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Date Posted: 10:14:01 08/12/08 Tue
Author: Ned
Author Host/IP: 75.106.168.249
Subject: Acknowledging "Error"
In reply to: Rick 's message, "Re: Dawg - the "two wrongs" lesson..." on 23:03:02 08/11/08 Mon

Rick -

how can there be any "error" in the case of pure speculation?

You might argue that the scenario proposed by many (but not by any means all) reputable historians - that there exists a sizable body of credible evidence, including eyewitness accounts, historical documents and first-hand testimony by those involved, that there were other alternatives that might have succeeded besides either a bloody frontal invasion of the Islands or the dropping of not one, but two nuclear devices - is somehow "less credible" than the idea that the use of those two atomic weapons was so clearly "necessary" that all other options that were open were "justifiably" foreclosed. But the idea that you can judge one speculative scenario "correct" and another "in error" doesn't make any sense.

As you say (and as I said above) many long and well-researched books have been written on this "angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin" discussion. Some are better argued than others, but none can possibly be deemed "authoritative" except by mystics who can "see what the future would have been."

Again, what I was talking about was not re-arguing the decision, but simply remembering the act and considering it, considering its implications and how it has played out in the world - considering even the psychological consequences of our nation's "identification" with that act.

Some would see the use of nuclear weapons in such a context as analogous to the villain suddenly pulling a knife on John Wayne, who has honorably shed his gun belt to go "mano-a-mano" in a fair fight. In some way, that act changed the world's (and even our own) perception of what "The American Way" really was.

As I said above - we are always deciding between alternatives that have negative sides as well as positive. How we make those decisions, what we choose to take into account and what to ignore, and how clearly we seek to explore the moral consequences of our actions - because even actions that we see as "morally justifiable" may still have profound negative consequences - is what "remembering Hiroshima" (and Nagasaki) is all about.

"Never again" is a statement that embodies a repudiation of the argument you are making - that the ends justify the means and that barbarous, ruthless, wholesale murder of helpless civilians (along with a small minority of "militarists") may sometimes be "necessary" to "save (fill in the blank) lives."

What do you make of the phrase "death before dishonor?"

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Replies:

  • Ned...some light reading -- Prairie Dawg, 00:03:26 08/14/08 Thu
  • Dawg , the argument is... -- Ned Depew, 10:37:09 08/16/08 Sat
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