Comment by NateEag
1 day ago
I believe OP is saying that the US has not been reliably sane in its public policy since ending WW II via nuclear warfare.
I don't know if I agree with the claim overall, but I certainly think nuking civilian populations was an execrable choice (even if the official targets were technically military ones).
They were already being firebombed to death by "regular" bombs and/or starving to death from various blockades. Why single out those attacks?
The destruction of Tokyo, Dresden, and so many other cities were also unconscionable acts. The war was absolutely full of them (though I think the Axis was clearly aiming for unconscionable overall goals, such as the Final Solution, so I still argue the Allies were fighting a just war, even if they often carried it out through unjust means).
The nuclear bombings were what the OP brought up, so I was just registering my opinion of those.
With the nukes in particular, there were a lot of other options, as they were announcing weapons that would completely change the balance of warfare.
I think a good first step would have been to find an uninhabited island and explicitly tell Japan through diplomatic channels, "We are going to destroy this island entirely with a new weapon we have developed. Please observe, and surrender afterwards if you do not want your military force to be annihilated by these means."
Then Japan would have had a strong reason to back down that didn't involve the US destroying entire cities and civilian population.
Why single out the only two instances of nuclear weapons being used in anger in the entire history of their existence? Why single out the single largest escalation in force in the world's history? Why single out the two largest single bombs ever deployed against an enemy?
Surely you aren't nearly so naive that you think these aren't significantly different from other bombings...
I don't understand the naivety involved in thinking that this matters to the people dying from the bombs.
I haven't personally died from a bomb, but I find it super hard to imagine a scenario where I would be happier if I died from a regular bomb vs a nuclear bomb.
More people died from the single bombing raid on tokyo than died from the nuclear weapon being dropped on hiroshima. Yes, people also died from radiation poisoning during the days and months following, but people also died from all sorts of injuries sustained from the "regular bombs", burns, smoke inhalation, etc.
Comparing which type of agonizing death is worse is rarely a useful way to spend time.
> Surely you aren't nearly so naive that you think these aren't significantly different from other bombings...
This is the point I want to make. It really wasn't that different. Yes, a city was destroyed in a single night. Over seventy other cities were destroyed in a single night in Japan alone during the year of 1945.
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The difference being that it cost a lot more to destroy those two Japanese cities alone than it did in total to destroy 72 other Japanese cities to the same degree.
Later on, that type of weapon became cheaper and several thousands were created and became the basis for a long window of relative peace.
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actually my comment was not really about how america waited to get involved in ww2, then finally did, back almost a hunded years ago (that is, this is not a veiled reference to some other time or place); it was about the USA's quest for "empire" which ramped up once "d-day" occurred.