CIVICS NEWS Comment: As Greg Boyd points out, anything that does not look and act like Jesus as revealed in the gospels, anything that does not resemble the life he taught us to live, cannot properly be called "Christian." This means loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, and of course, avoiding the mass murder of innocent civilians.
Truman, war criminal?
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Walter Block - August 6, 2009 12:18 PM
A very evil op-ed appeared in the War Street Journal today: It argues that the US atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified because it obviated an Allied landing on Japanese soil, which would have cost many, many more lives—American, Japanese, and other Oriental lives too. But, even assuming, arguendo, ALL of the implicit premises of this author (the war was justified in the first place; unconditional surrender was required—not the face saving conditional surrender the Japanese would have accepted at this point; this was not the opening battle in the Cold War), his conclusion still does not logically follow. For, the US could have first dropped these weapons of mass destruction on uninhabited Japanese islands as a demonstration of their terrible power. Only afterwards, if no unconditional surrender were forthcoming, would such heinous acts be justified (remember, I am still operating according to the implicit premises of the warmongers.)
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Re: Truman, war criminal?
Lew Rockwell.com Blog - Laurence Vance - August 6, 2009 06:33 PM
If I may add one thing to Dr. Block’s excellent post, several high-ranking military officers thought that an invasion of Japan would not be necessary, including General Curtis LeMay and Admiral William Leahy.
Indeed, according to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, “the eventual decision to surrender would have been made, certainly by the end of 1945 and probably before November, the month set for the initial invasion of the home islands, without the additional persuasion of the atom bomb, Russia’s entry into the war, or amphibious invasion” (Wesley F. Craven and James L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II [Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1953], vol. 5, p. 741).
Sorry, residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Let us not forget that the Japnese fleet was gone. One could have sent a wave of less destructive weapons upon strtegic locations without much water, and perhaps air, intervention.
ReplyDeleteBut that point is moot. What is more important is the idea that a plan of action was taken at the cost of thousands of civilians. We murderd those people, and if one understands the tensions which existed between Americans and Japanese since the late 1800s, then it does not take a stretch of the imagination that some who choose to bomb did so with a smile.
I am not saying that our goal as a nation was mass xecution, but that is what we did. Not a Hitler level, of course, but how many have to die before we call it mass extermination. Other choices could have been made, but were not.