Targeting innocent civilians to reach higher collectivist goals is...this is akin to terrorism, actually that's what all those suicide bombers in the recent years have been doing all along. That's how terrorists justify their unethical actions against people who never did anything to them.
But hey, Nagasaki and Hiroshima are not the only instances in which the USA just went on a 'wipe out anything that moves' without making distinctions between innocent civilians and actual combatants, they weren't the only special cases where the USA deemed it as justifiable to carpet bomb a place full of innocent folks. The Cambodia incident where hundreds of thousands of peasants were wiped off of the map, is just one of the many special cases when the USA thought it's fine..to just drop the bomb regardless of what it would hit.
But the civilians were manufacturing weapons of war, it was a total effort. Yes, I will make exceptions for World Wars as a special case. I don't think carpet bombing Vietnam had the same justification.
The lesson there is that it was completely unnecessary to drop the Bomb on a city - the death and destruction had already been withstood, by the Germans at Dresden and the Japanese in Tokyo, - - - the mere existence of the things was key.geoff said:
So merely informing the Japanese of their existence, six months earlier at the negotiating table, might have ended the war much sooner. If evidence was needed, inviting Japanese experts to witness Trinity was an obvious option. And the US seemed to know that - cutting off all negotiations as soon as the word of success came from Los Alamos, carefully keeping all knowledge from the Japanese, avoiding any diplomatic moves that might risk ending the war suddenly.
And of course not waiting to see what would happen after Hiroshima, but quickly selecting another target for the other design.
The appearance - the most obvious conclusion from the evidence - is that the US wanted to drop at least two of the things on actual cities, for some reason.
A US documentation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it sounds like an experiment to them...it's absolutely disgusting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUvM2uQR1cA&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUvM2uQR1cA&feature=player_embedded
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
You should hope that your actions are never judged out of context.
Is any violence ethical, especially pre-emptive violence (ie, I "had to" shoot him because he "was going to" shoot me.)?
We look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as horrific events, but the allies bombed Dresden Germany to smithereens, and then there was the Bombing of Tokyo on one night in March 1945. Of it, Wikipedia says:
I have to disagree to some degree here: even after the first bomb had hit, the Japanese refused the idea of surrender, or rather the military clique ruling the country did.
Maybe, except that six months earlier the Germans were still in the game, and presumably trying to develop their own weapon. I can't recall the timeframe, and consulting the intelligence on the nuclear timeframe of the Germans vis-a-vis the Americans would be a more complex issue, but
How do you mean? Do you have a reference for this? Truman seems to have much agonized over the use of the bomb, and not as a scientific experiment.
It's true they gave no notice to Hiroshima, and it's possible that this means they wanted a scientific analysis of what would happen. Then again, it's also possible they wanted to eliminate all chance of detection and interception, followed by 'god knows what' - the primitive terror of the new weapon being captured. That's supposition, but I don't think it's poorly founded.
Actually, I don't think this is true. Didn't they ask for surrender after dropping the first bomb?
Sorry about the wiki. Long day ahead yet. The last point is uncited, but I expect that could found relatively quickly.
Well, I guess we disagree here. If Japan had surrendered, such a plan would have been interrupted; wouldn't it have been better to whack them twice and then offer peace or something? So long as the surrender offer had been extended, Japan could have given up at any time, if you see what I mean.
SnowsportsSid
Registered Member
With regards to whether the Japanese were provoked, this is really interesting. Firstly, there is a considerable body of evidence that suggests that although President Roosevelt portrayed Pearl Harbour as an unprovoked, surprise attack, in actual fact, the American's had been actively provoking Japan, in the hope that the Japanese would commit what the American's referred to as an "overt act of war".
Still not able to post links, but please see Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceit and more specifically, Arthur McCollum's "Eight Action Memo", which is available on wikipedia. Robert Stinnett is an ex US Navy sailor who served in WW2 under George Bush Snr of all people. Arthur McCollum was a middle rank Navy officier, who was alledgedly President Roosevelt's communications officer. I think the evidence presented in this book is quite compelling, although I believe it is disputed by a number of mainstream historians.
Why would the American's wish to provoke Japan? As outlined in McCollum's memo, the American administration / military considered war with Japan to be inevitable, as Japan's empire building was beginning to threaten US interests in the pacific. The American administration also felt threatened across the Atlantic by Nazi Germany who were at war with America's ally, Great Britain.
At this time, although both British and American shipping in the Atlantic was enduring attacks from German U-Boats, Great Britain's Royal Navy were the dominant force in the Atlantic ocean and as such Nazi Germany's Navy were unable to pose a significant strategic threat to the American homeland. The American calculation was that if Nazi Germany defeated Great Britain and destroyed, or, worse still, captured a large part of the Royal Navy intact, they would then control the Atlantic ocean and as such become a strategic threat to the USA. It was therefore considered to be in the American interest to not only supply Great Britain's war effort, as was already happening, but perhaps also to fight alongside her in the European theatre. The problem was that this was not the wish of the American people who at the time were overwhelmingly against intervention in a foreign European war.
Robert Stinnett postulates that the American administration set out to provoke Japan into committing an "overt act of war", which would swing public opinion thus allowing the government to push the American economy into full scale war production mode and enter the war which they felt was inevitable anyway. Arthur McCollum's memo, which was originally classified but Stinnett had released under Freedom of Information years later, outlines 8 policies to provoke the Japanese to commit this overt act of war - all of which were apparently implemented.
Now, to give a somewhat shorter response to the original question, I think it was highly unethical of the allies (and I say allies, because I'm sure their was British involvement at some level) to drop an atomic bomb on a primarily civilian population center in Japan. However, given that it ended the war there and then and that it is pretty certain that more would have died if the war had continued conventionally (given the ridiculous number of people who had already died in WW2), perhaps it was justified. In the words of Barack Obama, "that question is way above my paygrade".
Still not able to post links, but please see Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceit and more specifically, Arthur McCollum's "Eight Action Memo", which is available on wikipedia. Robert Stinnett is an ex US Navy sailor who served in WW2 under George Bush Snr of all people. Arthur McCollum was a middle rank Navy officier, who was alledgedly President Roosevelt's communications officer. I think the evidence presented in this book is quite compelling, although I believe it is disputed by a number of mainstream historians.
Why would the American's wish to provoke Japan? As outlined in McCollum's memo, the American administration / military considered war with Japan to be inevitable, as Japan's empire building was beginning to threaten US interests in the pacific. The American administration also felt threatened across the Atlantic by Nazi Germany who were at war with America's ally, Great Britain.
At this time, although both British and American shipping in the Atlantic was enduring attacks from German U-Boats, Great Britain's Royal Navy were the dominant force in the Atlantic ocean and as such Nazi Germany's Navy were unable to pose a significant strategic threat to the American homeland. The American calculation was that if Nazi Germany defeated Great Britain and destroyed, or, worse still, captured a large part of the Royal Navy intact, they would then control the Atlantic ocean and as such become a strategic threat to the USA. It was therefore considered to be in the American interest to not only supply Great Britain's war effort, as was already happening, but perhaps also to fight alongside her in the European theatre. The problem was that this was not the wish of the American people who at the time were overwhelmingly against intervention in a foreign European war.
Robert Stinnett postulates that the American administration set out to provoke Japan into committing an "overt act of war", which would swing public opinion thus allowing the government to push the American economy into full scale war production mode and enter the war which they felt was inevitable anyway. Arthur McCollum's memo, which was originally classified but Stinnett had released under Freedom of Information years later, outlines 8 policies to provoke the Japanese to commit this overt act of war - all of which were apparently implemented.
Now, to give a somewhat shorter response to the original question, I think it was highly unethical of the allies (and I say allies, because I'm sure their was British involvement at some level) to drop an atomic bomb on a primarily civilian population center in Japan. However, given that it ended the war there and then and that it is pretty certain that more would have died if the war had continued conventionally (given the ridiculous number of people who had already died in WW2), perhaps it was justified. In the words of Barack Obama, "that question is way above my paygrade".