Having just finished reading a book on the Japanese surrender during World War II, I became curious about the libertarian position on the bombing of Hiroshima. Is there a general libertarian consensus on the legitimacy (should the bomb have been dropped) of the bombing, and if so, what is it and what justifications are there for it? Feel free to add your personal opinion.
The consensus among libertarians is that it was a horrible thing and a great example how brutal the state can be.
If you’re interested, Murray Rothbard has a good little essay on war in general, and nuclear weapons in particular, in his Egalitarianism as A Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays called War, Peace and the State. But, yeah, indiscriminate mass destruction (usually) isn’t regarded highly by libertarians.
The conventional wisdom held by most “conservatives” is that the alternative to dropping the bombs was to carry out a protracted invasion of Japan, costing many more lives, including US soldiers (important), Japanese soldiers (unimportant), and even Japanese civilians (important only insofar as the heroic image of Uncle Sam is at stake). I don’t feel that I have a strong enough historical grasp to refute or confirm this justification, but as was already said, the ability to condemn hundreds of thousands to death and many more to horrible disfigurement based on some quick arithmetic is a salient example of State brutality. Libertarians tend to be against the state, and while one could potentially justify the decision that was made based upon the strictures of that particular episode, it is also undeniable that without the State, there would have been no World War to begin with.
My opinion is the media has used the complete immorality of nuclear weapons to divert peoples attention from the equally immoral issue of killing non-combatants using non-nuclear means. Since the start of the colonly in Jamestown VA the white people have been using biological weapons (disease tainted blankets and what not) and more up front means to wipe out the native populations in the area now known as the USA. This process continued into the 20th century with such horrible examples of genocide like the “Trail of Tears” and “Wounded Knee”. But closer to today we have all of the civillian carnage in Iraq where by US Government number at least 100,000 people were killed by the US Military and Afghanistan where drones patrol the skies killing unknown numbers of “Al Queda”.
Granted the US Government is far from alone and probably not even in the top 5 in massacring its own “citizens”. The Soviets and Chinese Communists along with Hitler were worse.
They were bad because the U.S. gov started the war (see the Fruits and Seeds of Infamy) and it had no right to occupy Japan. 2nd, the bombings done to the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not necessary, even if one didn’t care about morality because it’s not like Japan would’ve killed anywhere near as many civilians on the U.S. as the U.S. gov killed in Japan. The Emperor said that he would never even consider an invasion against civilian Americans on the continent because he believed American civilians on the continent were too armed.
Thanks for the book link! I plan to read it, and I have been looking for a revisionist book that goes well beyond the “embargo-is-aggression” argument.
I must ask if you’ve considered the Korean, Japanese, and Manchurian civilians in the occupied territories. The Japanese were unquestionably brutal in their occupation of these countries, unleashing diseases on the populace, in addition to the mass indiscriminate slaughter of civilians (much of which is quite disturbing to read; read Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II). Their lives need to be factored in as well.
Some amount of Japanese soldiers were brutal and aggressed against civilians…therefore what?
Ugh, didn’t see this until now - sorry for the late reply.
As for your question, I was responding to No2statism, who argued that the use of the bomb was unjustified because more Japanese “civilians” would have died than American civilians, apparently because of some quote by the Japanese emperor. Since he was considering civilians as some sort of sanctified category, I brought up the colonial civilian casualties as a result of the delayed surrender.
Their surrender was inevitable.
People just wanted to see what that weapon could do others.
Source?
Based on the primary source documents I’ve read (actually quotes in a book), the United State’s “scientific power” was one of the reasons that convinced the Japanese government ot surrender. One of the top officials (Prime Minister Suzuki) , was so disturbed by what he saw at Hiroshima that he personally urged the emperor to intervene in the decision of surrender, against the military’s disposition.
See Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard Frank.
Edited for clarification and grammar.
Let’s say that this is true. It still leaves open the question why the need to have the Japanese surrender in the first place?
Most wars do not end with a wholesale surrender of one of the belligerent sides. Most times some kind of a negotiated settlemed is reached instead. Considering the military-strategic situation at any time after the Battle of the Phillipine sea, I don’t think the US would have had any problem getting a peace deal where the Japanese would retreat to their home islands and leave everyone in East Asia alone.
What exactly was gained by the alternative ending, which brought us the United States’ occupation and military rule of Japan until 1952 and unquestioned American hegemony over it since?
Wouldn’t it have made more sense to tell the Japanese from the beginning they can have peace at any time if they will evacuate China, etc… How many American lives were spent getting the Japanese to capitulate unconditionally instead? If the bomb was about saving American lives, as it is often claimed, it seems to me even more lives could have been saved by not insisting on unconditional surrender in the first place and sparing American troops costly late-war battles like Okinava and Iwo Jima. Such a demand was not good for either the Japanese or the Americans, or the occupied East Asians (who would have been freed of the Japanese earlier), it only makes sense from the point of view of trying to make America more into a world empire.
Of course it was not necessary to drop the bomb on the two japanese cities. The only alternative cited is the hight casualty toll resulting from an invasion. This is hogwash. The real alternative was to let the japanese know that the U.S. had the “bomb” with which entire cities could be pulverized. Then drop one bomb in the ocean off the coast of Japan to show them what would happen next if they don’t surrender in 48 hours. Why was this not done, you may ask? Well, how could the U.S. Army have missed the greatest opportunity they could have (ever?) to actually test the bomb on people?
Cheers!
Just blockade the country while you let them work out a deal to have russia or some other country act as a go-between to negotiate a cease-fire followed by a conditional surrender. Easy peasy.
Btw, any idea if this article is legit?
http://www.greenwych.ca/dulles.htm
I’ve found reference to the newspaper here, and the passage certainly appears in it.:
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1963/index.htm
(25. febuary edition)
That is not news and was known long before that article was published. It’s really only the American Empire shills that propagate the myth of Japan having a kamikaze foreign policy.
Yes the Japanese were brutal in China and Korea and that is not the most interesting part of the mess. The most interesting part of the mess to me when people bring up the brutality of the Japanese was that the Emperor of Japan sent his son to the USA to meet with FDR to propose withdraws from Manchuria and probably Korea and Indochina as well for the resumption of trade between the USA and Japan. Of course the response from asinine FDR administration was to tell the dude to take a hike and off into the biggest waste of capital and live in the history of the human race that ended in the destruction of two cities with two bombs.
In my opinion, the japanese soldier was brutal and a scumbag devoid of honor and nobility, their Bushido notwithstanding. To me the defintion of a military scumbag is that who murders women, children and defensless POWs. The japanese engage in this happily and often.
Why did the japanese attacked Pearl Harbour? Many ignore that the U.S. was very active in taking measures trying to strangle Japan economically by embargoing the sale of many raw materials and products including airplane fuel. This was to punish Japan for invading Manchuria. It reached a point in which such measures were considered a Casus Belli and that was the reason for fthe attack.
By the way, Gral Patton was also a scumbag as per my defintion above and should have been tried and hung together with the nazis and a host of russian generals, had the rules of the Nurnberg trial been equally applied to all. Of course, it did not apply to victors…,.(What else is new?)
I also heard 1 theory why the japanese might have surrenderred anyway.
Russia had already beat germany, so the japanese were afraid that russians would invade their continent and rape(literally) all their citizens?
Mass rape happened in the european front so the japanese were afraid this would happen to them, especially since they raped lots of people in the islands, (im sure lots of us soldier also raped islanders too).
Not sure if this is true but thats what i heard.
That is just plain gullible. Any notion that a randomly selected group of people, such as a regular army, is significantly abnormal is bogus. It’s like saying that everyone with red hair in 1981 was a mad killer. Such claims don’t warrant so much as a second thought. The “Nanjing Incident”, and probably every other alleged incident, came from Kuomintang spin doctors trying to hold onto power and the American post-war occupation propaganda. The facts both about the events and official motives for the war and policy for treatment of civilians stand in stark contrast.
Using Primary Sources To Clarify the Nanking Incident
You should read this book, and then explain to me why the author is some sort of “spin doctor” or propagandist. (Hint: He is a member of and researcher for the Hiroshima Peace Institute, which doesn’t exactly endorse the use of the atomic bombs)
Your analogy is just silly. There are several accounts of the differences between the way Italian soldiers and the SS treated conquered people.
Also, these aren’t “randomly” selected people. I’ll let you think about that one.