The Atomic Immorality

The past week has seen the anniversaries of two of the most regrettable acts ever carried out by the government and military of the United States of America: the detonation of the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Since then much debate has ensued over the actions of then President Truman. Given the circumsances he had to face, I not only cannot condemn him, I feel a tremendous sense of pity for this man, who was charged with defending America from all enemies foreign and domestic. However, the sorrow I feel for those Japanese who were killed far outweighs the sympathy I ocould ever feel for President Truman.

Most informed people know how the dabate is framed. A land war in Japan would have cost exponentially more lives than dropping the bomb. So, in the utilitarian moral calculus that accompanies war deciding to incinerate 100's of thousands of civilians was the better of the possible options.

It is an open question, however, whether or not that was true. For the options were not BOMB or land war. Were those the options, then maybe the decision was the best option among bad ones. Recently, documents have surfaced showing that the Japanese warlords of the time were far more determined to fight on to a bloody finish in the home islands than previously known.
Yet, there was a further option that ought to have been employed.

A protracted seige (blockade) of Japan would have probably been a better option. Pat Buchanan (someone I regularly disagree with) has noted.

But with Japan naked to our B-29s, her surface navy at the bottom of the Pacific, the home islands blockaded, what was the need to invade at all? On his island-hopping campaign back to the Philippines, MacArthur routinely bypassed Japanese strongholds like Rabaul, cut them off and left them to "rot on the vine."

What Japanese air power that existed could have been targeted and destroyed. On this senario only legitimate combatants would have been subjected intentionally to attack and death. the time of surrender would have been much later, but the legacy of shame, finger-pointing by the US and the legacy of sorrow and effects of radiation poisoning upon the Japanese would have been avoided.

Would more American soldiers' lives have been lost in a blockade stategy? Most assuredly, but that is the role of the soldier in every nation.

Perhaps the calculations by Truman were as political as they were military. Maybe his advisors suggested to him that a protracted blockade would not play well at home. Maybe they suggested that bombing Japan would be a lesson to other nations.

Whatever the case, Buchanan reports to us some haunting facts about the mindset of the administration.

in the Cabinet meeting of Aug. 10, as historian Ralph Raico relates, did [Truman] explained his reluctance to drop a third bomb thus: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said. He didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."

Of Truman's decision, his own chief of staff, Adm. William Leahy, wrote: "This use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion ..."

It is not enough for a nation to win a war, it must be won rightly. I would argue that America did not win the war with Japan rightly. Even if some good came from the bombing (the war ended), we cannot avoid the very probable conclusion that the decision to drop the atomic bomb does not stand up to the moral scrutiny of history.

This is especially true of the Christian tradition of Just War. In that view of war, efficiency is not the final part of the equation. Rather, the questions that must drive the deliberations are -- what will cause less unnecessary death, how will civilians be protected, and how does one stay the hand of the victor from indefensible action in the face of victory. Those considerations suggest that a failure of moral reflection led to a immoral decision. Civilians were intentionally targeted in order to break the power of the leaders of a nation, and without necessity.