Why use the atomic bomb on Japan?

[swansont]

18 minutes ago, MSC said:

On A) Whether or not the bombing of Japan was needed to end the war and B) Whether or not the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons is justified and morally permissable. 

Needed? No. Needed to force a quick end? Yes. As others have pointed out, a lot of people would have died if the war dragged on, even with no invasion. I think the justifications are sufficient to support the decision. The Allies wanted an unconditional surrender, and needed to force the issue for it to happen quickly.

I think B) is moot; justification is not really an issue. Others are stealing the information, and the control of the raw materials is diverse, not concentrated. The US has laws in place to try and keep such technology from spreading, but there’s no “decision” here except on the part of the bad actors who are facilitating the proliferation. And they are not worried about the morality, nor are they under anyone’s control who do worry about the morality.

[MSC]

On 4/23/2024 at 6:29 PM, J.C.MacSwell said:

Nuclear weapons are the deterrent to nuclear weapons. Eliminating your nuclear weapons is putting your guard down.

 

Statistically false; most countries don't have nuclear weapons, getting nuclear weapons reduces national security by making a country a target for countries that do have them and because of that fact, nuclear weapons are ineffective and dettering countries that don't have them, from building them. 

A simple probabiltiy calculation makes it all but certain that the more countries that have them over long periods of time would suggest that nuclear war is inevitable.

The majority of nations with nuclear weapons are either ex empires or new economic empires.

When a nuclear power engages in conventional warfare with a non nuclear power, more often than not the threat of a nuclear strike renders the non nuclear power completely incapable of fighting the nuclear power on equal footings as they can only defend their territory and cannot strike their aggressors in their home. 

At this point; it seems like most nuclear powers only have them because they fear retribution from the countries that they have exploited or it is a country that is sick of being exploited or is attempting to keep it's form of human rights violating governance in power. 

22 hours ago, toucana said:

I came upon a passage  the other day which reminded me of an issue now mostly forgotten, but one which was very important to Allied military planners back in 1945 as WW2 entered its endgame - and that was the fate of allied POWs and incarcerated civilians who were in the hands of the Japanese throughout the Far East.

http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/liberation_photos.html

Over 190,000 British and Commonwealth troops were taken prisoner by the Japanese during WW2 - many of them when Malaya, Singapore, and Burma were overrun, and some 32,000 Allied POWs were subsequently repatriated directly from Japan itself after the end of the war.

The majority of these prisoners were kept in appalling conditions on starvation diets and and many were worked to death in slave labour camps, like those working on the Thai-Burma Railway at Kanu Camp Thailand, where 60,000 British, Commonwealth and Dutch prisoners worked on the railway, and 16,000 of them perished doing so.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-life-was-like-for-pows-in-the-far-east-during-the-second-world-war

There is some vivid testimony from two such prisoners who later became very well-known novelists. One was the Australian born James Clavell who wrote the screenplay for The Great Escape (1963) and later wrote the first of his ‘Asian trilogy’ novels Shogun (1975) partially around his war-time experiences at Changi prison in Singapore. The other was the British writer J.G. Ballard whose family was interned in the Lunghua internment camp near Shanghai in China, and based his autobiographical novel Empire of The Sun (1984) on childhood memories of life there.

J.G. Ballard incidentally claims that he and other occupants of the Lunghua camp actually saw the flash of the second atomic bomb when it detonated over Nagasaki 500 miles away across the East China Sea on the morning of August 9 1945.

Both of these writers make the point that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 probably saved their own lives and those of countless other POWs and internees, because many of them simply could not have survived the effects of chronic malnutrition they were experiencing at the hands of the Japanese for much longer. They might well have been dead if the war had ended 6 months later.

James Clavell who was living on 110 grams of rice per day, one egg per week and occasional vegetables in Changi prison camp was unable to talk about his wartime experience for 15 years, but later disclosed that for quite some time after, he kept a can of sardines in his pocket at all times, and had to fight the urge to forage for food in rubbish bins.

This is a much stronger argument and is good food for thought. Gonna ponder this one a lot. I don't think it would be fair to say that if you were against the bombing you were for the torture and inhumane treatment. I'm against torture, inhumane treatment and civilian casualties in war. Whether we are discussing the Japanese military torturing POWs and civilians in the places they occupied or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I view them all as war crimes that ought to be tried seperately in a court of law. However once the USA was the only nuclear capable power, it doesn't surprise me no one was in any rush to have the allies tried for any warcrimes they may have committed and that's something I'll need to research before I make any solid claims one way or the other in that regard. 

But yeah, good comment. +1

43 minutes ago, swansont said:

And they are not worried about the morality, nor are they under anyone’s control who do worry about the morality.

Strong point, this is actually where I'd point in explaining why schoolyard politics is just not a good comparison for the simpleat reason, getting the bad actors to de-escalate and disarm and even the "good" actors to do the same because there is no parent, teacher etc to turn to. But I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Has anyone tried calling Putins mother?

[swansont]

7 minutes ago, MSC said:

Statistically false; most countries don't have nuclear weapons, getting nuclear weapons reduces national security by making a country a target for countries that do have them and because of that fact, nuclear weapons are ineffective and dettering countries that don't have them, from building them. 

Deterrence usually means in terms if using them. Statistically they are a deterrent; nobody has used them after more than one country had them.

 

[TheVat]

23 hours ago, toucana said:

Both of these writers make the point that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 probably saved their own lives and those of countless other POWs and internees, because many of them simply could not have survived the effects of chronic malnutrition they were experiencing at the hands of the Japanese for much longer. They might well have been dead if the war had ended 6 months later.

It is the sort of point that dissolves like cheap toilet paper on scrutiny.  To offer a quick exposure of the absurdity, consider the situation of Palestinians especiallly those facing starvation in Gaza.  Clearly, dropping a high-yield nuke on Tel Aviv would save thousands in Gaza from the kind of death you describe.  They will likely be dead if Israel continues its present mode of warfare and obstruction of UN aid for another six months.  And most of them are not soldiers who have had some preparation for facing death - most of them are women and children with zero involvement in any aggression towards Israel.  

Generally, all of these "saving lives" arguments operate on the morally abhorrent principle that "our lives are of more value than their lives, so yeah, let's nuke a whole city full of noncombatants."  

 

[MSC]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Deterrence usually means in terms if using them. Statistically they are a deterrent; nobody has used them after more than one country had them.

 

The caveat is that nobody has used them against another country but they still are used; it seems like every other year there is a nuclear weapons test going on somewhere in the world and I wonder what the cumalative effect of a nuclear weapons test every other year for  few centuries would be. 

It doesn't change the fact that before long there will be some madman who gets their hands on nukes and isn't dettered from using them, then all arguments in favour of their continued use and not taking as fast of a crawl to global zero as possible, will be moot. There are currently as of January 2023 approximately 12,500 nuclear war heads worldwide that we know of. How many of these going off would it take to trigger a full scale nuclear war and how many need to be used to cause a nuclear winter and irradiating most of the planet? When is the expiration date of effective deterrence of nuclear weapons? 

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

If I don't want to suffer, am I devoid of a moral compass?

No, I'd be more worried about your moral compass if you had no capacity to suffer/desire to avoid it, as then you'd be incapable of empathising with the suffering of others.

[Endy0816]

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

 

Generally, all of these "saving lives" arguments operate on the morally abhorrent principle that "our lives are of more value than their lives, so yeah, let's nuke a whole city full of noncombatants."  

 

 

Japanese civilian casualty estimates from Operation Downfall are also much higher.

Perhaps they would have unconditionally surrendered or the invasion forces flagged though. There are several ways events could have played out.

 

[J.C.MacSwell]

5 hours ago, MSC said:

Statistically false; most countries don't have nuclear weapons, getting nuclear weapons reduces national security by making a country a target for countries that do have them and because of that fact, nuclear weapons are ineffective and dettering countries that don't have them, from building them. 

You can disagree, but you need to go some to make the claim that eliminating your nuclear weapons is letting your guard down is "statistically false". It didn't work out for Ukraine, and the jury's still out on any of very few the others that eliminated them.  (or for that matter curtailed any nuclear weapons program, for which your argument would at least make some sense)

[MSC]

2 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

You can disagree, but you need to go some to make the claim that eliminating your nuclear weapons is letting your guard down is "statistically false". It didn't work out for Ukraine, and the jury's still out on any of very few the others that eliminated them.  (or for that matter curtailed any nuclear weapons program, for which your argument would at least make some sense)

That's not the part I was calling statistically false. Nuclear weapons have not in anyway deterred the continued manufacturing and testing of nuclear weapons and there are more countries without them who have similarly not been overrun by the powers that do have them so why does anyone need them? It's a circular argument; "Oh we need Nuclear weapons... because nuclear weapons exists, and because nuclear weapons exist.... we need nuclear weapons."

As for the second claim you made, that it is letting your guard down to get rid of nuclear weapons, there is only one way to test that out. Get people do disarm and see what happens. Now it's for science and ethics. Great job that's a wrap.

2 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

It didn't work out for Ukraine, and the jury's still out on any of very few the others that eliminated them.  (or for that matter curtailed any nuclear weapons program, for which your argument would at least make some sense)

See Switzerland.

Ukraine didn't get invaded by Russia because it doesn't have nukes, it got invaded by Russia because it used to be part of the Soviet union and the soviet union being made anew is Putins idea of a wet dream. 

[toucana]

8 hours ago, TheVat said:

It is the sort of point that dissolves like cheap toilet paper on scrutiny.  To offer a quick exposure of the absurdity, consider the situation of Palestinians especiallly those facing starvation in Gaza.  Clearly, dropping a high-yield nuke on Tel Aviv would save thousands in Gaza from the kind of death you describe.  They will likely be dead if Israel continues its present mode of warfare and obstruction of UN aid for another six months.  And most of them are not soldiers who have had some preparation for facing death - most of them are women and children with zero involvement in any aggression towards Israel.  

Generally, all of these "saving lives" arguments operate on the morally abhorrent principle that "our lives are of more value than their lives, so yeah, let's nuke a whole city full of noncombatants."  

 

Have you considered what would have happened if the allies had gone ahead with the alternative plan B of starving Japan into surrender by means of a naval blockade ? The 32,000 POWs and internees held by the Japanese were already on starvation diets - do you think the Japanese authorities would have made any effort to continue feeding those POWs when they were already making contingency plans to starve a significant proportion of their own non-combatant civilian population to death in order to continue the war ?

I take some issue with the Gaza analogy too. The Pacific war of 1941 - 45 did not take place in the Middle East in 2024. It took place in the context of a lethal struggle against a violent and well armed expansionist Japan whose military leadership systematically ignored every clause of the Geneva Convention, and exhibited a total contempt for any concept of the intrinsic value of human life - an aggressor that routinely murdered captured nurses and other medical staff (as they did in Singapore in February 1942) and whose soldiers murdered upward of 250,000 unarmed Chinese civilians during a six week killing rampage in the city of Nanjing in December 1937, and also murdered another 150,000 unarmed Filipino civilians in Manila during the Battle of Luzon in February 1945.

At a certain point when you are fighting a particular type of enemy, one (as previously noted) with no history of military compromise or surrender in its 2000 year history, then the finer points of moral argument become somewhat moot. You simply have to be prepared to take exceptional measures to break their will to carry on fighting you.

I also take some exception to the implied suggestion that the targets selected for the atom bombs contained nothing but non-combatant civilians. Hiroshima was a major military command centre for the Japanese Second General Army in southern Honshu. It also had a large seaport at Ujina that was used as an embarkation centre for Japanese troops, and housed the Army Marine HQ. The city of Nagasaki was likewise a military seaport, and also the home of the Mitsubishi company who were the principal manufacturers of the deadly ‘Long Lance’ (酸素魚雷) Type 93 torpedo used by the Japanese navy throughout WW2. The Mitsubishi Urakami Torpedo Works were in fact one of the military sites that was completely destroyed by the Nagasaki atom bomb.

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/images/mitsubishi_image.htm

Edited April 27 by toucana
fixed typo 32,000 in para 1 & Mitsubishi in para 4

[MSC]

4 minutes ago, MSC said:

That's not the part I was calling statistically false. Nuclear weapons have not in anyway deterred the continued manufacturing and testing of nuclear weapons

And people can stop moving the goalposts on this too; deterrence ought to mean more than just their use, if it doesn't deter their creation, then eventually they will be used. Nothing is being deterred just delayed. The detterence comes after you use them a bunch, then people forget how bad it was until people are practically foaming at the mouth at the thought of keeping them around and it makes me a little bit sick to be honest. 

4 minutes ago, toucana said:

Have you considered what would have happened if the allies had gone ahead with the alternative plan B of starving Japan into surrender by means of a naval blockade ? The 32,0000 POWs and internees held by the Japanese were already on starvation diets - do you think the Japanese authorities would have made any effort to continue feeding those POWs when they were already making contingency plans to starve a significant proportion of their own non-combatant civilian population to death in order to continue the war ?

I take some issue with the Gaza analogy too. The Pacific war of 1941 - 45 did not take place in the Middle East in 2024. It took place in the context of a lethal struggle against a violent and well armed expansionist Japan whose military leadership systematically ignored every clause of the Geneva Convention, and exhibited a total contempt for any concept of the intrinsic value of human life - an aggressor that routinely murdered captured nurses and other medical staff (as they did in Singapore in February 1942) and whose soldiers murdered upward of 250,000 unarmed Chinese civilians during a six week killing rampage in the city of Nanjing in December 1937, and also murdered another 150,000 unarmed Filipino civilians in Manila during the Battle of Luzon in February 1945.

At a certain point when you are fighting a particular type of enemy, one (as previously noted) with no history of military compromise or surrender in its 2000 year history, then the finer points of moral argument become somewhat moot. You simply have to be prepared to take exceptional measures to break their will to carry on fighting you.

I also take some exception to the implied suggestion that the targets selected for the atom bombs contained nothing but non-combatant civilians. Hiroshima was a major military command centre for the Japanese Second General Army in southern Honshu. It also had a large seaport at Ujina that was used as an embarkation centre for Japanese troops, and housed the Army Marine HQ. The city of Nagasaki was likewise a military seaport, and also the home of the Misubishi company who were the principal manufacturers of the deadly ‘Long Lance’ (酸素魚雷) Type 93 torpedo used by the Japanese navy throughout WW2. The Mitsubishi Urakami Torpedo Works were in fact one of the military sites that was completely destroyed by the Nagasaki atom bomb.

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/images/mitsubishi_image.htm

Take issue all you like; if the bombs had went off where your nation was you'd likely feel differently. But because it happened to the civilians of another country/race to you it just doesn't matter? It was ww2 and most of the world was starving, everyone suffered, but it was winding down, they were about to surrender and then the USA released the most cowardly double sucker punch of all time with the highest kill count and for what? A few points scored on a naval base wow and only tons of innocent civilians and two cities as collateral damage? Wow, amazing. 

This debate is starting to get really boring. 

Crimes carried out by millitaries need to punish the people giving the orders and carrying them out. Whichever side. Can we all just agree that civilian casualties suck and are unfair without having arguments that amount to "What colour or culture were they? Tell me that so i can decide how much I care."

Also where did OP go? Here we are busting our butts having it out and they've gone AWOL!

[TheVat]

58 minutes ago, toucana said:

take some issue with the Gaza analogy too. The Pacific war of 1941 - 45 did not take place in the Middle East in 2024. It took place in the context of a lethal struggle against a violent and well armed expansionist Japan whose military leadership systematically ignored every clause of the Geneva Convention, and exhibited a total contempt for any concept of the intrinsic value of human life - an aggressor that routinely murdered captured nurses and other medical staff (as they did in Singapore in February 1942) and whose soldiers murdered upward of 250,000 unarmed Chinese civilians during a six week killing rampage in the city of Nanjing in December 1937, and also murdered another 150,000 unarmed Filipino civilians in Manila during the Battle of Luzon in February 1945.

Well, really, contempt for human life and murdering medical staff does have some parallels with Israel's current tactics which are ignoring clauses of the Geneva Convention (1949, btw) quite thoroughly.  I know you are a careful observer of news, so you can't have missed this.  But I wasn't trying to make a perfect analogy, just point out that saving lives doesn't require some binary choice where the only choices are mass starvation or an entire city is annihilated.  Others here have pointed out that there were other options to bring a Japanese surrender.  But those didn't provide a way to show Russia how big a stick we now had.

1 hour ago, toucana said:

I also take some exception to the implied suggestion that the targets selected for the atom bombs contained nothing but non-combatant civilians. Hiroshima was a major military command centre for the Japanese Second General Army in southern Honshu. It also had a large seaport at Ujina that was used as an embarkation centre for Japanese troops, and housed the Army Marine HQ. The city of Nagasaki was likewise a military seaport, and also the home of the Mitsubishi company who were the principal manufacturers of the deadly ‘Long Lance’ (酸素魚雷) Type 93 torpedo used by the Japanese navy throughout WW2. The Mitsubishi Urakami Torpedo Works were in fact one of the military sites that was completely destroyed by the Nagasaki atom bomb.

I wasn't saying they were completely noncombatants.  No city in Japan could possibly have been so, given the massive national mobilization in that war.  Again, I was making a different and broader point - that when you annihilate a city, you will kill mostly civilians, and violate that Geneva clause mentioned above.  How can we Americans claim moral superiority over the Japanese if, after condemning them for indiscriminate mass murder, we then engage in same?  As an American, I've given this some thought, and I feel strongly that this was a barbarous and shameful chapter in our history in which we cannot claim a moral high road.  I will simply not validate Hiroshima and give the monstrous atrocity of a nuclear attack some veneer of moral value.  That's a Strangelovian step I cannot make, so we may have to disagree on that.  

[dimreepr]

15 hours ago, MSC said:

No, I'd be more worried about your moral compass if you had no capacity to suffer/desire to avoid it, as then you'd be incapable of empathising with the suffering of others.

The thing is, the only people that has suffered since Japan are the people banging their heads against a brick wall.

The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, for instance, I guess the 'peace camp' aspect was ironic, since no-one can fire the bloody thing's and plenty of cops got a knee in the balls defending an otherwise peaceful base.

 

[MSC]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

The thing is, the only people that has suffered since Japan are the people banging their heads against a brick wall.

Not sure me or Japan would agree. 

There is also the trichotomy of pain, suffering and harm to think about. So there is a question of whether or not the existence of nuclear weapons harms us, even if not currently causing us objective pain. 

Here is a thought experiment; There is a bank called the Gun to your head Bank. Inside the bank is a system of automatic turrets that only the bank manager can control. The policies are that if anyone tries to rob the bank, the manager will initiate the turrets and they will kill everyone in the bank. If a member of staff tries to quit or is otherwise being civilly disobedient, the manager will initiate the turrets. If a customer takes issue with the banks practice or believe the bank manager is stealing money from the account, the manager will initiate the turrets. You get the idea. This bank, is the world under the threat of nuclear weapons. Even if the manager says he is going to get rid of these extreme policies but keeps the turrets in place, the implication that they could be used thusly, anytime, still exists and you cannot guarentee that a new bank manager won't be even worse. 

So do I think people are banging their heads against the wall? No. Do I think we all have guns to our heads? Yes. 

[MigL]

This thread has devolved into an argument about 'morality', and 'mine is better than yours'.
I don't need to justify my morality to anyone on a science forum; people dying are people dying, and and my morality says if you can save those you care about, you do what you need, up to and including nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons are simply a better more efficient weapon for killing.
So were knives and swords to people with sticks; did anyone complain about the morality of using them ?
So were bows and arrows to people using knives; who complained about the morality of their use ?
The same for guns, tanks  and bomber planes.; why is it all of a sudden about 'morality' ?

And why is it more moral to kill someone( or many ) with guns, or bombs, but not nuclear weapons, @MSC

Edited April 27 by MigL

[geordief]

21 minutes ago, MigL said:

 

And why is it more moral to kill someone( or many ) with guns, or bombs, but not nuclear weapons, @MSC

Because ,with nuclear weapons you cannot kill your opponent without also killing yourself and anyone you care about first(or in the hours to follow)

The lucky ones will be those who are killed off most quickly.

Morality meets expediency

 

 

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

This thread has devolved into an argument about 'morality', and 'mine is better than yours'.
I don't need to justify my morality to anyone on a science forum; people dying are people dying, and and my morality says if you can save those you care about, you do what you need, up to and including nuclear weapons.

I am curious as to why you think the ethics of nukes or other WMD would not be pertinent to politics and "devolve" a thread.  I would be shocked by your assertion that city-annihilating nukes are okay for defending your loved ones, but I know you like being provocative, so I'm not.  Seriously, do you really think a weapon that could destroy all or most of human life on the planet and turn vast areas into radioactive wastelands is a reasonable sort of defense for your preferred group?  (Geordie has underscored the practical problem) How long do you think we would all last if everyone embraced this view?

 

 

[MigL]

I think we can all agree that killing is immoral.

I don't follow the reasoning where killing a few is more moral than killing many.
And if so, how many ?

And I find it strange that you think someone like President H Truman shouldn't value 100 000 American lives more than 100 000 enemy combatants.
That is his job; to defend people he cares about.

Oh, and I got 'pissy' like this because MSC commented about my morality, or lack thereof, not to simply be provocative.
 

Edited April 28 by MigL

[dimreepr]

21 hours ago, MSC said:

Not sure me or Japan would agree. 

There is also the trichotomy of pain, suffering and harm to think about. So there is a question of whether or not the existence of nuclear weapons harms us, even if not currently causing us objective pain. 

Here is a thought experiment; There is a bank called the Gun to your head Bank. Inside the bank is a system of automatic turrets that only the bank manager can control. The policies are that if anyone tries to rob the bank, the manager will initiate the turrets and they will kill everyone in the bank. If a member of staff tries to quit or is otherwise being civilly disobedient, the manager will initiate the turrets. If a customer takes issue with the banks practice or believe the bank manager is stealing money from the account, the manager will initiate the turrets. You get the idea. This bank, is the world under the threat of nuclear weapons. Even if the manager says he is going to get rid of these extreme policies but keeps the turrets in place, the implication that they could be used thusly, anytime, still exists and you cannot guarentee that a new bank manager won't be even worse. 

So do I think people are banging their heads against the wall? No. Do I think we all have guns to our heads? Yes. 

Let's explore a world where America didn't drop the bomb on Japan (assuming the secret was kept); would Russia bother to invest so heavily in developing such a bomb in peacetime, with their obvious strength in Europe?

Korea would still be a radioactive waistland now, is that more or less suffering?

That fact that they did drop it when they did took the weapon and it's devastating power, from the abstract into the reality. An abstract threat isn't really a threat at all politically, therefore no value as a deterrent.

21 hours ago, MSC said:

So do I think people are banging their heads against the wall? No. Do I think we all have guns to our heads? Yes. 

If we all have a gun to our head and no one is willing to pull the trigger, what's the point of trying to think of a way to uninvent the gun? Bc it's way easier to invent a way to deflect a bullet, than to erase all trace of knowledge on the subject.

 

 

 

[TheVat]

12 hours ago, MigL said:

And I find it strange that you think someone like President H Truman shouldn't value 100 000 American lives more than 100 000 enemy combatants.
That is his job; to defend people he cares about.

 

When Adolph Eichmann defended his actions this way, the jury was oddly unpersuaded.  Generally "just doing his job" is not seen as adequate justification for mass murder of civilians.  

Anyway, you are making an equivalence between combatants and civilians.  Many people, as well as the Geneva convention, view this differently.  

I don't doubt your morality, just saying this thread invites people to reflect on where those moral principles lead, if applied by everyone.

13 hours ago, MigL said:

I don't follow the reasoning where killing a few is more moral than killing many.

Really?  That was an element of Truman's argument.  Kill 150,000 Japanese with an A-bomb, save hundreds of thousands more Japanese and Allied soldiers lives.  We were discussing that earlier, and some were dubious that was what would happen.

And the reasoning holds water if we are looking at a contemplated thermonuclear exchange where parties either a) choose not to use nukes and lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers, or b) choose to use nukes and billions of innocent people die, due to knock-on effects from destroyed agriculture, nuclear winter, radioactive contamination, etc.  Call me crazy, but the loss of life scenario where soldiers die but we don't wipe out a large percent of the human race seems the better one.

 

[MigL]

10 minutes ago, TheVat said:

When Adolph Eichmann defended his actions this way, the jury was oddly unpersuaded.  Generally "just doing his job" is not seen as adequate justification for mass murder of civilians.  

Aw, come on.
Don't tell me you can't tell the difference between Eichmann saying "It was my job to put those Jews to death because we hate their kind.", and a cop saying "It was my job to shoot that person because he was about to kill another person.".

President H Truman was trying to save American lives.
You don't think that's a President's job ?

[TheVat]

2 minutes ago, MigL said:

President H Truman was trying to save American lives.
You don't think that's a President's job ?

Of course.  But that's not the issue being discussed in this thread.  That is the issue of is it okay to kill over a hundred thousand civilians to save soldiers lives, and to initiate the first use of a WMD to do so?

  I wasn't comparing Truman to Eichmann, just drawing an analogy to say we don't just go by job performance.  I'm sure Eichmann held that he was defending Germans from the menace of Jews taking over the economy and Aryan culture.  He rated German Gentile lives way above Jewish lives.  Every evil has its attendant moral justification.

And you are ignoring my other points, which makes me feel I'm just wasting time now.  

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

If we all have a gun to our head and no one is willing to pull the trigger, what's the point of trying to think of a way to uninvent the gun? Bc it's way easier to invent a way to deflect a bullet, than to erase all trace of knowledge on the subject.

 

Not a strong analogy.  No one is proposing uninvention - an absurd concept.  With guns, as with nukes, many propose a ban.  The point is not having a gun pointed at everyone's head because it nurtures life and happiness and freedom from chronic fear.  These are goals of civilization, or so I've heard.  Erasure of knowledge would be a terrible idea - we absolutely need to remember what these weapons are and what they can do.  

[swansont]

22 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Of course.  But that's not the issue being discussed in this thread.  That is the issue of is it okay to kill over a hundred thousand civilians to save soldiers lives, and to initiate the first use of a WMD to do so?

I think it’s what is the difference between using 1 bomb to kill these people, or using bombs from a few hundred planes.

The US had already killed 100k civilians in the raid on Tokyo, and several tens of millions of civilians died in the war, and even more if you include the resulting disease and famine. If the issue is the WMD, then the number of civilian deaths wouldn’t seem to be the issue.

[MigL]

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

And you are ignoring my other points, which makes me feel I'm just wasting time now.  

The fact that you ignore my points make me feel you were just wasting time before also.

 

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

Of course.  But that's not the issue being discussed in this thread.

Of course it is; it's in the thread title
-why did Truman use the atomic bomb on Japan-

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

and to initiate the first use of a WMD

The pChemical plant where I work makes and purifies liquid Phosphine. On a regular basis we may have up to 60 000 lbs of Phosphine at 700 psi, on site.
That is considered a weapon of mass destruction, even by the FBI, who have been here to investigate our site after 9/11.
What we consider weapons of mass destruction would have first been used in WW1, in the form of Chlorine and Phosgene gas attacks.
It might also be relevant that certain battles of WW1, and even the Crimean war, regularly had 100 000 casualties; if not from munitions then from infections of wounds afterwards.
even earlier when city states in Europe were besieged, flaming catapults may have killed half their inhabitants ( or plague-ridden rats, most of them ). In that historical context, would that have been considered use of WMDs?
Or how about when Ghengis Kahn raided central Asian cities, killed most, enslaved the rest, and burned the city to the ground ?
Does that make arrows and fire WMDs?

 

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

I'm sure Eichmann held that he was defending Germans from the menace of Jews taking over the economy and Aryan culture.

If the taking of lives is immoral, Taking them to save economy and culture are also.
I, and I'm sure many others ( even MSC ) don't consider taking the life of someone who is threatening the life of others, immoral.

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

Every evil has its attendant moral justification

Fear is never a justification; an imminent threat is.
There is a difference, and its usuaslly called self defense.

Have I addressed all your points, or are you still wasting your time.

Edited April 28 by MigL

[toucana]

20 hours ago, TheVat said:

Of course.  But that's not the issue being discussed in this thread.  That is the issue of is it okay to kill over a hundred thousand civilians to save soldiers lives, and to initiate the first use of a WMD to do so?

 

The title of the OP in this thread was “Why use the atomic bomb on Japan ?” which seemed to me to be about the strategic military thinking and realpolitik of using such a novel weapon to end WW2 in August 1945 - (as opposed to pursuing a devasting war of attrition that might not have ended until 1947). All of those points have already been answered in detail in this thread quite a while ago imho.

At some point the discussion then seems to have became a version of the thought experiment known as ”The Trolley Dilemma”. It might be instructive in this context to read a recent study by Exeter Business School which evaluates how different cultural groups - especially Asian ones -  evaluate sacrificial dilemmas of this type, and can come to markedly different conclusions and ethical judgements in doing so.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-trolley-dilemma-sacrifice-person-culture.html

To me it seems that arguments about ‘Few’ or ‘Many’ deaths descend into a form of Sorites Paradox (Greek  σωρός  - ‘a heap’) which is a type of  [N-1] problem.  At what point does a ‘heap’ of sand stop being a ‘heap’ if you repeatedly remove one grain of sand from it ? It’s a type of argument that relies on vague predicates. At what point do ‘Many ‘ deaths  become “Few’, and when do you reach a moral tipping point which renders that value ‘acceptable” ?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

Moral philosophers can pursue this type of debate almost indefinitely - but it’s rather different from the one raised in the OP.

[TheVat]

17 hours ago, MigL said:

If the taking of lives is immoral, Taking them to save economy and culture are also.
I, and I'm sure many others ( even MSC ) don't consider taking the life of someone who is threatening the life of others, immoral.

I think this is where a misunderstanding arose, as the discussion shifted away somewhat from the OP.  I take your and @toucana point as to where the thread started, so I didn't make clear that I thought the thread had moved a bit and was trying to follow that.

My point goes to the substantial difference (especially re the fate of Earth's supporting ecosystems) between any nuclear exchange and all the other historical forms of massive death you described.  I won't rehash that, but anyone who wants to review previous posts is welcome to.  I agree there is a legitimate moment of self-defense in a war, but I tried (and failed) to make some points as to how a nuclear "defense" can ultimately kill so many people who are not attacking.  Therein lies the problem of proportionality, as well as Geneva issues, plus the migration of radionuclides and weather effects to friendly nations,  also addressed by me and others.  Again, I didn't communicate well that I see this as more than just a form of the Trolley Problem, because of the unique implications of annihilating an entire (or several entire) cities (and what that opens up, in terms of a larger war).  We don't have to explore them here.  I gave it a shot, but will  step aside so others can resume with the original question.   

 

Edited April 29 by TheVat