Hiroshima was a terrorist act

Great Debates
1

(Note: This thread was originally posted on February 11th at about 11am EST, a day that shall live in infamy. cckerberos, smiling bandit, Spiritus Mundi, David Simmons, SuaSponte, kniz, and lucwarm all posted replies. Although their responses may have been lost forever, but I had prepared a reply to each of them, and discovered the board down when I attempted to post that reply. So, here goes again…)

Proposition: The US action of dropping atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of terrorism.

I really hate the thought that it was, but I find it difficult to construct a rational argument that it was not.

If you define terrorism as the use of offensive tactics in a war or conflict that target civilians with the intent of raising fear among a broader civilian population as a means of coercion, then I can find no way of refuting the above proposition.

Webster’s online dictionary defines terrorism as: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion

But I find that definition as so broad that it could incorporate practically any offensive military tactic, and therefore not representative of the meaning of the word as used in the current context.

Another definition I found on an FBI site says:

“Terrorism is defined as violent or criminal acts against a civilian population for the purpose of coercion, and promoting a political cause or agenda.” Cite

But that doesn’t seem to help any.

The events of 9/11 have stirred much discussions about terrorism and terrorists. In the words of our President, we are at “war against terrorism”. Isn’t that hypocritical?

Perhaps this is a case of the “ends justifying the means”? And if so, must we conclude that our conflict with Al Queda is strictly idealogical, and not based on their tactics (as a “war on terrorism” suggests)?

Or is this simply the case where the winner writes the rules and “spins” the history books?

I would be much appreciative of the dopers to help me understand the error in my reasoning, so that I may reconcile my patriotism with the current “war on terrorism”.

All opinions are welcomed. I think the relatively unbiased opinions of non-Americans may be of particular interest, so if you are not an American citizen, please point that out.

Also, I know that the US has perpetated numerous other acts that some may consider “terrorism”, but I think the Hiroshima example is powerful because it was “official” and “overt”, and I hope the thread doesn’t bog down in discussions of other covert US actions.

FYI, you may find this OpEd piece interesting, as it discusses some of the same issues. And When is killing non-combatants justified? (7 replies) and Is the United States Gov’t Terrorist? (15 replies) are two recent threads that touched on the same subject. Neither thread came to any solid conclusions.

I note that in the last thread, one of our highly esteemed CSR moderators, C K Dexter Haven, was asked the question directly, but failed to provide a direct answer.

So, what is the straight dope?

2

Thank you each for sharing your wisdom and insight.

cckerberos: Couldn’t the same be said of the 9/11 terrorists, that the message they were trying to send was to our government, and not its people. Further, that the purpose was to instill fear in the general population to coerce the government?

smiling bandit: You mention there is a difference, I’m willing to accept that. But can you clarify what the difference is? Both attacks targeted an unwitting civilian populace, and both were deliberate. Both attacks were carried out by “soldiers” of a declared cause. Al Queda certainly trained as a military. Are you suggesting that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not terrorism simply because it was a tactic to end the war? Or, as your first phrase infers, they were both terrorism? If so, what about my other questions in the OP?

Spiritus Mundi: How do you define terrorism? I accept most of your post as fact (war is hell), but with your last sentence, are you suggesting that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were carried out as they were to limit supplies? Please clarify, since I accept supply lines and industrial capacity as legitimate military targets, even if some collateral civilian casualties are to be expected.

David Simmons: I hope you didn’t take offense to my question. I am comfortable considering you a war hero, even if you don’t consider yourself such, so I mean no disrespect. And I’m not really wringing my hands over Hiroshima, I’m more concerned with what appears to be war rhetoric and propoganda with our current “war” (and that’s not to say that rhetoric and propoganda doesn’t have its place, I just like to know if I’m being snowed).

I do see a significant difference between conventional airraids versus atomic weapons. In WWII, these broad airraids, like Tokyo or Dresden, were carried out by tens/hundreds (thousands?) of planes, which provided warning to those on the ground to seek shelter. Personally, I was unaware of any tactics, such as you describe, specifically targeting civilians (as opposed to collateral damage from bombs that were not particularly accurate). And I would still ask: Is my question fair?

SuaSponte: As usual, a balanced and articulate post. If I understand your point, it is not that the tactics, in a moral sense, were all that different. But that it all has to do with context. Given a similar situation today (which is essentially implausible), a use of atomic weapons such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be despicable.

But I would like to analyze each of your points. Your first one justifies the bombing due to civilian targets involved in wartime production. Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki really targeted due to wartime production capabilities? My understanding was that Japan’s war machine was already decimated, but that cultural issues prevented the “hawks” from seriously considering surrender. Further, I’m sure you would acknowledge that there were other tactics available to the US, such as a demonstration blast. Was it really a legitimate war tactic?

I fully accept your second point, and agree that I would not ask if it were “terrorism” had the targets been military. Considering, at the time, the US was the only nuclear power, what made it an acceptable tactic then?

If I accepted your third point, what would be the difference between terrorism and war crimes? And further, perhaps more interesting, if the US had not been victors in WWII, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, do you think the (a) world court would convict Truman of war crimes?

I think your fourth point is the strongest, but I am unclear on some of the facts you use to support it. Was the use of mustard gas in WWI targeted at civilians? I understand that chemical weapons were used in the Iran/Iraq war, and if not targeted at civilians, used indiscriminately enough that the difference is moot - wasn’t that terrorism?

I can certainly understand the evolution of sensibilities. Are you suggesting that the criteria to assess whether an act was terroristic is not objective, rather subjective, and must take the current environment into account? And finally, even in some distant future, if non-lethal weapons are targeted at civilian populations to instill fear and coerce political ojectives, isn’t that still terrorism? (I promise not to take a position that terrorism is never strategically successful.)

kniz: Sherman was a terrorist, even with Sua’s evolution of sensibilities, IMHO. If someone wishes to debate this point, please start another thread.

lucwarm: So I presume you are not interested in modifying (any one of) my definition(s) of terrorism to exclude acts conducted by governments. So what is your take on the OP?

To All: Is the point worthy of debate, or is it fair to suggest that the use of “terrorism” in our current “war” is as much rhetoric and propoganda as anything else?

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By these definitions, all war is terrorism, since it is the use of violence to achieve some political goal. In that context, Hirosima was no better or worse than any other event in that war.

Everyone whines about Hiroshima, but nobody mentions Nanking.

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I’m a Canadian, for the record. I’ve argued in another thread (now lost) that Hiroshima was an unjustified act of war, because it targeted thousands of civilians and because we now know that Japan was already trying to negociate a surrender, and that Truman knew this, according to his diary entry for July 18, 1945. This is disturbing, since the usual justification for Hiroshima is that it was necessary for peace.

What was really at issue was the Japanese emperor. Truman wanted him gone, and wasn’t prepared to compromise on the issue. Japan was ready to negotiate a surrender if it could keep its emperor. In the end, after dropping two nuclear bombs, America decided to let Japan keep its emperor anyway.

You don’t have to go that far back to find American activities that “blur the line” of terrorism. On September 11, 1973, in Santiago, Chile, the CIA helped overthrow President Salvador Allende and replace him with the brutal military dictator General Pinochet. Pinochet and his CIA accomplices launched a few planes into the presidential palace. The death toll of the actual event was much smaller than on Sept. 11, but Pinochet’s regime was brutal. (My primary source for this is Le Monde Diplomatique for October 2001. Sorry – I don’t have an Internet cite for it).

There are people, also, who consider America’s involvement in Vietnam an act of terrorism. America didn’t really have a reason to be there. Quite a few maneouvers in Vietnam caused more than a little suffering for the civilian population there.

And – lest we forget – about twenty years ago, Osama bin Laden was considered a “freedom fighter.” Bin Laden was every bit the terrorist then that he is now, he was a terrorist against the right people.

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Actually, we don’t. This has also been covered in several earlier threads. There was a faction of the Japanese government that was looking to send out feelers to see what terms they could get. Those messages came (with multiple translations blurring the already vague message) through the Soviets and Switzerland.

The idea that the “only” term that Japan wanted was the preservation of the Emperor is disingenuous. The Japanese never conveyed that to the U.S. in anything resembling a clear statement.

There is also the point that needs to be remembered that the peace feelers did not originate with Hirohito or Tojo. There is no reason for the U.S. to have believed then (or for us to accept, now), that there was a clear intent on the part of the Japanese government to end the war.

I am not claiming that all the mistakes were made solely on the part of Japan and its emissaries. The U.S. had a tradition dating back to “Unconditional Surrender” Grant of demanding unconditional surrender.

However, the best evidence seems to indicate a series of tragic screw-ups rather than a deliberate effort to refuse Japan’s surrender until we could practice our nuclear weaponry.

(If you want to make a case for terrorism, I think Nagasaki provides a better example, although it, too, has to be placed in the context of Japanese officers refusing to consider surrender (and actually staging an attempted coup to prevent the surrender from going forward). )

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Yes, you understand my point.

[Sua trying to be cute] “Decimated” literally means “1/10 destroyed.” Seriously, your understanding that Japan’s war production potential had already been effectively eliminated is probably wrong. Aerial bombing in WWII was not very accurate or effective. Remember that Germany’s production of war materials reached its peak in 1943 and 1944, after years of heavy US and British aerial bombardment. There’s a reason that the parties in WWII bombed civilian targets - no one could effectively hit the military ones.

As for the demonstration blast idea, I think the reasons for not doing it were tactically sound. First, the fact that one bomb was tested successfully was no guarantee that the other 2 wouldn’t be duds (particularly as they differed in design). If the US had announced to Japan that they were going to demonstrate a “superweapon” and the frigging thing didn’t work, it would have had the opposite effect than than intended.
Second, what if the US had an effective demonstration, and Japan didn’t blink? There would have only been one bomb left to use on Japan, and likely months before another was assembled.

Sorry, I can’t clearly recall my second point.

One may argue that war crimes are a subset of terrorism, but I would argue that there are differences. War and terrorism are different - on occasion war is both justifiable and necessary, while terrorism never is.
In any event, war crimes are terms defined under international law - they are events in which the offending party has violated the agreed rules of war and international norms.

I don’t know if mustard gas was used against civilian populations in WWI. Given the lack of control you have when you release a gas into the air, I would be pretty surprised if there weren’t civilian casualties from mustard gas. Iraq has used chemical weapons against both civilian targets and mixed targets.
As for whether or not that was terrorism, I’d personally call Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians as “genocide”.
But anyway, I think this is an issue of semantics, but a rather important one. “Terrorism” is already being overused today, and broadening the definition to include just about every military tactic diminishes the impact of the word.

Absolutely, I think that the criteria of “terrorism” is subjective. And I think that that’s a good thing. ‘Terrorism’ didn’t exist as a word in the English language until 1795 and the French Revolution.
We’ve gone from killing all the males of a tribe or nation and enslavement of the women being the norm to anathema. To apply current morality to past events is silly. Hell, the military leader who, way back when, decided to enslave the males of the defeated tribe rather than massacring them should rightly still be considered “merciful” today - he acted in a more humane manner than the norm for the time.

Sua

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I’m not sure where you’re getting your revisionist history from but you’ve got it wrong. Japan wanted a helluva lot more than just to keep their emperor in a negotiated surrender. They wanted to keep maintain many of their ill-gottnen gains from the war as well as maintain their existing government (of which the emperor wasn’t really in control of anyway). Towards this end, to 'encourage, the US to accept those demands, the Japanese were preparing a tough homeland defense where every man, woman and child could become a potential combatant. Much of their preparation fo the populace was to use them as kamikazee/suicide attackers. The Japanese government was also planning to kill all American POWs if the US invaded the mainland.

After the second atom bomb was dropped it was the emperor who forced an unconditional surrender on his government and some elements attepmted a coup to overthrow the emperor with the intent to continue the war. Fortunately they were unsuccessful.

There are varyong estimates for how many casualties would have occurred had the US invaded Japan proper. The rosiest estimates about equal how many were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Worse estimates put casualties (both sides) at over ten times what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As hideous as the things are dropping the a-bombs on Japan were ultimately more of a ‘good’ thing than a bad thing. I use the word ‘good’ here in the sense that it was the least of many evils to choose from. Additionally, it is probably best for the world that it saw such weapons used in anger. If that hadn’t been the case I shudder to think what might have happened in crisis such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not knowing the full horror of such weapons first hand the US or USSR might have been more willing to give them a try at that point.

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(I am Canadian)

I agree with the above definition of terrorism, so from my perspective, dropping the bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki were terrorist acts. In fact I would go so far as to say all offensive military tactics that harm, or are a threat to civilians are terrorist. (I would also include politically motivated acts that are not specifically military in nature, where civilian casualties are expected or at least probable - i.e. an engineered famine, or economic sanctions that lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths) To me, the argument that the end justifies the means may be true on a case by case basis, (i.e. fighting the nazis - civilian casualties obviously expected in that kind of war - although Dresden, etc. in my view was way over the line) however, that does not change the name of the tactic. Justifiable homocide (self defense) is still refered to as homocide. I think we should be honest with ourselves about this kind of thing, so decisions that lead to these actions are not taken lightly.

Unfortunately, there have been times when terrorism has been necessary, although I would submit that most, if not all of these situations could have been prevented by strategically placed long term thoughts. (I must admit, though, I am speaking with the benefit of hindsight)

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I’d be interested to hear what hindsight we now have could have avoided war altogether with Japan. Do we go all the way back to Perry and gunboat diplomacy? Can you state what the outcomes of that would have been had the US not forced Japan’s doors open? We can certainly speculate but I’m sure instances for a better world could be thought up as well as instances for a worse world.

Even at the end of WWII many options for subduing Japan were proposed and pondered over including just blockading them and waiting them out. For various reasons the dropping of the a-bombs was considered the best option for more reasons than the US just wanted some payback.

Even in hindsight, once the US was at that crossroads, I don’t see a better option. Not for the US, its allies OR Japan. It is VERY possible and supportable that dropping the atomic bombs saved more lives than they killed. How does that measure up as a terrorist act? Don’t forget there was a very real threat of a Soviet invasion of Japan looming as well (the Russians still possess some clearly Japanese islands to this day).

Even armchair quarterbacking with the benefit of 50 years of hindsight is too difficult to see how the world could have been made a safer, happier place at that time.

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The only thing that that entry says regarding Japanese negotiations is that Truman was told by Churchill that he had been told by Stalin that he had received a telegram regarding peace. There were some who sought to get the Russians to mediate a settlement between Japan and the US, but Stalin had absolutely no intention of doing so. Furthermore, the Japanese insisted on conditions that were completely absurd. (More on this in a moment.) The Japanese diplomatic attempts in this regard were pretty much limited to the ambassador in Moscow attempting to meet with Foreign Minister Molotov, who was completely ignoring him.

They most certainly were not. The Japanese conditions for ending the war included that there be no occupation of Japan or war crimes trials, and that the generals running the government be allowed to remain in power. No sane leader would accept those terms in Truman’s position, as it’s pretty clear that as soon as they rebuild the country, they’re just going to attack again. (Can you imagine the Allies in Europe pulling out of Germany immediately after their surrender, not even removing the Nazis from power?) The generals would never accept the surrender offered by the United States, instead preferring that the entire population of Japan fight to the death. It was better for the Japanese people to be wiped out rather than surrender, as far as they were concerned.

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I tend to agree with SuaSponte and disagree with Payne N. Diaz on the point that all war is terrorism. If it were, the phrase “war on terrorism” would be a complete oxymoron. As I understand it, the significant difference is the targeting of civilians.

To suggest otherwise completely undermines any use of the term “terrorism” as providing any semantic context. So I reject that the definition of terrorism is “the use of violence to achieve some political goal”.

Hamish: Then you would tend to agree that the “war on terrorism” is more rhetoric and propaganda than anything else, right? At least in the sense that you believe the US uses “terrorism” when it can morally justify the end result.

I don’t specifically recall your third point (to which this corresponds), but I would not have equated war crimes and terrorism. I would disagree that war crimes are a subset or terrorism. I would argue the opposite - that terrorism is a subset of war crimes.

When your enemy uses Guerilla tactics (which I accept as not being terrorism, and an otherwise valid war tactic), it is often difficult to determine a combatant from a non-combatant. And that may be justification for significantly higher non-combatant (civilian) deaths. But purposely targeting civilians could not be justified. Further, an incident in which women and children were slaughtered, but not for the purpose of coercing the general population, would be a war crime, not terrorism.

I generally accept all your points, but really struggle with this one. I can understand that the criteria for whether or not terrorism is justified is contextual and subjective, but I can’t quite fathom that the concept of terrorism is subjective.

If we accepted the definition offered by the FBI website quoted in the OP, I can’t find any subjective nature to it. And it seems a reasonable definition to describe current use of the term. Could you offer your definition? Is it something like “a particularly egregious use of force in an armed conflict deemed unacceptable by contemporary standards”? I find that just a little too convenient.

The historical record shows quite clearly that Truman felt that the deliberate killing of civilians was morally reprehensible. What changes have occured in the past 60 years that leads you to conclude that the act should not be considered terrorism under then contemporary standards?

And generally, folks, despite the thread title (used to draw attention), the OP isn’t looking for whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified - I’m generally OK with that. But I think it was terrorism, and find our current stance hypocritical. Arguments supporting that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified are uninteresting, IMHO, arguments that they were/were not terrorism is of interest.

Although I hate to argue both sides of the OP, it would seem that one reasonable distinction is that the use of terrorism by the US was justified simply because we were fighting an enemy that regularly used tactics in violation of international laws of warfare. Could that be the significant difference between Hiroshima/Nagasaki and 9/11?

And thanks, im_a_loser, I think you addressed the issue proposed in the OP directly, and our thinking is mostly consistent. Can I conclude that you believe the current “war on terrorism” is overly simplistic or hypocritical?

12

The U.S. could have surrendered, thereby saving more lives than any other option. The U.S. decided that winning was more important than people’s lives (as any sane nation would).

What is the difference between civilians dying because they were specifically targeted and civilians dying as a result of attacks on military targets? I see no difference if the end result is the same. A popular maxim comes to mind here, about intentions, paved roads, and hot places.

And, referring to the 9-11 attacks, were they specifically targeting civilians or were they targeting the biggest economic structure(s) in the Western world (and also an important military target [the Pentagon])?

In my opinion, both the nuclear attacks on Japan and the 9-11 attacks were acts of war, not terrorism.

13

Who says we have to accept the FBI’s definition? As this thread alone demonstrates, it is an altogether vague and useless one.
As for my own definition, I don’t have one, and don’t feel the need for one. Elements of terrorism for me include (i) deliberately aimed at civilians, and (ii) without warning. I find it a very different thing to bomb a weapons plant during a war and hitting some neighboring homes and planting a car bomb on a street.

Because I see terrorism and war as separate things. The Palestinians sniping at Israeli soldiers are combatants, even if one of their shots goes astray and hits a civilian; the Palestinians who wander into a pizza parlor and blow themselves up are terrorists - even though their goals are the same. To my mind, the terms apply even if the sniper was an exceptionally bad shot and hit more civiians than soldiers, or if the suicide bomber didn’t hurt anybody.
So Truman dropped an exceptionally powerful bomb on an enemy city, killing both military and civilian personnel. It would be considered “terrorism” (or “war crimes”) now because we know what the full effects of atomic bombs are, and we also have evolved as a society. It wasn’t terrorism (or a war crime) then. Accept that or not.

This, with all due respect, is stupid. If my great-grandfather owned slaves and vigorously fought against emancipation, would my support for civil rights be “hypocritical”? Hell, we can utterly ignore Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where there are legitimate debate points on both sides. Let’s talk about the American genocide of Native Americans. No real debate there; the US was utterly in the wrong (as were you Canadians) - depending on semantics, the campaigns against Native Americans were “terrorism”.
But what has that got to do with anything? Should the US and Canada have avoided WWII because they were morally compromised by their history?

24 years before I was born, the US government, in a morally questionable decision, dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. What is the relevance to the “war on terrorism”? If Truman were President today, perhaps he should think twice about his moral position in directing the attack on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. But he’s dead, and the people running the US today have learned that dropping A-bombs is a Bad Thing.

What is happening now is the US has been attacked, and further attacks are possible or likely. The US is trying to preempt further attacks. Debate on tactics is certainly possible, as well as debate on whether the ideological goals of the terrorists, if sought by non-violent means, or violent means that fell within what is considered acceptable by the international community. But the strategy of trying to prevent further loss of civilian life seems to me beyond question - indeed, it would be an abrogation of the purpose of government, any government, to do otherwise.

Sua

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Just a point of clarification:

Are we defining terrorism in this thread in the context of 2001/2002?

Does any concept of September 11 infiltrate the mind in this thread?

Are we talking terrorism within a context of a declared (world) war, or as terrorism is used today by extremist groups outside of what was defined as war back in 1945?

I think any discussion is best when defined within the context of the event, and not apply 2002 attitudes, definitions and attitudes. After all, as mentioned earlier in this thread what about Nanking, of even Changi Prison? For some reason, Americans don’t seem to know about either. Then again, when the movie Paradise Road came out in 1997, it was poo-pooed by American audiences. Japanese atrocities and “terrorism” seems to escape history …

15

This comment is easily one of the most ridiculous assertions ever made on this issue.

Evidently, you are unaware of the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during their conduct of World War II. You could very well start by learning that Japan was already in a war by the time they attacked the United States. You could also learn that the Japanese military specifically targeted civilians in China, Singapore, Manchuria, etc. for punishment and death. You could also learn that the Japanese military abused Prisoners of War. There is zero evidence that Japan would not have conducted itself in a similar fashion had it won that war.

Ignoring the bigoted comment about the country that did a heck of a lot to save the world in that war, I’ll address the FACT that the United States and its allies (who, btw, were damn glad to have us in the war on their side) were not out to win at any cost. This country and its allies were out to prevent a power-mad government (Japan) from even being in the position to launch an attack such as the one on Pearl Harbor. That’s also why the US and its allies continued to fight against Hitler even after Germany was evicted from the lands it had occupied. The reason that the conduct of the peace after the 2nd world war was different than after the 1st is so the defeated nations would not be in the position of oppressed nations. The victors assisted the defeated to rebuild.

You must willfully delude yourself, then, that said military targets were devoid of military targets. Since A=A, your stated opinion is bunk.

Popular does not equal correct.

WTF do you think a non-military target is? The World Trade Center was a civilian target. The Pentagon is obviously a military target. Now that’s out of the way, exactly which country issued the declaration of war and which Soldiers of which Geneva Convention-recognized armed forces carried out those attacks?

Your opinion has already been proven to be bunk. This latest comment of yours does nothing to prove it’s not.

16

Oh Boy.

I think that the aerial bombing of a city is, if not always strictly terroristic, not the sort of thing which should be considered normal, acceptable warfare. But when you’re talking about the regime responsible for the Rape of Nanking, “lesser of multiple evils” arguments do come into play.

I would say that bombing Hiroshima was probably enough. Bombing Nagasaki was heinous overkill. But what do I know?

As far as the term “terrrorism,” it probably should be reserved for the Robespierres & Stalins rather than being applied to a bunch of desperate, out-of-power militants like Islamic Jihad/Al-Qaeda. But if we mean to call these people terrorists, we must also call the US government terrorist. In fact, since orderly rule generally relies on the threat of violence to the criminal, the traitor, & the invader, “legit” governments are often more effective terrorists than the Al-Qaeda types.

17

Monty, if you’re going to respond to my arguements, please make sense. “ridiculous assertions”, “bigoted comment”, “devoid of military targets”, etc. These all make no sense whatsoever. Not to mention the scarecrow arguements that you built up for me (when did i ever say that a Geneva-convention recognised armed force attacked the US?). Please remove your hate-blinders and look at this from a unbiased perspective.

18

Unlike your post, mine actually did make sense.

Saying the United States was out to win at all costs is the ridiculous assertion. I, along with History, showed that’s not why the United States fought that war to its conclusion.

This refers to your comment regarding the United States being an insane nation.

You asserted that there was no difference between targetting a civilian target and a military target. There is, the military target is the one with the military targets (Soldiers) in it.

That’s right. Your comments made no sense whatsoever.

I did not say you said that. I asked you which one did. Your response is to tell a lie saying I said something that I did not. I also did not attribute any argument to you. I pointed out that what you said was ridiculous.

Since this is not the Pit, I did not give my opinioin of you. I gave my opinion of your ridiculous comments.

What perspective would that be, the one that considers the United States an insane nation?

I don’t accept obvious lies. Your last two postings are not only obvious, but blatant, lies.

19

Monty

That is NOT what you called a ridiculous assertion. You called a ridiculous assertion that if the U.S. had surrendered, less lives would have been lost … no bomb killing civilians, no military fighting = less deaths. Please read my original post.

Actually, i said that the U.S. was a SANE nation. You attributed to me the exact opposite. Please read my original post.

No, i asserted that attacking a civilian target and killing civilians is no different than attacking a military target and killing civilians. Please read my original post.

OK, maybe i did go a little overboard there, but what i really meant to say is: what does that have to do with the price of beer in Chinatown? It was completely unrelated to my arguements. If you ask side-question, please explain why it is important to this discussion, so that i can respond accordingly.

20

While it is unprovable, given that it calls for alternative history, your assertion that, had the US surrendered to Japan, less lives would have been lost, is highly likely to be incorrect - indeed bordering on the ridiculous.

Definitely, less US lives would have been lost. But fighting the US diverted Japanese troops from China, Burma, etc. Given Japan’s atrocious behavior in China, it is highly likely that, had they been able to use the forces committed to fighting the US in China to conquer more (or all) of that country, considerably more Chinese civilians would have been slaughtered than all of the casualties from US-Japanese fighting.

And, of course, Japan may well have been able to invade and conquer at least portions of India, adding that many more people for the Japanese to kill.

Sua