a different history

[Dave Monroe]

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/06/429433621/why-did-the-u-s-choose-hiroshima

On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 7:43 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> easy for you all to say that 60 yrs in the future. so you call it terrorism,
> good for you guys. you've shown your moral worth. but the fact remains that
> with the hell of Iwo Jima and Okinawa fresh in the minds of most well if
> youve got something that will end it well youre gonna use that rightly or
> wrongly not to mention showing the Russians something, too. now, what was
> decided is always debatable but getting on your high horse from afar is
> easy. history isn't.
>
> rich
>
> On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 8:32 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Sent from my iPad
>> >
>> >> 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
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l