Subject:
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Re: Hiroshima-Was It Necessary?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 17 Oct 2001 18:05:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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545 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > > Well-- two things. First off, you may be quite right-- I don't really know
> > > what our mentality was at the time. Perhaps that was the best information we
> > > had available, which would mean that an A-bomb hit MAY have been the only
> > > way to show that to the populace. However, after the 1st one didn't work, I
> > > certainly don't think a 2nd attempt was doing much to change things.
> >
> > Dan's referenced site makes the case that it wasn't a "drop one, then decide
> > to drop the other" plan. Both were dropped as part of the same plan, so you
> > should take issue with the plan itself.
>
> Isn't that what I said?
No, at least I don't parse it that way. Feel free to diagram the sentence
though, so I can see it!
> > Dan's referenced site (accidentally) makes the case that having Stalin enter
> > the war was actually a bad thing for the world as the Soviets wanted to
> > prolong the conventional war so they could gobble more of Manchuria,
> > Sakhalin, Korea, etc. etc, as well as further consolidating their hold on
> > the countries they later enslaved in the Warsaw Pact.
> >
> > It further argues that had the war been concluded even sooner that perhaps
> > they would not have been in N Korea at all. So if anything maybe we should
> > have dropped sooner!
>
> Now you're the one who's going for the complicated explanation ;)
The world is a complicated place. Or would you rather Truman hadn't
considered all those factors?
You can handle the complexity, I think. You're trying to run two arguments
here at the same time, one about necessity and the other about morality,
after all.
> I could
> draw it out further and say isn't one of Osama's major "justifications" with
> the US the fact that we dropped the Bomb on the Japanese as an act of
> terrorism?
Well, except that it *isn't* a fact, it's an opinion and a (almost certainly
in my view, possibly? in your view) false one at that. Fact is we dropped
bombs. Opinion is that to do so was terroristic.
> What other consequences would have erupted for
> prolonging/extending the amount of time 'till we dropped?
The big ones are as outlined. GI deaths and Soviet empire building. Those
seem sufficient to me. Especially the latter, although the former is
sufficient by itself.
> As pointed out,
> two bombs were dropped and they still didn't surrender (at least not
> immediately). Were the bombs really providing the motivation? And to pick
> back to the side-issue, wasn't what motivation they were providing based on
> threat of terror?
No, the motivation was that we had a *new weapon* that could wreak so much
havoc with relative impunity (since we owned the sky at that point) that we
were about to become well nigh invincible and that the emperor cult was
going to therefore fall one way or another no matter what. That motivation
would still have been there if the weapon was one that made all metal go
away but left people around just fine (to pick a hypothetical weapon that
has a lot lower death quotient but still has that same invincibility) within
its effect radius.
I'm not sure where we are going here.
++Lar
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Hiroshima-Was It Necessary?
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| (...) Oh, that was just sarcasm about the last time you accused me of over-analyzing a situation down to many constituent parts and rating those parts as nigh on irrelevant. Hence the little ';)'. (...) You just hit the nail on the head, didn't you? (...) (23 years ago, 17-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Hiroshima-Was It Necessary?
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| (...) Isn't that what I said? (...) Now you're the one who's going for the complicated explanation ;) I could draw it out further and say isn't one of Osama's major "justifications" with the US the fact that we dropped the Bomb on the Japanese as an (...) (23 years ago, 17-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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