Originally Posted by
Cypress
We were not willing to risk open war to prevent the atrocities being committed by the Japanese Army in Korea, Manchuria, China, which had been going on since the early 1930s.
So you do not actually get to point to atrocities in East Asia as justification for vaporizing two Japanese cities.
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.
That makes it both terrorism and immoral.
Many immoral things happen in war.
It may be that the nuclear attacks were the least bad option to achieve our strategic war objectives. Maybe it was a strategic decision which prevented a larger conflagration. That does not prevent us from recognizing the immorality and inhumanity of vaporizing two cities.
FDR, you know, the Democrat, was willing to stop the genocide but most Americans were isolationist and content to hide behind the wall of two great oceans...until Pearl Harbor proved the Pacific ocean wasn't big enough.
Isolationism is where the Libertarian party and I part ways. We agree the US isn't and shouldn't be the world's policeman, but there is a lot of space between isolationism and being a Global Cop.
It's not just the humanity of stopping a genocide, it's also a matter of surviving "the end game". Where were the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich going with all this? Where would things eventually end up? If the outlook was bad, then it's smart to get involved in stopping it while there were enough people to do it.
Pastor Martin Niemöller, a concentration camp survivor, said it best IMO:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
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