On August 6, 1945, an American B-52 called the Enola Gay [correction: the Gay was a B-29 bomber. Thanks reader for the heads up] dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. A few days later a second atom bomb was unloaded on Nagasaki. The total number of civilians dead exceeded 100,000. Japan mourns today on the fifty-second anniversary of HIroshima. In Japan, the atomic attacks are generally considered a moral outrage, and the defense minister had to resign recently for making the truthful statement that the bombs were necessary to end the war.
The deeper question remains: is the targeting of civilians justified?
Before we say yes, let's remember what happened at 9/11. When civilians are killed with a view to terrorizing a population into capitulating to the killer's demands, we call this terrorism. Isn't this precisely what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Moreover, the Allied bombings of Dresden and other German cities, with the clear purpose of causing massive deaths and fear among civilians, would also surely fall into the same category. We who love Western civilization realize with some horror that the largest assaults on civilian life in modern times have probably been perpetrated by Western powers.In defending attacks on civilians, Bin Laden argues that citizens are ultimately responsible for what their governments do, and therefore civilians cannot claim to be innocent. When President Truman ordered the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he seems to have operated on a similar premise. He understood how fanatical the Japanese were, and that only disaster of atomic magnitude would compel that nation and its emperor to surrender. Similarly Churchill advocated the massive firebombing of German cities in the full recognition that only by breaking the will of the German people would Germany be brought to its knees. Truman and Churchill, too, refused to view Japanese and German civilians as innocents.
In this, however, they were wrong. It is a central tenet of just war teaching--which has governed Western thinking for more than a thousand years--that the deliberate targeting of civilians is never justified. It's one thing if civilians are accidentally killed in war when military targets are attacked. This, for example, is what we see today in Iraq. The United States forces there are not targeting civilians. Only the insurgents and Islamic radicals are doing that. But at Hiroshima and Dresden, civilians weren't inadvertently killed; mass civilian deaths were the objective of the attacks. It's hard to fault Truman and Churchill for doing what was necessary to complete what the Germans and the Japanese started. America's decision to drop the atom bomb was, as I argued in a previous post, a lesser evil than the invasion of Japan. But a lesser evil is still an evil. We, too, should mourn what happened at Hiroshima a half century ago.
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3. (continued)
The Japanese have no right to say Hiroshima cost more civilian lives than continuing the awr.
Similarly, in the German phase of the war, we did not have or choose to use an atomic bomb (perhaps we should have.) How many soldiers died from Normandy and D-day until VE day? Anything that decreased that number was morally correct independent of the number of German civilians killed. Tho we are not entitled to kill civilians for frivilous reasons, we are entitled to save our soldiers lives at the cost of enemy civilians in a defensive war.
The question arises in Iraq. Was 9/11 the first shot in the war against militant Islam? Are Gaza, Lebanon, Aphghanistan, Pakistan & Indonesia the opening fronts? Is Iran preparing to join the active war by supporting its allies? Then Iraq is totally justified and we should stop rules of engagement that kill our soldiers to protect civilians.
OR, was 9/11 an aberrency, which the Muslim world condems and will prevent all future variants (hasn't happened yet!). Then (and only then) we would be the invaders of Iraq and be morally responsible for every single casualty there and they would be on the defensive moral high ground. Hasn't happened yet!
ira0 at 6:20AM on Aug 6th 2007
4. We should not mourn Hiroshima, but we should mourn the existence of people who start offensive (in several uses of the term) wars.
Pearl Harbor was an offensive attack. We were justified in ANY defensive maneuver to prevent our death. Hiroshima then is totally justified. We only have a moral duty to minimize innocent civilian deaths IF AND ONLY IF it does not cost US any extra lives. Hiroshima cost US fewer lives than invading Japan, so it was correct. It also might have cost fewer Japanese lives than an invasion of Japan.
ira0 at 6:51AM on Aug 6th 2007
5. ANY ACT that specifically targets civilians is a criminal act...even the United States has said so. As such, by that standard the A-Bomb attacks of WWII WERE a criminal act, and STILL are. ANY leader of any nation that specifically targets civilians is a criminal and should be treated as such. ANY Americans that deny this are taking a narrow "america first" attitude that is DEVOID or reason, logic, or reality.
Mik at 7:36AM on Aug 6th 2007
6. Ira, following your logic - which, by the way, is reasonable - an inescapable conclusion is that George Bush started an offensive war in Iraq. We were not attacked by Iraq nor was there any substantiated reason to believe we would be. You'll recall GWB's new policy of preemptive war...and let's not kid ourselves that "shock and awe" only killed military/terrorists.
Kind of puts us on the wrong side of the moral balance, doesn't it?
nonshakedrinker at 8:11AM on Aug 6th 2007
7. Let's see... Japan attacked us. Iraq didn't. So, really, Dinesh, all we are doing is slaughtering innocent civilians in Iraq while those who actually DID attack us are pretty much allowed to grow in numbers in other parts of the world.
Are you somehow writing under the assumption that those who did attack us on 9/11 were Iraqis? Or, are we just killing all Muslims now in a mad frenzy to somehow keep ourselves safe?
Dan at 8:24AM on Aug 6th 2007
8. You might want to check with the U S soldiers and sailors who were poised in the Phillipines to board landing ships and engage in the invasion of Japan. The estimate of casualties if I remember correctly was in the one million.
Alan Lincoln at 8:53AM on Aug 6th 2007
9. its a dod-eat-dog world. al those countries giving us a hard time, ...blow emall away and be done with it.
kimberle alvarez at 8:26AM on Aug 6th 2007
10. I wasn't aware that we had B-52 bombers in 1945. Actually, the Enola Gay was a B-29. Moreover, isn't your statement a complete contradiction of your earlier post of declaring "God Bless the Bomb?"
I'm confuse here Dinesh, do you believe in killing civilians or not? Do you even know in which war and which generals were the first to openly advocate and intentionally went after the innocent civilians? Yet me help you. The American Civil War under the brutal leadership of Grant and Sherman.
gshort3011 at 8:27AM on Aug 6th 2007
11. Dinesh,
A little more historical research would have helped in evaluating the decision. By way of background, Truman was a WWI artillery officer. Limited artillery resources had to be used in what was perceived to be the most effective way to reduce enemy capacity. Company grade artillery officers of the time used mathematical thought processes to make artillery decisions.
The US expected 550,000 US casualties in the first 30 days after landing in Japan and believed (likely correct) the Japanese civilian population would participate in the fight, thus making themselves enemy combatants. That meant US troops would be killing Japanese civilians face to face. At least a million Japanese were expected to be killed.
So if you were Truman and had a chance to prevent that what would you have done? The question has a single correct answer.
PS 1. B-52's were not made until years later. It was a B-29. PS 2. Today a Clinton or Bush would have held a focus group, called the lobbyists, checked with the party base, consulted with their political advisors, and wondered about their legacy and otherwise deferred the decisions waiting for a legal opinion from a poorly chosen attorney general.
PS 3. Not a history or math major or artillery officer were you?
Jim K
Jim K at 8:36AM on Aug 6th 2007
12. gshort,
I hate to divert the focus of this blog, but Sherman was totally justified in his "attack" on civilians in the confederacy as those civilians were the same INBRED MONSTERS who would rather fight a war than to stop the abuse of slaves in the south.
He should have burnt the ENTIRE thing down...
Anti Confederate at 8:57AM on Aug 6th 2007
13. The old theory that we had to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been proven false time and time again but the right likes to justify any barbaric act that America has ever committed. The "shock and Awe" bombings of Iraq were not smart bombs and again the bombings of the first Gulf War and the second Gulf War were barbaric and unjustiied. The embargo years were also cruelly unjust to the civilians of Iraq. Thousands upon thousands were killed for lack of supplies in ordere to punish Saddam who lived in luxury all of the time while his people suffered. By the way we were not only the first country to use nuclear weapons against hunankind, we are presently using tons of depleted uranium at present in Iraq and Afghanistan which are causing drastic rises of birth defects and cancer rates on the innocents. You right wingers have to take off the white hats and see us for what we really are......and it's not pretty!
Richard Quiggle at 9:12AM on Aug 6th 2007
14. Hiroshima was the right thing to do. Overwhelming and unidentifiable force was used. The first bomb was dropped and they didn't believe anyone or anything had that much power. The second bomb was dropped and then they believed. What the liberals do not want to accept is that it saved lives.
Tony at 9:21AM on Aug 6th 2007
15. 62nd anniversary Dinesh, not 52nd. Not B-52's either. Let us not forget that when we dropped the "bombs" on Japan they were perfecting their poison gas munitions in labs located in China, and trying to come up with a delivery system to strike mainland USA with them. Japan's real complaint is that we "pulled the trigger" first. The Japanese slaughtered civilians every step of the way during their conquest of that part of the world. Stop the crying towels, they brought it upon themselves. As usual, the "loser" wants to whine.
wttrppr at 9:36AM on Aug 6th 2007