I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, if any good came out of it, I think showing the world the death, devastation and illness an atomic attack on a city can cause likely made world leaders pause before pushing the button. The Cuban Missile Crisis comes to mind. Would either party have backed down if no one had actually seen what even a relatively small bomb could do to a city?
Yes, all the way back to the first caveman, Ug. He was one hell of a son of a bitch, though he knew how to handle those pesky dinosaurs, so was a favorite of his cave.
World leaders don’t get to be world leaders if they do not do abstract thinking well.
Yes, that certainly sounds like Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un.
They did tests which clearly showed the destruction. They knew what would happen, but did not care. If it was your family and entire community being used as a test subject for American empathy, you wouldn’t have this take.
They did one test in the desert which did not clearly show the destruction. It did not show the deaths. It did not show the shadows on the wall. It did not show the burns. It did not show the blindness. It did not show the radiation sickness.
And the very first words in my post were, “I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” so I don’t know why you seem to think I believe they were justified.
Do you really not think anything the future can learn from can come out of a tragedy, no matter how horrific?
Saying you don’t wish to justify the tragedy doesn’t mean that wasn’t exactly what you were doing.
People don’t need to see something to know it’s going to be destructive. I have never personally seen a bloody car accident but I still know to avoid them.
Plus it’s not like people hadn’t seen a bomb before? Of course the nuclear bomb was worse, but all you have to do is see the damage existing bombs do, know that’s bad, and know that the nuclear bomb is going to be worse because they were designed to be worse.
Being able to find something good out of a tragedy is not justifying the tragedy in any way.
Look up the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Almost all labor rights in the U.S. came out of it. Does that justify all of those women dying? Of course not. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t result in making changes that ended up stopping many, many other people from being exploited and killed at work.
And if you don’t like that, feudalism was destroyed because the Black Death made workers a scarcity, which meant that lords could no longer hold them to farmsteads. Does that mean the Black Death was a good thing? I would hope you wouldn’t say it was anything but a tragedy.
There was no question, no doubt that atomic bombs would cause immense destruction.
The triangle shirtwaist factory gave activists a rallying cry for protections, but the people in charge of that factory could have easily predicted that locking the doors to a factory could be dangerous.
Again- immense destruction is in no way the same as seeing the shadows on the wall, the severe burns, the radiation sickness, the birth defects, etc.
What that they didn’t during see during the Trinity test was that it wasn’t just a great big powerful bomb. It was far worse than that.
The only way anyone could have known exactly how horrific an atomic bomb is would have been to use it. Which was horrific, but because of it we didn’t have a much bigger war using such weapons as we very well could have done in 1962.
The triangle shirtwaist factory gave activists a rallying cry for protections, but the people in charge of that factory could have easily predicted that locking the doors to a factory could be dangerous.
Yes, that’s my entire point. It was a horrible tragedy, but because of it, other such tragedies got much less rare.
The reasoning at the time was that the Japanese would not believe the U.S. could do it more than once and they would have to believe the U.S. could obliterate Japan in order to surrender.
I have no idea if that would have been true, but that was the idea. It certainly is true that the Japanese were being told to fight until every last man, woman and child on the islands died, so it was a desperate situation all around.
But the fact is that it was only a matter of time before someone developed an atomic bomb and no one has been crazy enough to use one in a war since 1945. The main reason for that, in my opinion, is that the world saw what happened.
I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, if any good came out of it, I think showing the world the death, devastation and illness an atomic attack on a city can cause likely made world leaders pause before pushing the button. The Cuban Missile Crisis comes to mind. Would either party have backed down if no one had actually seen what even a relatively small bomb could do to a city?
It’s not like we didn’t know nuclear bombs are destructive and violent. That’s the point.
Do you think thing people understand things in the abstract just as well as encountering a concrete example?
World leaders do not do abstract thinking well.
[Citation required.]
World leaders don’t get to be world leaders if they do not do abstract thinking well.
It’s just many times they’re constrained by the politics on the ground.
All of human history?
Yes, that certainly sounds like Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un.
Good thing they never had any access to nuclear weapons.
Yes, all the way back to the first caveman, Ug. He was one hell of a son of a bitch, though he knew how to handle those pesky dinosaurs, so was a favorite of his cave.
[Citation required.] [Again.]
They did tests which clearly showed the destruction. They knew what would happen, but did not care. If it was your family and entire community being used as a test subject for American empathy, you wouldn’t have this take.
They did one test in the desert which did not clearly show the destruction. It did not show the deaths. It did not show the shadows on the wall. It did not show the burns. It did not show the blindness. It did not show the radiation sickness.
And the very first words in my post were, “I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” so I don’t know why you seem to think I believe they were justified.
Do you really not think anything the future can learn from can come out of a tragedy, no matter how horrific?
Saying you don’t wish to justify the tragedy doesn’t mean that wasn’t exactly what you were doing.
People don’t need to see something to know it’s going to be destructive. I have never personally seen a bloody car accident but I still know to avoid them.
Plus it’s not like people hadn’t seen a bomb before? Of course the nuclear bomb was worse, but all you have to do is see the damage existing bombs do, know that’s bad, and know that the nuclear bomb is going to be worse because they were designed to be worse.
Being able to find something good out of a tragedy is not justifying the tragedy in any way.
Look up the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Almost all labor rights in the U.S. came out of it. Does that justify all of those women dying? Of course not. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t result in making changes that ended up stopping many, many other people from being exploited and killed at work.
And if you don’t like that, feudalism was destroyed because the Black Death made workers a scarcity, which meant that lords could no longer hold them to farmsteads. Does that mean the Black Death was a good thing? I would hope you wouldn’t say it was anything but a tragedy.
There was no question, no doubt that atomic bombs would cause immense destruction.
The triangle shirtwaist factory gave activists a rallying cry for protections, but the people in charge of that factory could have easily predicted that locking the doors to a factory could be dangerous.
Again- immense destruction is in no way the same as seeing the shadows on the wall, the severe burns, the radiation sickness, the birth defects, etc.
What that they didn’t during see during the Trinity test was that it wasn’t just a great big powerful bomb. It was far worse than that.
The only way anyone could have known exactly how horrific an atomic bomb is would have been to use it. Which was horrific, but because of it we didn’t have a much bigger war using such weapons as we very well could have done in 1962.
Yes, that’s my entire point. It was a horrible tragedy, but because of it, other such tragedies got much less rare.
Everyone knows shit stinks, but it just seems to stink much more when you shit yourself at work.
Right, so since you know shit stinks, you don’t need to shit yourself to know it’s a bad idea.
That point makes sense, but why drop TWO bombs days apart? That’s sickening.
The reasoning at the time was that the Japanese would not believe the U.S. could do it more than once and they would have to believe the U.S. could obliterate Japan in order to surrender.
I have no idea if that would have been true, but that was the idea. It certainly is true that the Japanese were being told to fight until every last man, woman and child on the islands died, so it was a desperate situation all around.
But the fact is that it was only a matter of time before someone developed an atomic bomb and no one has been crazy enough to use one in a war since 1945. The main reason for that, in my opinion, is that the world saw what happened.