Though I am ambivalent about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, since it was a deliberate and mass-scale killing of civilians, several people in that thread raise some very good points about the benefits of dropping the bomb.
But, if we are all to agree that it is sometimes OK (i.e. on the balance beneficial) to deliberately target and kill civilians, then we should agree that sometimes it is OK (i.e. on the balance beneficial) to blow up people in a marketplace or blow up a bus.
Of course, we might not agree on the reasons behind every bus bombing, but that should not invalidate bus bombing as a method of achieving certain goals.
Because, for people who are OK with the Hiroshima bombing, to them, nuking a city full of civilians is a valid method of achieving certain goals. They might not agree with the reasons behind every nuking of a city, but they accept nuking cities as a valid way to achieve strategic goals.
However, our society makes it as though suicide bombers are some sub-human scum for even thinking about blowing up civilians, whereas it considers the generals and politicians who decide to drop a nuclear bomb as reasonable people who had to make a regrettable, but justified, decision.
In my mind, either they are both sub-human scum, or they are both reasonable humans who make regrettable, but justified, decisions.
Blowing away a city (and morally, is there a difference between the fire-bombing of Tokyo or Dresden and using a nuclear weapon?) removes a lot of infrastructure that keeps a war mobilization going.
Blowing up a bus full of civilians achieves no goal other than terror.
Well, to be fair, the goal of terror is to force political leaders to capitulate – which is a sort of military goal. I’m with you that it doesn’t work very often, but never?
So what? If the resulting terror helps whoever blew the bus up to achieve their ultimate goal, why is “causing terror to achieve a goal” less valid than “remove infrastructure to achieve a goal”?
And, in any case, the purpose of the bombing of Hiroshima was mainly to cause terror (i.e. scare the living shit out of the Japanese and make them surrender)
Ok for who? I certainly don’t want to be blown up in a marketplace any more than I want an atomic bomb dropped on me.
The flaw in your argument is that it doesn’t matter what is “ok” when you are at war. You do whatever it takes to win.
What makes terrorists “sub-human scum” is that the people they target don’t even know they are at war. The Japanese had the expectation, after bombing Pearl Harbor and taking a bunch of Pacific Islands, that we would probably take issue with that. A bunch of random people on a train or bus most likely have little to nothing to do with whatever beef the terrorists have. Who was America at war with on 9/11? A bunch of radical Islamic fundamentalists who decided to take issue with the US? Does anyone who feels they are on the short end of a countries international policy have a right to kill 50 random people?
Hiroshima was a major military garrison established some time in the latter half of the 1800’s. The city itself housed military installations and heavy industries supported both the army and the navy. By the standards of the day it was a legitimate target. By the standards of today, at least by the standards of most civilized peoples, the indiscriminate targetting of civilians is no longer acceptable.
Because that infrastructure (the factories, port, trainyards) were targets with military value.
You analogy would hold if someone were to suicide bomb, for example, a plant making stealth bombers, and in that bombing killed civilians. I think in that case, the suicide bombing would would be a legitimate tactic of war.
So, in your opinion, during war, anything we do is morally OK?
Also, who decides if we are “at war”? I’m sure many British people living in England did not realize or consider that they were “at war” when the various British colonies starting rebelling against them in far away lands across the world. Yet, Britain was at war, and by your argument, anyone from the rebelling colonies could have killed civilians on British soil, since “[during war] You do whatever it takes to win.”
What difference does it make if the people being bombed knew they were at war or not? Is there some rule that says “you shall only kill people who know or agree that they are at war”?
Your example of 9/11 is irrelevant. As I said, we might not agree with the reasons behind every terrorist attack, but that doesn’t make terrorist attacks less valid (if we agree that nuking Hiroshima was OK)
And finally, just as you are able to say that “[during war] you do whatever it takes to win”, someone can just as easily say “you do whatever it takes to win, period”. Why is this less valid?
It might destroy infrastructure, but the main goal in Dresden-type bombings was to break the population’s morale, not to destroy stuff. If it weren’t the case, other means than a fire-bombing would have been used, like targeting said infrastructure instead of the residential districts. It wasn’t necessary, either to make sure that the fire would spread as much as possible and would be unstoppable, to create purposefully lethal heat waves, nor to involve in the method used a second wawe intended to kill the firemen, etc…
It was clearly a terror action. The famous quote about US and british generals being executed for war crimes had they lost the war certainly wasn’t uncalled for.
The deliberate targeting of civilian populations (as primary targets, as “collateral damages”, a ratio of some dozen civilian victims to take out one guy seems still acceptable) has come to be considered unnaceptable, but honestly, I don’t think it’s safe to assume it won’t ever be done again if push comes to shove.
Doesn’t make sense. I’m a jihadi and I decide I’m at war with the USA. Then anything goes? Why would this reasonning apply to states (apparently), but not, say, to independance movements or other organized groups?
This reasonning is a perfect justification for bombing buses in Tel-Aviv, since the guys ordering them definitely think they’e at war with Israel. Would blowing up buses be an acceptable tactic for the US army, in your opinion?
If the U.S., in the next couple of years, was in a war in which it needed to nuke a city in a foreign country in order to win (or avoid very large numbers of American casualties), do you think that most Americans who support the Hiroshima decision would oppose the nuking of this city because “by the standards of today, at least by the standards of most civilized peoples, the indiscriminate targetting of civilians is no longer acceptable”?
I think not. I think Americans would support it in the future, as they did in the past.
Nothing has changed. It’s just that today, 2005, the U.S. has no need for “indiscriminate targetting of civilians”, so it doesn’t do it, and some people attribute past actions to “the standards of the day”.
If it sees the need to do it in the future, it will do so. (Just as most other countries, I’m not singling out the U.S.).
I really don’t believe that by today’s standards in the case of a war of survival that the targeting of civilians is all that unacceptable. And I protest the use of the word “indiscriminate” in the case of Hiroshima.
As to suicide bombing, I tend to agree with the OP. I don’t think that it is particularly effective as a means of gaining an end, but I don’t have the luxury of choosing what tactics an enemy decides are in his interests.
It being a military center was an added bonus, not a primary motive. A long as you’re going to destroy a city, why not take out on that also houses military installations? If it had been the primary purpose, why was the second bombinb been carried out despite the fact that the original target couldn’t be reached (Nagasaki wasn’t the intended target)?
Besides, the statements of the people who made the choice of using the A bomb show clearly that their intent wasn’t to destroy some military garrison. Nobody ever argued it was the reason motivating the decision.
Searching for alternative explanations very remotely more morally justifiable when the real reasons are well known is just nonsentical. What’s the point, exactly? Being able to stae : “they’re scum but we weren’t ever” by drawing an arbitrary line in the sand in such a convoluted way that “us” is always on the good side, and “them” preferably never are?
These are very muddy waters. What is acceptable and what isn’t morally speaking isn’t clear at all, in almost all cases very arbitrary, changed over time (and might change again), and is heavily influenced by who (friend or foe) is/was doing the bad stuff.
I’ll skip a debate about the morality of war. Killing civilians is usually considered an unavoidable consequence of war, but it’s not the intent. Killing unsuspecting innocents is the point of blowing up a bus. It’s not a huge difference, but I do think it’s a difference.
Even as a hypothetical, this is an appalling statement.
This was SOP in WWII. If the target couldn’t be bombed, and the target was in Germany, for example, then a target of opportunity was chosen and there was no particular emphasis on military installations in the choice.
The entire WWII strategic bombing campaign in Europe was based on the plan by the British Air Ministry to ruin the morale of German industrial workers by continuous day and night bombing.
And if we agree to the latter, then it’s only logical to take any terror threat issued by any crankcase in the world as a cause for immediate military action in that region, because who knows, what if they really mean it? Remember, how ObL announced war, but we didn’t care?
War is to be undertaken very gingerly. That’s why over centuries there was a lot of diplomatic song and dance before hostilities became inevitable. Of course, once the battle is joined, gradually it could become more and more horrific (like in XX century, but not always in other times). Terror bombings of WWII became acceptable after years of bloodshed on both sides.
Terrorists dispense with all the safety mechanisms developed by states to minimize chances of war. Those safety mechanisms might look like a joke sometimes, but they also might be preventing a whole lot more slaughter then we can ever imagine.
If we grant legitimacy to terrorists actions, we also grant legitimacy to wanton abuse of power by our own military.