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> It either did or did not happen for the causes described. Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are to

> It either did or did not happen for the causes described. Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. But, thanks for the historical analysis here nonetheless.

mpyne 13y ago
> Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. Fair enough. But the people with the best understanding of events as they were happening, were those actually making the decisions at the time.... and they decided to drop the bomb. For years after that it's been 'backseat drivers' second-guessing that decision despite their own claims being totally unfalsifiable. While it might be nice to be able to look back on hindsight, no one had a crystal ball at the time, which is why it's inappropriate to pin decisions made in 1945 with the moral qualms of a generation that has never seen world-wide total war.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  I guess I just project my own personal worldview onto world affairs. I do stupidly bad things with some frequency, and I only ever recognize them as such in hindsight. Nobody acts against their own morals at the time, right? But I believe it's helpful to say, "Look, I did a stupidly bad thing because I didn't feel or think I had any other options, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd known better." Einstein said as much when he wrote, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger." We don't know if there could have been an alternative that definitively ended the war and cost less lives. Things were winding down at that point anyway. I don't even necessarily feel that dropping those bombs was a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, because it shone a light on the darkness that we are capable of as a species. Maybe those two bombs were all that prevented mutual destruction during the cold war. But as an isolated event, nuking a city is just as horrific as pushing people into ovens - it's really quite comparable, actually - and I think it's best just to say, we did something awful, we thought we had to, it's over now, it won't happen again. Germany did this, for instance. And the only reason that didn't happen for the atomic bombs is because the US "won" the war.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Great insight, but I hope you don't think that Americans don't feel it was an awful, horrific action. It's considered exactly like you say, "something awful, but what choice did we have?".
    - foobarbazqux 13y ago
      "What choice did we have?" is very different from "We had choices but we lacked the perspective required to take them." The first says, we did something bad, but it was justified, i.e. we didn't do anything morally wrong. The second says we did something bad, we thought it was justified, but it turns out that it was a mistake. Einstein is clearly expressing the latter, whereas official American policy expresses the former, and there has never been an apology.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        So "perspective" is what's telling you to invade the islands and slaughter millions of civilians while causing millions of American casualties? Remember the goal here is to win the war that Japan started. Presumably you have a proposed option to have done that without atomic weaponry and that the Americans should have recognized with the information available to them; what is that option?
        foobarbazqux 13y ago
        First of all, I believe you're still missing my point, so maybe I need to be more clear. I'm fine with a simple "we didn't know better" since that's apologetic. That's not a falsehood even if it weren't possible for the Americans to know better; I'm willing to believe they acted in good faith on the best information they had. That's not even a falsehood even if there truly weren't any better options, which is of course impossible to know. Instead you get "we did what we had to", which is unapologetic, and doesn't allow the possibility of there being better options. It basically comes down to admitting doubt vs. reinforcing belief (since asserting an unfalsifiable claim is a belief). Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that invading Japan was the only alternative. I mentioned somewhere, perhaps not in reply to you, that dropping atomic bombs on remote regions of Japan would have demonstrated military superiority with far less casualties. And another post in this thread linked to this article: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di... If you're actually really interested in this, and maybe you are since you're obviously interested in military stuff, I'm pretty sure there are entire bookcases filled with books and journal articles weighing the pros and cons of the decision to drop the bomb.

mpyne 13y ago

> Well, whatever the actual reason for the surrender, any claims about it one way or the other are totally unfalsifiable. Fair enough. But the people with the best understanding of events as they were happening, were those actually making the decisions at the time.... and they decided to drop the bomb. For years after that it's been 'backseat drivers' second-guessing that decision despite their own claims being totally unfalsifiable. While it might be nice to be able to look back on hindsight, no one had a crystal ball at the time, which is why it's inappropriate to pin decisions made in 1945 with the moral qualms of a generation that has never seen world-wide total war.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
I guess I just project my own personal worldview onto world affairs. I do stupidly bad things with some frequency, and I only ever recognize them as such in hindsight. Nobody acts against their own morals at the time, right? But I believe it's helpful to say, "Look, I did a stupidly bad thing because I didn't feel or think I had any other options, and I wouldn't have done it if I'd known better." Einstein said as much when he wrote, "Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger." We don't know if there could have been an alternative that definitively ended the war and cost less lives. Things were winding down at that point anyway. I don't even necessarily feel that dropping those bombs was a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, because it shone a light on the darkness that we are capable of as a species. Maybe those two bombs were all that prevented mutual destruction during the cold war. But as an isolated event, nuking a city is just as horrific as pushing people into ovens - it's really quite comparable, actually - and I think it's best just to say, we did something awful, we thought we had to, it's over now, it won't happen again. Germany did this, for instance. And the only reason that didn't happen for the atomic bombs is because the US "won" the war.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Great insight, but I hope you don't think that Americans don't feel it was an awful, horrific action. It's considered exactly like you say, "something awful, but what choice did we have?".
  - foobarbazqux 13y ago
    "What choice did we have?" is very different from "We had choices but we lacked the perspective required to take them." The first says, we did something bad, but it was justified, i.e. we didn't do anything morally wrong. The second says we did something bad, we thought it was justified, but it turns out that it was a mistake. Einstein is clearly expressing the latter, whereas official American policy expresses the former, and there has never been an apology.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      So "perspective" is what's telling you to invade the islands and slaughter millions of civilians while causing millions of American casualties? Remember the goal here is to win the war that Japan started. Presumably you have a proposed option to have done that without atomic weaponry and that the Americans should have recognized with the information available to them; what is that option?
      - foobarbazqux 13y ago
        First of all, I believe you're still missing my point, so maybe I need to be more clear. I'm fine with a simple "we didn't know better" since that's apologetic. That's not a falsehood even if it weren't possible for the Americans to know better; I'm willing to believe they acted in good faith on the best information they had. That's not even a falsehood even if there truly weren't any better options, which is of course impossible to know. Instead you get "we did what we had to", which is unapologetic, and doesn't allow the possibility of there being better options. It basically comes down to admitting doubt vs. reinforcing belief (since asserting an unfalsifiable claim is a belief). Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that invading Japan was the only alternative. I mentioned somewhere, perhaps not in reply to you, that dropping atomic bombs on remote regions of Japan would have demonstrated military superiority with far less casualties. And another post in this thread linked to this article: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di... If you're actually really interested in this, and maybe you are since you're obviously interested in military stuff, I'm pretty sure there are entire bookcases filled with books and journal articles weighing the pros and cons of the decision to drop the bomb.