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 20:27:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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623 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton writes:
> > > As pointed out,
> > > two bombs were dropped and they still didn't surrender (at least not
> > > immediately).
I think I missed that the first time. It was my understanding that they
surrendered about as immediately as could be possibly arranged given the
circumstances. Can you restate why you feel they did not surrender 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.
>
> You just hit the nail on the head, didn't you? That we had a "new weapon"--
> and that we weren't afraid to use it! "Be scared, you Japanese! Behold our
> new super-weapon! Surrender or else!" Yes? Isn't what you described
> instilling fear in the enemy as opposed to preventing them from retaliating?
> Isn't that terrorism? You may still argue that it was a *necessary* and
> maybe even a *moral* use of terrorism (I'll disagree if you do, but carry it
> little further), but I think you're arguing that it *was* terrorism.
I fear a rathole but let's discuss "motivation" here for a sec. Seems to me
that if you're prosecuting a desperate and terrible war which you really
really want to win, on pain of unspeakable horror if you lose, EVERY action
you carry out ought to be measured against the overall metric of "will this
help win the war". That includes the procurement and firing of a single .22
bullet on up to the procurement and deployment of a Dreadnought (the most
expensive single weapon of the time).
Now, weapons are expended for tactical objectives but those objectives
themselves are part of the strategic objective of winning. The strategic
objective was to get the unconditional surrender of Japan. We can discuss
why that objective (rather than a negotiated peace that left the military
dictatorship in place) was the *correct* objective in a different subthread
if you like, but I am firmly convinced that nothing less was acceptable (and
I have remarked elsewhere that our failures in war since then have stemmed
at least in part from inappropriate objectives, for example in Korea it
should have been the reunification of the peninsula, not an armistice, and
in Iraq it should have been removal of a despotic troublemaking government,
not return to previous borders, and so on... enter war reluctantly but if
you enter, enter to WIN).
OUR objective in using the a-bomb was to destroy a significant part of the
Japanese war effort support structure and to inflict casualties. The fact
that it *happened to convince* the Japanese that we were well nigh
invincible does not necessarily imply that that convince-ment was our
objective. So I reject the assertion that "obviously we did it to scare the
Japanese" as well as "obviously we did it to show off to the Russians".
Nothing is obvious about that and you will have to prove it in detail, step
by step.
Absent that, instilling fear cannot be claimed to be the primary objective
unless you show it to be so.
Restating, the motivation for Japanese surrender was the realisation that
they had utterly been defeated. No other weapon or weapons, I am convinced,
short of hand to hand invasion, would have convinced them of that. Yet, that
is not why the weapons were deployed, in my opinion, they were deployed as
part of the overall strategy of destroying the enemy capability to carry out
the war.
And they did that. Hiroshima and Nagasake were not some sort of bedroom
communities only, they were *industrial* centers. Their loss was a
significant blow to Japanese military capability. Just as the Dresden
firestorm, previously, was a significant loss to German military capability.
In both cases they had the unfortunate effect of inflicting casualties on
(some significant fraction) of the civilians who were *not* enthusiastically
helping prosecute the war, as well as on those that were (and who therefore
were legitimate targets).
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Hiroshima-Was It Necessary?
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| (...) "As immediately as possible" I suppose you could question, but according to the timeline: - 8/6 Bomb #1 - 8/9 Bomb #2 - 8/14 Surrender There was more time inbetween the 2nd bomb and the surrender than between the 1st and 2nd bombs, in fact. (...) (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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| (...) 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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