Bin Laden And Hiroshima

tahmad #various: Some questions:

1. Do you think it is a legitimate strategy for any country to decide, on its own, that it needs to drop a nuclear bomb on a city, to save the lives of its soldiers (or the enemy`s soldiers) in a war? For example, suppose the Indian leadership decides, in a war with Pakistan, to nuke Pindi, because it feels the war will go on for too long? Would that be valid?

2. Why do you think the nuclear bomb was dropped on a civilian populations? Why wasn`t it dropped in just a vacant area to show its effects?

3. The USA dropped more armaments in Vietnam War, than all the allied bombs dropped combined, in WW II. There were discussions of dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam, also. Do you think that would have been valid, using the same logic as Hiroshima?

4. Do you think the USA would have nuked Japan, if Japan also had nukes?

Re: # 6 Zeemax

``Japanese were the first suicide bombers, and then the Tamils. Muslims came much later. So religion has nothing to do with suicide bombings as a motivating factor. The only factors are alienation and disenfranchisement. ``

Japs and Tamil suicide bombings don`t fall in the category of ``religiously`` inspired.
Japs were more inspired by their Bushido/Samurai culture and Tamil Tigers (Hindus and Christians) were fierce militants.
In both the cases religion (Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism/Shintoism) were not used to justify suicide bombing. On the contrary, the concept of Shahadat/matrydom used by Muslims (of different ethnic, communities, nationalities) is based on the one preached by Islam (on the basis of jihad). Thats the difference.
Hence you cannot ignore the role played by Islam in encouraging suicide bombing in the promise of paradise.

Continuing from my previous post, the jihadis are playing with fire. If they manage to detonate an atomic bomb in any of the western countries, it will be end of Islam for all practical purposes. Major centers of Islamic radicalism like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, will be wiped clean of the face of the Earth. Like Pardesi said, the retaliation will be in direct proportion to what has happened, since 9/11. Probably more so.

The moderate Muslims should worry that they will paying for the misdeeds of people like Osmana.

People like aquaris live in a dream world. The prime lesson of history is that it is written by the victors. It is immaterial whether bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crime against humanity. What is material is that American helped devasted Japan and Germany to get back to the modern countries that they are. If there was a crime it has been more than atoned by the good that was done subsequently.

I will write more later.

`` One of the prominent critics of the bombings was Albert Einstein. Leo Szilard, a scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued:

``If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.``


Mr Hoodbhoy is one of those who have Soft corner for the World Sole Super Power, and some consider him to be One of their Mouth Peice, Yes I agree it was a failure of Mankind
Had they tried the then Americans , in a proper War Crime Trial ,and hanged a few of them , many more American Attrocites would not have happened.

When American Got away with the Killing of over 150,000 people within 3 days and subsequently of over 400,000 in the next 2 and a half year , It defined their future psychology, their way of thinking, and their perceptions about the REST of the world
which they consider nothing but disposable scums, like they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan , and had done earlier in Vietnam .

Time has not been Lost , Some one still should Put forward a case of War Crimes against them , and try the Responsibles for their Killing of Millions of Innocent Civilians....

Re: # 19 Godot
{If the Muslim terrorists succeed in nuclear attack on the US, Islam will be eradicated from America and Europe. Muslims will be either expelled or be asked -- forced -- to convert to another religion, preferably Christianity, a la Spain, and perhaps for the next 100 years anyone with a Muslim name will not be allowed in America or Eurpoe}

You are absolutely right. I would also think that quite a few major cities of the muslim countries will be wiped out just so that the beast is finally put to rest.

Those who doubt it should just look at the ratio of casualties on 9/11 to what muslim world is paying in Iraq and Afghanistan with no end in sight.

Sane people learn from their previous miscalculations.

Dr Hoodbhoy asks, ``If we accept that religious fanatics are planning nuclear attacks and that they may eventually succeed, then what? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counter reaction whose horror the human mind cannot comprehend. Who will the US retaliate against? Will the US nuke Mecca? The capitals of Muslim states? What will the US and its allies do as their people fear more attacks, will they expel Muslims from the US and Europe or like the Japanese Americans in World War II, herd them into internment camps?``

If the Muslim terrorists succeed in nuclear attack on the US, Islam will be eradicated from America and Europe. Muslims will be either expelled or be asked -- forced -- to convert to another religion, preferably Christianity, a la Spain, and perhaps for the next 100 years anyone with a Muslim name will not be allowed in America or Eurpoe.

Here`s another (and different) perspective on Nuclear Bombs...

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Hiroshima
Nuclear weapons, then and now.

Today--or August 6 in Japan--is the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which killed outright an estimated 80,000 Japanese and hastened World War II to its conclusion on August 15. Those of us who belong to the postwar generations tend to regard the occasion as a somber, even shameful, one. But that`s not how the generation of Americans who actually fought the war saw it. And if we`re going to reflect seriously about the bomb, we ought first to think about it as they did.
In 1945, Paul Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant who`d spent much of the previous year fighting his way through Europe. At the time of Hiroshima, he was scheduled to participate in the invasion of the Japanese mainland, for which the Truman Administration anticipated casualties of between 200,000 and one million Allied soldiers. No surprise, then, that when news of the bomb reached Lt. Fussell and his men, they had no misgivings about its use:

``We learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, and for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.``

Mr. Fussell was writing about American lives. What about Japanese lives? The Japanese army was expected to fight to the last man, as it had during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Since the ratio of Japanese to American combat fatalities ran about four to one, a mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths--and that`s not counting civilians. The March 1945 Tokyo fire raid killed about 100,000; such raids would have intensified had the war dragged on. The collective toll from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is estimated at between 110,000 and 200,000.

Nuclear weapons are often said to pose a unique threat to humanity, and in the wrong hands they do. But when President Truman gave the go-ahead to deploy Fat Man and Little Boy, what those big bombs chiefly represented was salvation: salvation for young Lt. Fussell and all the GIs; salvation for the tens of thousands of Allied POWs the Japanese intended to execute in the event of an invasion; salvation for the grotesquely used Korean ``comfort women``; salvation for millions of Asians enslaved by the Japanese.
Not least, and despite the terrible irony, the bombings were salvation for Japan, since they prompted Emperor Hirohito to intervene with his bitterly divided government to end the war, thus laying the groundwork for America`s beneficent occupation and the country`s subsequent prosperity. To understand the roots of modern Japan`s pacifist mentality, so at variance with its old warrior culture, one need only visit Hiroshima`s peace park.

The same can be said about nuclear weapons in other contexts. America`s nuclear arsenal helped thwart Soviet expansionism and provided the umbrella under which Western Europe and the Asian rim countries became--and remained--free throughout the Cold War. For embattled Israel, nuclear weapons have not only helped guarantee its existence, they have paradoxically provided it with the margin of strength it needs to contemplate territorial concessions unimaginable for other states its size.

Of course, for every Pershing missile that helped keep Western Europe free, a Soviet SS-20 helped keep Eastern Europe captive. In the hands of democracies, nuclear weapons safeguard liberty; in the hands of dictatorships, they safeguard despotism. It`s doubtful the Soviet Union could have survived as long as it did had it never developed nuclear weapons. That`s true for North Korea today, and it explains why the mullahs of Tehran seek to bolster their faltering regime with an atomic bomb.

Also true is that the threat nuclear weapons pose today is probably greater than ever before. That`s not because they`re more plentiful--thanks to the 2002 Moscow Treaty (negotiated by John Bolton), U.S. and Russian arsenals are being cut to levels not seen in 40 years. It`s because nuclear know-how and technology have fallen into the hands of men such as A.Q. Khan and Kim Jong Il, and they, in turn, are but one degree of separation away from the jihadists who may someday detonate a bomb in Times or Trafalgar Square.

Reflecting on this history, there`s a tendency to wax melancholic about the dangers of letting the proverbial genie out of his bottle, and to suggest we stuff him back in. Thus the reflexive opposition by Democrats and some Republicans to developing new nuclear weapons such as the ``bunker buster`` and to the resumption of nuclear testing. The Senate has even zeroed out of the President`s budget funding for a high-powered laser that would help gauge the reliability of the U.S. arsenal without testing. We also frequently hear calls for the U.S. to lead by example by further reducing its arsenal, and for the Bush Administration to ``strengthen`` the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by agreeing to the useless Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Yet the notion that the nuclear genie can be willed out of existence through the efforts of right-thinking people is as absurd as it is wrongheaded. Just as guns and knives will be with us forever, so too will the bomb. We need bunker busters because North Korea and Iran are using underground facilities to build weapons that threaten us, and we must be able credibly to threaten in return. We need to have nuclear tests because the reliability of our principal warhead, the W-76, has been seriously called into question, and China must not be enticed to compete with us as a nuclear power. In neither case does the U.S. set a ``bad example.`` Rather, it demonstrates the same capacity for moral self-confidence that carried America through World War II and must now carry us through the war on terror.

Looking back after 60 years, who cannot be grateful that it was Truman who had the bomb, and not Hitler or Tojo or Stalin? And looking forward, who can seriously doubt the need for might always to remain in the hands of right? That is the enduring lesson of Hiroshima, and it is one we ignore at our peril.


Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

(Just a note – this is my first interact on one of your articles, therefore I’m being nicer than my usual self!)

The article makes for interesting reading. I don’t have any reason to doubt that your intentions may be sincere and that you indeed seek a peaceful world.

You went to great pains to collect references to make the hackneyed point that nuke-seeking countries are doing nothing new which the superpowers have not already done before. That of course is false and self-serving logic – when the superpowers did what they did back when, they did not have the hindsight (nukes being a brand new game) which Pakistan and others have available. The trick to becoming great is to learn from mistakes – especially from those of others, and definitely from one’s own – the country and leadership of Pakistan have both failed miserably and consistently on both accounts.

The description of Americans celebrating after Japanese surrender is misleading. Even though the rhetoric was racist (in keeping with the times (we are talking about the days when the U.S. used to sanction South African apartheid internationally and have separate seating arrangements for blacks and whites domestically)) – still people were merely celebrating that event for exactly what it was – the end of a protracted war, ending in a victory – nobody celebrated the loss of innocent lives (and how do you identify which segments of the Japanese populations back then were not fully supportive of fighting the Americans? (From all accounts, there was not much of a “peace” constituency in existence in Japan back then)). Regarding the racist nature of those times, the simple fact is that (especially before the age of the internet), things and people far away just didn’t have the same prominence in one’s mind as their immediate issues in day-to-day lives – it’s human nature.

[The decision to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not taken in anger.]
The plain, stark reality of a war is that nations wage it for their geopolitical interests and provide it an ideological or other color or cover so as to be able to facilitate acceptance (especially within). Pakistan has been one recent exception where the government (and perhaps a chunk of its intelligentsia) has allowed its religious prejudice to run rough-shod over any sensible geopolitical considerations – and consequently, paid a heavy price. It shall continue to pay such a price as long as the exclusive “Islam is special and people and things Islamic need to be judged by standards different from those applied to the rest of the world” mind-set does not change! Take it, dear Professor, from this simple janitor!

[Headlines like “Jap City No More” soon brought the news to a joyous nation.]
As I said above, those were very different times. There was a certain element of institutionalized racism present in many European countries as well as the U.S. – in fact within many parts of the U.S. the “Jim Crow” laws were fully in force. This country has (pretty much) grown out of that mind-set, thank God! So, when is Pakistan going to do its own “growing up”?

[One wonders what bin Laden – and others of his ilk – learnt from Hiroshima.]
It is ludicrous, of course, to think of this guy as another legitimate world leader of any kind – he does not think like them – his sole objective is to protect his “cause”, not a nation-state. People like him (and I’m sure there are plenty of such people around) never sit down and THINK – because in their minds, they already KNOW – everything!

[Gul then vented his anger at those – like myself – who oppose Pakistan’s Bomb as agents of America, apostates, enemies of Islam and the Pakistani state. I will not burden readers with my replies to this extremist general.]
The real question, Dr. Hoodbhoy, is not whether people like Gul exist or whether they are to be considered “extremists” or not – but why is it that they are able to rise to their positions of power (like this one did) in Pakistan – and the army and the people at large and (parts of) the intelligentsia is able to look at them as legitimate leaders – even role models! The simple (perhaps simplistic) logic of the humble janitor tells him – “it’s the religion, stupid!” – others are entitled to their own theories.

[Imperial America On The Move]
This section pretty much reads like rhetorical flim-flam. Yes, the U.S. is big and powerful and spends on its defense accordingly – but there is no overriding desire in this country to rule the world as an imperialistic power. In fact, recent history points the other way – despite conquering, we did not annex Mexico in the nineteenth century and Philippines in the twentieth. It is true that after 9/11, a certain amount of realization has set in that it is not possible to stay aloof from world events – so there is more “hands-on” involvement. Individual U.S. cabinet members (both past and present) sometimes express their views as individuals. Also, in case of past cabinet members, who are otherwise employed now, it is not always feasible to separate what they say from their current jobs.

[Why does it want to goad other nations towards also craving nukes?]
It’s simplicity of the highest magnitude to imply that ANY country needs any “goading” to yearn for nukes – the desire for nukes among countries at large is as basic as the desire of the masses to have intimate “less than platonic” interactions with high-profile movie stars (of the opposite sex, mostly)!

[The answer is obvious: imperial hubris, runaway militarism, and the arrogance of power. Nuclear weapons, in the revised US view under George W. Bush, are now to be viewed as weapons for fighting wars with. They may even be used as a first-strike – no longer are they to be thought of as weapons of last resort.]
You let your prejudice (as a peacenik, I hasten to add) show here. In any kind of warfare, it is always foolish to “rule out” ANY kind of weapons (like the Indians seem to do). The reality is, if and when a war starts, everything goes out of the window; therefore such pronouncements have NO validity!

[The making of atomic weapons – especially crude ones – has become vastly simpler than it was at the time of the Manhattan Project. Basic information is freely available in technical libraries throughout the world and simply surfing the internet can bring to anyone a staggering amount of detail.]
This part of your write-up is the weakest and least supportable. Making a nuke is a lot tougher than learning about one. And NOBODY thinks that “quick and dirty” nukes pose the same magnitude of danger as the real thing – in spite of whatever the public expressions.

[Can The Islam-US Clash Go Nuclear?]
This section is nothing but pure populist poppycock for primitive puerile peace pundits!

[The notion of an Islamic Bomb had existed long before 911.]
The obvious fact – which you disregard – is that NONE of the countries having such a capability thinks of itself as a “protector” of a religion and puts religious colors on this tool of mass destruction – except Pakistan – and that country does so in full duplicity, too. I would doubt that any one in the Muslim community of nations is deluded enough to think that Pakistan is ever going to emerge as a big protector. I would even doubt that any one in the Pakistan is deluded enough to think that the bomb provides them ANY safety from the likes of U.S., and if they keep pushing, perhaps even from India (despite an obviously heavy cost to both countries).

[It saw in the Bomb a sure sign of a reversal of fortunes and a panacea for the ills that have plagued Muslims since the end of the Golden Age of Islam.]
O boy! The cruel, cruel Hoodbhoy REALLY rubs it in!

[….(but it is worth recalling that this kind of “extended deterrence”, as it was called, was practicised aggressively by both superpowers in the Cold War, including during the Cuban Missile Crisis).]
As I said before, the trick is to learn from the mistakes others have already made and not to repeat them.

[Today, the United States rightly lives in fear of the Bomb it created because the decision to use it—if and when it becomes available—has already been made.]
Actually, Pervez, we don’t! (Certainly janitors like me don’t! I can’t speak for the professor-types.)

[If we accept that religious fanatics are planning nuclear attacks and that they may eventually succeed, then what? … expel Muslims from the US and Europe or like the Japanese Americans in World War II, herd them into internment camps? ]
You let your imagination REALLY run wild on this one.

[For this to happen, the civilized world will have to subdue the twin ogres of American imperialism and Islamic radicalism.]
You needed to add – the former imaginary, the latter very REAL!

tahmed, you did specify Chinese. However its ok. It`s just that you need to see things in their correct perspective. America didn`t give a damn about the Chinese, or for anyone else for that matter. Germany had surrendered, Japan hadn`t and still occupying its neighbours. Russia was an ally but untrustworthy. Japan was as imperialist as America and better than them as an imperial power at that. Russia had the whole of Eastern Europe in its palm as a result of WWII and its own imperialism was certain. So what better way to show the Russians, who could be a future major imperialist adversary (which they still were anyway in the future) than to show them how America could decimate some yellows Japs?

Your entire view of the history is misplaced.

zeemax: I have to go now. bye. Give my love to your hero Emperor Hirohito, the butcher of Nanking.

zeemax: if you have something to say in response then say it. I dont intend to waste my entire sunday correcting your learning disabilities.

zeemax #11 What you say flies against reality. That is why you try to justify your unrealistic claims by saying ``And here we are with lots of intellectuals justifying it.``.

This is the slavish mentality of pakistanis - looking towards other men for guidance, rather than your own eyes and your own common sense.

No it isnt. I did not specify any nationalities. The lives the US saved by making hirohito realize that his own head would be next and to thus cause him to surrender immediately saved the lives of people of ALL nationalities that would have been fighting in the war.

Nuking of Japan was the biggest war crime ever committed. And here we are with lots of intellectuals justifying it. So please justify bombing of London`s tubes as well. Thanks.

tahmed you said america saved hundreds of thousands of life by nuking Japan .. isn`t it? Whose lives did it save? Chinese? Who arwere always and even now America`s biggest enemies?