My point is there is a fundamental difference between choosing the lesser of two evils and causing one yourself. One should never intentionally sacrifice one person for the sake of another, nor does one have the right to.
If you think the typical conservative opinion is contradictory, try the opposite on for size:
"It is OK to sacrifice other human beings for the benefit of science and myself, but it is wrong to stop hundreds of thousands from being killed because I probably will kill someone while doing it".
As for your main point, there is a key difference between the two scenarios.
In the stem-cell scenario, we are discussing the intentional sacrifice of one living human being for the sake of another. In the war scenario, we are talking about choosing between two alternative paths where many people will die, despite our efforts.
The difference lies in the intent. In the war scenario, we know that whatever choice we make will result in death, but we never kill an innocent person intentionally. In the stem-cell scenerio, we very deliberately kill innocent humans.
That is a profound moral difference which you seem to be skipping over.
I think what may be an issue for you is the following hypothetical war scenario (the Iraq war may or may not be an example of this, as only the future will tell).
Option A: Do something. Some people will die. A fraction of those directly, but unintentionally, by your actions.
Option B: Do nothing. More people will die than in scenario A. But you will have no blood on your hands.
If you think B is the moral choice, we have little common ground upon which to have a reasonable discussion.
As a scientist myself, my biggest concern with the layman's conception of science is that it is somehow "objective" or otherwise philosophically special. It is not. It has its unprovable assumptions, just like any other. Rather, it is simply a philosophy that seems to work really well.
If you would like to fund further science with your money, I fully support your effort. However, I see no philosophical difference between you forcing your neighbor to donate to your favorite research lab, and him forcing you to donate to your church.
How about we all just quit forcing anyone to donate to any of our pet causes?
are actually quite irritating. In an effort to save energy, they do not start to open until you are about three feet away from them, much later than in the US. The result of this is that anyone with a normal walking speed usually has to stop and wait a half-step before they can go through.
This value of irritation has got to be a lot greater than that of the micro-watt of energy that is saved, but such logic does not seem to hold in Japan.
which I believe contains a reference to the authors of the 250k-400k study. You can go read it yourself.
Of course, we cannot know the opinions of the victims, as they are dead. But we can know the opinions of surviving Japanese (who, barring a few peacenik radicals, generally understand Truman's decision, to the extent that they care), as well as the opinions of the Chinese, Koreans, etc who were spared additional years of Japanese thuggery.
The number was a result of a serious pier-reviewed study, and Japan explicitly rejected our offer. The actual number estimated was 250k-400k per month. I chose to use 10k per day as an conservative average within that range.
I am a bit baffled as to why you think "making peace" with a bunch of murderous thugs would have been a great idea in the first place.
The Japan/Pearl Harbor hypothetical involves unintended consequences, while the US/Hiroshima does not.
Japan choose an evil for its own ends. It backfired, and the world, in the long run, benefited.
America choose what it considered to be the lesser evil. In hindsight, we were probably right, though one can never be sure of alternate histories.
I do not see the same reasoning being used in these two scenarios.
Ask yourself an honest question. How many dead Chinese would it have taken for you to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. If not 10,000 a day, how about 20,000? 50,000? Or is their no number?
Would you set on your hands and let millions die, to keep the bloods of a far smaller number off your hands? What makes that moral?
did at the time. Part of the wonders of hindsight. Nor were these generals privy to the cracked diplomatic intercepts.
If you would have read the article, you would have learned that the Japanese darned well did have an ability to fight, so much so that our generals and admirals were balking at the idea of an invasion.
In any case, you are being selective, as over 90% of people were for it at the time. I am sure there is a 9:1 quote ratio in my favor from the time period.
But I am willing to abandon that principle, and any other, if that principle is clearly getting significant numbers of people killed. Dragging the war out would have had that effect. Actually, it is impossible to obey that principle and fight a war. To obey it in such times, to its full extent, means to surrender immediately.
One more side point: The ends justifying the means is the entire underlying basis of the welfare state. So if you consider yourself a liberal, I think you should ask yourself why you seem to ignore this principle in normal times, but grab hold of it only when obeying it would result in needless slaughter. Sounds backwards to me.
It is not as if the Japanese set all of their factories outside of town for convenient bombing. Likewise, the soldiers were stationed in the cities. About 40,000 of the 300,000 people in Hiroshima that day were soldiers. Virtually everyone was directly involved in the war effort.
Without the bombs, we likely would have bombed and blockaded for a few months, forcing an eventual surrender of some sort. However, that surrender would likely not have been complete, but more of a cease-fire with the military junta left intact.
Instead of the Japan that evolved into the wonderful nation of today, we would have had a hostile, militaristic, nationalist dictatorship with an unknown course of evolution. I highly doubt that it would have been anywhere near as good as what we got.
Also, depending on the actions of Russia, the bomb and blockade strategy could have wound up with a half-communist nation with a north and south Tokyo.
Honestly, in a geo-political sense, the bombs were grand slams and the results could not have been better. Of course, this would not be sufficient justification if the bombs were likely to have caused more damage than the alternatives, but that is unlikely.
If I tie a rock to someone and throw them in a river, and you subsequently rescue them, I cannot possibly claim to have saved a life!
You are right, Japan attacking us actually made the world a better place. However, they get no credit, as their credit ends precisely where our choices begin.
In Japan, more so than other countries, there is a big difference between the way you truly feel and the public face you put on (honne and tatamae).
Having "harmonious" relationships with those around you is very important, even when there is a deep-rooted problem that you are burying. Since discussing politics does not lend itself to harmony, it is not talked about much. If it is not talked about, it tends to be not thought about. Because of that, it isn't covered so much on the news - there sure isn't a Crossfire or Fox here. It is pretty much a one-party system anyway, with the same left-center group having been in power for ages. Hence, most Japanese are fairly apolitical.
By August 1945, the Big Six (the people really running Japan) were fighting for sovereignty, not conquest. Without the bombs, they may well have gotten it.
Lest you think this is better than the bombs, remember the 10,000 dead per day, multiplied by a few months this settlement would have taken. Then consider the cost to the world that a hostile Japan would have brought. The fact that we defeated Japan so soundly, and they embraced this defeat, was a critical point in their history. Letting them settle into some sort of face-saving draw would have left a hostile, militaristic, proud Japan. Beyond that is pure speculation, but none of the results I can come up with are particularly pretty.
They were just barely hinting at a negotiated cease-fire with the Russians as the intermediates. In their mind ("they" being the people in power), keeping the "emperor system" meant keeping the military junta in power with the emperor as its figurehead, and as a sovereign state - not an occupied colony run by Emperor MacArthur.
In fact, they had specifically rejected the suggestion by their Russian ambassador concerning the sparing of the emperor.
You are right, however, that we probably would not have invaded. Instead, we would have bombed and blockaded. Of course, at 10,000 deaths per day, this would make the a-bombs look like a miracle.
bomb, though the Japanese were working on bio-weapons.
Of course, Truman had no way of knowing this. If you were him, every day you keep your genie in the bottle is one more day that your enemies have to unleash their own.
I live in Japan and can confirm the latter half
on
60 Years Since Hiroshima
·
· Score: 2, Informative
of your post. Japanese are in general apolitical and the younger generation simply doesn't think about Hiroshima (or history in general, for that matter). I once asked one of my Japanese coworkers, a very bright guy, how much they studied WWII during school. His answer was three or four days. I had an entire class entitled "WWII", and probably spent six weeks covering the war (the rest was the cold war and Vietnam).
The problem I have with anecdotes is that one is almost never exposed to them in proportion. The bombs constitute about.3% of the people that died in WWII, yet probably half of the anecdotes that an average American reads. That provides a completely distorted perspective.
The Japanese decidely rejected such terms in their communications with their Russian ambassador. This is historical fact, and apparently MacArthur did not know this at the time of the quote you cited. Note that these intercepts did not become public until the 1990s.
As for the second quote, note the "loss of face" line. The bombs were precisely what Eisenhower was asking for. The Japanese were prepared to fight to the bitter end against conventional weapons. Also note that Eisenhower was referring to bomb and blockade strategies, which while costing few American lives, would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Remember, 10k a day!
of stories from the Phillipines, China, Korea and elsewhere throughout the Pacific as to the evil we are fighting?
Or what about the day-to-day horrors going on in Japan, due to the combination of conventional bombings and food shortages? Check out the anime Grave of the Fireflies for a good depiction of these events.
Anecdotes are powerful, but inherently unbalanced.
As I have cited above, the Japanese were nowhere near surrendering, nor should they have been.
They were beginning to whisper about a cease-fire, which would have left their military junta intact and them in possession of large chunks of the asian mainland.
The Japanese were not close to surrender on such terms. They completely rejected such terms in secret codes we had intercepted and cracked. They were considering asking the Russians to mediate a cease-fire, leaving them in possession of large chunks of China and leaving their military junta intact, not just the emperor.
Nor should the Japanese have been close to surrender. Our generals were already backing out of their support for an invasion, because it would be too bloody.
The likelyhood of someone dying in war has dropped dramatically since August 9th, 1945. Despite a boom in world population, the annual number of deaths due to war has fallen about 80%.
I will agree, however, that people have odd reactions to minute but spectacular risks (while all but ignoring everyday risks such as driving your car)
but a product is a product either way. Truman's first line of reasoning was concerned with American lives, as it should have been. The fact that it also saved allied lives, Japanese lives, forced Japan into a totally-defeated surrender, and prevented a split, half-communist controlled nation were all icing on the cake.
and remember, our next attack was the main island Kyushuu, with a population ten times that of Okinawa. There is no reason to believe that the Japanese would defend one of their main four islands any less fiercely than they did Okinawa, which is actually a long way from the main cluster of islands and about as much a part of Japan as Hawaii is part of the US.
Actually, as the article I cited notes, our generals and admirals were having second thoughts about the invasion.
Slashdot Mirror
in both scenarios.
My point is there is a fundamental difference between choosing the lesser of two evils and causing one yourself. One should never intentionally sacrifice one person for the sake of another, nor does one have the right to.
If you think the typical conservative opinion is contradictory, try the opposite on for size:
"It is OK to sacrifice other human beings for the benefit of science and myself, but it is wrong to stop hundreds of thousands from being killed because I probably will kill someone while doing it".
That argument is childishly ignorant.
As for your main point, there is a key difference between the two scenarios.
In the stem-cell scenario, we are discussing the intentional sacrifice of one living human being for the sake of another. In the war scenario, we are talking about choosing between two alternative paths where many people will die, despite our efforts.
The difference lies in the intent. In the war scenario, we know that whatever choice we make will result in death, but we never kill an innocent person intentionally. In the stem-cell scenerio, we very deliberately kill innocent humans.
That is a profound moral difference which you seem to be skipping over.
I think what may be an issue for you is the following hypothetical war scenario (the Iraq war may or may not be an example of this, as only the future will tell).
Option A: Do something. Some people will die. A fraction of those directly, but unintentionally, by your actions.
Option B: Do nothing. More people will die than in scenario A. But you will have no blood on your hands.
If you think B is the moral choice, we have little common ground upon which to have a reasonable discussion.
That's quite a subjective question, now isn't it.
As a scientist myself, my biggest concern with the layman's conception of science is that it is somehow "objective" or otherwise philosophically special. It is not. It has its unprovable assumptions, just like any other. Rather, it is simply a philosophy that seems to work really well.
If you would like to fund further science with your money, I fully support your effort. However, I see no philosophical difference between you forcing your neighbor to donate to your favorite research lab, and him forcing you to donate to your church.
How about we all just quit forcing anyone to donate to any of our pet causes?
are actually quite irritating. In an effort to save energy, they do not start to open until you are about three feet away from them, much later than in the US. The result of this is that anyone with a normal walking speed usually has to stop and wait a half-step before they can go through. This value of irritation has got to be a lot greater than that of the micro-watt of energy that is saved, but such logic does not seem to hold in Japan.
which I believe contains a reference to the authors of the 250k-400k study. You can go read it yourself. Of course, we cannot know the opinions of the victims, as they are dead. But we can know the opinions of surviving Japanese (who, barring a few peacenik radicals, generally understand Truman's decision, to the extent that they care), as well as the opinions of the Chinese, Koreans, etc who were spared additional years of Japanese thuggery.
The number was a result of a serious pier-reviewed study, and Japan explicitly rejected our offer. The actual number estimated was 250k-400k per month. I chose to use 10k per day as an conservative average within that range.
I am a bit baffled as to why you think "making peace" with a bunch of murderous thugs would have been a great idea in the first place.
The Japan/Pearl Harbor hypothetical involves unintended consequences, while the US/Hiroshima does not.
Japan choose an evil for its own ends. It backfired, and the world, in the long run, benefited.
America choose what it considered to be the lesser evil. In hindsight, we were probably right, though one can never be sure of alternate histories.
I do not see the same reasoning being used in these two scenarios.
Ask yourself an honest question. How many dead Chinese would it have taken for you to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. If not 10,000 a day, how about 20,000? 50,000? Or is their no number? Would you set on your hands and let millions die, to keep the bloods of a far smaller number off your hands? What makes that moral?
did at the time. Part of the wonders of hindsight. Nor were these generals privy to the cracked diplomatic intercepts. If you would have read the article, you would have learned that the Japanese darned well did have an ability to fight, so much so that our generals and admirals were balking at the idea of an invasion. In any case, you are being selective, as over 90% of people were for it at the time. I am sure there is a 9:1 quote ratio in my favor from the time period.
But I am willing to abandon that principle, and any other, if that principle is clearly getting significant numbers of people killed. Dragging the war out would have had that effect. Actually, it is impossible to obey that principle and fight a war. To obey it in such times, to its full extent, means to surrender immediately.
One more side point: The ends justifying the means is the entire underlying basis of the welfare state. So if you consider yourself a liberal, I think you should ask yourself why you seem to ignore this principle in normal times, but grab hold of it only when obeying it would result in needless slaughter. Sounds backwards to me.
It is not as if the Japanese set all of their factories outside of town for convenient bombing. Likewise, the soldiers were stationed in the cities. About 40,000 of the 300,000 people in Hiroshima that day were soldiers. Virtually everyone was directly involved in the war effort.
Without the bombs, we likely would have bombed and blockaded for a few months, forcing an eventual surrender of some sort. However, that surrender would likely not have been complete, but more of a cease-fire with the military junta left intact.
Instead of the Japan that evolved into the wonderful nation of today, we would have had a hostile, militaristic, nationalist dictatorship with an unknown course of evolution. I highly doubt that it would have been anywhere near as good as what we got. Also, depending on the actions of Russia, the bomb and blockade strategy could have wound up with a half-communist nation with a north and south Tokyo.
Honestly, in a geo-political sense, the bombs were grand slams and the results could not have been better. Of course, this would not be sufficient justification if the bombs were likely to have caused more damage than the alternatives, but that is unlikely.
If I tie a rock to someone and throw them in a river, and you subsequently rescue them, I cannot possibly claim to have saved a life!
You are right, Japan attacking us actually made the world a better place. However, they get no credit, as their credit ends precisely where our choices begin.
In Japan, more so than other countries, there is a big difference between the way you truly feel and the public face you put on (honne and tatamae).
Having "harmonious" relationships with those around you is very important, even when there is a deep-rooted problem that you are burying. Since discussing politics does not lend itself to harmony, it is not talked about much. If it is not talked about, it tends to be not thought about. Because of that, it isn't covered so much on the news - there sure isn't a Crossfire or Fox here. It is pretty much a one-party system anyway, with the same left-center group having been in power for ages. Hence, most Japanese are fairly apolitical.
By August 1945, the Big Six (the people really running Japan) were fighting for sovereignty, not conquest. Without the bombs, they may well have gotten it.
Lest you think this is better than the bombs, remember the 10,000 dead per day, multiplied by a few months this settlement would have taken. Then consider the cost to the world that a hostile Japan would have brought. The fact that we defeated Japan so soundly, and they embraced this defeat, was a critical point in their history. Letting them settle into some sort of face-saving draw would have left a hostile, militaristic, proud Japan. Beyond that is pure speculation, but none of the results I can come up with are particularly pretty.
They were just barely hinting at a negotiated cease-fire with the Russians as the intermediates. In their mind ("they" being the people in power), keeping the "emperor system" meant keeping the military junta in power with the emperor as its figurehead, and as a sovereign state - not an occupied colony run by Emperor MacArthur.
In fact, they had specifically rejected the suggestion by their Russian ambassador concerning the sparing of the emperor.
You are right, however, that we probably would not have invaded. Instead, we would have bombed and blockaded. Of course, at 10,000 deaths per day, this would make the a-bombs look like a miracle.
bomb, though the Japanese were working on bio-weapons.
Of course, Truman had no way of knowing this. If you were him, every day you keep your genie in the bottle is one more day that your enemies have to unleash their own.
of your post. Japanese are in general apolitical and the younger generation simply doesn't think about Hiroshima (or history in general, for that matter). I once asked one of my Japanese coworkers, a very bright guy, how much they studied WWII during school. His answer was three or four days. I had an entire class entitled "WWII", and probably spent six weeks covering the war (the rest was the cold war and Vietnam).
.3% of the people that died in WWII, yet probably half of the anecdotes that an average American reads. That provides a completely distorted perspective.
The problem I have with anecdotes is that one is almost never exposed to them in proportion. The bombs constitute about
The Japanese decidely rejected such terms in their communications with their Russian ambassador. This is historical fact, and apparently MacArthur did not know this at the time of the quote you cited. Note that these intercepts did not become public until the 1990s.
As for the second quote, note the "loss of face" line. The bombs were precisely what Eisenhower was asking for. The Japanese were prepared to fight to the bitter end against conventional weapons. Also note that Eisenhower was referring to bomb and blockade strategies, which while costing few American lives, would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. Remember, 10k a day!
of stories from the Phillipines, China, Korea and elsewhere throughout the Pacific as to the evil we are fighting?
Or what about the day-to-day horrors going on in Japan, due to the combination of conventional bombings and food shortages? Check out the anime Grave of the Fireflies for a good depiction of these events.
Anecdotes are powerful, but inherently unbalanced.
As I have cited above, the Japanese were nowhere near surrendering, nor should they have been. They were beginning to whisper about a cease-fire, which would have left their military junta intact and them in possession of large chunks of the asian mainland.
Hello Kitty...
Perhaps we could have asked her to intervene.
The Japanese were not close to surrender on such terms. They completely rejected such terms in secret codes we had intercepted and cracked. They were considering asking the Russians to mediate a cease-fire, leaving them in possession of large chunks of China and leaving their military junta intact, not just the emperor.
Nor should the Japanese have been close to surrender. Our generals were already backing out of their support for an invasion, because it would be too bloody.
The likelyhood of someone dying in war has dropped dramatically since August 9th, 1945. Despite a boom in world population, the annual number of deaths due to war has fallen about 80%.
I will agree, however, that people have odd reactions to minute but spectacular risks (while all but ignoring everyday risks such as driving your car)
but a product is a product either way. Truman's first line of reasoning was concerned with American lives, as it should have been. The fact that it also saved allied lives, Japanese lives, forced Japan into a totally-defeated surrender, and prevented a split, half-communist controlled nation were all icing on the cake.
Despite the horrors, the alternatives were worse.
and remember, our next attack was the main island Kyushuu, with a population ten times that of Okinawa. There is no reason to believe that the Japanese would defend one of their main four islands any less fiercely than they did Okinawa, which is actually a long way from the main cluster of islands and about as much a part of Japan as Hawaii is part of the US.
Actually, as the article I cited notes, our generals and admirals were having second thoughts about the invasion.