Was Hiroshima an act of terrorism?

Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed on the leadership, disagreed that it was immoral. No more immoral than the war itself.

You seem to be agreeing that sometimes war is necessary. It would be completely irresponsible to go to war without the intent of winning it. To go to war and not do everything to both be victorious and humane in doing so. Dropping the atomic bomb wasn't a flippant decision. It was a struggle but I think the right decision was made.
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Then you're as crazy as the perps.
 
Anvil Kasseri said:
Which law do you believe was violated by the A-bombings?
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The targeting of civilians. And I'm not trying to single out America here. The British, the Bolsheviks, the Japanese, and the Nazis all targeted civilians too.
WWII was not "the good war," it was just another terrible war, only bigger than all previous wars.
 
StoneByStone said:
The targeting of civilians. And I'm not trying to single out America here. The British, the Bolsheviks, the Japanese, and the Nazis all targeted civilians too.
WWII was not "the good war," it was just another terrible war, only bigger than all previous wars.
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There was no law. Humane people try to minimize the loss of human life and to human suffering. However, as "the Trolley Problem" points out, it reaches a point of doing some undesirable things for the greater good.

Doesn't the LW ideology include weighing the good of the many versus the good of a few?
 
Cypress said:
So you do not actually get to point to atrocities in East Asia as justification for vaporizing two Japanese cities.
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The justification for the A-bombs was that they reduced Japan's ability to resist our invasion.


Cypress said:
Legal word games amount to a distinction without a difference. The entire point of vaporizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to terrorize and traumatize the people of Japan. Period. End of story.
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That is incorrect. The point was to reduce Japan's ability to resist our invasion.
 
Anvil Kasseri said:
Killing civilians was not the point. The point was to kill soldiers and destroy military headquarters (Hiroshima), and destroy war industry (Nagasaki).
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The point was to see what the abomb would do to a pristine city. Several Japanese cities were not bombed like Tokyo was. They were saved as test targets. I read about Hiroshima residents who thought the gods were being protective of their city because it wasn't bombed. They did not know what was in store. It wasn't god saving them.
If they wanted to end the manufacturing of Hiroshima, they could have done it much earlier. But they allowed it to keep producing. America had other plans for them.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
There was no law. Humane people try to minimize the loss of human life and to human suffering. However, as "the Trolley Problem" points out, it reaches a point of doing some undesirable things for the greater good.
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It's definitely against international law to target civilians. Maybe it wasn't a law at the time, but WWII did happen after international law became a thing.

Doesn't the LW ideology include weighing the good of the many versus the good of a few?
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Sure, but as I mentioned earlier, the war was all but won when America dropped the a-bombs.
The Allies also did a lot of morally gray things when fighting the Nazis, which maybe one could defend, but there is no defending the terrible things done to Germans after the war was over.
 
StoneByStone said:
Sure, but as I mentioned earlier, the war was all but won when America dropped the a-bombs.
The Allies also did a lot of morally gray things when fighting the Nazis, which maybe one could defend, but there is no defending the terrible things done to Germans after the war was over.
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That's not true. You'd be guessing. What if the carnage lasted nother year? Do you know the nation almost went bankrupt fighting that war? Do you really think the best strategy was to keep spending money while tens of thousands of soldiers risked their lives waiting for Japan to surrender? How would you feel of your loved ones were killed because our national leadership had a weapon to end the war but thought it wasn't proper etiquette to use it?
 
Dutch Uncle said:
That's not true. You'd be guessing. What if the carnage lasted nother year? Do you know the nation almost went bankrupt fighting that war? Do you really think the best strategy was to keep spending money while tens of thousands of soldiers risked their lives waiting for Japan to surrender? How would you feel of your loved ones were killed because our national leadership had a weapon to end the war but thought it wasn't proper etiquette to use it?
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I'd say it's at least most likely that dropping the a-bombs was unnecessary since Japan was unable to continue the war even before the bombs were dropped. And maybe I'm wrong here, maybe Japan would have mustered up what little they had left to launch another big attack on America. But that's the logic people always use when defending excessive violence. It's the logic dictators use to kill people who question them. It's the logic America used to put their own citizens in camps during the war.
Hindsight is 20/20, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was completely unnecessary to attack Japan that way during that point in the war.
 
StoneByStone said:
I'd say it's at least most likely that dropping the a-bombs was unnecessary since Japan was unable to continue the war even before the bombs were dropped. And maybe I'm wrong here, maybe Japan would have mustered up what little they had left to launch another big attack on America. But that's the logic people always use when defending excessive violence. It's the logic dictators use to kill people who question them. It's the logic America used to put their own citizens in camps during the war.
Hindsight is 20/20, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was completely unnecessary to attack Japan that way during that point in the war.
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On that point I disagree. When it comes to life and death go for the surer thing.

Yes, Hindsight is 20/20. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
 
StoneByStone said:
It's definitely against international law to target civilians. Maybe it wasn't a law at the time, but WWII did happen after international law became a thing.



Sure, but as I mentioned earlier, the war was all but won when America dropped the a-bombs.
The Allies also did a lot of morally gray things when fighting the Nazis, which maybe one could defend, but there is no defending the terrible things done to Germans after the war was over.
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The strategic goal was not to simply get Japan to surrender or to stop fighting.

The goal was to coerce them into unconditional surrender, subjugate them, occupy them, dismantle their military dictatorship, force a pacifist constitution on them, and turn what was a historic aggressor nation into a pacifist nation which abides by international standards of conduct.

By those standards, the strategic objectives of Fdr and Truman were remarkably successful.

It is almost impossible to coerce a major nation-state into accepting subjugation, military occupation, and wholesale dismantling of their government. It is not going to be accomplished by blockade and embargo.

Hitler found that out the hard way in Soviet Russia. He brought extraordinary pain and suffering to Russians, but they refused to allow military occupation and subjugation.
 
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