[thechat] West v. East (was: civilized vs. uncivilized)

[Joe Crawford]

Erika Meyer wrote:
> ><snip>
> >>I certainly have issues with US conduct during WWII.  Hiroshima.
> >>Nagasaki.
> >
> >While I recognise (albeit disagree with) the PoV that says that
> >Hiroshima was a necessary evil, I really do not think that Nagasaki
> >was necessary for the Japanese to get the point.
> ><snip>
> >
> >So, you think it would have been better for the Allies to invade Japan at a
> >cost of untold millions of Japanese lives, not to mention a million Allied
> >casualties instead of dropping the bombs?
> 
> Isn't it nice when your leaders give you a choice?

Well Erika, working backward, how would you have conducted the Pacific
part of the second world war? Minus any Invasion of Japan and minus the
dropping of Japan?

I would be interested. Not just being a smartass - what options were
missed?

> My point: mass murder of innocents is unethical regardless of the
> circumstances.

Question: is ethics about absolute good and bad, or about weighing the
relative good and bad in given situations. An argument could be made
that by avoiding a costly invasion of Japan (take a look at the losses
of the ground forces while invading Germany, for example), that the
A-Bombs were a difficult moral choice which is defensible.

It's wrong to kill civilians. But is it wrong to allow more of your own
soldiers to die if you know that by killing civilians you can spare many
more of your own soldiers?

I think we'd answer that question differently.


> Joe's point (I think): Even if you think a 50,000 civilians in city
> #1 should die in order to make a point about what could come if Japan
> didn't surrender.... It was probably not necessary to kill another
> 50,000 and destroy a second city a mere 3 days later.
> 
> The US has been known to blow these things up on relatively
> uninhabited islands... (the Japanese war masters may have wondered,
> 'do they have more than one such bomb?')

In a confrontation, it's often to your advantage to appear larger and
stronger than you are to your enemy.

> >After the first bomb was dropped, Truman again called for them to surrender,
> >http://www.nuclearfiles.org/docs/1945/450808a-pr-war.html, which they again
> >rejected, then and ONLY then did he give the Ok to drop the second.
> 
> I pray my government will never this stubborn.  I grew up haunted by
> nightmares of these bombs.  I want the nightmares to go away.

Oh yes, we have all new nightmares.

My current one is that the nuclear plant at San Onofre (a mere 30 miles
away or so) is vulnerable to attack - by plane or truck. 

I also worry about the proximity to the border and the porousness of
same, to, say, terrorists.

I'm worried about increasing attacks on Arab -Americans and people who
appear to be Arab-Americans.

I also worry about chemical attack.

I am also concerned about jingoistic thought in my countrymen. I'm
worried that in their zeal for vengeance they're going to kill our civil
liberties. These are real and proximate worries.


> >Even then the War Council didn't want to surrender, Hirohito had to
> >order them to accept the terms. So Yes, Nagasaki WAS necessary for
> >the Japanese to get the point.
> 
> Was the point: "surrender or we will kill all your women and children"?
> 
> (Boy, that Osama Bin Laden sure is an bad guy, isn't he.)
<snips>

The Japanese Empire was ruthless and cruel. An Australian friend of my
Grandfather was on the Burma Road -- he visited here last Summer and was
essentially saying that the Japanese were brutal. Summary executions,
wounds untreated, men dying every day for lack of nutrition, treatment.
Not to mention the Bataan Death March, atrocities, rape all over Asia.
Making a point about the current situation by trivializing the events of
the Second World War is, to me, offensive.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your points, though.

	- Joe <http://artlung.com/>