It’s absurd to argue that “we” did the right thing because the results happened to turn out well. You can make that argument about anything. For example, if Hitler had not started WWII when he did, there would inevitably have been a world war after both sides had nuclear weapons and it would have been far, far worse. Hitler might have done it for the wrong reasons but we owe him our lives for doing it.
All it takes is to look at what happened, and make up a worse alternative, and then say that what happened was better than the alternative. You can do that about anything. Unless you can repeat the experiment and get odds, it’s bogus.
There’s the argument that without a horrible example somebody would inevitably have used nukes because they couldn’t wrap their minds around it. This is bogus. We have the example of biological warfare, which we have avoided so far without a horrible example. Ditto genetic warfare. However, a variant of it can be used to excuse Truman. Truman had been kept out of the loop, he didn’t know about the nukes until very late. Then he had to make a choice quickly. If national leaders couldn’t understand it without the graphic example, that would apply to Truman even more. Forgive him, he didn’t know what he was doing.
There is the argument that the japanese would not have surrendered without being nuked. This is the first bogus argument all over again, a completely bogus claim about what would have happened otherwise. But this one is special. We had no method set up to accept a surrender from japan. If all along, since Pearl Harbor, we had been negotiating with them about what it would take to end the war, we might at some point have negotiated a peace. But we didn’t want to. We wanted an unconditional surrender and nothing else. So there was nothing to negotiate about and no method arranged to do it, and it took the japanese days after our nuke to reach an agreement about how to surrender and we bombed them again while they did it.
So rephrase that. “We nuked japan because we would not accept a conditional surrender.” We could have ended our war with japan at any time after Pearl Harbor if we had been willing to negotiate terms. Right after Pearl Harbor the japanese might have insisted on some sort of favorable terms. After they took Manila they would probably not have wanted to give it back. By Midway they might have given back a lot, but of course we wanted them to give back all of china etc. Maybe we could not have agreed on a peace. But we were totally unwilling to find out. It isn’t fair to say that we nuked japan because they refused to surrender. It is fair to say that we nuked japan because we were unwilling to negotiate a surrender. We’ll never know whether we could have arranged a surrender without nuking japan because we made absolutely no effort to do so. We were unwilling.
There are arguments that we should not negotiate peace and fight at the same time. The basic reason is that peace negotiations weaken our resolve. Apply that this time. We were unwilling to negotiate a surrender with japan because that would weaken our resolve to nuke them.
VD Hanson says that to keep a war from starting again you really need to smash the enemy, show them that they’re completely beaten. Japan was already beaten that way, without nukes. The world would be a better place if Hanson got into an argument where he had to admit that his arguments were worthless and perhaps suffer some mild consequence like a YouTube bare-bottom flogging to prove it. The reason he keeps blathering on is that no matter how many times his bogus claims are definitively refuted, he doesn’t have to notice.
Bogus justifications aside, people who weren’t adults during WWII probably can’t understand what it was like. I’ve read old Life magazines from during the war, and it seems like an alien culture. We haven’t had anything like it more recently, except in the weeks after 9/11. For few weeks there, normally-sane people were saying we would have to kill every muslim who didn’t renounce islam, or turn the middle east into a glass parking lot, etc. I’m not talking about the insane people who were still saying that in 2002. For awhile there the nation as a whole went crazy. And in WWII it went on for years. We lost close to half a million dead and their families had the grief to deal with. Rationing. A whole lot of men away, in the military. Censorship, and particularly censorship of anything that hindered the war effort. I particularly remember the full-page photo of the steelworkers’ union organizer. He tried to start a strike when we were at war! He got a bayonet wound on his butt, and they photographed it and put it in Life magazine along with his recantation. He said he was wrong to hurt the war effort and he apologized.
Say what you like about what you would have done. But you weren’t there. People aren’t very good at predicting what they would have done if things were different.
So, it’s been 63 years and people are real intent on what “we” should have done. Why don’t we ever talk about what Genghis should have done, or what Tamerlane should have done, or maybe what Andrew Jackson should have done? We never give a lot of thought to what MacLellan should have done—if he’d done the right things. maybe the Civil War would have been cut short with far less loss of life. What should we have done in the philippines or the mexican war?
What should Hitler have done? Clearly his approach was suboptimal, but if he had been sane—if you had been in his place, say—what might work for getting good results, mercy or at least much reduced injustice for germany?
Why do we only think about what Truman should have done—one single old dead guy—and not the other old dead guys?
It’s absurd to argue that “we” did the right thing because the results happened to turn out well. You can make that argument about anything. For example, if Hitler had not started WWII when he did, there would inevitably have been a world war after both sides had nuclear weapons and it would have been far, far worse. Hitler might have done it for the wrong reasons but we owe him our lives for doing it.
All it takes is to look at what happened, and make up a worse alternative, and then say that what happened was better than the alternative. You can do that about anything. Unless you can repeat the experiment and get odds, it’s bogus.
There’s the argument that without a horrible example somebody would inevitably have used nukes because they couldn’t wrap their minds around it. This is bogus. We have the example of biological warfare, which we have avoided so far without a horrible example. Ditto genetic warfare. However, a variant of it can be used to excuse Truman. Truman had been kept out of the loop, he didn’t know about the nukes until very late. Then he had to make a choice quickly. If national leaders couldn’t understand it without the graphic example, that would apply to Truman even more. Forgive him, he didn’t know what he was doing.
There is the argument that the japanese would not have surrendered without being nuked. This is the first bogus argument all over again, a completely bogus claim about what would have happened otherwise. But this one is special. We had no method set up to accept a surrender from japan. If all along, since Pearl Harbor, we had been negotiating with them about what it would take to end the war, we might at some point have negotiated a peace. But we didn’t want to. We wanted an unconditional surrender and nothing else. So there was nothing to negotiate about and no method arranged to do it, and it took the japanese days after our nuke to reach an agreement about how to surrender and we bombed them again while they did it.
So rephrase that. “We nuked japan because we would not accept a conditional surrender.” We could have ended our war with japan at any time after Pearl Harbor if we had been willing to negotiate terms. Right after Pearl Harbor the japanese might have insisted on some sort of favorable terms. After they took Manila they would probably not have wanted to give it back. By Midway they might have given back a lot, but of course we wanted them to give back all of china etc. Maybe we could not have agreed on a peace. But we were totally unwilling to find out. It isn’t fair to say that we nuked japan because they refused to surrender. It is fair to say that we nuked japan because we were unwilling to negotiate a surrender. We’ll never know whether we could have arranged a surrender without nuking japan because we made absolutely no effort to do so. We were unwilling.
There are arguments that we should not negotiate peace and fight at the same time. The basic reason is that peace negotiations weaken our resolve. Apply that this time. We were unwilling to negotiate a surrender with japan because that would weaken our resolve to nuke them.
VD Hanson says that to keep a war from starting again you really need to smash the enemy, show them that they’re completely beaten. Japan was already beaten that way, without nukes. The world would be a better place if Hanson got into an argument where he had to admit that his arguments were worthless and perhaps suffer some mild consequence like a YouTube bare-bottom flogging to prove it. The reason he keeps blathering on is that no matter how many times his bogus claims are definitively refuted, he doesn’t have to notice.
Bogus justifications aside, people who weren’t adults during WWII probably can’t understand what it was like. I’ve read old Life magazines from during the war, and it seems like an alien culture. We haven’t had anything like it more recently, except in the weeks after 9/11. For few weeks there, normally-sane people were saying we would have to kill every muslim who didn’t renounce islam, or turn the middle east into a glass parking lot, etc. I’m not talking about the insane people who were still saying that in 2002. For awhile there the nation as a whole went crazy. And in WWII it went on for years. We lost close to half a million dead and their families had the grief to deal with. Rationing. A whole lot of men away, in the military. Censorship, and particularly censorship of anything that hindered the war effort. I particularly remember the full-page photo of the steelworkers’ union organizer. He tried to start a strike when we were at war! He got a bayonet wound on his butt, and they photographed it and put it in Life magazine along with his recantation. He said he was wrong to hurt the war effort and he apologized.
Say what you like about what you would have done. But you weren’t there. People aren’t very good at predicting what they would have done if things were different.
So, it’s been 63 years and people are real intent on what “we” should have done. Why don’t we ever talk about what Genghis should have done, or what Tamerlane should have done, or maybe what Andrew Jackson should have done? We never give a lot of thought to what MacLellan should have done—if he’d done the right things. maybe the Civil War would have been cut short with far less loss of life. What should we have done in the philippines or the mexican war?
What should Hitler have done? Clearly his approach was suboptimal, but if he had been sane—if you had been in his place, say—what might work for getting good results, mercy or at least much reduced injustice for germany?
Why do we only think about what Truman should have done—one single old dead guy—and not the other old dead guys?