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!"