Sometimes ya just gotta nuke em

At 4:12 AM 2/3/96, Rich Graves wrote:

>Who holds up the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as great victories
>against tyranny?

Since you ask, I do.

A land invasion of Japan would've likely cost half a million American
lives, and perhaps a million or more Japanese citizen lives, according to
comprehensive studies I think are on the mark.

(Anecdotally, my father was on Guam at that time, and was part of the force
being prepared for the land invasion of Japan. He was mighty happy to hear
about the new wonder weapon and how it ended the war in days rather than
months.)

If the war was just, then ending it quickly and decisively was more just
than ending it more slowly and painfully. That some Japanese died in a
nuclear fireball rather than in conventional firestorms or blockbuster
bombings is neither here nor there.

Sometimes ya just gotta nuke em.


--Tim

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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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ROTFL

But this is not nukepunks...

and that wasn't my point. There is considerable debate about whether
dropping the bomb was right. The moral clarity of a Gandhi, MLK, or (to
add someone who actually killed people, I think) Thomas Paine is much more
useful when you're talking about winning hearts & minds. 

If you have a choice, don't nuke.

But yes, sometimes ya just gotta nuke em.

-rich