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From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame
Subject: Re: Belated Good Wishes!
Message-ID: <986@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 01:00:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.986
Posted: Fri Aug 16 01:00:22 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 03:27:49 EDT
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Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept
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Xref: watmath net.politics:10476 net.flame:11578

Ken, you're stuffing a lot of irrelevancies on top of the issue.  Most of
the points you raise I can either agree with, or set aside as too hard to
settle, and *still* find this anniversary something to lament.

In particular:
	1.  I entirely agree that the Axis side was wrong and the Allied
	    side was right, in some quite solid sense that is happy with
	    these absolute judgments.  Does anybody seriously question
	    this?  No; so it doesn't require the heat and detail you give it.

	2.  It is not easy to say whether the use of the A-bomb was necessary
	    in the situation as it stood at the time; or even whether, if not
	    necessary, it was justifiable.  My inclination is to say that it
	    was unnecessary, but justifiable.  Your inclination, apparently,
	    is to say that it was necessary.  I don't want to start an argument
	    on the substantive points, but I do object to your apparent view
	    that it's easily settled.  It's not, it's a hard question.  That's
	    why there isn't a clear historical consensus.
		In any case, settling this point isn't necessary.  Let us even,
	    for the sake of argument, grant it your way.

Then the lamentation over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is purely
hindsight, and is not a deep moral judgment upon those who had to make the
decision at the time.  'Just hindsight': but hindsight is powerful and worthy.
What we are so worked up about on this anniversary (those of us who are
worked up) is based on something we know now, but they didn't know then, and
we can't blame them for not knowing -- that nuclear weapons are a lively
and active threat to our civilization and perhaps to the survival of our
species.  

What we're talking about here is the future.  We're most of all lamenting
the future possibility of nuclear war, and on this occasion doing so by
looking at the one time in the past when that which we dread actually
happened...in miniature, and in a different context, but nonetheless a real
case of the same thing.

To use nuclear weapons today would be a dreadfully immoral thing, a crime
against humanity.  Rendering that judgment in today's situation does not
mean that we cast the same condemnation upon HST and his advisers.  But with
that proviso in mind, what's wrong with our using this anniversary -- this
year and every year -- to say "It happened once, let it never again come
to pass"?  That's what the fuss is about, that's what we're tearing our
hair about, and none of this is changed by reciting and weighing up the
cruelties of all aspects of World War II.
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar