Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sphinx.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar 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 References: <3665@decwrl.UUCP> Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept Lines: 48 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