Why Truman Dropped the Bomb

[Philip_P]

Ani Ibi:

This is an extrapolation of what I said and arguing to extremes.

Once you have removed the distinction between combatants and nocombatants (including civilians), what is left to prevent anyone from reaching these extremes? If you remove this standard, you need to provide another, strictly defined standard or else accept moral anarchy. I doubt you want that, so what standard would you apply instead?

 

[oat_soda]

Circumstantial intention can reduce or increase the goodness of an object. But it cannot change that goodness into an evil.

what are you talking about?? if i steal your car because i want to drive to church in it, does that make it a good act? it’s an evil act because stealing your car is evil, not me wanting to drive to church. the road to hell is paved with good intentions. even hitler thought he was doing good when he killed the jews, as do abortionists.

There are probably millions of Jews at least who would disagree with you that an Allied victory in WWII didn’t solve anything. What would you do with them? Hang them out to dry? Turn a blind (but sanctimonious) eye?

look at what stalin did to russia and the ukraine. he killed far more innocent people then hitler and we did nothing about it and he took half of europe and inslaved all of those people. so what did wwii solve? not to say that we shouldn’t have fought in it but like i said, usually, wars don’t solve anything.

the united states is usually only involved in war for their own selfish interests, as were most countries in wwi and wwii and not to bring about greater good.

what brought freedom to eastern europe was peaceful solidarity and sacrifice, not violence.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Philip P:

What playing field? There’s nothing left to play on or with.

In the case or retaliation yes there is ‘nothing’ left if you define ‘nothing’ as the absence of 21-century infrastructure. But not everyone would define ‘nothing’ in those terms.
Philip P:

If there’s a nuclear war (of the kind contemplated in a USSR-US conflict), it’s game over for everyone.

I won’t argue that. Nuclear warfare on this scale is an abomination against Creation.
Philip P:

That’s why nuclear war is not a rational possibilty.

Once nuclear warfare had been developed beyond the 20 K capacity and once more than one nation acquired that capacity, nuclear warfare took on the nature of a deterrant.
Philip P:

The only thing to do is work to prevent it from happening

Deterrence is prevention. It is the most effective prevention. For it work you have to have rational leaders in place. By rational leaders I mean those who are not clinically insane.
Philip P:

and have emergency services in place to care for the survivors if it does happen.

Having emergency services in place is actually acknowledging that nations have nuclear strike capacity and that that capacity can be actualized. On the other hand you have Canada…

 

[vern_humphrey]

Philip P:

Once you have removed the distinction between combatants and nocombatants (including civilians), what is left to prevent anyone from reaching these extremes? If you remove this standard, you need to provide another, strictly defined standard or else accept moral anarchy. I doubt you want that, so what standard would you apply instead?

It was the Japanese who removed those distinctions, not us. It was the Japanese who established military intstallations and war industries in those cities, not us.

MacArthur showed how it should be done – when he declared Manila to be an Open City. He sought to protect civilians by NOT fortifying the city, NOT having troops or other installations in there, and NOT haveing them support the military effort.

The Japanese could have done the same.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

oat soda:

what are you talking about??

Why don’t you just admit that you don’t know what double effect is?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Originally Posted by Ani Ibi

If Aunty Ani is manufacturing weapons and delivery systems for those weapons, then Aunty Ani is not a civilian. She is part of the war effort.
Philip P:

If a spy breaks into Aunty Ani’s house in the middle of the night and sticks a knife in her, is that murder or simply a legitimate act of self-defense during war time?

A legitimate act of self-defense during war time. Ah! But then you are going to say why didn’t we send in hundreds of thousands of spies into Hiroshima and Nagasaki and only take out the military, the materiels, and those working to manufacture supplies, weapons, and delivery systems. That method would have saved the lives of ‘civilians.’

I agree. Now you tell me how you would go about achieving that objective.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

oat soda:

look at what stalin did to russia and the ukraine. he killed far more innocent people then hitler and we did nothing about it and he took half of europe and inslaved all of those people. so what did wwii solve?

You are implying that WWII solved nothing. I am saying that is arguing to extremes. While WWII did not solve everything and in fact may have brought into being new problems, it is incorrect to say that WWII solved nothing.
oat soda:

not to say that we shouldn’t have fought in it

Well, what are you saying then?
oat soda:

but like i said, usually, wars don’t solve anything.

Just because Stalin did what he did and just because we did not succeed (or attempt, if you will) at stopping him, does not mean that WWII didn’t solve anything. Given that, then your escalation to the generalation that all wars don’t solve anything is unjustified.
oat soda:

the united states is usually only involved in war for their own selfish interests

A generalization which requires a formidable offering of specific examples and argumentation to demonstrate the veracity of your claim. These examples and argumentation do not yet appear on this thread.
oat soda:

as were most countries in wwi and wwii and not to bring about greater good.

False analogy. Unsupported generalization.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I dont remember who said this:

In some ways it gives the attacker the moral ‘high ground:’ Those three waves could all go against military targets.

Analysis:

The attacker targets our military.

We then target the attacker’s civilian population.

Assumption: targetting military in wartime is licit.
Assumption: targetting civilian populations in wartime is not licit.

Therefore the attacker in a pre-emptive nuclear strike has the moral ‘high ground’ over those who retaliate.

Response:

Targetting military in a declared war is licit. A pre-emptive nuclear strike may or may not be in a declared war.

Targetting civilian populations in wartime is not always illicit, depending on the application of the principle of double effect.

The ‘moral high ground’ argument fails on the basis of faulty false premises.
vern humphrey:

But there is no vacuum – a single missile would never happen if deterrence failed. The cities would be gone anyway.

This is so close to be a general truth among those in possession of the full array of big nukes that I concede this point.

But let’s push the envelope. What is our response in the event of a group of suicide bombers carrying in not thousands but, say five small nukes to our own civilian population and detonating them on timers thus causing an enormous firestorm? Given that we know which country aided and abetted those bombers?
vern humphrey:

Untennable doesn’t mean “if we ignore it, it will go away.”

Agreed. It seems to me that some of us want to reduce these situations to being easy. They are not easy. In fact the actual analyses of these situations are way over any of our capabilities on this discussion board. Let’s be humble about that. But let us at least learn as much as we can and analyze as much as we can. And make responsible conclusions as much as we can.
vern humphrey:

Now all the Soviets had to do was put a covert operative at each silo.

 

[Wolseley]

Philip P:

Careful there, once you remove distinction between combatants and non-combatants, you run into dangerous moral territory. After all, even Aunty Keiko making her noodles may be construed as “supporting” the war effort once this line is crossed. Did she feed her solider husband when he was home on leave? Did she feed any workers from the munitions factory? Or perhaps she is a symbol for whom the soldiers are fighting. “Remember Aunty Keiko with the noodles, for whom you risk your lives!” Where do you draw the line, and on what basis?

I think the line between combatants and non-combatants must be scrupulously upheld and defended if we’re going to insist that there can ever be such thing as a “just” war or just conduct during war.

The fact still remains that it is ludicrous to maintain the position that it’s okay to bomb a soldier in uniform, but not the ten civilians making the arms the soldier in uniform is using to shoot at you with.

Without the civilians producing arms for the soldiers to use, I guess the soldiers would just have to go down to the riverbank and form toy guns out of clay and hope that saying the magic words would turn them into real weapons. However, in the real world things don’t work that way.

Why do you think we spent more time dumping bombs on civilian cities like Berlin and Munich and Hamburg and Leipzig and Dresden and the Ruhr Valley than we did on German troop concentrations?

Because that’s where the arms for those troops concentrations were being manufactured, that’s why. You destroy a country’s industrial capability, you destroy their capability to wage offensive war. Pretty soon their army has nothing left to fight with, and they have to give up. However, since the army is off fighting with the enemy, somebody has to make the weapons, and that somebody is the civilian population. The army can’t be in two places at one time.

Nobody seems to howl about bombing Germany too much, though—it always comes back to the Awful American A-Bomb Atrocity, which is nothing more than leftist-revisionist propaganda put out the by the Flower Children of the 1960’s who now have tenured positions in universities where they teach students to despise the only country in the history of the world that never produced a tyrant.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Wolseley:

The fact still remains that it is ludicrous to maintain the position that it’s okay to bomb a soldier in uniform, but not the ten civilians making the arms the soldier in uniform is using to shoot at you with.

Without the civilians producing arms for the soldiers to use, I guess the soldiers would just have to go down to the riverbank and form toy guns out of clay and hope that saying the magic words would turn them into real weapons. However, in the real world things don’t work that way.

Why do you think we spent more time dumping bombs on civilian cities like Berlin and Munich and Hamburg and Leipzig and Dresden and the Ruhr Valley than we did on German troop concentrations?

If an enemy puts a troop facility or a war factory in a city, it is the enemy who is responsible for the resulting civilian deaths when the attack comes.

The Japanese did not remove their troops and war factories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and declare them Open Cities, now did they?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Wolseley:

The fact still remains that it is ludicrous to maintain the position that it’s okay to bomb a soldier in uniform, but not the ten civilians making the arms the soldier in uniform is using to shoot at you with.

no supplies = no army.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Ani Ibi:

no supplies = no army.

Remote material cooperation. The same principle that has inspired some bishops to say that if a Catholic politician supports abortion, then

a) Catholics should not vote for him/her and
b) that that politician runs the risk of the bishop withholding communion from him/her.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Ani Ibi:

But let’s push the envelope. What is our response in the event of a group of suicide bombers carrying in not thousands but, say five small nukes to our own civilian population and detonating them on timers thus causing an enormous firestorm? Given that we know which country aided and abetted those bombers?

Would we be in a quandary over a missile versus a bomber?

A country launches five nuclear missiles at us. We shoot back.

A country launches five nuclear bombers at us. We shoot back.

A country launches five nuclear-armed terrorists at us. We shoot back.
Ani Ibi:

Agreed. It seems to me that some of us want to reduce these situations to being easy. They are not easy. In fact the actual analyses of these situations are way over any of our capabilities on this discussion board. Let’s be humble about that. But let us at least learn as much as we can and analyze as much as we can. And make responsible conclusions as much as we can.

If you do much analytical work of this type, you come to the rule that only real-world solutions are acceptable. Made-up or “simplified” scenarios carry too much ideologcial baggage, and are constructed not to examine to point, but to make the point.

 

[qmvsimp]

Intentionally targeting civilians is immoral. But civilians were not intentionally targeted. Tokyo had already been bombed to oblivian, yet Japan was still producing arms, mostly in civilian areas. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were purposely targeted as industrial areas and probable arms producing areas.

While the civilian population had been militarized, we still felt morally compelled to drop fliers from airplanes stating in Japanese that we were going to drop one big bomb that would destroy the whole city.

A few days later, we dropped the first bomb.

We targeted industrial centers with probable arms factories. We warned the “civilians” about it ahead of time, then we bombed.

100% moral decision.

It’s legitimate to say it might have been a mistake in that mostly civilians were killed, but that does not answer the moral question.

 

[Philip_P]

Combatants vs. Noncombatants, Part 1/2
Ani Ibi:

Originally Posted by Ani Ibi

If Aunty Ani is manufacturing weapons and delivery systems for those weapons, then Aunty Ani is not a civilian. She is part of the war effort.

A legitimate act of self-defense during war time. Ah! But then you are going to say why didn’t we send in hundreds of thousands of spies into Hiroshima and Nagasaki and only take out the military, the materiels, and those working to manufacture supplies, weapons, and delivery systems. That method would have saved the lives of ‘civilians.’

I agree. Now you tell me how you would go about achieving that objective.

CCC quotes referenced in this reply can be found at:
http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2art5.htm

We disagree on whether or not killing noncombatants was a proximate or circumstantial intention in the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It seems we also disagree on what constitutes a non-combatant. Actually, discussing the distinction between combatants and non-combatants may help with thinking through the distinction between circumstantial and proximate intention as well.

I hold that a spy killing Aunty Ani, who works at the bomb factory, in the middle of the night is murder. It is true that tomorrow morning she will probably get up and go to work in the bomb factory, and that those bombs are being produced with intent to harm the U.S. I will even grant that while she is at work at the bomb factory she is actively threatening the U.S., and so an aggressor, even if it is indirectly. While she is sleeping, however, she is not a threat, nor is she an aggressor. She is at most, a potential aggressor.

Why is she a potential, and not an actual, aggressor at this point? Because any threat she presents in the future and hence beyond our sure and certain knowledge. She may wake up and go to the factory, or she may decide never to return to the factory, or the war might end during the night so that even were she to work at the factory, such work would no longer be a threat to the U.S. We cannot kill her because she may be a potential threat anymore than we may insist that a woman with a family history of sociopathology abort her child.

Why? Because if we kill her, we are no longer treating her as a human being, but as an industrial part, a mere extension of the industrial machine. Catholic moral teaching is rooted in the dignity of the human being, and as such is strongly biased against killing (CCC 2258). Even self defense, when it results in the death of an aggressor, is not seen as an exception to the prohibition of taking human life, but rather the death of the aggressor is seen as an unfortunate effect:

“The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. ‘The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.” (CCC 2263)

and

“If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s” (CCC 2264).

 

[Philip_P]

The only allowable situation for causing the death of a human being, then, is self defense. You will not find a justification of pre-emption anywhere in the Catechism that allows you to kill a merely potential aggressor.

What is lawful, however, would be to foreclose the possibility that Aunty Ani will become an aggressor. The most effective way to do this, and to guarantee not only that Aunty Ani, but all the other workers at the bomb factory, do not become aggressors, would be to remove the means of their aggression. In other words, get rid of the factory, or otherwise render it no longer a threat.

Our agent could, instead of breaking into poor Aunty Ani’s house and murdering her in her sleep, instead proceed down the road to the factory and sabotage all the machinery and destroy all the stores. If we had enough agents on the ground, they could do this to each and every factory.

Of course, this is hardly feasible, so even though this respects the workers, who while sleeping are not workers but rather human beings first and foremost, it does fail on the third point of just war theory “there must be serious prospects of success” (CCC 2309).

This probably eliminates a paratrooper invasion and a naval bombardment as well, leaving us with aerial bombardment. The same considerations that guided our thinking of what is acceptable for our agent on the ground, however, apply when considering aerial bombing, for the moral law applies even when (I would say especially when) we are at war (2312). In other words, if it was immoral to target Aunty Ani for death when our agent was on the ground, it remains immoral to target Aunty Ani for death when planning our bombing sortie.

The factory Aunty Ani works in would thus be a legitimate target, but her house would not be. This effects our choice of weapon and our tactic, naturally. Carpet bombing would not be justified, because in that case how could we say that we are not targeting Aunty Ani’s house? No, in that case we would be targeting everything, without discriminating between combatants and non-combatants, legitimate and illegitimate targets. For the same reason, a weapon that effectively has as its target the entire city (i.e. a nuclear bomb) is out. This leave us with conventional, targeted bombs.

\

Ah, but you say, conventional bombs in WWII were notoriously inaccurate. True, but to say that they had only rudimentary target control is not the same as having *no *target control. The commander ordering the strike against a series of legitimate targets embedded within non-legitimate targets, as was the case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has a positive duty to use the most accurate and reliable weapons available. He must make a good faith effort to target legitimate military objectives and avoid non-combatants.

Assuming he chooses the most accurate weapons and delivery mechanisms available to him, then, do we not still run into the problem that civilians will die? Yes, but remember the claim was not that a nuclear bomb or carpet bombing technique is wrong because civilians die, it is wrong because it would fail to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. For instance, if we assume that the factories are running 24/7 and that the entire population of the city remains within the walls of the factories at all times, then destroying those factories would have the same effect, in terms of loss of life, as a nuclear bomb. The difference, of course, is that the circumstances are quite different – because they are in the factory, they are at that moment acting as active aggressors. If they were to spot the bomber coming and flee from the factory, the bomber could continue on its mission to destroy the factory, but could not then attempt to strafe the fleeing workers (who, with their factory destroyed, are no longer workers at this point but rather human beings running for their lives).

Similarly, should a bomb go astray (as they often did) and land hit a house instead of the factory, killing all within, the intent was not to hit that house. Of course, if the bomb hit the house because the crew of the bomber were too lazy to aim, or because the bomb manufacturer cut costs and provided a substandard product, the person or persons responsible bear moral guilt for that death. Should the bomb simply go despite the best-faith efforts of all involved to produce a bomb that was as accurate as possible and target a legitimate military objective, though, there is no moral culpability.

 

[JimG]

Please. All this talk of nuclear annihilation and destruction of cities is beginning to make me nostalgic for the good old days.

 

[jco2004]

I always found it interesting that the ship that delivered the components for the bombs to the Marianas, the USS Indianapolis, was sunk on it’s way back from the mission, and the several hundred survivors of the initial sinking were victimized by sharks during the several days it took to be rescued. Could God have been making a commentary on the bomb? Just a possibility. Joe

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Philip P:

It seems we also disagree on what constitutes a non-combatant.

Ani the bomb-maker is indulging in remote material collaboration by building the bombs.
Philip P:

I hold that a spy killing Aunty Ani, who works at the bomb factory, in the middle of the night is murder.

Should we ascertain if a soldier is asleep or awake before we kill him? Like: “Hey you soldiers in that trench! Wake up, I’m going to throw a grenade in there!” That reminds me of the nurse who wakes up the patient in order to give her the sleeping pill. :bigyikes: What about the prime minister who endorses abortion? Should the bishop only deny him communion when he is speaking about abortion? Or should the bishop deny him communion until he repents?

Same here. Ani the bombmaker is fair game until she stops working in the bomb factory and makes that known in some way.
Philip P:

Why? Because if we kill her, we are no longer treating her as a human being, but as an industrial part, a mere extension of the industrial machine.

I believe, from listening to military people that people have very diverse relationships and responses from people with whom they are in a life and death struggle. Vern, gilliam, and some of the others will be able to tell you more about this.

“If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s” (CCC 2264).

Barring being completely out of control or barring being sadistic, then I think that varying tactics for defence depend on the purpose for engaging that particular enemy. In Japanese tradition, some of the fighting arts which the West wrongly call ‘soft,’ thinking that they are non-aggressive, are every bit as aggressive as the so-called ‘hard’ styles.

Aikido for instance is for the purpose of capturing and controlling an enemy combatant so that he may be tortured and interrogated. That is a huge over-simplification, but … you can see that the ends are inherent in the means.

JKA Karate on the other hand is for bringing the enemy down and making sure he doesn’t get up and chase you down the road to stab you in the back later. Here again the ends are inherent in the means.

Note that I did not say that the end justifies the means.

In the case of H and N: what really constitutes ‘more than necessary violence?’ If a blockade is projected, then how easy do you think it is to starve to death? We went through this in quite some detail when Terri Schiavo was still alive. What about freezing to death? In the case of a conventional invasion: think about this before you leap to conclusions. How non-violent do you think urban warfare would be in Japanese cities?

You know, we see ‘combat’ on tv every night. Do you think this is real combat? Hand to hand isn’t what it is cut out to be.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Philip P:

For instance, if we assume that the factories are running 24/7 and that the entire population of the city remains within the walls of the factories at all times, then destroying those factories would have the same effect, in terms of loss of life, as a nuclear bomb. The difference, of course, is that the circumstances are quite different – because they are in the factory, they are at that moment acting as active aggressors. If they were to spot the bomber coming and flee from the factory, the bomber could continue on its mission to destroy the factory, but could not then attempt to strafe the fleeing workers (who, with their factory destroyed, are no longer workers at this point but rather human beings running for their lives).

Grandpa Funikoshi was walking home along a dark road in the country with his grandson. After a bit, Grandpa stopped and pointed with his stick at two small lights at the side of the road: a naga (snake). The snake attempted to strike, but the Grandpa turned his body so that the strike went into thin air. Then the snake slithered into the grass.

Then, after a bit, Grandpa walked into the grass with grandson in two. They came upon a turn further down the road and there beside the road again was the naga. The snake, having escaped one encounter was ambushing the Grandpa and his grandson for a second try. Grandpa quietly snuck up behind the naga and landed a killing blow to the serpent who was not expecting a rear attack.

The principle of Aunty Ani being a legitimate target because no supplies equals no army holds true for any kind of support systems in place to keep Aunty Ani making bombs. As long as Aunty Ani continues to make bombs then her sleeping time, her eating time, all of her time is fair game. Why? Because that time enables Ani to keep on making bombs.