j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
werepossum, cheers for the well written reply. It's certainly made me think about the issue a bit more. I still regard the bombings, or the bombing of Nagasaki at least, as immoral. Could the US not have negotiated Japan's surrender after bombing Hiroshima on its own?
I think this quote by Leo Szilard, one of the men who worked on the Manhattan Project, is quite illuminating:
"Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?"
In the end, history is always written by the victors.
I don't consider the bombing of Nagasaki to have been immoral, but I agree the point is open to discussion. I believe Japan formally surrendered about a week after the second bombing, so it could be argued that had we waited another week after Hiroshima, Japan might well have unconditionally surrendered without the second bomb, thereby sparing 80,000 of what are today some of our strongest allies. We would of course have continued conventional and incendiary bombing so the actual amount of lives saved would have been lower, but almost certainly fewer Japanese would have died had Nagasaki not been nuked. Again, I don't agree the Allies (actually the USA, since only we had the atomic bomb at the time) had a moral imperative to hold off bombing Nagasaki, but the argument is certainly valid. Another week of conventional bombing might (or might not) have given the Japanese emperor time to convince his warlords to surrender unconditionally. Although the Japanese emperor in theory had absolute dominion over every Japanese (and they would argue over the world, due to his divinity), the real world is always more complicated.
To some extent it's true that the victors define the prosecutable war crimes, but not completely. Skorzeny et al were facing the death penalty for engaging in combat while wearing the enemy's uniform during the failed Ardennes offensive. Indeed, some of his troops who were captured early on were executed in the field, which is the defined punishment for spies and saboteurs. They were however saved by the testimony of a single British agent, who testified that yes, this is proscribed under penalty of death, and yes, the Allies did it too. In that case the punishment during the war for crimes against armed combatants exceeded the punishment after the war was won.
Fondant - it's not quite accurate to say the USA created either al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. Both were to some extent Soviet satellite states - look at their military equipment, which is almost exclusively Soviet Pact or Red Chinese. The Soviet Union gave arms, money, and advisers to Afghanistan to expel the British and as a foil to pro-US Pakistan and Iran, and to Iraq to act as a foil to US-friendly Iran and Israel. When the Soviet Union attempted to annex Afghanistan, it was with a view toward establishing a warm water port, something the Soviet Navy greatly desired. The mujahedeen fought back with guerilla warfare, and the USA aided them with weapons (including advanced Stinger and Dragon missiles), money, satellite imagery intelligence, and training - just as the Soviets had assisted them against the British. (If there's anyone here who used Dragon missiles I humbly apologize for referring to them as advanced.) While the USA had no good relationship with the Afghans (we backed the Brits, of course), we did have an enormous interest in seeing Pakistan remain free, as the Pakistanis were our buffer against Soviet-leaning India. This was doubly true after the Shah fell. Some of the mujahedeen of course went on to become al-Qaeda, but not by any means all did; most just wanted their own country to be free. You could certainly argue that the USA helped al-Qaeda by training some of its later recruits - but you'd have to include the Societ Union in that guilt as well. I should note that I greatly admire the Afghans, who were willing to fight and die for freedom in a dirt-poor nation when being a Soviet satellite state might have brought more prosperity. That history and fighting spirit is why we used Afghan fighters for the most part and turned over Afghanistan immediately to the Afghans; otherwise they'd have turned on us and tossed us out too.
Iraq went much the same. Originally despised by the USA, when the Shah was overthrown Hussein became "the enemy of my enemy". We aided him with satellite imagery intelligence and little else. He was not our friend; he was simply someone whose struggle could be aided to hurt our self-declared most bitter enemy. We did not create him; we merely helped him weaken Iran. The image of a USA-created Hussein is largely a media creation, fueled only by that satellite imagery intelligence, later mild overtures we made to him, and the fact that the US government okayed a sale (CDC or a university, I forget who) of medical grade anthrax to Bahgdad University. Being an Arab is hardly a crime, and at the time Bahgdad University had a reasonably good reputation. Yes, that or some other anthrax was eventually militarized, but that's nothing we didn't do ourselves, and anthrax is a piss-poor biological weapon of mass destruction. And take a good look at those Iraqis and Afghans - they're about as white as I, although certainly a bit swarthier.
As an interesting side point - the Bush administration has recently declassified some of the early discussions and struggles over Iraq's post-war governance. The military preferred a plan somewhat like Afghanistan's, where we immediately establish a new Iraqi government staffed from exiles, don't disband the military, etc. Call it the Petraeus Plan since I can't remember who originally pushed it. State Department hated and distrusted the exiled Free Iraqis and prefered a long occupation - call it the Bremmer Plan. Bush selected the Petraeus Plan; the State Department implemented the Bremmer Plan. I guess even the evil overlord of liberal nightmares can't completely control the government.
EDIT: Read Sun-Tsu. The concept of hearts and minds goes back a bit farther than the SAS, with all due respect.
Razzle - no, I can't even begin to address your points. Please adjust your field expedient cranial Faraday cage and re-examine the matter.
