a different history

[John Bailey]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mostly chosen as targets due to the high
numbers of civilian casualties that would result and how this would
affect morale. It was a show of force. It's pretty much on the record
that any military gain would just be a by-product. I think a similar
move today (eg using biological weapons on a civilian population)
would be a war crime, although we're in a totally different world and
I'm not retroactively applying that label to the atomic bombings. But
the intention to kill a huge number of civilians in order to instil
fear is pretty much my textbook definition of terrorism.

I've said on the list before that Hiroshima is a beeeeeautiful city
today and I highly recommend visiting, which no sitting US president
has done (still!). I might pass through Nagasaki later in the month,
too, but that's to visit the new hotel staffed by robots:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/japans-robot-hotel-a-dinosaur-at-reception-a-machine-for-room-service

On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have been practically unable to read anything at all about the events. Not Hiroshima.
> Learning by existing what I have learned--and even seen about it--I, too, still am viscerally against it and must be forever now.
> But, I usually reserve the word terrorism for acts outside of declared war acts. The U.S. had declared war on Japan.
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> Sent from my iPad
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>> On Aug 8, 2015, at 6:22 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It's a neat trick how 'terrorism' becomes 'demonstration of dominance'
>> when the good guys push the button.
>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 7:45 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Death is Lighter than a Feather
>>> Westheimer, David
>>>
>>> http://untpress.unt.edu/catalog/3060
>>>
>>>> On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Wellerstein's an excellent historian of the nuclear weapons complex -- see
>>>> his blog at http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/.
>>>>
>>>> There's no knowing how long Japan might have withstood a blockade with
>>>> Manchuria gone (and undoubtedly further Soviet advances or threats into
>>>> northern China), but that alternative too would have been far from
>>>> bloodless: see German health and mortality late in WWI, Leningrad and the
>>>> 1944-45 "hunger winter" in the  Netherlands in WWII. Japanese nutrition was
>>>> already hurting badly by mid-1945; unless and until the Emperor endorsed
>>>> surrender, I can imagine hundreds of thousands of additional civilian deaths
>>>> from malnutrition and disease.
>>>>
>>>> That said, my 1960 reaction to reading 'Hiroshima' remains the same: like
>>>> all the "strategic" bombing of cities from 1939 on, it was terrorism and it
>>>> was wrong in any context -- as was the rationale for 70 years of nuclear
>>>> weapons development and deployment.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 10:52 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> https://ideas.aeon.co/viewpoints/alex-wellerstein-on-what-options-were-there-for-the-united-states-regarding-the-atomic-bomb-in-1945
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l