At 04:36 PM 7/20/01, Adam C. Lipscomb wrote:
>Kat wrote:
> > All right, we have symbolically refrained from using nuclear weapons on
> > numerous occasions. But aren't we sort of the only people who've ever
> > *used* nuclear weapons? Doesn't that sort of muck up our track record?
>
>Let me ask you a question. Would you believe an alcoholic that told you it
>was a bad idea to drink too much?
[1]
> WOuld you believe a man that had killed
>another man in self defense tell you it was a bad idea to take a human life?
[2]
>Or would you assume that if *they* did it then you could too? I'd say that
>we as a nation know better than anyone else what it does to a people to use
>these weapons. That doesn't make us more noble, but it gives our nation a
>different perspective on it.
>
>Yes, the US is the only nation that's ever used an atomic weapon in wartime.
>At the time, it seemed the best option. No one had ever used one before,
>and it seemed likely that the use of this weapon would end the war without
>an invasion of the Japanese home islands. Looking back, we can do all kinds
>of Monday morning quarterbacking and say, "But but but if they'd done this
>and such, everything would have worked out fine!" We can see that now. At
>the time, the view was different. A good friend of my father's was a
>chaplain during the War in the Pacific. He was involved in the aftermath of
>the island campaign, and remembers to this day counseling many, many young
>soldiers that *knew*, based upon the bitter, "no surrender" tactics of the
>Japanese in Okinawa, Iwo Jima and all of the other islands they occupied,
>that an invasion of the Home Islands would be bloody, and millions on both
>sides would die. When the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
>announced, the first thought almost every single soldier in the Pacific
>theater had was, "Thank God. Thank God, we're not going to have to go and
>die in Japan."
My father was one of those soldiers. In the summer of 1945, he was on a
ship headed across the Pacific. They made what was supposed to be a rather
brief stop at one of the little islands somewhere in the middle of the
ocean, but their stop eventually stretched into weeks, at the end of which
they received the news that the war was over. He still went on to Okinawa
to be part of the occupation and reconstruction effort there, returning
home in IIRC May of 1946.
BTW, how many other major world powers have, after fighting and winning
(yes, I know, not alone!!) a war against two major enemies on two fronts,
then immediately turned around and spent billions of dollars more
rebuilding the countries that only months before they had been engaged in
an all-out war to the finish with?
>President Truman made the decision that it was better for
>the US and Japan for two entire cities to die immediately rather than
>millions of soldiers and millions of civilians die in a long, drawn out
>invasion. We will never know for sure if he was right,
Yes, and we can't fight wars in hindsight.
>although the
>evidence points in favor of the decision to use atomic weapons. I think I'd
>have made the same decision in that situation.
------
[1] When I was growing up, both my parents told me how bad smoking was and
how they hoped I'd never be tempted to take up that habit, though they
themselves didn't finally stop until after I finished my master's degree
and left to go on active duty in the Air Force.
[2] One of the men I know at church was in the Marines and caught an
earlier Far East cruise than my father, reaching Okinawa in time to be part
of the invasion in the spring of 1945. One night while on guard duty, he
had to shoot a woman who repeatedly tried to get past his post and enter
the camp.
--Ronn! :)
---------------------------------------------------------
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
---------------------------------------------------------
