Wow i didnt't expect to awake to so many comments,. I will read them thoroughly when i have more time. Many Thanks.
Was droping bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 evil?
by new hope and happiness 108 Replies latest jw friends
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Simon
Most sensible people want peace but there are stupid, evil, greedy people who would abuse others to get what they want and sometimes you need to fight to protect the innocent.
Fighting the evils of nazism was absolutely the right thing to do but not enough focus is paid to preventing situations like that arising. The reparations of WWI laid the foundations for the rise of nationalism that led to WWII. Politicians failed us and the soldiers had to put things right.
We should learn from history and not do things that excuse or strengthen dangerous ideologies.
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new hope and happiness
" We should learn from history and not do things that escuse or strengthen dangerouse ideologies"
I agree totally with the above statement. But the above is difficult to do as history is written by the winners of wars. I think a person needs to be strong and wise to not follow the crowd and do what he/ she thinks is right.
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Band on the Run
It is true that the way a war ends is as important as how it starts. The reparations after WWI were crippling. Not much attention was paid to the burden they imposed on civilizations. Hitler used them to come to power. I believe the Allieds decided to help rebuild economies after WWII.
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AlphaMan
Germany, Japan & Italy were the aggressors in WWII, until the Allies started defeating them. Japan had killed millions of other asian peoples, and were killing Allied POW's. Germany had invaded Europe and was trying to destroy London. Nazi Germany was committing the holocaust against the Jews, and were trying to create atomic weapons first before the Allies. No doubt if Hitler did succeed in developing atomic bombs first he would have used them on England and the U.S. The Nazi's would probably have used Japan to drop atomic bombs on the west coast of the U.S.
It's easy to look back and second guess the decisions to drop the 2 atomic bombs on Japan. I think the decision to use atomic bombs, which by the way was a join effort by the U.S. England & Canada was two fold.....to help end the war much quicker, and to send a message to Stalin. The important thing is that atomic weapons haven't been used since. I think the main threat nowdays in using atomic weapons of mass destruction is by a terrorist organization detonating an atomic weapon in a major western city somewhere, or against Israel.
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sammielee24
Fighting the evils of nazism was absolutely the right thing to do but not enough focus is paid to preventing situations like that arising
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But here's my thought on that as a whole. If we were so bent on the destruction of the Nazi's and everything that it stood for - how is it that we were able to justify the war on some moral highground but then turn around and instead of having those scientists and engineers etc who were complicit in those crimes, sent to the executioners chair, we welcomed them into our countries so we could exploit,use,benefit from their genius?
We justified the war on some sense of ethics and morals, while the corporations that paid us tax money, were providing goods and services we purported to be against.
Then in the end, we decided to draw a line on a map and reallocate the spoils of war - we chose to slice up countries because we could and we really didn't care about the people, the families, the communities who lived there - millions of people died after the war - starved to death, sent to forced labor camps for a lifetime, dieseased.
The starvation of millions after the war - innocent men, women and children - is vastly different. The pain and suffering is always the same but during war, we can somehow understand casualties of conflict - but after the war - the same actions become mass murder.
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Island Man
C) They could have bombed Tokyo where all the generals lived but chose Hiroshima.
Actually, there was a significant military outfit in Hiroshima and that fact may have played a significant part in the decision to target Hiroshima. But I'm not saying this to justify it. I believe it was in fact an evil and unecessary act. They could have demonstrated the destructive power to the Japanese by nuking a nearby uninhabited island or dropping the bomb some miles offshore in sight of the populace so all can see the tremendous power and maybe get a little taste of the winds created by the blast miles away - just enough wind to unsettle them but without the loss of life. I think such a warning could have been sufficient to motivate the Japanese to surrender.
I think the real motives for dropping the bomb had more to do with testing this new novel weapon in the field to see the effects on life and property; and maybe to frighten other nations like the Russians. Ending the war was just a weak excuse for PR purposes.
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Island Man
But I find the religious side of this story to be quite fascinating. Before the bomb, the Japanese emperor was believed by most Japanese to be God. Imagine yourself as being one such deluded Japanese individual and one day that illusion is completely shattered by a weapon of such great power unleashing cataclysmic, Armageddon-like destruction and consigning unfortunate survivors to days of a painfully hellish existence, pleading with others to put them to death, then your God surrenders and admits that he isn't a God. If ever a story came close to the humiliation of the Egyptian's Pharoah God by the plagues brought on Egypt . . .
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JeffT
We should learn from history and not do things that excuse or strengthen dangerous ideologies.
Of course, but who gets to decide what constitutes a "dangerous ideology?" Hitler (and many ordinary Germans) beleived Judaism, Communism and western liberal thinking to be dangerous. Mao and Pol Pot saw themselves as fighting Western ideas destroying their counties. Currently we're watching ISIS trying to destroy what it sees as dangerous ideologies.
Robert Heinlein put it very well: "No one sees himself as the bad guy."
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Terry
sammielee . . .
If we were so bent on the destruction of the Nazi's and everything that it stood for - how is it that we were able to justify the war on some moral highground but then turn around and instead of having those scientists and engineers etc who were complicit in those crimes, sent to the executioners chair, we welcomed them into our countries so we could exploit,use,benefit from their genius?
It is a pragmatic choice.
Pure decisions in an impure universe are illusory.
Think back to High School when you are Team Captain and you are going to select players for your side.
Would you let the OTHER team get all the good players just because you know those excellent atheletes are assholes?
Besides . . .
Would your rather RUSSIA claimed those scientists? Or, how about China?