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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Thu, 18 Oct 2001 03:05:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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837 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:
> > 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?
>
> "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. And in fact, had it not been for the
> emperor's stated desire, it sounds like war would have persisted.
There was, in fact, an attempted coup by high-ranking officers
once the Emperor's wishes had become known. The problem with
Fascist thinking was that it was seen as a struggle of civilizations;
Hitler in fact articulated that if the German race could not
overcome and conquer in all adversity, they deserved to be consumed
by the fire (I believe that was the exact term). The Japanese
military ideal was similar, though less racially loaded and more
culturally so. The belief was that they would simply sacrifice
more and Providence would ensure them victory--thus the kamikaze
and the faith in a terrible storm to destory the invaders in 1944/5
(and in fact an enormous typhoon did strike the US fleets off
Okinawa, IIRC--tore off the bow of the USS Pittsburgh and swamped
many smaller ships). The die-hard Fascist mentality was exactly
that.
> > ...
> > Now, weapons are expended for tactical objectives but those objectives
> > themselves are part of the strategic objective of winning.
> > ...
>
> Yes, I fully agree that the objective was to win. The tactic behind the
> atomic strike, however, was fear (I believe), moreso than it was any sort of
> actual physical damage the bomb might have done.
It was two parts political, one part military. The second
"political" part was to show Japan that we had the means to
flatten their country and render it uninhabitable *without
ever setting foot on Japanese soil*. Conventional bombs
are terrible, and firestorms deadly, but radiation and that
heat left no room for any escape. So I'm in agreement that
there was a fear aspect, but is sowing fear in the context
of war somehow especially evil?
Until after 9 August 1945, Japan's remaining strategy was
built on repelling an invasion of the Home Islands. Some
20,000 to 30,000 explosive-laden aircraft--anything that
would fly--were to be launched against the invasion fleet
at a thousand an hour. Tiny amounts of fuel would be needed,
wooden aircraft would do. And, of course, the civilian
population was armed with poles, staves, knives, anything
available. Gar Alperovitz makes a strong case that the
invasion would not have been quite as bad as military planners
were saying, but the numbers killed by the A-bombs were
smaller still. We can't argue the counterfactuals clearly,
but if you ask the war generation, you'd be hard pressed to
find someone who didn't find the bombing defensible. In that
case I think that memory is a powerful indicator of what
total war was like. Nobody involved in the current .debate--
as far as I know--has *ever* looked from within a total war
or a fully militarized society. Our ability to equivocate
these actions is based upon an entirely Vietnam-era set of
sensibilities that I don't think are applicable to WWII.
> > 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.
>
> Only if I want to convince you. Unless you're not entitling me to my
> interpretation of the events, in which case I'll fight you on that. I think
> it was a scare tactic, plain and simple, under the guise of a militarily
> "justified" strike-- hence, a terror weapon, rather than a strategic weapon.
> Although perhaps "strategic" covers the "terrorist" category as well, but
> nevertheless, I think it the action's intent was to scare more than
> incapacitate retaliation.
Again, see my other post--where does "military" end and
"nonmilitary" begin in a society mobilized for total war?
Hiroshima was definitely calculated to achieve a political
result, a surrender--but that was also a *military* objective
that, through surrender, ended the threat of retaliation
against US occupation forces.
> > Absent that, instilling fear cannot be claimed to be the primary objective
> > unless you show it to be so.
>
> And likewise your viewpoint. I hold that my interpretation, given the facts
> available, is a just as logically valid of a conclusion as yours is. And
> further, I think mine makes more sense (subjectively of course). And there
> we can agree to disagree. Try to convince me otherwise if you like-- but I'm
> not overly likely to change my mind.
>
> Meanwhile, I'll ask this-- if it *were* the case that scaring them was our
> primary objective, would you then consider it a terrorist action on our
> part? How about if it were only a 2ndary objective? Partially terroristic?
> At least I hope you'll agree with me that far.
I should ask the same question as I did in the other message:
Do you consider Doolittle's Raid of 1942 to be terrorism? The
biggest problem with calling these things "terrorism" is that
it divorces those acts from their context, and it both trivializes
the scale of the wartime acts and proclaims them morally indefen-
sible because of its generally-understood negative connotation
of the word "terrorism" that we've held in the last 20 years.
Who are legitimate military targets? To whom? How far up the
chain of producers in a national economy do the legitimate
targets reside?
Here's an oddball thought: Imagine a world where Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were never bombed, and nuclear weapons were never seen
in action on such a comparatively small scale. I'd be willing
to posit that in such a world, a Cuban Missile Crisis would
have become World War III, and we wouldn't be here flapping
our jaw-meat about it. Does the end justify the means? Can
there not be any *positive* value to having seen the horror of
a Hiroshima and Nagasaki relative to the survival of humanity?
best
LFB
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Hiroshima-Was It Necessary?
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| (...) Especially evil? No, or at least, I wouldn't deem it as such. As I've said elsewhere, the fact that it employed fear doesn't necessarily make it immoral, and even if it does, it doesn't mean it's necessarily unjustified. (...) I'm highly in (...) (23 years ago, 18-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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| (...) "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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