 Kore7 says: Good article about the American public's response to waking up on August 6, 1945 to discover out-of-the-blue that "they possessed the most powerful weapon in the history of war." In the early days after the attack, only a few scattered voices objected. Most of them were religious. The Vatican and Catholic newspapers promptly denounced nuclear weapons. One minister in New York said, “Our savage generation cannot be trusted” and called the nuclear program “a triumph of research, but also a superb symbol for the Age of Efficient Chaos.” I think if you read Gar Alperovitz's histories about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, he quotes some Republicans who took Truman to task for using such a horrible weapon. It's an interesting contrast to today, where it is pretty much taken for granted by the right, center, and center-left in the US that the bombing was justified. One exception is National Review writer Ramesh Ponnuru, who, while promoting his book "The Party of Death" on the Daily Show, said he thought the atomic bombing was wrong, although as far as I know he has not been very active in arguing this point. The atomic bombing did finish the war quickly on U.S. terms. It may have saved the lives of thousands/tens of thousands of Americans and Japanese. It's level of destruction was matched by the massive fire bombing of Tokyo (http://japanfocus.org/images/463-1.jpg). These are arguments for the use of the bomb, why it was good to use it. The arguments against it include the fact the bombing had two purposes. One was the ending of the war the other was as a test of the new weapon on a human population. Personally, though the history is mixed, I fail to see why the atomic bombing is worse than the fire bombing of Tokyo. I agree that the argument over using the atomic bomb is inseperable from larger arguments over targetting cities with more "conventional" weapons. But I have a problem with this cost/benefit analysis that justifies the atomic bombing. Essentially, the argument goes that bombing Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, etc. helped end the war sooner and thus saved the lives of Allied civilians and soldiers. Now even though there is no way to totally prove or disprove this argument, let's say that in the case of WWII, the relatively rapid collapse of the Third Reich and the quick surrender of Japan bears this argument out. However, just because it worked (maybe) in WWII, does it mean it will... Personally, I'm not a fan of atomic bomb use, only in dire circumstances perhaps... but the use of it in Japan wasn't only to save arguably 400k soldiers and prolonged war, it was also a way to break the Japanese fighting spirit with such an overwhelming and unmatchable force. From what I've heard/read of Japanese culture - no firebombing of Tokyo or anything of the sort would've diminished their fighting spirit. The bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki did. That was one of the intents supposedly, with the others stated in prior comments. It was also a way to prevent the Soviet Union from taking much of Japan. If it didn't happen perhaps a nuclear world war would have already happened. Luckily someone said: Damn, we don't wanna do that ever again! |
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