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I still don't really buy this whole trade-off idea used to justify dropping the bombs, massacre from above vs massacre on the ground.
by ant6n 11y ago
I still don't really buy this whole trade-off idea used to justify dropping the bombs, massacre from above vs massacre on the ground.
- vadman 11y agoMassacre from above minimized American losses.
- comrh 11y agoWhich was traded for Japanese civilians though, no?
- belenos46 11y agoDefinitely. In general, though -all other things being equal- if I have to decide who dies, I will decide they won't be people fighting on my side.
- davidjeet 11y agoBy most approximations, there were about 200,000 causalities from the bombs and their aftermath. That said, had the bombs not been dropped, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties and tens of millions for Japanese (civilian + soldiers) casualties. Ultimately it boils down to an issue of numbers (achieved by expediency).
- ant6n 11y agoBut that doesn't justify the massacre itself.
- belenos46 11y agoNothing justifies a massacre. Or war, or any sort of nonconsensual act (I'm asserting here that murdering people en masse is nonconsensual). There's no casus belli that makes war just. But making shit stop, and stop right now? That can be useful as opposed to just.
- ant6n 11y agoNothing justifies massacre -- except if you can claim that you can make a quick one right now, compared to an 'inevitable' long one, and that trade-off is worth it. (Back to square one)
- belenos46 11y agoYeah, and that's pretty much my point. No matter how expedient and net-win a prospect like that might be, it's still not just. I think we agree, I'm just saying this because I hear way too much about 'right' and 'wrong' with armed conflict. It's all wrong -ALL of it.
- ant6n 11y agoYou say 'all of it is wrong - ALL of it'. It implies it's equally wrong. But then, conveniently, the Japanese attacked first. So defending is kinda right, but of course it's just as wrong as mass murder of civilian populations. So it's kind of like a wrong but right necessary evil.
- pjc50 11y agoStrategic bombing was already ongoing by all belligerents which had the capability. The difference is one of scale not of quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo 9-10 March "Operation Meetinghouse", six months prior to the nukes: "Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of the city was destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died." This was more deadly than either of the atomic bombs, it just required far more planes and pilots.
- ant6n 11y agoI feel like I'm going in circles here, but, this information shouldn't be used to justify nuclear mass murder, rather, it should be used to start questioning the conventional mass murder. It's not that 'we already were mass murdering people anyway'; it's 'on top of that, we were also mass murdering people with conventional attacks'.
- pjc50 11y agoWell, they started it. That's a trite expression but actually a vitally important part of the international law of war. Initiating a conflict is the immoral act, collective self-defence is not. How far back does collective self-defence reach in terms of destroying the enemy's capability to attack you? That is the difficult bit and where so many people take issue with the Israeli use of this justification. (Unless you want to argue against armed self-defence tout court, that the participants in the defence of the Warsaw ghetto were also murderers etc. etc, which is a self-consistent but rather unusual position)
- ant6n 11y agoKilling populations en masse has little to do with 'destroying the enemy's capability to attack you'.