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The one major point about there having need to be two separate bombs is still being contested today. Both bombs were dropped in just under three days. Which would ask the question - what would you do in that situation? Try to think about it logically and subjectively, not in pro bombing way. The other discussions that are still raging are the reasons for the Japanese to surrender in the first place - some say the bombs, some say Russia invading Manchuria.

I asked an Ork Warboss this same question and all he said was "Needs more DAKKA!!"

That I wouldn't doubt for orks!

Emperors Faithful wrote:You just said that Japan's willingness to surrender is historical fiction, and now you backpeddle and claim that they made multiple peace settlements?

My position is that they weren't going to surrender on terms that would be accepted. Surrender might not actually be the right term (should have worded this more carefully). They didn't want to surrender. They wanted to negotiate a peace which had always been Japan's plan in WWII; that they would lose some conquered territory ending the war with the US but that they would come out of it ahead. They made offers but the Allies were fixed on unconditional surrender and after by the time of Potsdam, they'd given up on achieving anything and the military was gearing up for the big defense.

That Japan would surrender at any point was very unlikely until after the bombs were dropped (to clarify; the bombs ended up getting Hirohito to put his name behind the pro-surrender faction of the government, and eventually managed to get the military to fall in line so it could happen) or some invasion of central islands occurred. Peace could have probably been negotiated at some point, but the demand for unconditional surrender just didn't allow it to happen and produced a lot of resistance in the Japanese military.

Exactly. Why do you think the Allies were after an unconditional surrender?

If you're trying to suggest racism, then no. Germany was also forced to surrender unconditionally. The reason the stance was taken was because of fear that ending WWII without the ability to absolutely disarm the opponent and remove hositle governments would simply lead to another world war down the road. (To be honest I'm iffy on the why exactly. I haven't studied the stance of unconditional surrender much as it pretains to WWII. I know the US pushed it really hard while Britain and Russia where less inclined).

And, if the roles were swapped and the US was on the defensive, how willing do you think the government and people ofthe USA would have been to offer an unconditional surrender?

That's exactly why one can make a strong argument that the stance on unconditional surrender taken by the allies was a bad one but that's a larger issue than the dropping of the atomic bombs (in a manner of speaking).

The safety of the royal family from any repercussions was the only condition on the final agreement that I was aware of.

I don't know if I'd qualify that as preventing the surrender from being unconditional. Original plans were to remove the Emperor from power, not kill him. And he was removed from power when the existed Japanese government was restructured. As a civilian, his safety would have been assured anyway once hostilities ended. EDIT: Other than this nothing was promised in the surrender and the surrender went the way all unconditional surrenders go (then again they're only been like... a few of them...).

The other discussions that are still raging are the reasons for the Japanese to surrender in the first place - some say the bombs, some say Russia invading Manchuria.

I'd say a combination of the bombs and the invasion.

Andrew1975 wrote:
Sure, we should have told them where we were and when we were going to drop them too!

Stawman. He didn't suggest that.

No he just suggested showing your hand to the enemy, always a bad idea. It wouldn't have mattered anyway since they didn't surrender after the first bomb got dropped!

I mean we had an endless supply of them at that point right? Really?

A further 15 bombs were expected to be ready in time for any invasion plans.

Righteousness! What are you on? Are you really saying the Japanese fought with honor?

Seeing as honor actually is a term subjective to cultural norms. Yes, I suppose they did if they met their standards for it. The Japanese were obsessed with personal and family honor. It's one of the prime reasons why they refused unconditional surrender.

The problem with simply saying they didn't surrender after the first bomb is that only a few days passed for a second was dropped. The first bomb sparked up quite the discussion in the Japanese government and it is debatable that the first bomb may have been enough to get Japan to surrender.

EDIT: Now the problem with recording an atomic explosion and telling Japan we will use this, is that it is tantamount to bluffing. Japan could have taken the stance 'You won't really use it' and we'd have to use it anyway.

I personally don't hold that view. I think our willingness to use such a destructive weapon achieved the aim more effectively than the weapon itself and the Japanese certainly thought we were more than willing to keep using it (It was a giant road side poster that scream "We can turn you to ashes without even setting foot on your island and we will do it too").

One of the often overlooked points is that not long before the atomic bombings, the hardliners in the military were looking at 'replacing' the Emperor and royal family.

The Emperor was key to the whole thing.

We wanted to strip the military from both Germany and England, but unlike the surrender for WWI we promised to help aid them. This is why the United States has large bases in both Germany and Japan right now. Without a military they couldn't invade and with us guaranteeing protection they had no need for a military defensively.

Japan's surrender was different than Germany's for different reasons. Japan was behind Pearl Harbor and Germany did relatively nothing to the American territories.

In fact at the signing of the surrender the American accepting the surrender didn't shake the hand offered by the Japanese delegate. Not because he hated the Japanese, well actually he did because he was a part of the Bataan Death March. There was a lot of animosity against the Japanese because of the way they treated prisoners and civilians.

Seeing as honor actually is a term subjective to cultural norms. Yes, I suppose they did if they met their standards for it. The Japanese were obsessed with personal and family honor. It's one of the prime reasons why they refused unconditional surrender.

Yes but as the victors we get to dictate what honor was! If Japan had one they would have considered us dishonorable! Since we won, we got to say torturing and massacring civilians and prisoners is dishonorable!

ArbeitsSchu wrote:@ Various people including Sebster: And when the American military leadership of 1945 developed its time machine and flew to the future of NOW and googled Japan's war effort then they would have known that Japan didn't actually receive anything particularly useful from Germany, that most German research was advanced but not immediately useful, and a host of other exciting things......

No. They had a very good idea of the German nuclear project (demonstrated by their ability to undertake black ops against it), and a very good idea of how developed a nuke scheme needed to be to actually produce a nuke (Manhattan was an immense undertaking).

What you're claiming is plainly against the facts of what they knew at the time.

I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy.

In attempting to compare a terrorist strike, and the casualties it caused, to deaths suffered by a nation under war, you show yourself as being entirely clueless over the scale of war. You need to be less sure of your own arguments, less willing to use your imagination, and a lot more willing to actually read.

And if nothing else, if Japan was not a threat as much as people in this thread seem to believe was the case, then why didn't the whole Pacific Fleet just pack up and sale home? Why carry on prosecuting a war against a nation that is "no threat"?

Because there's a difference between rendering a nation incapable of retailiating effectively as long as you keep bombing them and submarining their supply vessels, and a nation which is completely incapable of ever gathering itself and regaining the capability to fight.

Which is, you know, a very obvious thing that you should feel quite embarassed for having missed.

Addendum: For those who seem to think that I'm stating opinion and not fact, here's a google for you. 30AU and T-Force. Then go and read up about what the Germans did or did not have, and the rest of it.

They didn't have nuclear program anywhere near capable of producing a bomb, and this was well understood by Allied high command. So everything else is piffle, really.

On a slightly different angle: There seems to be some confusion about the difference between the act of bombing being "right" and "necessary", which are obviously two distinct things.

No, there isn't. Arguing such would divorce actions from their consequences, which is certain to produce an entirely incoherent system of morality.


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Emperors Faithful wrote:Sure, but there's a huge difference between striking at targets within a city, and simply targetting the city itself. The first one may view civilian casualties as a collateral, the other is hoping for civilian casualties in itself.

Have you read anything about the German operations against the UK? Or against Soviet cities?

And the operations of the allied strategic air command against Germany (where a policy of tactical bombing was replaced by wholesale strategic bombing with the intent of killing enough civilians to demoralise the German population?), that culminated in the fire-bombing of Dresden.

The general purpose bombing of cities was undertaken by both sides, and often with little chance of meaningful strategic gain. It's very strange that people pick on the one bombing campaign that targetted civilians that actually achieved something, and ignore efforts like Dresden.

I hardly think the situation in China was what prompted the US to drop the bomb. That wasn't the motivation behind it.

True, but it wasn't absolutely the effect of dropping it. So you can either judge the dropping of the bomb by what the US knew (they thought they'd suffer a hundred thousand or more in casualties, and while likely wrong it certainly would justify dropping the bomb), or you can judge it by the actual effect (it ended the war quickly and saved millions of Chinese, Japanese and Russian lives).

Either way the bomb was justified.

After pouring in an huge amount of resources into the nuclear program do you think the US government was going to let them sit by unused?

That's absurd. "Okay, dropping this bomb would kill hundreds of thousands of people, but building it cost loads of money and we've all worked so hard on it, won't you please let us drop it on somebody?"


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Ketara wrote:Actually, might not have been as stupid as you think. The American government considered it enough of a threat to morale to hush the whole thing up. Something about the whole 'being attacked on american soil' thing. They didn't think it would sit well with the masses. And they were probably right. It was never going to do substantial damage, by then again, neither were the V1&2's. That wasn't really their purpose.

True, although given the handful of deaths and ease with which the Americans covered it up I'm still willing to call it a failed, and poorly considered operation.

Meanwhile, let's just take a second to consider this is the means that ArbeitSchu implied the Japanese might deliver a nuclear weapon to the US. He seriously did that.


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Emperors Faithful wrote:Mutilation of Japanese prisoners and corpes is well documented.

You're confusing the existance of a thing, with the idea that it was widespread.

While both sides committed atrocities, the US did so very rarely, while the Japanese did so regularly. This is a matter of plain, accepted historical fact and you cannot pretend otherwise.

In terms of discipline and adherence to the standards of was the US in WWII performed admirably, despite individual instances from soldiers.

Whereas the Japanese acted in an abhorrent manner, and there are many books dedicated to exactly why this happened (unlike the Nazis their was no ideological prompting for their atrocities, it looks to be more the product of brutalisation during training, coupled with poor supplies and even poorer governmental oversight).


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Emperors Faithful wrote:But seriously, is it really that hard to admit that targetting civilians in a war is bad?

It's almost certainly bad, because it gets a load of people killed and doesn't achieve anything.

The one time it actually achieved something, and certainly saved more lives than it cost, was the dropping of the atomic bombs. Yet we always hear people complaining about the atom bomb and never about the bombing of Dresden, or Hanoi.

It's very weird.


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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:So China and Hong King were being invaded, despite large chunks being occupied by Britain and other European powers for a number of years. Ditto India, Singapore and Malaysia.

And what about American colonies in the pacific: Midway, Wake Island, Phillipines etc were they not aleady occupied?

Oh for feth's sake, go and ask the people of the Phillipines whether they preferred US or Japanese occupation.

Let's not forget the evils of Japanese occupation, but the west was in no position to take the moral high ground about Japanese imperialism. Hence, the conflcit boiled down to a racial struggle.

Colonialism is not a good thing. But pretending the colonies of the US and UK were the same as Japanese occupation is utterly ridiculous.

The lives of people, and the things inflicted on them by the conquering nations actually matter.

Germany was nuked, Japan was not, despite the Germans being far more of a threat.

The allies agreed to let the Soviets take Berlin, so you might want to read up on the pointless brutal manner in which the Soviets did so. Honestly, having an atomic bomb dropped on the city might have got less people killed.

You might also want to read up on Dresden, and realise the Allies were willing to do very awful things to the soviets.

At which point, your idea that racism played a part in dropping the bomb on Japan becomes rather obviously foolish.


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Jubear wrote:Arguing over if it was a good/humane idea to drop the A bomb is pointless, War is exactly that war and the objective is to win and the allies did win...so we get to decide if it was right or not and guess what we decided it was the right thing to do.

No, you have to measure the cost against the benefit. Emperor's Faithful gets it wrong by ignoring the benefit. You get it wrong by ignoring the cost.

The Imperial army got extremely close to being in postion to invade oz if they had I doubt they would have been the most merciful conquerors and I am 100% sure I would not be here today....So yeah let em burn

The Japanese couldn't properly support operations in Indonesia, how do you propose they would have supported an invasion of Australia. And what part of Japanese manifest destiny would have prompted them towards such an incredibly challenging undertaking, anyway?

sebster wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:@ Various people including Sebster: And when the American military leadership of 1945 developed its time machine and flew to the future of NOW and googled Japan's war effort then they would have known that Japan didn't actually receive anything particularly useful from Germany, that most German research was advanced but not immediately useful, and a host of other exciting things......

No. They had a very good idea of the German nuclear project (demonstrated by their ability to undertake black ops against it), and a very good idea of how developed a nuke scheme needed to be to actually produce a nuke (Manhattan was an immense undertaking).

What you're claiming is plainly against the facts of what they knew at the time.

I seem to recall a big hole in the middle of Manhattan made by a group with no air force and no navy.

In attempting to compare a terrorist strike, and the casualties it caused, to deaths suffered by a nation under war, you show yourself as being entirely clueless over the scale of war. You need to be less sure of your own arguments, less willing to use your imagination, and a lot more willing to actually read.

And if nothing else, if Japan was not a threat as much as people in this thread seem to believe was the case, then why didn't the whole Pacific Fleet just pack up and sale home? Why carry on prosecuting a war against a nation that is "no threat"?

Because there's a difference between rendering a nation incapable of retailiating effectively as long as you keep bombing them and submarining their supply vessels, and a nation which is completely incapable of ever gathering itself and regaining the capability to fight.

Which is, you know, a very obvious thing that you should feel quite embarassed for having missed.

Addendum: For those who seem to think that I'm stating opinion and not fact, here's a google for you. 30AU and T-Force. Then go and read up about what the Germans did or did not have, and the rest of it.

They didn't have nuclear program anywhere near capable of producing a bomb, and this was well understood by Allied high command. So everything else is piffle, really.

On a slightly different angle: There seems to be some confusion about the difference between the act of bombing being "right" and "necessary", which are obviously two distinct things.

No, there isn't. Arguing such would divorce actions from their consequences, which is certain to produce an entirely incoherent system of morality.

Lets see, where to start? Nuclear program? Because the ONLY THING that the Germans ever researched that could possibly be a threat to anyone was nukes, of course. None of the other thousands of tons of research or material recovered was of any use at all to anyone, and nobody gave a damn about it because it was zero threat. Which is why the allies risked starting a shooting war with the Russians just to get to Kiel and see what was there. Which is why allied units risked clandestine forays into Soviet territory to locate materials and people for extraction. For things that simply were not important enough because they weren't a nuke. K. Gotcha. Only nukes are a threat. No other military resource is threatening..just "piffle". Sound reasoning. Couple of thousand years of armed conflict might disagree with you, but because you used such a disparaging term AND flamed me as well, you must be right.

You want to pick any of the hundreds of examples of how an aggressor with no organised Navy or Air Force can war-fight against Uncle Sam (or anyone else) be my guest. I just picked an obvious one. (Because even if you think its "terror", I assure you that your enemies do consider it to be "war". ) You'll have to find them for me though, because I can't read proper well, and got most of my information off the back of a cereal packet and watching Saving Private Ryan a lot. (Where you can learn nearly as much about Histuree as you can by reading Stephen Ambrose.)

Ah, "No Threat". Because its worth the time and effort to render them "completely incapable of ever gathering itself and regaining the capability to fight." And why do we do that? Because they are a threat. A reduced one, trapped on the Home Islands, but one with great potential. And that is what this is about. Ending the THREAT.

The moral discussion about whether setting off nukes is right discussing a different decision-making process than whether dropping them on Japan is necessary. Which was my point. Is it morally correct to atom bomb cities? Is it militarily neccessary? So really there should be two threads..one discussing the moral and humanist implications of Atom Bomb usage, and the other discussing the strategic and military applications of them. Or at least two answers to the question. Two separate and different answers. (IMO No and Yes, respectively.)




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LordofHats wrote:[The reason the stance was taken was because of fear that ending WWII without the ability to absolutely disarm the opponent and remove hositle governments would simply lead to another world war down the road. (To be honest I'm iffy on the why exactly. I haven't studied the stance of unconditional surrender much as it pretains to WWII. I know the US pushed it really hard while Britain and Russia where less inclined).

That's a relatively easy one. Unconditional surrender forced the Axis hand. Couple that to a leadership that thinks retreat and surrender are capital crimes (in both states as it happens) and you are forced to engage in a bloody and costly battle to utterly crush all resistance. I know that certainly the British were not fond of the idea of having to grind through what was left of their manpower, simply because the UK simply did not have the reserves of men to do that sort of thing, and never really did...not without lasting cost. The butchers bill paid to conquer Germany totally included the loss of the empire..not something the British wished to lose.

In Europe, the Russian stance of surrender may well have been mutable, seeing as how vastly their position changed from "losing badly" to "spamming tanks." Its very easy to demand unconditional surrender when you are knocking on the gates of Berlin, much harder to make such a demand when the enemy are watching the Kremlin with binoculars...even Carl Zeiss ones. (See further! Bring your enemies Closer! in HD!)

In Asia, the same situation exists for the British..a potentially unending meat-grinder using Slims' Forgotten Army, which wasn't all that big to start with, or Dominion forces that tended to get upset when you killed all their men, which inevitably ends with a hugely weakened Far East army of neither use nor ornament, and a collapsing empire. As far as I can see, Russia mostly declared war on Japan in a cynical attempt to get in on the inevitable reparations, as opposed to any real desire to defeat them. Of course there was a much lower chance that Japan would surrender, unconditionally or otherwise, but in the short term the possibility of not having to fight is preferable to prolonged fighting.

This flower picking hippy withdraws from the argument after a thorough beating of logic from LoH and sebster.

Though I will say to LoH that civilians were put on trial, and sentenced, during the Tokyo trials. The Emperor's future if no bargain had been secured would have been very shaky.

No, there isn't. Arguing such would divorce actions from their consequences, which is certain to produce an entirely incoherent system of morality.

Incorrect. Morality does not necessarily ( ) have any bearing on necessity.

It is necessary that I drink water every three days at least. Or I will die.

It is necessary that I breathe oxygen. Or I will die.

It is necessary that a soldier must be able to shoot people on demand. Or he will lose his job.

It is necessary that an office worker must perform his job competently and adequately, if he hopes to be promoted.

If there is an objective you have (to survive, to retain your job, to be promoted, etc), it is possible to delineate things as being necessary to the achievement of that goal without involving morality. Whether the goal or the actions themselves are moral is irrelevant. If you must meet a criteria in order to meet an objective, it can be described as necessary, with no inclusion of moralistic judgements.


The goal was the surrender of Japan. Was the nuclear bomb necessary to that? i.e., was it the only way that objective could be achieved? Were there no alternative methods which might be used to achieve it? The answer is; yes, there were other possibilities. Therefore on a technical side, it was not necessary.

We then move on to the moralistic end to which you seem to have intermixed with the technical end, i.e. was this the most preferable method if the goal is to achieve the surrender of Japan in a way that is most compatible with your personal morals.

If it turns out dropping the bomb would have ultimately killed 200 more people than a blockade could, and the objective is the surrender of Japan with the minimum of deaths(from your perspective), than the bombs could be described as unnecessary.

However, calculating such things in a precise way is impossible. All you can do attempt to judge the probability of the results of the other possibilities, and predict whether or not they would have lead to an outcome more in line with your personal values. And then label it as 'necessary' or 'unnecessary' based on your decisions from that.

But the necessity of things changes in regard to the personal objective. If, as the US president, your objective is the surrender of Japan with the minimum of American lives lost, it could well be that it was necessary, weighing up the possibilities of the time. As can be seen, necessity that is decided with the inclusion of personal morality is highly subjective.


Whereas simply stating that nuclear bomb was technically unnecessary, because there were other possibilities to force the surrender of Japan (including killing every man, woman and child-not a palatable alternative-but one of them) is correct, if divorced from morality.

This does not divorce actions from consequences, it is a simple statement of fact. Where several alternatives exist to the achieving of an objective, no one of those alternatives can be described as necessary.

Kilkrazy wrote:I am still waiting for anyone who is against the bomb to present some better alternatives.

Go back in time with the Nimitz and intercept the Japanese bombers approaching Pearl Harbor? It would be an awesome movie. To really top it off you'd have to have Kirk Douglas in it and top of the line jets literally running rings around Japanese zeroes.

Alternatively go even further back in time with the Admiral Kuznetzov and intercept the Japanese fleet near Port Arthur in 1905?

Well It was based off of LoTR, or the other way around, and LoTR books/Movies are great so...
(The Shire (U.S.A) drop the ring (A-Bomb) in Mount Doom (Hiroshima) to end the war of Middle Earth (the Americans and Japanese).

There is some serious victim blaming going on in this thread.

rubiksnoob wrote:There is some serious victim blaming going on in this thread.

Say it like you mean it. BLAME THE VICTIM!!!

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:I am still waiting for anyone who is against the bomb to present some better alternatives.

Go back in time with the Nimitz and intercept the Japanese bombers approaching Pearl Harbor? It would be an awesome movie. To really top it off you'd have to have Kirk Douglas in it and top of the line jets literally running rings around Japanese zeroes.

Alternatively go even further back in time with the Admiral Kuznetzov and intercept the Japanese fleet near Port Arthur in 1905?

There is a science fiction book in which a task force from 2020 gets accidentally sent back in time to the Battle of Midway. It sounded completely stupid so I didn't bother to read it.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:I am still waiting for anyone who is against the bomb to present some better alternatives.

Go back in time with the Nimitz and intercept the Japanese bombers approaching Pearl Harbor? It would be an awesome movie. To really top it off you'd have to have Kirk Douglas in it and top of the line jets literally running rings around Japanese zeroes.

Alternatively go even further back in time with the Admiral Kuznetzov and intercept the Japanese fleet near Port Arthur in 1905?

There is a science fiction book in which a task force from 2020 gets accidentally sent back in time to the Battle of Midway. It sounded completely stupid so I didn't bother to read it.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:I am still waiting for anyone who is against the bomb to present some better alternatives.

Go back in time with the Nimitz and intercept the Japanese bombers approaching Pearl Harbor? It would be an awesome movie. To really top it off you'd have to have Kirk Douglas in it and top of the line jets literally running rings around Japanese zeroes.

Alternatively go even further back in time with the Admiral Kuznetzov and intercept the Japanese fleet near Port Arthur in 1905?

There is a science fiction book in which a task force from 2020 gets accidentally sent back in time to the Battle of Midway. It sounded completely stupid so I didn't bother to read it.

It was somewhat enjoyable, certainly more so then a clancy novel

rubiksnoob wrote:There is some serious victim blaming going on in this thread.

And who would these victims be?




Us vs Japan, sorry you are not the victim!

Andrew1975 wrote:

rubiksnoob wrote:There is some serious victim blaming going on in this thread.

And who would these victims be?




Us vs Japan, sorry you are not the victim!

Reminded me of this:

I'll just leave this here...

http://smh.drive.com.au/motor-news/revealed-new-yorks-new-yellow-cab-20110504-1e79l.html

In the states most Nissans are made in Smyrna Tennessee. The South shall rise again!

I hate to attempt to bring this thread back on topic.

Sometimes the most simple and logical answer is the correct one. The 2 atomic bombings killed about a 1/4 million civilians. Operation downfall was projected to kill a lot more than 1/4 million civilians. If more civilians would have died from operation downfall then the 2 atomic bombings actually saved more lives of Japanese civilians than they took.

The second video!!! Absolutely hilarious but unfortunatley becoming true these days! The first video I take was real? If so, the little sh** deserved everything and more for being a bully!

ArbeitsSchu wrote:Lets see, where to start? Nuclear program? Because the ONLY THING that the Germans ever researched that could possibly be a threat to anyone was nukes, of course.

Umm, no, they had nothing that was of any threat. The list of things that didn't threaten us included the nukes they didn't have.

None of the other thousands of tons of research or material recovered was of any use at all to anyone, and nobody gave a damn about it because it was zero threat.

Of course it was useful. The point is that having useful tech doesn't mean you're a military threat.

This is a very obvious thing.

You want to pick any of the hundreds of examples of how an aggressor with no organised Navy or Air Force can war-fight against Uncle Sam (or anyone else) be my guest. I just picked an obvious one.

Your fail was in assuming a terror strike, even one as devestating 9/11, materially impacts the ability of a nation to wage war. The destruction inflicted upon each of the allies during the war was immensely greater than 9/11, or even a dozen 9/11s, yet their military power continued to grow. Because a terror strike is a human tragedy, it is not actually a threat to continued existance of the state.

Ah, "No Threat". Because its worth the time and effort to render them "completely incapable of ever gathering itself and regaining the capability to fight." And why do we do that? Because they are a threat. A reduced one, trapped on the Home Islands, but one with great potential. And that is what this is about. Ending the THREAT.

Obviously. So the point was to force an unconditional surrender, because leaving Japan to itself and thereby risking the possibility that it might rebuild it's military capabilities would be unacceptable. But that has nothing to do with pretending they represented an immediate threat while under virtual siege.

The moral discussion about whether setting off nukes is right discussing a different decision-making process than whether dropping them on Japan is necessary. Which was my point. Is it morally correct to atom bomb cities? Is it militarily neccessary?

A thing can be an awful, horrible thing to do, and still be moral, if it achieves a sufficiently great end.

"Oh it was an awful, immoral thing, but necessary' is a nonsense, as it ignores the point that dropping the bomb achieved something so tremendous (ending the war sooner and removing the need for an invasion of Japan) that it became a moral action.


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Ketara wrote:This does not divorce actions from consequences, it is a simple statement of fact. Where several alternatives exist to the achieving of an objective, no one of those alternatives can be described as necessary.

Hmmm, I think we were talking at cross purposes. I might have misread the original comment.

I had thought the point was being made that the bomb might have been immoral, but was necessary. Which would be divorcing the action from it's consequences (as it would be judging the act of blowing up a city in isolation of what that might achieve and thereby declaring it immoral, then considering what it achieved and deeming it 'necessary').

If that wasn't happening, then I withdraw my comment, and apologise.

sebster wrote:

ArbeitsSchu wrote:Lets see, where to start? Nuclear program? Because the ONLY THING that the Germans ever researched that could possibly be a threat to anyone was nukes, of course.

Umm, no, they had nothing that was of any threat. The list of things that didn't threaten us included the nukes they didn't have.

None of the other thousands of tons of research or material recovered was of any use at all to anyone, and nobody gave a damn about it because it was zero threat.

Of course it was useful. The point is that having useful tech doesn't mean you're a military threat.

This is a very obvious thing.

You want to pick any of the hundreds of examples of how an aggressor with no organised Navy or Air Force can war-fight against Uncle Sam (or anyone else) be my guest. I just picked an obvious one.

Your fail was in assuming a terror strike, even one as devestating 9/11, materially impacts the ability of a nation to wage war. The destruction inflicted upon each of the allies during the war was immensely greater than 9/11, or even a dozen 9/11s, yet their military power continued to grow. Because a terror strike is a human tragedy, it is not actually a threat to continued existance of the state.

Ah, "No Threat". Because its worth the time and effort to render them "completely incapable of ever gathering itself and regaining the capability to fight." And why do we do that? Because they are a threat. A reduced one, trapped on the Home Islands, but one with great potential. And that is what this is about. Ending the THREAT.

Obviously. So the point was to force an unconditional surrender, because leaving Japan to itself and thereby risking the possibility that it might rebuild it's military capabilities would be unacceptable. But that has nothing to do with pretending they represented an immediate threat while under virtual siege.

The moral discussion about whether setting off nukes is right discussing a different decision-making process than whether dropping them on Japan is necessary. Which was my point. Is it morally correct to atom bomb cities? Is it militarily neccessary?

A thing can be an awful, horrible thing to do, and still be moral, if it achieves a sufficiently great end.

"Oh it was an awful, immoral thing, but necessary' is a nonsense, as it ignores the point that dropping the bomb achieved something so tremendous (ending the war sooner and removing the need for an invasion of Japan) that it became a moral action..

Ah, so nobody in the US military cares about German technology in 1944. Its not a threat, which is why they just let the Russians have it, and made no attempt at all to snatch it out from under the nose of the Soviets. Likewise, nobody cares about the threat posed by chemical weapons either. K. Gotcha.

What is it you can't grasp here? Strikes have been made against the US by forces lacking a conventional military. This is fact. I would rather hope that the Japanese High Command, on planning their strikes, would have considered exactly what and where they wished to target for the maximum effect for their plans...the point still remains that it is possible now, and it was possible then, for an aggressor to strike against the continental USA. Japan (as we have already covered several times) DID strike against the continental USA. The weapon used was ineffective but IT STILL HAPPENED. The nature of that strike, or the weapons used is neither here nor there.

And yes, OBVIOUSLY they are a threat, which is why I keep saying they were a threat. YOUR FAIL is to assume that I was only speaking in the short term. A threat is a threat. Long term or short term, that is why the allies had to take some form of action against Japan. Because it was a THREAT. You're actually agreeing with me and trying to make an argument out of it. That's just weird. No point trying to converse with someone that obtuse.

12 pages, eh? I guess I hit a topic someone actually cares about for a change. I'd prefer if you guys stayed on topic, but then again, you probably won't.

ArbeitsSchu wrote:And yes, OBVIOUSLY they are a threat, which is why I keep saying they were a threat. YOUR FAIL is to assume that I was only speaking in the short term. A threat is a threat. Long term or short term, that is why the allies had to take some form of action against Japan. Because it was a THREAT.

Your logic is perverse. Just because something may pose a threat you in the future does not mean it poses a threat now. The definition of 'threat' is not so elastic as that. Otherwise every baby I pass on the street I must consider to be a threat, because it may one day grow up, and mug me in the future. The car parked outside my driveway must be a threat to me now, because it may run me over ten years down the line.

And before you deny, that is your logic here, correct? That in two/ten/however many years after the war, Japan may pose a threat to the USA? Therefore they are a threat now that must be crushed? Because future (or 'long term') threats are the same as current (or 'short term') threats?

Jeez, I'd better start punching babies and smashing cars.......