Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decwrl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-lymph!arndt From: arndt@lymph.DEC Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Bombs away! Message-ID: <3839@decwrl.UUCP> Date: Thu, 4-Oct-84 21:30:41 EDT Article-I.D.: decwrl.3839 Posted: Thu Oct 4 21:30:41 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 6-Oct-84 01:42:17 EDT Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP Organization: DEC Engineering Network Lines: 44 In light of the recent discussion on the net of the American decision to drop the Atomic bomb on Japan I would suggest reaching to the library shelf for: The Atomic Bomb:The Great Decision, Ed. by Paul R. Baker, American Problem Studies, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. All the heavies in on the decision explain what went on at the time and give pro and con accounts. We are often given to facile comments without much thought or study to very complex problems. "As the selections reveal, the decision in 1945 to use the atomic bomb was highly complex. In analyzing and evaluating the different aspects of the problem, the student should attempt to put himself in the position of the decision makers in 1945; he must try to be aware of the scope of their understanding, their frame of reference, and the pressures on them."p.8 Someone on the net suggested that the bomb should have been demonstrated first to avoid loss of life. Indeed, that was an option considered at the time. Listen to what Herbert Feis, a diplomatic historian, has to say: "They urged that before using it against Japan its immense destructive power should be displayed to the world by dropping it in some remote, uninhabited or emptid spot . . . . All suggestions of this sort were judged impractical, ineffective and/or risky." p.44 Read the whole thing for the details. Feis was no slouch. He won a Pulitzer prize in history for his work and served in the government at the time. He attempts to show that use of the new weapon was not essential to bringing about a surrender on Allied terms, and he develops the question of the justification for the decision. So don't pass him by as a pro bomb guy!! He believes, nevertheless, that the reasons for use of the bomb by the United States were valid, even though he questions some aspects of the American course of action. --------------------------------- Now I know that this is net.flame. Slogans only please. But so much of the crap here is so boring!! Why can't we arrest people for being boring? I might even agree to arresting people for not being able to spell! Keep chargin' Ken Arndt "Nuke the warmongers!"