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.
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.Doesn't the LW ideology include weighing the good of the many versus the good of a few?
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.
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?
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
Anvil Kasseri (08-09-2020)
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.
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.
Anvil Kasseri (08-09-2020)
Does anyone realize the slippery slope we're on if we accept killing civilians if it shaves time and loss off of a conflict?
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
Nomad (08-10-2020)
Could be but it hasn't. Why do you think it was then and why only Islamic terrorists target civilians now?
BTW, today is the anniversary of Nagasaki. Japan didn't surrender until the 15th but the US was out of bombs but that was classified.
If the Japanese were about to fall anyway, why not surrender on the 7th? The 10th? Why risk a third US bomb by waiting almost a week?
"Hatred is a failure of imagination" - Graham Greene, "The Power and the Glory"
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