> > You needn't stretch to find worse US parallels. Dresden, Hiroshima,
> > and Nagasaki were all straight-up terrorist acts - trying to force
> > action onto governments/societies by killing civilians in areas of
> > minimal military importance.
Dresen, certainly, because the war was pretty much already over
and it didn't accomplish anything but a sense of retribution,
which I agree isn't as effective in international relations as
it might be in interpersonal ones.
But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were different: at the time, there
was no reason to belive the war wouldn't continue for a long
time, at the cost of many thousands of lives. A show of
devastating, overwhelming, terrifying force against an enemy
that was clearly the agressor, leaving him no choice but total
unconditional surrender, accomplished exactly the right goal:
war over, lives saved, no questions. I have a lot of sympathy
for folks who argue for restraint in the use of force in most
cases, and I think many of our own uses of force were unjustified.
But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were that exceptional case, and
were the right thing to do at the right time.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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