myers@uwvax.UUCP (Jeff Myers) (10/09/84)
Thanks to everyone who has been discussing this; it's nice to see a plague of reasonably calm and rational discourse spreading in this newsgroup. Not like the old days! (Well, TC Wheeler's postings on other topics bring back those fond memories...) The military reasoning behind the way things happened was quite clear to me when I railed against our not doing a warning Bomb first. There's no doubt that our actions brought a speedy and bloodless (for we'uns) conclusion to the War in the Pacific. However, many postings used the advantage of hindsight to support the bombing of Hiroshima. "Well, look how long it took...how irrational the Japanese military was..." We had no way of being certain at the time how Japan would react. Given time, Hirohito may have reacted in just the same way as occurred historically. Perhaps we could have tried empty island first, Mt. Fujiyama second? Funny, Bombing that perfectly conical mountain seems almost worse than bombing Milwaukee. Others bring up our shortage of Bombs at the time. Well, Japan was for all practical purposes militarily defeated already...the only real force left to contend with were Kamikazis (and were they dwindling as well?). What was our hurry? (1) Conserving US personel and equipment. (2) Liberating Japanese occupied territories from a bad situation. (3) Reducing the amount of territory the USSR might grab. (4) Testing the Bomb on REAL targets (it had to be a consideration). How does one weigh the pros and cons of using a weapon which is orders of magnitude more powerful than any seen before (on Earth, anyway)? I believe that the problem was considered as a MILITARY problem rather than as a HUMAN problem, which is our problem today with Arms Control Talks. Much of the discussion takes on a language, "experts", and then a reality of its own; warheads are counted as in children's games at marbles in order to figure out who is winning and losing. Does using the Itty-Bitty-Bomb on Hiroshima differ from the incendiary bombing of Dresden, or from the German bombing of Guernica (a Basque village) during the Spanish Civil War? Only in that it has demonstrated to us that one of two things had best happen quickly: either war as presently practiced must be made obsolete via negotiations or we must develop the Hyperdrive and spread our butts out. Which is more realistic? Will Peace Thru Strength work FOREVER? Please think about it. Jeff Myers @ La casa de los locos, Los Estados Unidos