[Decky]

And that's saying a lot considering our history in the Middle east, Africa and Latin America).

Don't forget North America.

Regardless of the reason

It was obviously to scare the Soviets. I don't see why American's cant admit it. It was an excellent foreign policy decisions from an American viewpoint. The biggest threat to the country was scared into inaction and if didn't cost a single American life (just lots of Japanese civilian lives).

Until you bring mortality into it (never anything Americans seem to have cared much about) it was a perfect decision.

A bunch of off-topic current affairs/politics stuff that followed this post were deleted. Stay on topic people - SD

[Oxymoron]

justifiable if even one American life was saved.

[Eran]

OK - so by your logic, the Nazis would have been justified in mascaraing whole villages if "even one German life was saved"?

[Godstud]

Justifiable that on the alternative was likely a LOT more people dying with a lot more damage done to the Japanese nation.

[Eran]

That's a separate point. My contention is that such analysis, if done, was invariably based on the need to extract unconditional surrender from Japan. To justify the loss of innocent lives, you would have to demonstrate that no viable alternative was open to Truman, including the alternative of negotiating surrender, perhaps after a demonstration of the power of the bombs.

If, for example, the US demonstrated the power of the bombs on uninhabited land (inviting Japanese officials to observe one of the nuclear tests), and then negotiated surrender terms that would have allowed the Japanese to keep their emperor, can anybody honestly be certain that innocent lives couldn't have been saved?

[Oxymoron]

OK - so by your logic, the Nazis would have been justified in mascaraing whole villages if "even one German life was saved"?

Yes and it would make perfect sense/

[Eran]

In that case we clearly work with very different understanding of justice and justification.

Yours, btw, explicitly contradicts established just war theory.

[Oxymoron]

Winning is the only war theory applicable.

[Godstud]

Eran, demonstrating the willingness to use the atomic bomb(s) on a target was just as important. A bomb you aren't willing to use, isn't a threat.

[Rich]

Regardless of the reason, dropping a nuclear bomb on a largely civilian population makes you a war criminal. If Harry Truman isn't considered a war criminal then by that standard who can actually be considered a war criminal?

Well of course the answer is the whole idea of being a war criminal is ridiculous. I would have thought that it would be easy to grasp that warfare is a very different activity from Lawn tennis or even Queensbury rules boxing, but seemingly this is beyond the grasp of the majority of people. I've all always been totally firm on 9/11, I've never colluded worth the pathetic little victim mentality of so many Americans. I mean how many Muslims have been murdered in Americas pursuit of cheap and stable gas prices. This thread vindicates what I've always said. Start criticising 9/11 for its its tactics and people will be criticising Dresden and Hiroshima next. How prophetic my words were. We should oppose Al Qa'ida because their Muslims not because their military operation may involve civilian casualties.

If a war could be fought according to an agreed common frame, with agreed umpires then it shouldn't be fought at all. The Falklands is a good example of a war which came close, to being fought by greed rules and it certainly wasn't justified for either side.

Eran, demonstrating the willingness to use the atomic bomb(s) on a target was just as important. A bomb you aren't willing to use, isn't a threat.

That's a god point. in the counter-factual where Truman hadn't taken the righteous, noble and courageous decision to nuke The Japs, we might well be "living" in a nuclear winter now.

[Eran]

Eran, demonstrating the willingness to use the atomic bomb(s) on a target was just as important. A bomb you aren't willing to use, isn't a threat.

You don't know that. America had two bombs. They could have used one to demonstrate capabilities, demand negotiated surrender, and threatened to use the other one (not that Japan could know how many bombs the US had) to drive its point, if necessary.

To my knowledge, this option wasn't even seriously considered. After all, the lives in question belonged to Japs, and who cares about them?

[Godstud]

Japan had really good intell on the American Atomic program and one thing they did know about was the rough amount of fissionable material. Using two atomic bombs quickly put the Japanese intell into doubt.

Interesting read:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for- ... html#rtoc3

[Eran]

Is there anything in the reference to shed light on the essential need for ground invasion assuming negotiated rather than unconditional surrender?

[Godstud]

Negotiated surrender with an aggressor such as Japan? Japan might clearly have prefered this, but this would have kept Japan as a regional power and still a threat to those around it.

[Eran]

How can anybody tell? The way negotiations work is that you sit down and discuss terms. As the winning force, the US wouldn't have been obliged to agree to any particular Japanese request. But the Americans never tried. It is much easier to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths than to sit down and talk.

[OnTPath]

Justifiable ?

I refer to Ward Wilson's analysis of the nuclear strike against Japan, and the questioning of the nuclear exceptionalism (which is a dangerous thing as well..but) (Youtube:

).

It may be justifiable if it was the decisive event to shorten the War in bringing Japan to surrender.
This is the official narrative, that it saved a lot of American Blood.

However as Ward and the historical facts convincingly show, it was not the bomb but instead Russian Blood in form of an 1.6 Mio (160 Divisions) strong Army attacking in the night of 8/9 th August.

The US had already bombed 68 cities in the bombing campaign which started in March 1945.
Some of this attacks have been more destructive than the Nukes. The firebombing raids on Tokyo
in March were more ferocious, destroyed more lives and a greater extent of the City.

After the first Nuke had been dropped on 6. 8. 1945 the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Emperor's Army, Kuabe Torashiro (according to his diary) was jolted by the attack but then concluded "we must be tenacious and fight on".

However, 6 hours (morning of the 9th Aug.) after the message of the Soviet attack on Manchuria and Sachalin reached Tokyo, the Supreme Council conferred and concluded surrender as the only option. This was before the second drop on Nagasaki came to the knowing.

Looking at the strategic situation it becomes clear, that after the Soviet attack the two strategic options the Japanese still had:
1. A mediated surrender by the aid of Stalin (Russia was neutral up til then)
2. Battle the US and fight a bloody fight for them (something they knew the US tried to avoid)
were gone.
There Land Army was still largely untouched and could still give the US a large battle.

For this 2. point the Army had shifted it's forces mainly to the South where the US Main blow was expected.

Now after the Soviet attack the Japanese had no options left. The Soviet 100+ Mech-Divisions sliced through the Quantung-Army like Butter. On the Sachalin island and Hokaido the +10 Divisions of the Russians was opposed by second rate troops which were dug-in facing the wrong direction (West instead of East).

I don't say it was the Soviets alone, but they were the decisive factor, which took all options from the Japanese. And of course all of Manchuria is now Russian hehe, Uncle Joe bagged Uncle Sam also on this one, hehe. The plan was to awe Stalin by the bomb, but he knew what Armies can do instead.

Warden answers the question whether attacks on civilians(obliteration of Cities) has decided wars, and he finds none.
So, no , slaughtering Women and Children does not win wars, but destroying the enemy's Armies do.

[U184]

YES.

War is WAR, people die and weapons are used, period. War, by its very nature is won by any means.

Japan was wiling to use suicide troops, so the sanctity of life debate is off the table.

Besides that, a bomb is a bomb, the USA used a bigger bomb than the Japanese had been using... did I miss the rules agreed on by both sides, before the Japanese sneak attack?

[Eran]

War, by its very nature is won by any means.

Why?

War, by its very nature? The nature of war has changed over the generations. Wars have often been fought following rules.

[U184]

Why what?

War, by its very nature? The nature of war

Is to win, period.

[Eran]

Why do you claim that War, by its very nature, is "won by any means"?

For your statement to be relevant to the previous discussion, I interpreted it in a normative sense. In other words, I read you as stating that "all means are justifiable to win a war". Is that your claim? If so, how do you root that claim in the very nature of war?