***** The U.S. nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were as much terrorist acts as anything else. I think they were justified terrorist acts--they succeeded in bringing an end to the Japanese militarist government, and did so with a much lower butcher's bill than any conceivable invasion of Honshu. But that doesn't change their character...
Brad DeLong
<http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0209/1917.html> *****
In response, some LBO-talkers politely explained why the U.S. nukings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not justified by Brad's own standard (i.e. the standard of whether they were "necessary" to achieve the end of Japan's unconditional surrender), given that Japan would have surrendered without them, that they were meant to be warnings to the USSR rather than to achieve the aforementioned end, etc. I don't think anyone asked why an unconditional surrender was necessary. I also recall that no one in that thread categorically denied that nukings were impermissible under any circumstances; in fact, no one even addressed a hypothetical case of the nukings actually lowering a butcher's bill by making a longer war with higher tolls unnecessary. The thread may have something to say about LBO-talk attitudes toward means and ends.
-- Yoshie
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