The effects of our atomic bombs were dreadful, but so too would have been the alternatives you suggest: Blockade the Japanese and wait for starvation to force them to surrender? What a ghastly way for tens if not hundreds of thousands to die. Invading Japan was also considered, but estimates of one million casualties or more were predicted.
And while I'm no historian, I remember reading once that the bombing of Dresden killed more civilians than either of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Was the leveling of Germany's cities by Allied bombs a decision based on racism? I don't question that American attitudes about Japan in the 1940s were deeply racist, but at some point in WWII, it seems to me, racism became far less decisive a factor than did the need and subsequently the desire to end the war. Wartime seems to spur a nationalism bordering on racism in which the death of any American serviceman or -woman is far harder to bear than that of any number of civilians in the enemy country. We've certainly seen this attitude operating in response to civilian casualties in Iraq--civilians that were never our enemies. Our atomic bombs ended the war with Japan with a ghastly suddenness. We cannot ever know how any alternatives would have played out, and in part because of that, I don't think we should be so confident in assertions of how unwarranted were Truman's decisions to use the atomic bombs.
Posted by deminva at August 6, 2005 06:18 AMAs has been stated, bombing civilians had been done extensively by both sides in WWII. Perhaps Hiroshima/Nagasaki were the original version of "Shock and Awe", not only for the Japanese but for the Soviet Union. I think if the world had not gotten a taste of the effects of atomic bombs, we might have ended up in an all-out nuclear war before 1970. Francois Mitterand was the last world leader to actually witness a nuclear explosion...I fear our current leaders are becoming indifferent to the use of nuclear weapons because they have no frame of reference...(*sigh*)
Posted by Roy Batty at August 6, 2005 06:44 AM"Sixty years ago today, the ultimate act of terrorism "
Pess (the THOUGHT POLICE)
This "analysis" is why your party is so out of the mainstream!!
Try reading about the ALTERNATIVES and maybe your "analysis" won't be so MYOPIC..
YOU'RE a PRICK!!!
Is that why you keep trying to sit on my lap, DOOF? Are there no willing volunteers to take care of you in New York that you have to show up here to be satisfied?
Posted by ROOF at August 6, 2005 06:51 AMHere's an interesting piece to chew on...
Was the Nagasaki bomb constructed of enriched uranium salvaged from Nazi nuclear programs?
Posted by Roy Batty at August 6, 2005 07:04 AMThere was no racism involved and to say so is over the top pandering in my opinion. They wanted to take over the world, the attacked us, we went to war with them, we beat them, their emporer was crazy and wouldn't surrender unless we invaded, and we wanted to minimize American casualities. We killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.... and yes the fire bombing of Dresden killed more people than each a bomb(not combined though). They were white so no one cares as much. It was a much more senseless bombing and we were just flexing out muscles to the commies...
Posted by Tex at August 6, 2005 07:29 AM"But Japan was finished, and had been attempting for over a year to find a way to end the war without losing their emperor as their political and religious leader." Laughable, in fact many of the JAPANESE military wanted to continue the war despite the bombing of the two cities. Ok I get the fact that nukes make a big noise and mushroom cloud but were they deader than the Chinese in Nanking, or the Germans in Dresden, or the Russians in Stalingrad. It was just a more efficient way to bomb cities and that’s how we conducted war back then (unrestricted). For my grandfather who DIDN’T have to invade Japan I want to personally thank Harry Truman and the scientists for their service.
Posted by Cyber Sarge at August 6, 2005 07:37 AMRoy Batty posted at 6 August 2005 at 07:04 AM:
Was the Nagasaki bomb constructed of enriched uranium salvaged from Nazi nuclear programs?
Nope. "Fat Man", the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was the weaponized version of the plutonium deviced tested at Alamogordo earlier that summer. It was an implosion design bomb rather than the bullet design used in the U235 based Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima. Regretably, everything used in the nuclear weapons on Japan was home grown.
It was a pity that the bombs needed to be used. No proof exists that the Japanese were considering surrender in early August 1945. They might have been willing to negotiate a truce in place, but they had no intention of abandoning their imperial pretensions. The Japanese military was willing to fight to the last Japanese citizen to uphold the military's honor. Only the bombs' frightfulness finally persuaded the Emperor that he would need to intervene and overrule the military. Why else the broadcast of the Emperor's voice to the population, which they had never heard before? As with all wars, no good (meaning absolute moral) decisions existed in the war right up to the end.
Posted by PrahaPartizan at August 6, 2005 08:23 AMThe ultimate act of terrorism? I think many in the Asia Pacific region would disagree. In fact for them the ultimate act of terrorism may have been the day the Japanese showed up on their doorstep. Manchuria anyone?
Posted by Daryl at August 6, 2005 08:25 AMAnd the apologists and the defenders come crawling out of the corners and from underneath the appliances.
Shorter CyberSarge - that was the way it was, and my grandaddy wasn't killed so therefore it was good thing. If my grandaddy was well enough, he's use his remaining three knuckles to bust out your teeth.
Tex & deminva - You'll find that most of the anti-war proponents who are familiar with the burning of Dresden are just as, if not more, sickened by that episode in history. Yes, Dresden can be more easily made into a case for war crimes. But its irrelavent to the topic at hand.
I can't speak to the effects of the nuclear bombs leading to V-J day other than there seems to be an inordinate amount of information that the bombings could have been unnecessary. I don't know if the hypothesis that the United States could have won without the bombs is correct. You might just as well be asking if the Beatles would have been just as good without Ringo Starr. Neither could ever be proved and are the equivalent of college freshman metaphysics.
All of you have conviently ignored the main thrust of the argument - as Christians, or at least people of faith, wasn't the dropping of the atomic weapons on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an immoral act and sin?
How the lot of cast your eyes to the side and come up with things to discuss other than what Christ asked that we do make me sick to my stomach. It's no wonder I find myself more out of communion with most Christians.
You friendly neighborhood Methodist,
-id
Pessimist,
I am reluctant to take such a harsh view of the bombing because it is hard to know all the circumstances that led to it in the first place. I'm not an advocate of bombing or killing civilians and I'm not an advocate of nuking entire cities, but WWII Japan and Germany were nations that simply had to be stopped and sitting here today it is not clear to me what the alternatives were. (Read this for example).
Nuking Japan may not have been the most moral of decisions, but I don't think it is easy to judge what happened 60 years ago without fully understanding what was and what wasn't known to decision makers at the time, who must surely have felt the sting of such a painful decision.
Posted by eriposte at August 6, 2005 08:56 AMSo far, only idiosynchronic got the message of the post. He thus wins a no-expense-paid trip to anywhere in the Blog World he wants to go.
I wrote about this topic last year, and the quotes from major wartime leaders I provide there are still historically accurate. (scroll down). Google them yourself if you doubt me.
I have read about the decision process, and when so many top Allied officers were against its use - including Douglas MacArthur, who had far more reason than any other US military leader to support its use - one has to wonder about the true military advantage the Bomb offered.
The only real motivation for the use of the bomb when the majority of the war's leaders were against it was revenge, and racism - involved in the process to decide how to use the bomb - was as much a tool of the Allies as it was for the Japanese. Check out the movies from that era at your local historical film library.
In addition, as my added quotes from Curtis LeMay are intended to demonstrate, our leaders knew that attacking civilian populations (as our Marine quotes Churchill accusing the Nazis) was a war crime. They just didn't yet have Alberto Gonzales around to declare them 'quaint' and not to be observed.
As for the alternative strategy of starving out the Japanese to get them to surrender, military planners (who had no knowledge that the Bomb was on the way) came up with that strategy to save American lives and reduce the likelihood that the Japanese would remain strong enough to oppose occupation. In fact, the Japanese were to face starvation anyway.
There was no reason for the Japanese leaders to expect any mercy from the Allies, for they knew full well that their actions during the war were inspiring tremendous feelings of revenge. They used this knowledge to inspire the Japanese civilians on Saipan and Okinawa in particular to fight alongside Imperial troops, and yes, it did cause Allied leaders to project horrible losses in the event of an invasion.
But to those of you who deny that Japan wasn't seeking even a conditional end to the war as early as 1944, you just plain aren't paying attention. Too much television and not enough history book?
Posted by pessimist at August 6, 2005 09:22 AMSixty years ago today, the ultimate act of terrorism - one that is today used to scare otherwise rational human beings into believing the unbelievable - was first committed.
I never thought I'd say this to you, Pessimist, but go fuck yourself.
Sorry, Perfessor - DOOF is already ahead of you in the insult queue. You might try reading the entire post before you react to the very first line. I would expect that much even of you.
Posted by Toby Petzold at August 6, 2005 09:28 AMWhat gets me the most about this whole thing is how sanitized Americans have become since the end of WWII. Nowadays the essence of the time, the desperation, the need -- all have been lost in time. My father was a Captain in the US Navy during WWII and I have been told war stories all my life. Some of which are far worse than the effects of the A-bombs.
Yes, "Japan" was seeking peace, but the "people of Japan" were not. They would have fought to the last Japanese human life for the Emperor and his ideals. Yes, we could have invaded, but at what cost to American lives? (Has everybody forgotten that AMERICAN lives are at stake here??) And it's true, that even after the dropping of both bombs the Japanese military was still willing to continue fighting.
But all I have said is meaningless unless you can grasp hold of the spirit of the day; the energy in the air; the furvor, fury, explosive atmosphere. WWII was post-depression for us and most of the world, which was desperate politically and financially at that time. New ideas such as Nazi, Facist and Communist governments were emerging. Global freedoms were being lost country by country. The world was in a state of chaos. Now, in 2005, even with all this "terror", we cannot imagine what it was like in 1940 with Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler running the show in Europe, threatning the rest of the world. And not to forget, the Emperor of Japan was no innocent bystander -- he had ordered the Japanese army to invade most of what is now called Manchuria, Mongolia and eastern China. In other words, LIFE ON EARTH WAS HELL for everyone EXCEPT FOR THE ISOLATED UNITED STATES, which only entered into the war after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. By the time the US got involved, Europe had been at it for 2 years!
It's easy to sit back now and say "we were wrong" to use such a device as an atomic bomb, but you better believe that if Hitler had the bomb, he'd use it and not bat an eye.
We can sit back and try to make up excuses for why we did not invade and try to justify the use of the bomb -- we can punish ourselves with words on how wrong we were, how we should have used other methods to end the war. We can blame it on nationalism, racism, or just plain fury. We can say these things TODAY because only a tiny handfull of people are still alive who WERE THERE WHEN WWII WAS AT IT'S PEAK and live to tell the horrors of what these rogue regimes brought to the world. NO AMERICAN in our modern time has experienced Nazism, Facism, or had to deal with Stalin-style Communism, or put up with the oppressions brought on by these governments. So make up all the excuses you want; the bomb WAS NECESSARY, it was NOT IN ANY FORM TERRORISM. It was a TOOL used by the American military to put an end to a horrible war that could have raged on for years. I don't personally like the fact that we HAD to use it, but we did.
No more excuses.
WolfmanSpike
Howlin' at the World from the Left Side of the Planet
Nagasaki and Heroshima were horrible, the face of real war. But so was Pearl Harbor.
Posted by Hank at August 6, 2005 09:44 AMPessimist, for me personally, your words are the most thoughtful writings you have done to date. Thank you.
My understanding of what you have written is that morality is a larger and more important issue than justification. All wars can be justified, just ask GWB, and war is indeed the suspension of morality by it's very nature. Governments and war departments promote war, and it is always the civilians that pay the price for that justification.
When we are asked to suspend our morality, we are giving up our belief system of moral conduct and moral principals. We are asked, by our leaders, to conform to the ideals of right and wrong conduct, except when it comes to war. Then we all become responsible once we accept any armed hostile conflict toward others, especially when we are the antagonist.
When you have religious leaders who promote war by their very support of this President, then I have to question their understanding of the words of Jesus. Christ warned people of the price to be paid for the suffering of others, and those of the religious community would be wise to remember those teachings. Unless this Country repents, we will bring upon ourselves the very slaughter and death that we have visited upon others.
I never thought I'd say this to you, Pessimist, but go fuck yourself.
You see, that's what wrong with you people. Unless someone believes exactly as you do -in lock-step (goose step) without deviation- you have no response. You onlt try to silence them.
I couldn't disagree more with pessimist. 60 years down the road it is difficult to place yourself in the situation these people faced. From my many family members who served in the Pacific theatre during the war the one thing I always gathered is that the Japanese soldier and people, almost to a man, had religious-like devotion to the Emporer, and followed orders slavishly without question. My father told me many times that the Japanese would attack and there was no way to defend yourself other than killing every last one of them. They never retreated, they dug in or just kept coming. Those Japanese who surrendered or could be captured were highly prized because so few did anything other than fight until they were dead. That was what all commanders thought would happen if we invaded the main Island, and they had plenty of proof of that from every piece of ground they had to take during the war.
The only thing we can do with the perfect clarity of hindsight is to take whatever lessons can be learned from these events. This is something the neo-cons and republi-cons have been unable to do. They can't contextualize historical occurrences because they only believe in some weird incarnation of a new reality. And their "new reality" is causing nuclear proliferation in 3rd world countries, not stopping it.
Posted by phidipides at August 6, 2005 09:54 AM"There was no reason for the Japanese leaders to expect any mercy from the Allies, for they knew full well that their actions during the war were inspiring tremendous feelings of revenge."
We, as a Nation, would do well to remember those words.
Posted by Judith at August 6, 2005 10:01 AMThis ignorant, I quit reading left coaster now. That bomb saved more than it killed.
Jackass posts such as this give liberalism a bad name.
Posted by aaa at August 6, 2005 12:23 PMYes idiosynchronic it probably was very unchristian to bomb cities but you fail to grasp the situation and the history. We had just invaded Okinawa (The 1st native Japanese island) and the defenders fought ferociously. Using that fight as a template the allies (mostly US forces at this time), knew the invasion of the home islands would have been just as bad in not worse. Now if you were the President and could have saved a million and a half American casualties by using one or two bombs it would be immoral to do so. I know most of you disagree with the way wars in the past were conducted, but I thank God that Truman made the right decision. I am not sure what side you grandfather was on but I bet there were damn few American soldiers (if any) complaining about using the A bomb. But then they were facing combat and possibly death and we are just facing snarky comments.
Posted by Cyber Sarge at August 6, 2005 12:33 PMLong time reader, first time poster:
Arguments can be made, even today, for and against the decision to drop the bomb. It's a legitimate debate. But I see too much false outrage in pessimist's post. He calls the decision to drop the bomb 'racist', but offers no real proof other than the propaganda films of the time. However, Eisenhower is on the record as having said if he'd had the bomb available to him in Europe he would have dropped it on Germany. (I have little doubt that this is true, as it would have not only knocked Germany out of the war almost immediately, but may well have kept the Soviets from advancing any further west.) Can pessimist call that a racist decision?
And the comparison to Dresden is indeed valid as both were large-scale killings of civilian populations. I also note that pessimist has omitted reference to the earlier firebombing of Tokyo which also caused enormous numbers of civilian fatalities. It seems to me, therefore, that pessimist's real quarrel is with the method used, i.e. the atomic bomb, rather than with the deaths inflicted on civilians. (Note pessimist's willingness to 'starve' Japan into submission.) He is outraged at the very existence of the atomic bomb, so he expresses his outrage by criticizing the decision to use it because he knows, as we all do, that the bomb is here to stay. That's just one of the many unfortunate realities of our times.
Posted by Warren Terrer at August 6, 2005 12:53 PMLaughable post.
If you think the Japanese would have surrendered to a blockade, you obviously haven't spoken to anyone who was in Japan at the time.
My Japanese literature teacher told me that he had been told by his high-school principal that if the Americans came, all the girls would be raped and all the boys castrated.
Starving the Japanese out would have resulted in the deaths of millions, mostly old people, women, and the young. The army would have had first dibs on the food. Do you really think it would have been more moral to kill a lot more people but in ways that it's easier for you to ignore? Japan 1945 would have been like Germany 1918 multiplied a thousandfold, and we all know what Germany 1918 led to.
The charge of racism is particularly knee-jerk and mindless, and if you have any intellectual honesty, you ought to apologize. The Bomb was developed to drop on Germany, and it would have been dropped on Germany if the Germans had lasted long enough. Last time I checked, Germany was full of very white people. For years after the Second World War, the primary target of the Bomb was the Soviet Union, which is pretty white too.
Posted by sagesource at August 6, 2005 03:15 PMBTW, just for the record, the figures for the Dresden raid may need to be revised drastically downward.
The figure of 145,000 or so dead comes from.... guess who.... David Irving. Go check his websites to find out why he wanted it high (be prepared to shower afterwards).
Basically, his line is, "Who cares about the dirty Jews, we Aryans suffered a lot more!"
Posted by sagesource at August 6, 2005 03:20 PMOne point. The u.s. illegally overthrew the kingdom of Hawai'i in 1898 and its presence in the Pacific was an imperialistic first step to establishing influence over that region. Japan's own imperialist designs were directly threatened by u.s. encroachments. Does this justify Pearl Harbor? No, but did the u.s. have a right to be in Hawai'i? Was Hawai'i american soil? Not at all. In what way does nationalistic and imperialistic struggles over military sites justify the horrible civilian deaths caused not once but twice when the u.s. dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
And really, in what way is the u.s. a more "benign empire" than Japan? How many american Indians were killed for land in westward expansion? There's a legacy that the u.s. has yet to deal with. Or is it that Indians are somehow less than human, like the Japanese? No wonder internment camps were established on or near reservations. And what about the Spanish-american war?
As for racism, we might ask how Japanese American internees felt about u.s. policy. But then again, the way dominant u.s. society constructs Japanese people has them resembling mindless drones willing to do anything for emperor and country. So anyone one living in the u.s., regardless of how many generations (and some were at least nissei and sansei when they were rounded up) still served at the pleasure of the emperor, regardless of why they might have left Japan in the first place. And truly, is this any different than the u.s. right now? How much mindless support does Bush and his Iraq war have? U.s. citizens are just as mindless, just as relentless as the Japanese during WWII. History will not be kind to any of us.
Yes, we should consider the era and the immediacy of the war as a means to understand why the decision was made to use the bombs. But the u.s. was willing to sacrifice its own troops to test the effects of nuclear weapons by placing them at intervalled distances to determine the immediate and long-term effects of exposure to radiation. One has to remember that the u.s. dropped the bomb twice because it was nothing more than a big science experience in the nationalistic development of weapons of mass destruction. The war was just an excuse for boys with big guns to have a little fun.
Posted by kama 'aina at August 6, 2005 05:14 PMYes, "Japan" was seeking peace, but the "people of Japan" were not.
And you know this because you interviewed all of them? Japan was a dictatorship, run by militarists who worshipped war and battle. The vast majority of the "people of Japan" had no more say in what was going on than did the people of Iraq under Saddam. Or than the 60% of Americans (and 90% of the rest of the world) who opposed going to war with Iraq.
I notice that none of the pro-bombing commenters have grappled with the central issue of this post: How can one call oneself a Christian and be complicit in such atrocities?
These two bombings were monstrous acts, and cannot be excused (or diminished in their monstrosity) by saying, Well, Hitler would have done it too. When did Hitler become the measure by which we decide what is right or wrong?
The facts are that certain elements of the Japanese government were desperately looking for a way out. They were opposed by the fanatics who were willing to go out in a blaze of glory in which their deaths would be meaningful because they also would be responsible for the deaths of 20 million Japanese citizens who would have died for the glory of gotterdammerung. When Truman trumpeted the "unconditional surrender" ultimatum, he gave the War Lovers their chance to silence those who were interested in ending the slaughter. He was hoping that the Japanese would not take up the offer, because then he wouldn't have been able to drop his toys and kill Japs. (Amazingly, or not so amazingly when you think about it, the Japanese did not "unconditionally" surrender, but were allowed to keep their Emperor -- even though by any standards he was as much a war criminal as Tojo or the Japanese generals we hanged after the war.) Truman's own military people were advising him to avoid dropping the bomb, if it were possible. He wasn't interested.
The Hiroshima bomb was ghastly enough, but the Nagasaki one was a war crime for the ages, dropped for a reason that had nothing to do with ending the war (the Japanese leadership was never given enough time after Hiroshima was destroyed even to have a real meeting at which to discuss surrender among themselves before Nagasaki was wiped out). That reason was to give the plutonium bomb a real test under combat situations, since it was obvious to the physicists at Los Alamos that if we were going to build a lot more of these things, plutonium was the only way to go. Oh, and also because it made a nice loud explosion and there's nothing Americans love more than blowing shit up.
You so-called Christians make me sick. I've never known an atheist who had so little conscience about the evils done in the name of civilization.
Posted by Basharov at August 6, 2005 07:26 PMThe world was tired of war and wanted it to stop. The bomb was the right thing to do, it saved japanese and american lives. The war would have lasted much longer and cost many more lives. I have been reading the left coaster for over a year and agree with him on most points. I think he went over the top and way far to the left on this issue. I will continue reading the left coaster in the future. we agree on GWB and the runnaway gop. nevada dog
Posted by nevada dog at August 6, 2005 07:43 PMBasharov writes: "I notice that none of the pro-bombing commenters have grappled with the central issue of this post: How can one call oneself a Christian and be complicit in such atrocities?"
How can one call oneself a human and be complicit in such atrocities?
Brasharov: "You so-called Christians make me sick. I've never known an atheist who had so little conscience about the evils done in the name of civilization."
I am a Christian and I can assure you that I do not, nor have I ever, believed in killing other humans, for any reason. Why is it that you feel that Christians are to blame for the evils dones in the name of civilization and not people in general?
Posted by Judith at August 6, 2005 08:42 PMI've been reading some right-wing posts arguing that 2000 dead Americans in Iraq is a bearable loss for the good that is supposedly being accomplished and in their argument they use World War II as a comparison of a "good war" that cost a great deal more in lives. It staggers me that they would make such a comparison. World War II was the worst war in human history. It is estimated that 50-70 million people died in the war (I incline towards the higher figure). 20 million Russians died and 20 million Chinese died (the latter mostly at the hands of the Japanese though other fighting was also going on). There is no doubt in my mind that if Nazism and Japanese fascism had not been stopped, the total of dead would have been a great deal higher.
I think pessimist underestimates the total madness of the times that worked across all national groups. This was a function of total war. With each passing month, the morality on all sides decayed. But one needs to remember that most American soldiers were bewildered by this war we entered two years after it started; it's not a well known fact but most foot soldiers refused to fire their weapons at the enemy in the early stages of actual conflict. But most Americans were determined to do their job, to survive and to get back home to their families which was their main concern. I'm sure this was true for most soldiers of most other countries.
Was America racist in that era? Yes it was. But almost all countries were racist in that era. The Japanese atrocities against the Chinese was largely the result of extensive brainwashing: soldiers were taught that the Chinese were subhuman and that Japanese were members of a new master race. The brainwashing was a function of Prussian military doctrine: dehumanize the enemy and build strong bonds among your soldiers so that nothing else matters to them.
The lesson of World War II and the dropping of the two A-bombs is not that Christians were being hypocrites (and what an immature thesis that ultimately is!); the lesson is that we cannot afford all-out wars or even the limited use of nuclear weapons. The rest is revisionism. The world has gone 60 years without using A-bombs in war and it must go another 60 years and then another 60 years after that and so on. This is not a liberal or conservative battle (Bush is, after all, no conservative) but an issue for the survival of humanity. It is a lesson that Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and others need to understand. Pessimist, you need to be more inclusive in your arguments.
Posted by Craig at August 6, 2005 09:25 PMI am a Christian and I can assure you that I do not, nor have I ever, believed in killing other humans, for any reason. Why is it that you feel that Christians are to blame for the evils dones in the name of civilization and not people in general?
I blame Christians for Hiroshima and Nagasaki because Truman and those around him who ordered the bombs to drop were almost all Christians -- or Judeo-Christians, if you want to be completely accurate. It's not "people in general" who worship a literary construct they call the Prince of Peace, it's "Christians" -- who, ever since Emperor Constantine saw a vision of Jesus waving a large sword and took that to mean that it was time to kill everyone in sight who refused to become a "Christian", have killed, maimed, tortured, and destroyed millions upon millions of human beings whose only sin has been to be unfortunate enough to be "The Other" or, say in the instance of the Conquistadors in the New World, to have something the "Christians" wanted, namely gold.
Give me a secular humanist any day. None that I've known ever tries to justify the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while "Christians" almost always do.
Posted by Basharov at August 6, 2005 11:16 PMSo, it is just us Christians who are the warmongers. How sad that you have such a ridiculous belief, because whether you know it or not, you are generalizing.
Posted by Judith at August 7, 2005 07:09 AMWars are started by politics, power, greed and territory and religion is the tool used to incite the masses to fight for the political end of people like Bush, a non-Christian. Do it for God and Country is the cry of warmongers. To suggest that Christians are the cause of wars is as ridiculous as me saying that atheist are the cause of this Country's crime rate.
Even though politics has been the true cause for any war, religion has been used as an excuse more often than any other reason for war.
So what exactly should we have done instead?
WWII was the last "good" war because it is clear that we were fighting against pure evil... not because not a lot died...
Posted by at August 7, 2005 09:56 AMThere's a Christian radio host who makes me gag when I inadvertantly hear him, but I've twice heard him say Muslims should be talking long and loud about the Islam radicals, or else the moderate Muslims must be truly agreeing with the radicals. Well, I just wonder why he doesn't think Christian moderates are just as guilty of keeping quiet in the face of extremist so-called Christianity. Oh, maybe because he's himself an extremist. I saw the movie "ONE" and my friend loved it, but since they had that radio guy on a few times, I pretty much couldn't stand it.
Posted by Sharon at August 7, 2005 06:43 PMSharon, exactly. There are many more Christians who consider themselves moderates or liberals. Yet, people lump us all into the pile of wacko, right-wing extremists. That was my point to Basharov. It is very unfair to claim all Christians are responsibile for what a few do.
Posted by Judith at August 8, 2005 07:47 AMhttp://www.greenwych.ca/hiro2bmb.htm
The decision to bomb Hiroshima...
http://www.greenwych.ca/pearl-h.htm
Another view of Pearl Harbour...
Thanks Greenwich.
Posted by Sharon at August 11, 2005 09:58 AM