We Were Right to Drop the Bomb

[gipper]

Given the evolution of thought during the Second World War, it was logical for them to use the weapon. That only demonstrates how logic can lead to gross error.

I don’t see the logic in massacring defenseless women and children, of a nation trying to surrender.

 

[there4eyeM]

I don’t see the logic in massacring defenseless women and children, of a nation trying to surrender.

You are not immersed in the epoch as they were. As with so many poor decisions in the past, more of us can see clearly now what few did at the time.

 

[Unkotare]

You are not immersed in the epoch as they were. As with so many poor decisions in the past, more of us can see clearly now what few did at the time.

Plenty of people saw it clearly at that time.

 

[there4eyeM]

Plenty of people saw it clearly at that time.

It certainly seems obvious to me, but obviously not enough influence was in place back then.

 

[mikegriffith1]

There is a reason that the vast majority of scholars who specialize in Japan's surrender argue that nuking Japan was completely unnecessary and criminal. Even some historians who you would expect would endorse dropping the bomb have condemned it.

 

[JoeB131]

This post is based on myths that were debunked decades ago. The bomb did not save "hundreds of thousands of lives." Japan was prostrate and virtually defenseless against air and naval attack. So defenseless was Japan against air attack that we stopped sending fighter escorts on our bombing missions. Japan's population was on near-starvation rations. What's more, Japan was already trying to surrender when we nuked Hiroshima, and we knew it from multiple sources.

Mormon Mike, you work under the delusion that people at the time looked at the bomb with the existential dread that those of us born after 1950 look at it.

They didn't. It was just another weapon to drop on an enemy four years of propaganda had told Americans to look upon as sub-human. (Not that they didn't themselves any favors raping and murdering all over Asia.)

 

[JoeB131]

There is a reason that the vast majority of scholars who specialize in Japan's surrender argue that nuking Japan was completely unnecessary and criminal. Even some historians who you would expect would endorse dropping the bomb have condemned it.

Awesome. Hindsight is always 20/20.

I grew up knowing a lot of WWII vets, including my late father... I never met a one of them who had an objection to nuking Japan.

 

[Colin norris]

I tend to agree. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives, including many Americans.

The headline of this column is lifted from a 1981 essay by the late Paul Fussell, the cultural critic and war memoirist. In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. Army who had fought his way through Europe only to learn that he would soon be shipped to the Pacific to take part in Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin in November 1945.

Then the atom bomb intervened. Japan would not surrender after Hiroshima, but it did after Nagasaki.

I brought Fussell’s essay with me on my flight to Hiroshima and was stopped by this: “When we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.”

In all the cant that will pour forth this week to mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs—that the U.S. owes the victims of the bombings an apology; that nuclear weapons ought to be abolished; that Hiroshima is a monument to man’s inhumanity to man; that Japan could have been defeated in a slightly nicer way—I doubt much will be made of Fussell’s fundamental point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t just terrible war-ending events. They were also lifesaving. The bomb turned the empire of the sun into a nation of peace activists.​

Thank God for the Atom Bomb - WSJ

What are your thoughts?

Firstly, God had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb and only a godbothering dickhead would say that.
Secondly, I agree about dropping it. Its stopped the war and that's the whole point of the exercise.

 

[gipper]

Mormon Mike, you work under the delusion that people at the time looked at the bomb with the existential dread that those of us born after 1950 look at it.

They didn't. It was just another weapon to drop on an enemy four years of propaganda had told Americans to look upon as sub-human. (Not that they didn't themselves any favors raping and murdering all over Asia.)

Wrong.

 

[gipper]

Firstly, God had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb and only a godbothering dickhead would say that.
Secondly, I agree about dropping it. Its stopped the war and that's the whole point of the exercise.

STFU

 

[Colin norris]

STFU

Not a happy camper? Still love God dickhead,? Fuck your silly gods.

 

[gipper]

Not a happy camper? Still love God dickhead,? Fuck your silly gods.

STFU!

 

[Colin norris]

STFU!

I'm under your skin.
Every time you reply I get another whack at you. Have another go dickhead

 

[there4eyeM]

If past mistakes are not acknowledged as such it increases the likelihood of repetition.

 

[gipper]

I'm under your skin.
Every time you reply I get another whack at you. Have another go dickhead

That’s not it. I just dislike purposely ignorant people.

 

[gipper]

If past mistakes are not acknowledged as such it increases the likelihood of repetition.

Very true. Yet after all these many failed foreign interventions since and including Vietnam, our corrupt government continues to follow an interventionist foreign policy completely undeterred and uncontrolled.

The power of the MIC can’t be overstated. The profits for the war profiteers is just too great.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Look, if we were really worried about the "headquarters" garrison at Hiroshima, we could have easily taken it out with a small conventional bombing mission. The garrison's buildings were on the outskirts of the city. Ditto for most of the factories--they were on the outskirts of town and could have easily been wiped out via conventional bombing. But the aiming point for the a-bomb was in the middle of the city.

 

[Colin norris]

That’s not it. I just dislike purposely ignorant people.

Not ignorant son. Its you inability to accept facts which is ignorant. We are all ignorant about something. You're ignorant about every thong because you are a Republican.

 

[gipper]

Not ignorant son. Its you inability to accept facts which is ignorant. We are all ignorant about something. You're ignorant about every thong because you are a Republican.

Damn and I was just accused of being a commie by another dumb poster. I must be doing something right.

 

[JoeB131]

Look, if we were really worried about the "headquarters" garrison at Hiroshima, we could have easily taken it out with a small conventional bombing mission. The garrison's buildings were on the outskirts of the city. Ditto for most of the factories--they were on the outskirts of town and could have easily been wiped out via conventional bombing. But the aiming point for the a-bomb was in the middle of the city.

Um, yeah... that's the point of bombing, to create as much fear and destruction as possible.

But again, you are putting existential dread that we feel today about nukes on people who had already endured six years of global war and had become kind of numb to it.