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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gordon A. Langston who wrote (446570)	8/22/2003 12:58:22 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Respond to of 769670

I see the first A bomb as a demonstration that resistance was futile. And to convince the emperor that even his skin was at risk. The choice of of locations was to demonstrate the breath of damage of the one bomb. A technical consideration only. America lived in fear of having to fight and lose hundreds of thousands more soldiers and the biological attack fear you bring out is also reasonable. But terrorism is about instilling fear because you are killing the people of a country. The leadership of Japan considered all the people the property of the emperor and their death meant nothing. All the conventional concepts of instilling fear and terrorism just don't fit the context of WW II and the Japanese culture. What arguments were really made, do we really know? Were they sanitized for political consumption? What do we know of the culture then and what are the implications of fear and terror then in how we think of if now. The bomb was not a terrorist act. It was the logical choice to convince the Japanese of the futility of continued war. It was likely to cause specific ways of thinking in the Japanese. All other alternatives did not have the same likelihood of result. Targeting the center of a city gave the cleanest demonstration of the power that would be unleashed.