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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: America-bashing (use of atomic bomb)
Message-ID: <283@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 00:15:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubvax.283
Posted: Wed Jul 31 00:15:14 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 08:29:17 EDT
References: <3268@drutx.UUCP> <10615@rochester.UUCP> <444@mit-vax.UUCP> <10686@rochester.UUCP> <301@persci.UUCP>
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 68

In article <301@persci.UUCP> bill@persci.UUCP (William Swan) writes:
(The 'bomb' on Japan brought ...)
>the instigators of that war to an early surrender, thereby avoiding tremendous
>bloodshed (on both sides) and total destruction of their nation and people.
>

The "instigators"?  Do I detect a hint of revenge here?  There was just
this week an article by Theodore H. White in the NY Times Magazine
recalling the war on Japan; the inhumanitarian sentiments expressed there
turned me off.  Lots of revenge in him.  He wants to blame the Japanese
for building competitive industries with technology the US gave Japan to
ward off starvation, no less.

The historical account of the war shows the same lust for revenge as
Mr. White had in his article forty years later.

But revenge is not a sufficient excuse for the cold-blooded murder of
civilians.  The US knew it was on the verge of victory.  It could
have considered the tradeoffs in lives from one strategy or another,
especially civilian lives.  The historical record shows no such niceties
in the decision(s) to drop the bombs.

>It's often been said that we should have dropped the bomb on Fuji instead of
>a populace. Consider that the bomb was not considered reliable, that there was
>a fair chance that it might not explode if dropped (like so many conventional
>bombs). A failure in that attempt would have only strengthened their resolve,
>forcing us into even more drastic actions, resulting in the deaths of even
>more human beings than if it had never been dropped. (The attempt, failed,
>would have made us look *very* weak and without resolve in Japanese eyes. It
>would have actually encouraged them: 1. We have a most unreliable superweapon.
>2. We don't have the resolve to actually use it.)

If it worked, more than 100,000 lives would be saved.  If it failed, then
maybe a bomb would end up being dropped anyhow, thereby not saving 100,000
lives.  That's better than just dropping the bomb.

I read somewhere that the second bomb was dropped to see if it would work,
since it was more experimental (used plutonium instead of uranium) than
the first bomb.  Dropping it on a civilian population served two purposes
at once, I guess.  It was dropped on Nagasaki.  The second bomb was not
dropped because the Japanese had decided to continue fighting.

Most arguments about the morality of the "bomb" focus only on the first
one.

>It was most unfortunate that it was used, but consider ALL the circumstances
>before you start getting judgemental. This particular circumstance will never
>arise again.
>-- 
>William Swan  {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill

War is war, and it's hell, and so are atrocities.  The dropping of the
atomic bomb was just more effective than the concentration camps, since
we still have it around today.

It's amusing how the US tries to show a crazed skull's face to its enemies and
a caring, fatherly "we are the world -- I did it for the best of reasons" face
to the rest of us.  All governments do this to some degree, but I think the
US believes it can persuade people that it acts as a moral actor and
conquers the contradictions of "circumstances" with a lot more sureness
and certainty than do most other governments.

If state religion is what states believe about themselves and their
relation to the deity, then the US is probably the most religious and
pious state in the whole world.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw