And yet, in the years that followed, US decision-makers (and others) would advocate for, and threaten to use, nuclear weapons. There have been many close calls, and yet the overall status quo doesn’t change, because, like in other things, budgets always need justifying, otherwise they might get slashed.
It’s just patently absurd to claim that a second bomb had to be dropped to justify $2 billion that had already been spent; but then several trillion dollars was justified by mere threats but no further dropping of bombs.
It’s like saying that if a guy were to take a girl out to a fancy dinner in the most expensive restaurant in town, the girl would feel obligated to sleep with the guy because the soup cost $16… but the girl would only feel obligated to be a charming conversationalist when she orders the $60 entree. It makes no sense at all.
No, he doesn’t. The cite doesn’t even mention Truman, who had nothing to do with the bomb, and didn’t even know about it until after FDR died, and so had nothing to justify.
It does say that some of the Manhattan Project’s leaders, presumably Groves and others, wanted to justify the expense, but it never says that was the only reason, or even the most important one, for dropping the bomb. On the contrary, it explicitly says that James Byrnes (who became Truman’s Secy of State a little over a month before the bomb was dropped) cited political considerations. A little googling finds Lanouette’s opinions in context, and shows that justifying the money spent was only the fourth of five major reasons. Political considerations that were more important than the money spent included ending the war quickly and decisively for domestic and armed services morale, ending the war before the Soviets could get a foothold in Japan, and as a demonstration to the Soviets as a first step in post-war diplomacy.
Let’s hope nobody judges you by quotes taken out of context and cobbled together by some anti-war blogger.
All that aside, I would also add that stupid reasons for military action are not that uncommon. Eleven years ago, very influential strategists were appearing on national TV news shows and opining that we had to invade Iraq, because we had already gone to all the trouble and expense of staging our troops on its border, and it would look weak to not use them.
TonySinclair - you are exactly right, I made the assumption that Lanouette’s opinions were being accurately represented by that website, which was a very poor assumption indeed. I should have been more circumspect in my comments regarding the author, and less credulous of an obviously loony website and their ability to accurately summarize someone’s views. However, it still remains laughable that the second bomb was dropped to justify a budget or avoid a congressional investigation, since it seems perfectly obvious that the first bomb actually worked.
I only take issue with your assertion that Truman “had nothing to do with the bomb” since he ordered it to be used. If someone says the bomb was dropped to justify (whatever), it simply had to be Truman who felt the need to justify (whatever), because no other person than Truman had the power to order the bomb to be dropped.
Anyway, this is far off topic of the thread. I’ll wash my hands of this hijack.
It might if you knew more about the subject.
First, you keep claiming we’ve spent several trillion dollars on nukes. That’s true only if you include all the planes, subs, missiles, and production facilities associated with them since 1940, plus environmental cleanup for the next 80 years. The nukes themselves are only 7% of that 5.8 trillion figure, or about 400 billion. I’m pretty sure that we would have built the bombers, subs, and missiles even if we didn’t have nukes to put on them. Maybe we would have built more, to compensate for the lack of megatonnage in our warheads and bombs.
More importantly, the money spent on nuclear weapons after the war was approved by Congress. The Manhattan Project was not; it was a deep, dark secret from almost all elected officials, including VP Harry Truman.
And it wasn’t just the money — the Manhattan Project was a law unto itself. They took the land they wanted for Hanford by confiscating family farms with as little as two week’s notice. And anyone working there who was suspected of loose lips was quietly disappeared to who knows where.
I know this because my parents both worked there beginning in 1944, and I grew up there. I don’t know what it was like at Oak Ridge. But I think it’s not a reach to say that a lot more questions would have been asked about the Project if it hadn’t been such a spectacular success.
The first bomb was a uranium bomb, made from material produced at Oak Ridge, TN. The second bomb was a plutonium bomb, made with material produced at Hanford, WA. They were essentially two different projects with two different technologies at two different facilities, and the success of the first had little predictive value for the success of the second.
I really think you should explain and justify your point of view on the NSA and terrorism before we get to arguing about nuclear war.
What’s “obviously loony” about antiwar.com? War seems much loonier/more loony.
Sensationalist headlines and 90s-era web design?
I’m on your side here, but that website is definitely questionable.
Plus, simply poor writing and logic. Here is a recent example. The headline says, “Robert Gates on How Israel & Saudi Arabia Pressure US into Wars of Choice.”
It describes parts of Gates’ memoir in which Israel asks the US to bomb a nuclear reactor in Syria, and Saudi Arabia asked the US to topple the government in Iran. The author says Gates “write[s] frankly about how U.S. interests are subordinated to those of our weaker allies.” So with this as the thesis – basically that the US does what those countries tell us to do – one would expect that the US bombings of Syria and toppling of the government in Iran would be powerful evidence of who really runs American foreign policy…
Except the US didn’t do either one of those things. We have a blog article focused on the premise that the US is being entangled into alliances that force us to do things we don’t want to do; and uses two events as examples where the US did NOT do things that those countries wanted us to do.
It’s this kind of poor reasoning, combined with isolationist dogwhistle themes of “entangling alliances” and “unprovoked war” that lead me to believe that the site has no credibility (other than its links to actual news items from reputable sources).
Plus, I’m willing to bet that they are probably misconstruing what Gates wrote anyway, but I don’t know that for a fact because I haven’t yet read his book. But I bet you I’m right.
At the end of the summer, the calls were coming in to Congressional offices at a 10-1 ratio against intervention. It’s still not a settled issue, however. The War Party doesn’t give up that easily.
The site’s writers invoke non-intervention rather than isolationism. What are those dogwhistles? The US is unwisely involved in entangling alliances, that lead to unprovoked wars.
Israel isn’t signatory to the NNPT, they have no obligation to abide by it.
Exactly.
There’s nothing sinister about choosing not to sign a treaty.
Can you cite the claim that Israel’s weapons came from information “stolen” from the U.S.?
I didn’t sign any of the laws for the jurisdiction I’m in. Am I not obligated to follow them?
Right, it’s the stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction that is sinister, the treaty is irrelevant.
The law and morality are orthogonal, it is a fallacy to conflate them.
Yeah, it’s pretty much settled. Unless something totally unexpected happens, we aren’t going to war in Syria in the foreseeable future. This really reminds me of how websites (like antiwar.com) predicted seven of the last zero invasions of Iran. I don’t know why they did so, but it was either to throw red meat to its readership that wants to be angry over something; or it was because they actually believed that the US was going to invade Iran… which doesn’t speak well for their expertise on international issues.
There’s another dog whistle for you. There is no “War Party.”
Oh, like the throwing around “non-interventionism” and “entangling alliances” when what is really meant is “blame the US for everything” and “the world would be peaceful if not for US imperialism.” You know, codewords that sound nice if you don’t pay too much attention, but become ludicrous upon any closer examination.
There is no alliance that has brought us in to an unprovoked war. I can’t think of a single war that the United States has been dragged into by an alliance we have – we’ve jumped into each of our wars with great aplomb.
Shifting back toward the thread topic:
Lousy corporate subsidies! If American companies want foreign industrial secrets, let them get off their butts and hire their own spies to steal them…
Is it possible that Siemens, and the other alleged targets of the NSA’s industrial espionage, may merit such surveillance given that their products may be uniquely valuable to various enemies of the US?
A prime example of this is illustrated by the “Toshiba scandal” of the 1980’s, when advanced, uniquely engineered products made by Toshiba wound up in the hands of the Soviets (for use in their nuclear subs’ propellers).
I’m only vaguely familiar with that event. In what way were the products in question “uniquely valuable” to the USSR?
I remember a story from a decade or so ago, about Saddam Hussein trying to get the (then new) Pentium 4 processors for use in some missile technology. Intel refused to sell them to him, citing national security concerns (or something, this was an urban legend when I heard it, and who knows how much is true).
So apparently Saddam just went to the local version of Walmart and bought thousands of Sony Playstation 2s instead. 
Anyway, I just checked, and PS2s didn’t have Pentium processors at all. Does anybody know if there was any truth in this story at all?
I think the “moral” is that you can’t really control technology in that sense. If the technology exists, it will be used by your enemies whether you want them to have it or not. Certainly nukes didn’t seem hard for every country that wanted one to make, despite all our secrecy. So I doubt the NSA will have any effect on suppressing civilian technology of any sort. It is just an excuse for being corporate espionage puppets.