Terror Bombing
"While World War II was a just war against enemies whose crimes, from Nanking to Auschwitz, will live in infamy, the means we used must trouble any Christian conscience."That good came out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is undeniable. In a week, Japan surrendered, World War II ended and, across the Japanese empire, soldiers laid down their arms. Thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Japanese who would have perished in an invasion of Japan survived, as did Allied POWs who might have been executed on the orders of Japanese commanders when we landed.
"But were the means used -- the destruction in seconds of two cities, inflicting instant death on 120,000 men, women and children, and an agonizing death from burns and radiation on scores of thousands more -- moral?
"Truman's defenders argue that by using the bomb, he saved more lives than were lost in those cities. Only the atom bombs, they contend, could have shocked Japan's warlords into surrender.
"But if terrorism is the massacre of innocents to break the will of rulers, were not Hiroshima and Nagasaki terrorism on a colossal scale?
"Churchill did not deny what the Allied air war was about. Before departing for Yalta, he ordered Operation Thunderclap, a campaign to "de-house" civilians to clog roads so German soldiers could not move to stop the offensive of the Red Army. British Air Marshal "Bomber" Harris put Dresden, a jewel of a city and haven for hundreds of thousands of terrified refugees, on the target list.
"On the first night, 770 Lancasters arrived around 10:00. In two waves, 650,000 incendiary bombs rained down, along with 1,474 tons of high explosives. The next morning, 500 B-17s arrived in two waves, with 300 fighter escorts to strafe fleeing survivors.
"Estimates of the dead in the Dresden firestorm range from 35,000 to 250,000. Wrote The Associated Press, "Allied war chiefs have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of German populated centers as a ruthless expedient to hasten Hitler's doom."
"Yet, whatever the mindset of Japan's warlords in August 1945, the moral question remains. In a just war against an evil enemy, is the deliberate slaughter of his women and children in the thousands justified to break his will to fight? Traditionally, the Christian's answer has been no."
Read the rest of Pat Buchanan's column HERE.
Presented for your delectation by the Gentleman Farmer at 8:15 AM
Comments on "Terror Bombing"
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Yeoman said ... (12:08 PM) :
post a commentInteresting column.
I noted the Hiroshima bombing the other day on my blog on this one:
http://yeomanlawyer.blogspot.com/2005/08/war.html
I don't really mean to link myself in, but only to note the item there about opposing the bombings, in retrospect, requiring an acknowledgment that it would have meant a lot of American and Japanese deaths (as well as Australian, British and New Zealander deaths).
But that doesn't really address the question of morality of the act.
Ultimately, while the war was one we had to fight, I'm afraid that the use of the atomic bomb to end it, and indeed the use of mass bombing against Japan, while not really viewed as immoral at the time, should not have been done. This would have cost a lot of American lives, but that doesn't really justify using weapons against civilians. And that statement doesn't equate to sympathy with the Japanese.
At the same time, of course, you almost have to wonder if the use of the bomb at the end of the war has provided such a horrific example, that it is what caused it from being used later, when its use would have been much more destructive.