J
JimG
Guest
What if the conventional weapons have a combined yield of 50 kilotons, and the nuclear weapon used in defense has a yield of 1 kt?
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C
Caesar517
Guest
Would it have been less cruel to kill them at room temperature?
Does anyone really care about a blinding light when they are being incinerated?
I find your list of horrendous effects amusing. If blinding light is horrendous and cruel, how do you feel about a non-lethal flashbang grenade?So if enemies fire at a soldiers with small arms, the soldiers can’t call in an airstrike or artillery support?
A
Al_Masetti
Guest
To what extent is “atomic bomb” an emotional code word, intended to evoke an emotional response.
In 1993, an attempt was made to bring down the World Trade Center with conventional explosives mixed with cyanide gas. Six people were killed and thousands were injured. The plan had been to damage the columns holding up the North Tower (1WTC) and cause it to crash into the South Tower (2 WTC), thereby bringing down both buildings and killing 50,000 people. The bomb went off successfully and the collapse of not the North Tower, but of the Vista Hotel ( 3 WTC) was averted only by the narrowest of margins. Had the hotel collapsed, it would have fallen into the North Tower and in all probability, the original goal of the plot would have been successful.
In 2001, the group responsible for the 1993 attack made another, more spectacular attempt which was successful … all of the WTC complex buildings were destroyed and the death toll was limited to “only” 3000 people by the grace of God: a large number of people were inexplicably late for work that day.
While there was no radioactivity, there have been additional deaths owing to (what is being assumed) people having breathed in the dust and smoke from the attack.
The crater of the WTC was / is 16 square blocks and 70 feet deep. Basically the same as an atomic bomb crater if detonated at ground level.
So, it’s not necessary to use an actual atomic bomb to create the effect of firing an atomic bomb.
In addition, the issue in the original post dealt with “atomic bombs”. But what if the atomic bomb had an explosive yield of say 100 tons … the equivalent of only five truck loads of explosives … instead of 20,000 tons … would a very small atomic bomb be as morally reprehensible as a larger yield weapon?
What exactly is it about a nuclear weapon that is so frightening? Not all of them are “city busters”.
And a lot of conventional explosive (and non-explosive) attacks have the same effect as a nuke.
Seems to me that the intended effect of the OP was to create a after-the-fact emotional response, with a selective political aim of eliminating one class of weapon but not eliminating the idea of killing innocent civilians using deliberate indiscriminate terrorist tactics.
And, to re-raise the point made by several people, objections raised a half century later are not valid to some event that took place 50 years earlier. It is not logical to demand condemnation of something using criteria of a period of time 50 years after the event.
Keeping in mind that indiscriminate (or deliberate) killing of civilians in wartime has been going on for 5000 years.
In 1993, an attempt was made to bring down the World Trade Center with conventional explosives mixed with cyanide gas. Six people were killed and thousands were injured. The plan had been to damage the columns holding up the North Tower (1WTC) and cause it to crash into the South Tower (2 WTC), thereby bringing down both buildings and killing 50,000 people. The bomb went off successfully and the collapse of not the North Tower, but of the Vista Hotel ( 3 WTC) was averted only by the narrowest of margins. Had the hotel collapsed, it would have fallen into the North Tower and in all probability, the original goal of the plot would have been successful.
In 2001, the group responsible for the 1993 attack made another, more spectacular attempt which was successful … all of the WTC complex buildings were destroyed and the death toll was limited to “only” 3000 people by the grace of God: a large number of people were inexplicably late for work that day.
While there was no radioactivity, there have been additional deaths owing to (what is being assumed) people having breathed in the dust and smoke from the attack.
The crater of the WTC was / is 16 square blocks and 70 feet deep. Basically the same as an atomic bomb crater if detonated at ground level.
So, it’s not necessary to use an actual atomic bomb to create the effect of firing an atomic bomb.
In addition, the issue in the original post dealt with “atomic bombs”. But what if the atomic bomb had an explosive yield of say 100 tons … the equivalent of only five truck loads of explosives … instead of 20,000 tons … would a very small atomic bomb be as morally reprehensible as a larger yield weapon?
What exactly is it about a nuclear weapon that is so frightening? Not all of them are “city busters”.
And a lot of conventional explosive (and non-explosive) attacks have the same effect as a nuke.
Seems to me that the intended effect of the OP was to create a after-the-fact emotional response, with a selective political aim of eliminating one class of weapon but not eliminating the idea of killing innocent civilians using deliberate indiscriminate terrorist tactics.
And, to re-raise the point made by several people, objections raised a half century later are not valid to some event that took place 50 years earlier. It is not logical to demand condemnation of something using criteria of a period of time 50 years after the event.
Keeping in mind that indiscriminate (or deliberate) killing of civilians in wartime has been going on for 5000 years.
P
pnewton
Guest
I have to agree on this. When one believes that fighting WWII was unnecessary (not the topic here, BTW), their opinions are so far out from me as to be totally alien.
B
buffalo
Guest
PBS had a special on last night called “Road to Tokyo”. It was an Australian film.
For those who question whether we should have dropped the bomb it is a must see.
For those who question whether we should have dropped the bomb it is a must see.
C
Contarini
Guest
This is a straw man. I don’t think any of us who condemn the use of atomic bombs are justifying the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo, and I know that none of us are condoning 9/11. Dropping atomic bombs on a civilian population center is one of the things that one must never do in warfare. It’s not the only one.
That’s blatant moral relativism. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the words of your Pope. Furthermore, attitudes have not changed that much in 50 years–inasmuch as they have, a lot of it because we have recovered to some extent from a period of great moral barbarism in the middle of the 20th century. Perhaps some genuine moral progress has been made, but I don’t usually put a lot of weight on the whole concept of moral progress. It’s chancy at best. The only hope for real moral progress is to hold fast to unchanging moral standards, such as the ones you are questioning here.
And it’s been murder for 5000 years.
Edwin
A
Al_Masetti
Guest
I think that folks nowadays have a mistaken picture of war.
War differs from police activity.
War differs from a battle.
Most of history deals with wars that include seige warfare.
Read about wars in history. They basically don’t take prisoners. The Geneva Convention was aimed at taking away some small amount of of the barbarism toward civilians.
I posted this earlier; situations where God … OUR God directed total warfare to groups, nations, tribes, that He picked out. For His own reasons:
Read the Old Testament. Where God personally directed the Prophets to give very specific directions to the leaders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. God ordered the total destruction of their enemies.
Read “The Prophets” by Norman Podhoretz … chapter two: “Wielding the Sword”.
amazon.com/Prophets-Who-T…/dp/0743219279
Joshua at Jericho and at Ai. And God hurling hailstones down upon the Amorites. Conquest after conquest.
Moses smote the two kingdoms ruled by Sihon and Og.
Gideon against the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east. Gideon was given the “nickname” of Jerubaal … “contender against Baal”. [Baal was a false god,]
In Judges, there is Jephthah against the children of Ammon.
And then there is God speaking through Samuel to Saul: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ***.”… But Saul defeats the Amalekies and disobeys God … allowing their king, Agag, to survive and allows the troops to take as spoil the best of the Amalekites sheep, oxen, fatlings and lambs … and would not utterly destroy them.
God then reminds Samuel, He has in the past vowed to wipe out the Amelikes because of the cruelty they showed toward the Israelites fleeing from slavery in the desert.
The failure to carry out God’s battle command caused Israel to be punished.
“And the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses … said … the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
Podhoretz’ book is filled with examples of fights to the death between nations.
We need to be careful of taking situations out of context.
War is unique in that it is utterly destructive. War is not a contest. It is a fight to the finish.
War is deadly to nations. When one ruler of a nation starts a war they had better be prepared to win or suffer the consequences of utter defeat. And some of these wars take years, decades and generations to finish.
Someday the lion will lie down with the lamb.
But not yet.
War differs from police activity.
War differs from a battle.
Most of history deals with wars that include seige warfare.
Read about wars in history. They basically don’t take prisoners. The Geneva Convention was aimed at taking away some small amount of of the barbarism toward civilians.
I posted this earlier; situations where God … OUR God directed total warfare to groups, nations, tribes, that He picked out. For His own reasons:
Read the Old Testament. Where God personally directed the Prophets to give very specific directions to the leaders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. God ordered the total destruction of their enemies.
Read “The Prophets” by Norman Podhoretz … chapter two: “Wielding the Sword”.
amazon.com/Prophets-Who-T…/dp/0743219279
Joshua at Jericho and at Ai. And God hurling hailstones down upon the Amorites. Conquest after conquest.
Moses smote the two kingdoms ruled by Sihon and Og.
Gideon against the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east. Gideon was given the “nickname” of Jerubaal … “contender against Baal”. [Baal was a false god,]
In Judges, there is Jephthah against the children of Ammon.
And then there is God speaking through Samuel to Saul: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ***.”… But Saul defeats the Amalekies and disobeys God … allowing their king, Agag, to survive and allows the troops to take as spoil the best of the Amalekites sheep, oxen, fatlings and lambs … and would not utterly destroy them.
God then reminds Samuel, He has in the past vowed to wipe out the Amelikes because of the cruelty they showed toward the Israelites fleeing from slavery in the desert.
The failure to carry out God’s battle command caused Israel to be punished.
“And the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses … said … the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
Podhoretz’ book is filled with examples of fights to the death between nations.
We need to be careful of taking situations out of context.
War is unique in that it is utterly destructive. War is not a contest. It is a fight to the finish.
War is deadly to nations. When one ruler of a nation starts a war they had better be prepared to win or suffer the consequences of utter defeat. And some of these wars take years, decades and generations to finish.
Someday the lion will lie down with the lamb.
But not yet.
C
Contarini
Guest
Al,
What you are saying goes completely against the Christian just war tradition. You are advocating total war, which has indeed existed throughout history but has always been condemned by Christians as sinful (perhaps with the exception of the Crusades, though I’m not sure these were really exceptions).
I am quite confident that your position is utterly at variance with the teaching of your Church, which has laid down very narrow requirements that must be met for a war to be just.
If the choice is between total war and pacifism, then we will have to be pacifists, as Christians were for 300 years.
The Old Testament is not relevant for a discussion of this issue.
Edwin
B
bobzills
Guest
According to John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations:
"A fair reading of the treaty [the Rome Statute concerning the ICC], for example, leaves the objective observer unable to answer with confidence whether the United States was guilty of war crimes for its aerial bombing campaigns over Germany and Japan in World War II. Indeed, if anything, a straightforward reading of the language probably indicates that the court would find the United States guilty. A fortiori, these provisions seem to imply that the United States would have been guilty of a war crime for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
"A fair reading of the treaty [the Rome Statute concerning the ICC], for example, leaves the objective observer unable to answer with confidence whether the United States was guilty of war crimes for its aerial bombing campaigns over Germany and Japan in World War II. Indeed, if anything, a straightforward reading of the language probably indicates that the court would find the United States guilty. A fortiori, these provisions seem to imply that the United States would have been guilty of a war crime for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
W
Wolseley
Guest
If the Japanese were worried about their children, they could have easily spared their children the effects of war. All they had to do was surrender.
But, of course, just as with the current crop of suicide-lovers in the Middle East, at the time, the Japanese wanted to die.
(shrug)
I already told you, son, I know more about what these things do than you do. I know what they do. Simply reading off a laundry list of nuclear weapons effects over and over again and then wringing your hands while you say, “Oh, isn’t this awful!” doesn’t strengthen your point, which you already made, post and posts ago. We get it, okay? Give it a rest and move on to other points of the discussion.
That having been said, none of this stuff was known in 1945. Nobody knew about long-term radiation effects. Nobody knew about the destructive force of the plutonium bomb—and very little about the uranium bomb. A lot of this stuff you’re crying about simply didn’t apply in August of 1945; the perameters hadn’t been established yet.
Good thing they gave up, then, isn’t it? We had about six more in development and scheduled their way when they surrendered.
Hindsight again. Hindsight is a marvelous thing, isn’t it? It allows us to sit here in our smug, self-righteous society where we abort millions of children every day, allow homosexual perverts to “marry” and even adopt children, and block the passage of laws which would keep pornography off grade-school library computers, and pass judgement on what our ancesters did 60 years ago. We’d never do such terrible things, would we?
“I thank You, O Lord, that I am not like this tax collector.”
W
Wolseley
Guest
Yes, the horrible old United States was worse, much worse, than Japan was in World War II.
It would have been better if the American war criminals had stayed home and left the progressive and compassionate Japanese to keep using Chinese women and babies for bayonet practice and kidnapping 14-year old Korean girls to serve in army brothels.
B
bobzills
Guest
It was not hindsight when Dwight D. Eisenhower opposed the dropping of the ABomb. For example, he wrote in his memoir The White House Years:
“In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”
Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.
“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.” Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
“The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.
A
Al_Masetti
Guest
All that the Japanese had to do was to stand down their troops, their suicide planes, their anti-aircraft guns, their fighter planes, and their navy.
They could also have stopped killing 100,000 innocent Chinese, Manchurians, Indonesians, Philippinoes, Malays, Thais, Burmese, Indochinese, per month.
These killings by the Japanese had been going on since the 1930’s … and in some cases since the 1920’s.
They could have withdrawn their troops from China, Manchuria, Indochina and gradually pulled back.
They could have started feeding all the Allied prisoners of war.
We would have noticed immediately.
They did none of those things.
And “loving them” [however one might conduct a “love campaign”] probably would not have convinced the Japanese to stop killing.
Keep in mind that the Soviets and the Germans had demolished Poland.
Keep in mind that the Soviets were stirring up trouble all over the world and that Stalin was encouraging war … figuring that regardless of Soviet losses, he would be able to pick up the pieces after the war. [And he certainly did pick up a lot of of the pieces and was deterred from picking up more by Curtis E. LeMay doing his thermonuclear war deterrence thing.]
They could also have stopped killing 100,000 innocent Chinese, Manchurians, Indonesians, Philippinoes, Malays, Thais, Burmese, Indochinese, per month.
These killings by the Japanese had been going on since the 1930’s … and in some cases since the 1920’s.
They could have withdrawn their troops from China, Manchuria, Indochina and gradually pulled back.
They could have started feeding all the Allied prisoners of war.
We would have noticed immediately.
They did none of those things.
And “loving them” [however one might conduct a “love campaign”] probably would not have convinced the Japanese to stop killing.
Keep in mind that the Soviets and the Germans had demolished Poland.
Keep in mind that the Soviets were stirring up trouble all over the world and that Stalin was encouraging war … figuring that regardless of Soviet losses, he would be able to pick up the pieces after the war. [And he certainly did pick up a lot of of the pieces and was deterred from picking up more by Curtis E. LeMay doing his thermonuclear war deterrence thing.]
T
tomarin
Guest
i hesitated to wade into this discussion, as i’m not always entirely sure what is being argued or who is on what side, but I have to ask you – do you think that once war is declared the participants are under any obligation to follow rules regarding conduct during war? or is it a free-for-all? (as the romans said vae victis– “woe to the conquered”).
i think the people who are troubled by our use of the atomic bomb to end the war in the pacific feel that there is or should be a distinction made between military targets and civilian targets. and that our dropping the bomb on hiroshima constituted a violation of that moral imperative.
(though i’ve also read that, in the case of nagasaki, the intended target was a shipbuilding site, which is obviously a legitimate military target. however the bomb did not hit its intended target. it fell on a catholic cathedral in the middle of a working-class neighborhood that was the heart of japan’s tiny christian community.)
A
Al_Masetti
Guest
Admiral Leahy is an interesting character.
He seems to have said a lot of different things.
For one thing, he said the atomic bomb was incapable of going off.
For another thing, he would have been perfectly happy to let the U.S. Navy solve the problem of the Japanese surrender by starving them into submission:
[from Wiki:[
Leahy was appointed the first US Fleet Admiral on December 15, 1944. He was critical of the atomic bomb: “This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” said to president Harry S. Truman, after Vannevar Bush explained how the atomic bomb worked.[citation needed]
Once it had been tested, President Truman faced the decision as to whether to use it. He did not like the idea, but he was persuaded that it would shorten the war against Japan and save American lives. It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assitence in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons… My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion , and that wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.[3]
He seems to have said a lot of different things.
For one thing, he said the atomic bomb was incapable of going off.
For another thing, he would have been perfectly happy to let the U.S. Navy solve the problem of the Japanese surrender by starving them into submission:
[from Wiki:[
Leahy was appointed the first US Fleet Admiral on December 15, 1944. He was critical of the atomic bomb: “This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.” said to president Harry S. Truman, after Vannevar Bush explained how the atomic bomb worked.[citation needed]
Once it had been tested, President Truman faced the decision as to whether to use it. He did not like the idea, but he was persuaded that it would shorten the war against Japan and save American lives. It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assitence in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons… My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion , and that wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.[3]
W
Writer
Guest
I also enter this discussion with a little apprehension. Although it’s certainly a divisive issue, I have to side with those who used the bomb to end the war. Japan initiated it, and we ended it. The intertwining of military targets and civilian populations is a tragedy, but, given the technology of the age, we appear to have done the best we could do. (As an aside… I am not sure whether this issue was raised, but what the Catechism says about weapons of this nature can’t be applied retroactively. I’d suggest that our understanding of the true destructive nature of the bomb in a city environment may likely have caught many in the administration off guard.)
Having said that, there are some great minds out there who thoroughly disagree and say that it was an immoral act. I believe Karl Keating is one of those, and he recommended Thomas Fleming’s book “The New Dealers’ War” to me a couple years ago when this topic was raised another time.
It seems that the morality of the action may hinge a great deal on the motivations of those involved. Is it true that we looked the other way concerning possible peace overtures from Japan–because they came “too late”. I have to believe that our government acted out of a desire to save huge loss of life by our men in uniform and felt that this was the best choice. Only God knows, however, what was actually in their hearts.
C
Contarini
Guest
But that isn’t the point. Morality is not comparative. Our goal as human beings is not to be better than some other bad human beings but to be good, period.
Edwin
W
Wolseley
Guest
All of which fails to take into consideration the very unstable condition of the Japanese government at the time; there were peace factions who wanted to surrender, and war factions who wanted to fight to the death. The morning of September 2, 1945, the day the surrender was signed, there was a group of kamikaze pilots warming up who had orders to dive-bomb the Missouri and then strafe the water until everyone aboard, including Nimitz and MacArthur, were dead. The plot was foiled when a pro-peace faction showed up at the airfield and persuaded them to stand down. All in all, the Japanese surrender, even after the bombs, was a very, very fragile structure.
No. Warfare should have rules, and for the record, I oppose the use of nuclear weapons as much as the next guy. But these atomic bomb threads take the past 63 year’s worth of nuclear weaponry and project it backwards to 1945. They make it sound like the small 16- to 20-kiloton weapons dropped on Japan are the same thing as a 40-megaton hydrogen thermonuclear device that would vaporize everything within a 800-mile radius.
It was 1945, remember, and nobody knew a whole heckuva lot about these things then. And none of this policy that we now have governing the use of atomic or nuclear weapons existed then.
They don’t understand the concept of “total war”; they’ve grown up with an idea in the heads that wars are things fought overseas by soldiers, while the civilians sit at home in comparitive safety and watch them on TV.
Nagasaki was not the target. It was not supposed to be bombed. Kokura was the target, but it was not bombed for reasons which I outlined in greater detail in this post: forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=3729505&postcount=38
C
Contarini
Guest
The moral bankruptcy of your position is strongly indicated by the fact that you have to make up silly things for your opponents to say, which are completely different from the things we are actually saying.
Go argue with your straw men if you want to. But don’t kid yourself that you’re having a real conversation with other people.
No one is making a comparative argument here. No one is claiming that the Japanese in the 1940s or modern Americans are better than Americans in the 1940s. In fact, I for one am not passing judgment on the subjective guilt of the people who dropped atomic bombs. I’m making a claim about what is objectively moral. At all times. At all places. Everywhere.
And yet I’ll bet that you and Al Masetti and the other pro-Hiroshima folks somehow think that *you *are the conservatives. Or am I misrepresenting you there?
Edwin
B
bobzills
Guest
In 1946, a report by the Federal Council of Churches entitled Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith, says:
“As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one’s judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible.”
“As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one’s judgment of the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible.”
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