Genocide or normal act of war

Remove all ads!

Interesting that Americans do not see this as genocide, or even an atrocity of such great scale. Yet the facts cannot be denied: atomic bombs were dropped on two cities that practically decimated it in seconds. They were dropped on civilians, not military targets. Some people like to say it's to put an end to the war, but why weren't they dropped on military targets? The observation made was right: when the victors write history, it is an heroic, not a cowardly and dastardly, act. And up to this time, talking to those who defend the actions, I still fail to see how the explanation that it ended the war justifies the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and the continued deaths years later by those who were affected by the blasts. Indeed, if Americans ask Japan to apologize for Pearl Harbor, shouldn't America as well make an example by apologizing for Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

 

I don't see it as genocide. It is an war atrocity. It was pure Machiavelli. 2 of the main reasionings I stated above. There were more reasionings involved. It wasn't honorable nor was it necessary to end the war. The bombing was a means of Realpolitik, to achieve far more goals, than simply ending the war.

 

A "military target" would be, at maximum, the size of a large hospital. Granted I'm not familiar with military factories but is it really a good plan to fire an A-bomb at something the size of a large hospital. Not only would you destroy the target but you would also devastate every village in several hundred kilometers.

 

Well, that again depends on the size of the bomb - not every nuke is a 25 MT monster. But anyway, nukes aren't without reason called "waepons of mass destruction".

 

I can hardly call hospitals military targets in fact there are under no circumstances military targets. But the A-bomb even if it dropped on the empty sea would cause a major destruction considering the radiation and the Tsunamis it would create.
And the two bombs that were dropped in WWII were not so powerfull as the new ones. As for the small destructive power A-bombs the problem remains it's not the people only that are affected the nature is also and as far as i know the nature has not gone into war with anyone yet

 

I still have to take issue with the usage of the word "genocide" in this context. Genocide means that you are out to completely wipe a race off the face of the planet. If the goal of the nukes had been that, tney would have dropped a few more. They didn't. I'll go with mass murder, maybe, but "genocide" is a hot-button word that has no bearing on what actually happened. A huge number of Japanese were killed, but the death toll, both projected by the Americans beforehand and the real one that came after, that death toll never came anywhere close to being one that would wipe out the Japanese race or culture.

Any sophistry trying to make this event into "genocide" reminds me of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland "When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean!"

[ May 05, 2003, 23:55: Message edited by: Depaara ]

 

I completely agree with Depaara (for once ). It wasn't genocide, it was a war atrocity, mass-murderer. (I know I state nothing new, but I am happy to agree for once ).

 

Depaara wrote:

It's Humpty Dumpty, dammit!

 

AGGH! Caught by the Typo demon. I'll go fix that right now!

 

The bombings weren'y by definition genocide. It was quite tragic though. It's always difficult to justify sacrificing a life, much more tens of thousands for what is believed to be a greater loss of life.

Humpty Dumpty was in Alice in Wonderland (or more accurately, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There)? I always thought he was originally from Mother Goose. I guess I was wrong.