(urth) (no subject)

[António Pedro Marques]

James Wynn wrote (19-01-2011 16:37):
> On 1/19/2011 9:48 AM, António Pedro Marques wrote:
>> On 1/18/2011 11:13 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>> All were awful, but the atomic weapon makes it so much easier and
>>> convenient to be awful. The overkill bombardment of Berlin and the
>>> Okinawan slaughter required a huge human cost in sustaining the
>>> terrible resolve to kill and keep killing for as long as it took, so
>>>  that few of the victors could look forward to repeating it. Robert
>>> E. Lee would weep.
>>
>> The reason people abhor nuclear bombing in a way that they dnt
>> conventional bombing, is that in conventional bombing a reasonable
>> proportion of the potential victims is able to fight for their lives,
>> even if the odds are low. With nuclear bombing, the idea people have is
>> that it just kills everyone in a given radius instantaneously. That
>> sounds inhuman (yes, inhuman, not simply inhumane).
>
> Allow me to take the Devil's side for a bit. The Imperial Japanese
> culture in the early 1940s glorified nihilistic fanaticism. Long after it
> was clear that they would not win the war, the Emperor and the J
> government had decided that if they were beaten there should be a
> genocide of the Japanese people. This, incidentally, was the ultimate
> decision of Hitler's inner circle and cultic followers for Germany as
> well. The Japanese soldier's who bought in to that culture did all they
> could to make themselves detestable (inhuman) to American Marines and
> sailors. You would go to lend medical aid to a wounded Japanese soldier
> and likely as not he would have a grenade in his hand waiting to take you
> out. They used the White Flag the same way. And they were famously
> callous in the their own treatment of captives. Obviously, this
> undermined US forces willingness to not Overkill. The use of the bombs on
> Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan's leadership to truly face what their
> imagined genocide would be like. They presented them with an example of
> that genocide, stripped of all it's potential glory, and thus brought
> them back to rationality. It only barely worked. Hiroshima alone wasn't
> enough and there was _actually_ a serious attempt at a coup.

Oh, no contention there at all. At the same time I find it good that people 
remember Hiroshima - not only the bombing, but why the bombing was needed in 
the first place. I find it a wholesome exercise.