Is it immoral to use nuclear weapons in war?

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Hume said:
I think the only long-term solution for the survival of humanity is their complete abolition. As a matter of statistics, the longer they exist and the more of them there are both work to reduce our odds of survival as a civilization, if not as a species.
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I don’t think it is at all likely that we will detonate a nuclear device that will eliminate humanity. Civilization, maybe, but not humanity. I think deliberate elimination of the engineering knowledge required to synthesize a nuclear device is extremely unlikely: scholars don’t burn what they’ve learned. They just don’t. They want to keep that knowledge. Ironically, it is probably only the indiscriminate use of nuclear devices that will ever eliminate knowledge of how to make and deploy them. Wars–wars eliminate knowledge. Wars destroy cultural and societal memories. The desire to wish we didn’t know what we know, though? We don’t have that kind of will power.
 
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Ah, so both Halsey and Eisenhower were wrong. MacArthur too?

“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the Emperor.” That’s from “The Pathology of Power,” by Norman Cousins.

Tell me, GKM, other than Truman, the atomic spooks, you and other armchair historians, who wanted to drop the thing in 1945?
 
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PetraG said:
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Hume:
I think the only long-term solution for the survival of humanity is their complete abolition. As a matter of statistics, the longer they exist and the more of them there are both work to reduce our odds of survival as a civilization, if not as a species.
Click to expand...
I don’t think it is at all likely that we will detonate a nuclear device that will eliminate humanity. Civilization, maybe, but not humanity. I think deliberate elimination of the engineering knowledge required to synthesize a nuclear device is extremely unlikely: scholars don’t burn what they’ve learned. They just don’t. They want to keep that knowledge. Ironically, it is probably only the indiscriminate use of nuclear devices that will ever eliminate knowledge of how to make and deploy them. Wars–wars eliminate knowledge. Wars destroy cultural and societal memories. The desire to wish we didn’t know what we know, though? We don’t have that kind of will power.
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A thing like that isn’t used in a moment of rationality, else you’d give me hope.

As I understand fully that genies don’t go back in bottles, our only long-term hope is to have human life elsewhere in the universe before the next one inevitably goes off - likely starting a chain reaction of them.
 
The national command structure. The people who get to decide such things. And no one, at the time, made any demur, Eisenhower’s claim as to what happened with Stimson not withstanding…

Added: MacArthur wasn’t told of the bomb until late in July, when his main reaction was that whatever that might do, the invasion, him on white horse, absolutely needed to go ahead, anyway.

Nimitz, since the bomb (509th Composite Group) was to be stationed in his theater, was told, in February. When told it wouldn’t be available for months, he asked couldn’t we get one sooner?
 
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StudentMI said:
509. Arms of mass destruction — whether biological, chemical or nuclear — represent a particularly serious threat. Those who possess them have an enormous responsibility before God and all of humanity .[1071] The principle of the non-proliferation of nuclear arms, together with measures of nuclear disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear tests, are intimately interconnected objectives that must be met as soon as possible by means of effective controls at the international level.[1072] The ban on the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical and biological weapons as well as the provisions that require their destruction, complete the international regulatory norms aimed at banning such baleful weapons,[1073] the use of which is explicitly condemned by the Magisterium: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation”.[1074]
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Really? No one addressed this?
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Hume said:
Third, the biggest voice for invasion was MacArthur, the 6-star general who led the planning for Operation Downfall.
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Given basic facts, such as the rank of your source, are easily shown incorrect, I have little confidence in the rest of what you have brought to the argument.
 
Hume said:
A thing like that isn’t used in a moment of rationality, else you’d give me hope.

As I understand fully that genies don’t go back in bottles, our only long-term hope is to have human life elsewhere in the universe before the next one inevitably goes off - likely starting a chain reaction of them.
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My hope is in Providence. People are too crazy and venal.
Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save.
Who breathing his last, returns to the earth; that day all his planning comes to nothing.
Ps. 146:3-4
 
StudentMI said:
Really? No one addressed this?
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Well, yes, in the sense that the decision to bomb Hiroshima was made in the already-corrupt moral reasoning that had already allowed bombing of civilian areas all throughout World War II. It has also been noted that it would be difficult to use the current conception of a nuclear bomb without inflicting that kind of damage.
 
So what do you have to say about it? I mean it’s from the Church.
 
According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”. Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.

Read more: Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda | New Scientist

Heck of an article I’m looking at here from the Brits. You guys might consider giving it a read.
 
This thread, on this topic, developed a little oddly, compared to others (so many others). Normally, early on I would say something like this:

I have no interest in what the RCC moral judgement on the bombs might be. I have my own, and am not interested in comparing that to any RCs personal judgement, either. I have an opinion on the RCC position, and am not interested in discussing that, either.

I deal in history. If the topic arises, and takes the form of what the RCC teaches on the matter (say, in Gaudium es spes), I might read, but not post. it’s only when dubious and incorrect history is adduced that I post. All RCs should affirm all RCC teachings, at the appropriate level of theological certainty. if there is not an attempt at “And anyway” comments, re:: WWII and Japan, I don’t participate, get more reading done, and am quite happy.
 
So, the two bombs achieved the goal of ending the war, in a matter of days.
Maybe General MacArthur would have greatly preferred leading a bloody invasion, but he was denied that opportunity. Did other generals have an alternative plan for ending the war? Japan was surely defeated but the war was not ended. Not until the two bombs.
 
Hume said:
I think the only long-term solution for the survival of humanity is their complete abolition.
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I too would love to see their abolition. I have yet to see how that is to be accomplished. I have no patience whatsoever with a pollyanaesque approach that “if we would just…”

I have no desire to go to war again, but when it came down to trying to get a conscientious objector status, I did not go that route, but enlisted. And if I were back there again knowing what I know now, I would do the same. I do not see evil everywhere; but neither am I unaware of it. The two rogue states of North Korea and Iran are particularly concerning, as well as the constant friction between Pakistan and India.

I would suspect it possible - not likely, but possible - that China, Russia and the US, France and Britain could reach a decision to significant;y reduce weapons. Whether they could be completely eliminated, I doubt. Genies do not willingly go back into the bottle.
 
Oh sure I’ll not argue for one second that the bombs didn’t immediately end the war. I’m just arguing that they were immoral and unnecessary. It’s fairly clear that Japan was seeking the way to surrender or at least that’s clear to MacArthur and Eisenhower and thus Truman, but Truman just wanted to drop those bombs.

That we had to do it is just raw jingoism.
 
I find it interesting that a battleship was made from some remains of the buildings of 911. That’s the way usa does things
You mess with us boy we will mess you up too
Nuke or not you’ll pay for it.
Whether that’s moral or not it’s a protective measure.
God Bless America
 
No. Truman was not told that by Eisenhower or MacArthur. Leahy is a possible candidate, but nothing documents it. He was the only one that had a moral objection to it, as he stated, and first stated in his autobio I WAS THERE.

I find Leahy fascinating. A very recent bio of the man, THE SECOND MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD/O’Brien, is recommended to those who read books. Though I suspect, and the book has been criticized for this, that he overstates the relationship between himself, Marshall, Stimson and King, with respect to Roosevelt.

I admire the old sea dog. Though he did say silly things, as when he bet that the atomic bomb would not function, never detonate. And he said, he said, as an expert on explosives (he made his name in the Navy as a gunnery expert).
 
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Hume said:
It’s fairly clear that Japan was seeking the way to surrender or at least that’s clear to MacArthur and Eisenhower
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Yeah…
About that.
You need to add citations.
You have been so wrong about basic facts, I have serious doubts about this.
 
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