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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (55146)	10/28/2002 11:08:55 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

It is a war crime, in my humble opinion, to nuke two civilian cities. War is a crime Zonder... And both of those nations thrust war upon us and the rest of the world. Just as Saddam thrust war upon the middle east with its unprovoked invasion of Kuwait. And once war is thrust upon you, you take every action required to kill more of your enemy's people than he can kill of yours. And as I've stated before, the firebombing of Japan killed more Japanese than did either of the atomic bombs combined. But people only remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they were such large and remarkable forces unleashed instantaneously upon a target... But few remember Tokyo, Dresden, Hamburg, Coventry... or the night time bombing of civilian population centers by the British.. Nuclear devices are merely a instantaneous means of delivering hundreds of tonnes of destructive force, rather than delivering it over the course of days, weeks, or years... But people die in all of these cases... Being "innocent" or "guilty" matters not... And you bet.. were it necessary to save US lives in a desperate scenario where our national security were at stake, I would NOT HESITATE to use whatever means were requried to accomplish the utter capitulation of the opposing nation/state. And yes... I am jealous... hehe Hawk

To: zonder who wrote (55146)	10/28/2002 11:44:04 AM
From: Sir Francis Drake	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

zonder - by what definition do you regard the nuking of two civilian cities as a war crime? Let us assume the validity of your characterization of the cities (in point of fact, in the case of at least one of the cities there was a significant armaments industry there). If you mean that it was a war crime, because civilians were explictly targeted, then yes, as in fact that was the case in for example the allied bombing of Dresden. However, in this case I would strongly disagree with this part of your statement from another post wrt. Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Every nation has skeletons in the closet. Still, we believe ourselves "beyond" all that now and should be consistent and humane in our treatment of others in this time, regardless of what we or anyone else has in the past. Yes, the U.S. dropped the bombs to save AMERICAN lives. However, they also were aware of the fact that it would save Japanese lives. The bombs were to demonstrate overwhelming superiority and convince the Japanese leadership that resistance is futile. In this they were successful. When the Japanese saw the power of these weapons, they promptly reached the correct conclusion. Case scenarios the U.S. military built at the time, for an invasion of Japan, showed huge casualties on both the U.S. side and the Japanese - INCLUDING MASSIVE JAPANESE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES based on both the Japanese tactics used at the time and intelligence reports. The alternative the U.S. had to dropping the bombs, was something in fact they started doing initially, before it was clear they'd have nuclear weapons. It was massive bombing of cities with conventional bombs, which in fact resulted in more casualties than the atomic bombs - exhibit one: the firebombing of Tokyo by American forces where over 130,000 civilians died. The continuation of such bombing raids would have resulted in SEVERAL TIMES THE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES that in fact came from the atomic weapons. For detailed statistics cited by authoritative studies of civilian casualties in WWII in general (not just Japan) see: holocaust-history.org It is CRYSTAL CLEAR that the number of civilians that died in the atomic attacks on Japan, however regrettable, were a tiny fraction of all Japanese civilian deaths in that war. There is absolutely NO doubt that the atomic bombs saved a HUGE number of civilian Japanese lives and property (as well as of course American lives). Therefore, the U.S. has NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF - and so, I strongly disagree with your characterization of the atomic bombs as "skeletons in the closet" - they did the right thing, and have nothing to hide. And I think you are wildly wrong when you say "Still, we believe ourselves "beyond" all that now and should be consistent and humane in our treatment of others in this time, regardless of what we or anyone else has in the past." For this implies that the U.S. did something wrong "in the past" by dropping the bombs - they did no such thing! And it is LAUGHABLE to say: we should be "beyond' all that now and should be humane [...] in this time". Wrong, wrong, wrong. Because dropping the bombs WAS THE HUMANE THING TO DO!!! never mind whether you can find a technical legality to call it a war crime (debatable point). If your idea is that it would have been "humane" to see SEVEN MILLION JAPANESE CIVILIANS DIE as a result of a conventional victory in Japan, and a "war crime" that is INHUMANE when sadly a few hundred thousand die (regrettably) in the atomic attacks, then I think your position will have no support anywhere. 7 million or a few hundred thousand - NO CONTEST. I doubt the Japanese would have preferred that either. I think you are simply wrong on this score. Now, you may be someone who says - I'd rather die in a fireball of a conventional bomb than in the fireball of an atomic bomb, but the end result is exactly the same, death - just fewer victims with the nuclear bombs as the case was. Let me say: IT WAS HUMANE TO DROP THE ATOMIC BOMBS ON JAPAN. The alternative was infinitely worse for JAPANESE CIVILIANS as well as American military. Because the war had to be prosecuted until its end - Japan was the aggressor, and as such, by rules of war, the U.S. had to pursue the enemy to home territory, since the enemy refused to surrender. Prosecuting the war on the Japanese mainland by conventional means would have resulted in many, many, many times the Japanese civilian casualites than what happened with the a-bombs, therefore, it was absolutely humane to drop the bombs. A separate issue is the political problem of precedent - I'd rather that atomic weapons had never been used, because once used, you can always point and say: "see, the U.S. used it, why can't we?". Unfortunately, in this case there was little choice - would 6.5 million additional Japanese civilian deaths be worth avoiding that precedent? Sometimes, there are no "good" choices, just "bad" and "worse". But on the atomic bombs issue, you are dead wrong, as in "6.5 million civilian dead wrong", pardon the expression.