A lot of folks have commented on my previous post, Commemorating a Major U.S. War Crime. In the course of the discussion, a number of issues have been raised that I would like to address.
Foremost among them is a foundational principle of Christian morality that quite a number of commenters do not appear to fully appreciate. It is this: One can never do something that is intrinsically evil, period. No circumstances whatsoever can make it morally licit.
That, in fact, is the difference between things that are intrinsically evil and those that are only extrinsically evil. Intrinsically evil things are evil by their own nature, regardless of circumstance, and so they can never be done (per the fundamental axiom of all morals: Do good and avoid evil). Extrinsically evil things become evil because of their circumstances and/or intent, not because of the nature of the act itself. As a result, such acts can be done in some circumstances (those in which they are not immoral), while they cannot be done in others (when circumstances make them immoral to do).
The fact that some actions are intrinsically evil is reflected in St. Paul’s rejection of the proposal, “Why not do evil that good may come?” He says of those who propose this, “Their condemnation is just” (Rom. 3:8).
The principle is treated more elaborately in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states:
1755 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting “in order to be seen by men”). The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts – such as fornication – that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.
1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.
In his subsequent encyclical on moral theology, Veritatis Splendor, John Paul II stressed:
Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances [VS 80].
He returned to the theme again in his encyclical on life, Evangelium Vitae:
No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church [EV 62].
So this point is quite firm in Catholic moral teaching: Some acts, by their very nature, are intrinsically evil and thus cannot be done by anyone at any time, no matter what the intention or circumstances.
One of these acts is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. In Evangelium Vitae John Paul II proclaimed:
[B]y the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.
The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end. It is in fact a grave act of disobedience to the moral law, and indeed to God himself, the author and guarantor of that law; it contradicts the fundamental virtues of justice and charity. “Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action”.
As far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others. This equality is the basis of all authentic social relationships which, to be truly such, can only be founded on truth and justice, recognizing and protecting every man and woman as a person and not as an object to be used. Before the moral norm which prohibits the direct taking of the life of an innocent human being “there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the ‘poorest of the poor’ on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal” [EV 57].
In this passage, John Paul II walks right up to the edge of invoking papal infallibility. He is using the most solemn form of papal teaching shy of invoking infallibility (had he said “I declare and define” instead of “I confirm,” he would have invoked infallibility), though in this case that is not necessary because the same teaching has already been infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church.
Because the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is intrinsically evil, it is never morally legitimate to target innocent civilians, even in wartime. It does not matter what authority (civilian or military) has recommended or ordered the action—even if he be the American president or the master of the world. It does not matter whether innocent people on your side will die as a result. They are absolutely equal to the innocent on the other side and cannot be preferred.
Furthermore, to threaten to do something intrinsically evil is itself intrinsically evil, and to threaten—by words or deeds—to target civilians is intrinsically evil and cannot be done under any circumstances. You cannot hold innocents as hostages to another goal, however noble or lofty it may be.
These are exactly the same principles that underlie the intrinsic immorality of abortion, euthanasia, and other forms of murder. One cannot justify them, no matter the circumstances or the intention.
This does not deal with all the subjects that have been brought up in the combox. It does not, for example, go into cases where—by the law of double-effect—civilian casualties can be tolerated for a proportionate reason. But it does show the fundamental conflict between Catholic morality and the position of those trying to justify the targeting of civilians due the exigencies of wartime or as the “lesser evil” compared to what would otherwise happen.
Killing, attempting to kill, or threatening to kill the innocent can never be justified, even if it means you yourself—also an innocent—will die.
This is true, but I don’t exactly understand how it works in the case of the original dropping of the atom bomb. Now (at the present time), we know that using nuclear weapons as WMD targeting innocent civilians is an intrinsically evil use of the weapons, but at the time of the original dropping, knowledge was so improperly formed that even though, objectively, it was an intrinsically evil use, no one could have known that because there was little knowledge of its destructive potential. Obviously, intrinsic is intrinsic, but where there are legitimate defects in knowledge and no time to correct them, the subjective imputability is diminished. One may never do evil that good may come from it, but if one does not understand or even recognize that something is an evil, that defect, if invincible, is enough to remove the subjective aspects of the sin. Given the time frame under which the bomb was dropped (four days after the Trinity Test), there was no way that anyone understood the implications. We didn’t even survey the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki until after the War.
So, while one cannot deliberately kill innocent people, not everyone in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was innocent. One can not always shoot a weapon in such a way that other people might not inadvertently get killed. I just am a bit more tentative in discussing history, especially the history of a single human’s judgment than many people posting here seem to be. A careful distinction must be made between objective and subjective evil. Just because dropping the bomb was objectively evil does not mean that Truman should be judged as cooperating in an evil. In order for someone to be vincibly ignorant, one must be able to take right counsel. The question is: was such counsel possible at the time?
The Chicken
It ended the war.
Mr. Chicken:
That was very well put. I would be inclined to the opinion that it was not possible to take such counsel at the time.
The real war crime, I’m afraid, was the decision (taken unanimously by the Allies, under pressure from the appallingly evil Stalin) to carpet-bomb German and Japanese cities in the first place. The firebombing of Tokyo caused far more damage, and I believe also more loss of life, than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings combined. Those who authorized it, in my view, bear a heavier burden of culpability than those responsible for the two A-bombings.
If anything, the A-bombings were less criminal, because of the principle of double effect. They were not intended primarily to cause destruction, but to demonstrate to the Japanese that further resistance was hopeless and it was in their vital interest to end the war. According to the balance of the evidence I have read, they succeeded in that purpose. Dropping another 20,000 tons of TNT on those two cities (which the U.S. forces could easily have done) would not have produced such an effect.
Dear Chicken
The Manhattan Project and atomic bomb was developed precisely because of its vastly increased destructive power. It was not developed as some kind of schoolboy chemistry experiment along the lines of “I wonder what would happen if I mixed these two chemicals together and lit them?”.
When he witnessed the Trinity test Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of the words of the Bhagavad Gita “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Dear Tom Simon
Some have tried to comfort themselves with the idea that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were examples of Double Effect. They were not.
A simple test of what one’s true means and ends are is to ask ‘what if’ questions. eg
1. What if when the bomb hit the ground it did not explode? Would that part of your intention be frustrated?
2. What if it exploded but no one was killed? would that part of your intention be frustrated?
3. What if it exploded but no non-combatants were killed? would that part of your intention be frustrated?
It is difficult to imagine the US government’s intention as not including the destruction of those cities and a large proportion of their civilain population. This may have been the means of demonstrating that resistance was futile. But because it was the operative means it is not double effect. If the intention was 3 above then the bomb could have been detonated in a sparsely populated area or Japanese delegates could have been given safe passage to a test site like Trinity.
A woman who becomes unintentionally pregnant, might have the Primary (and noble) aim of securing her freedom and security, but aborting her child is not a licit (‘secondary’) means of achieving that goal. That abortion would not be a double effect.
The hard truth for those who uphold the inviolability of innocent life is that there are limits to what we may do to secure our freedom and murder is one limit.
We need to have a consistent ethic of life.
Leo:
I did not say that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not morally culpable because of double effect. I merely pointed out that the existence of the second effect is a mitigating factor that was not present in the indiscriminate bombing of Tokyo and other cities.
To say that something is the lesser of two evils is not to say that it is good.
Dear Tom Simon
do you think that that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally justifiable as the lesser of two evils?
A doctor performing an abortion on a woman might believe that abortion is ‘not good’ but might be morally justifiable as the lesser of two evils.
Leo: Please read what I said. ‘To say that something is the lesser of two evils is not to say that it is good.’ How can I make myself any clearer than that?
Dear Tom Simon
you could answer my question with a Yes or No if that is possible.
I respectfully recommend that those who wish to think more clearly on intention, double-effect, consequentialism and war read the 7 pages of Elizabeth Anscombe’s War and Murder
Anscombe‘s book Intention is regarded by many professional philosophers as being the most important treatment of the subject since Aristotle.
She was a convert to Catholicism and discomfited both the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ in the church by her ruthless rationality and fidelity to what she saw as Catholic truth.
you could answer my question with a Yes or No if that is possible.
I already answered it. Twice, yet. No, it was not morally justifiable. The presence of the second (desirable) effect mitigated but did not correct the evil of the act. Whereas the evil of the ‘conventional’ bombings was not mitigated in that way.
The reason I keep harping on this is that it is vitally important, in any discussion of a moral issue, to keep the moral element clear and not confuse it with the accidents of the act. Consider this case:
A man commits 15 murders with a knife, after which he murders two more people with a gun. Are the last two murders more evil than the first 15, merely because of the weapon used? No: murder is murder, however performed. If a gun-control advocate comes along and makes a hullabaloo about the two murders because they were done with a gun, while ignoring the 15 because they were not, he is not doing valid moral reasoning. Instead he is appealing to emotion and shock-value to co-opt the incident in the service of his own political cause.
Similarly, I have seen many people come out and call the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings war crimes, but very few of them recognize that the fire-bombing of Tokyo was a war crime of the same nature (and on a tremendously larger scale). By the end of July, 1945, the U.S. military was dropping several thousand tons of bombs per day on Japanese cities — more explosive power every week than was contained in both A-bombs. And they did this with the full intention of causing firestorms which would inflict innumerable civilian casualties. They did not know anything about the lethal after-effects of A-bomb radiation. (Many of the men who worked as technicians and observers at the early A-bomb tests died of cancer because of that lack of knowledge. But there is no moral culpability for those deaths, because until they occurred there was no way of knowing that such radiation would be lethal.)
It seems vital to me that we should keep our minds clear. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians is evil in and of itself, regardless of what kind of bomb is used. It is unquestionably worse to bomb a civilian neighbourhood with TNT than to attack an isolated military target with a nuclear weapon. But the tendency to focus on the A-bombings exclusively, and ignore other criminal acts of the same kind, inclines people to forget that important lesson.
They were not intended primarily to cause destruction, but to demonstrate to the Japanese that further resistance was hopeless and it was in their vital interest to end the war.
They were intended to demonstrate further resistance was hopeless by causing destruction. The primary means deliberately chosen (i.e., intended) to demonstrate the hopelessness of further resistance was bombing civilian populations. That’s the problem. Intent goes not just to the ultimate object or goal (i.e., ending the war, showing the futility), but intent also goes to how you choose to accomplish those objects or goals – in other words, the means you choose.
They were intended to demonstrate further resistance was hopeless by causing destruction.
I have to confess, I find it hard to imagine how else you would demonstrate that in a war.
Thanks Tom Simon.
My apologies for misunderstanding you.
In my experience saturation bombing of cities by lots of smaller bombs has been invoked as a smokescreen to try to justify the same effect using one big bomb.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were clear:
Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.
Gaudium et Spes 80
Thanks Tom Simon.
My apologies for misunderstanding you.
De nada.
I get irritated when people don’t understand what I’m saying, but it’s really irritation with myself. I’m a writer by trade (not a terribly successful one, mind you), and it’s my job to make my points clearly. This may be only the combox of a blog, but that’s no excuse for doing shoddy work.
Dear Chicken
The Manhattan Project and atomic bomb was developed precisely because of its vastly increased destructive power. It was not developed as some kind of schoolboy chemistry experiment along the lines of “I wonder what would happen if I mixed these two chemicals together and lit them?”.
When he witnessed the Trinity test Robert Oppenheimer was reminded of the words of the Bhagavad Gita “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”.
Dear Leo,
Your comment does not change the possibility that Truman may not have understood that this was a new bomb in kind, not merely intensity. How much do you know about the Manhattan Project science? In some ways, it was precisely a schoolboy experiment with the physicists patting themselves on the back after every step. There was so much they didn’t know, such as how to enrich Uranium in the most efficient way, how to create the shape charge to set off the concentric shock wave for the Plutonium bomb. In fact, there was some concern up to the Trinity test that the bomb would blow the atmosphere off of the planet. No one knew up until nineteen days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima how much force the bomb would generate. Enrico Fermi, using dimensional analysis, came within 10% of the right answer, but how did he test this? As the shock wave from the blast reached the bunker, he dropped some paper shreds and measured how far they drifted. This was nineteen days before the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Even then, the first bomb was not like the second bomb. The first bomb was a 235U bomb. The one that fell on Nagasaki was a Plutonium-based bomb (it wasn’t ready when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped). The Uranium bomb was a much dirtier bomb than the Plutonium bomb. There were two things that made the Manhattan project difficult: the ability to enrich Uranium and the ability to produce a shape-charge to make a concentric shock wave that would implode a concrete core to cause the Plutonium to fission.
You have no idea how easy it is to make an atom bomb if you have one of these two elements. I explain to my students exactly how easy it is to make an atom bomb. If you have enough 235U, you can make an atom bomb with a lead pipe. The reason we are so worried about places like Iran is that they have enrichment plants for distilling the 235U from the 238U. All it takes is about 15 pounds of enriched uranium to make a bomb. Normal Uranium has an atomic mass of 238 amu and is fissionable with fast neutrons, but not fissile. 235U is fissile, meaning slow neutrons, such as those generated by impact, will cause fissioning. You can make an atom bomb, literally, by hitting together two large enough pieces of 235U.
All scientists share in the Original Sin of the Manhattan Project. Robert Oppenheimer and many of the original Manhattan project people (except Edward Teller) became very dovish against nuclear weapons after the Manhattan Project. In fact, Oppenheimer met with President Truman in the White House after the war to discuss nuclear weapons and this is where, if memory serves, Oppenheimer remarked that physicists have known sin (it may have been at a senate hearing). In any case, after the meeting, Truman was reported to tell his advisors that he never wanted to see “that man,” again. Make of that what you will.
In any case, I know a fair amount of the history of the science of the period. My comments stand.
The Chicken
Dear Chicken
thank you for the bomb-making notes!!!
Your comment does not change the possibility that Truman may not have understood that this was a new bomb in kind, not merely intensity.
I don’t know whether you have specific grounds for supposing this or whether your default position is to make a charitable assumption.
When he was briefed on the Trinity test, and before ordering Hiroshima, Truman wrote:
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.
In 1963, with the benefit of hindsight, he wrote:
I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war… I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman
my quotes are from Wikipedia footnotes 91 and 105 which check OK.
I expect that Truman was acting according to his lights and I don’t want to dwell on his subjective moral culpability – full and final judgment belongs to God.
I will say this much for Truman. He didn’t start the policy of carpet-bombing civilians; that had been going on since 1942. When he approved the use of the A-bombs, he did so in the hope that it would make the carpet-bombing (and the war) stop. His moral reasoning may have been flawed, but at least he tried to take moral considerations into account. FDR didn’t do as much; he seemed to think of strategic bombing chiefly as a way to wreak vengeance on Germans and Japanese while keeping Uncle Joe Stalin happy.
Again, a lesser evil is not good, but one must give some credit to those who resisted the dreadful attraction of utter moral nihilism amid the horrors of that war. Trying to do good by evil means is at least an improvement on trying to do evil by evil means.
I don’t know the best way to bring this up but it has been on my mind when I come across this discussion. If the population of an enemy state is off limits to a military, wouldn’t that take away a necessary motivation to stop their own government from making war? It also encourages enemy combatants to use civilian populations as shields, hindering our combatants and putting their lives on the line. Finally, doesnt this methodology make it easier to justify our wars against Iraq?
Something I don’t understand.
If the USA leafletted 20 cities and warned them of upcoming attacks, and told people to leave the area where the attacks were planned to happen…..how is that deliberately targetting innocent people? It was obvious the goal was to destroy military targets and not to kill innocent people.
If there was a deserted island near Japan and we dropped a nuke on it, would that have given the same message to the Japanese? (also assuming such a deserted island exists too…)
An interesting short paragraph from “Masonry Exposed”
“The LARGEST of Two Atomic Bombs used in the 2nd World War
was dropped on the only CHRISTIAN populated city in Japan.
Four military targets in Japan were chosen as targets to drop two atomic bombs. One of these cities, Kyoto, was removed from the list because of its religious and historical significance to Japan. The only city with a large population of Christians was chosen as a replacement even though it had far less strategic military significance.
The largest of the two bombs dropped on Japan was reserved for Christian Nagasaki, the city with the least military importance of the four. This city was chosen with the approval of President Harry Truman – a Past Grand Master of Masonry (both of his grandfathers had been Masons) – by Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War. Stimpson had been appointed to office by President Roosevelt, a Mason, who had chosen (or had been directed to choose) another Mason as Vice-President.”
Just curious, and you don’t have to answer…
Chicken, what do you do for a living and where do you teach?
Speaking of trying to demoralize Christians, I found reading this account of Nagasaki inspired me as a Christian.
http://hprweb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=250:the-catholic-holocaust-of-nagasaki-august-9-1945why-lord&catid=34:current-issue
Dear BobCatholic
If the USA leafletted 20 cities and warned them of upcoming attacks, and told people to leave the area where the attacks were planned to happen …
Let’s assume, for a moment, that this is true.
1. Would such a warning have been believed or understood? Those who wonder if Truman understood the factual enormity of the Bomb cannot expect ordinary Japanese civilians to understand better than Truman.
2. Would large numbers of Japanese civilians have been allowed to leave these cities? If not, then this warning would be like the police ordering hostages to leave their kidnappers otherwise the police would blow up the building.
3. Assuming they did leave the 20 cities – where would these millions of people have gone? They could not visit relatives in one of the other threatened cities. Where would they flee to? What about water, sanitation, disease, food, earning a living to pay for things etc.. For how long could millions of people live in makeshit refugee camps? Days? weeks? months? Just look at how difficult it is for the current Pakistani flood refugees.
4. Bringing this closer to us. Osama Bin Laden has made various threats/warnings. Suppose he gave a warning to the residents of a number of named US cities to leave or at least avoid tall buildings and places serving alcohol.
Would/should you take Bin Laden’s threat seriously or consider it enemy propaganda?
Would you evacuate? Where to? For how long? How would you pay while ou were away from your work?
Would the warning significantly reduce his culpability if some of his supporters flew an aircraft into a building or placed bombs in crowded bars?
In practice, leafleting in these circumstances does not significantly reduce culpability for murder.
4. Bringing this closer to us. Osama Bin Laden has made various threats/warnings. Suppose he gave a warning to the residents of a number of named US cities to leave or at least avoid tall buildings and places serving alcohol.
Would/should you take Bin Laden’s threat seriously or consider it enemy propaganda?
Would you evacuate? Where to? For how long? How would you pay while ou were away from your work?
If Bin Laden were dropping thousands of bombs on U.S. cities every single day, I think I’d be inclined to take him seriously when he announced his next target. This is so far from the truth that it doesn’t even constitute a helpful counterfactual.
The real problem, perhaps, is that neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki could be evacuated without the cooperation of the authorities, which seem to have entirely disregarded the leaflets — whether because they thought the Americans were bluffing, or because they considered that the civilian population had a duty to stay put and die for the Emperor. The latter attitude seems to have been depressingly common among Japanese officials during the war.
>Let’s assume, for a moment, that this is true.
Actually, it is true. It is a historical fact.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100524190844AAomHw7
> 1. Would such a warning have been believed or understood?
The flyers were written in Japanese, so yeah. Believed? Hello, we’re at war. If someone we’re at war with would say they’re going to attack, I think that’s pretty much going to be believed.
>2. Would large numbers of Japanese civilians have been allowed to leave these cities? If not, then this warning would be like the police ordering hostages to leave their kidnappers otherwise the police would blow up the building.
If someone is holding people hostage, it is a right and good thing to shoot him dead. Just letting the people be held hostage is not moral.
Also, how would the police stop large numbers of people from leaving? We’ve seen what happens when riots break out, they’re going to mobilize police in 20 cities? That huge amount of manpower is not likely to be raised up in a time of war when most men are dying in war as soldiers.
Your police/hostage analogy is also incorrect. Suppose a police sharpshooter had the hostage taker’s head in his crosshairs. He is given the order to shoot. He shoots. The hostage taker is dead, and due to a richochet, so is an innocent hostage. Is this deliberately killing innocent people? Obviously, no.
>Where would they flee to?
At least they’d be ALIVE. Priorities are a good thing.
First get them out of danger then worry about the later details.
Remember, the Japanese government did not care one iota about its people. All the evils you talk about are squarely on the shoulders of the Japanese government.
>4. Suppose he gave a warning to the residents of a number of named US cities to leave or at least avoid tall buildings and places serving alcohol.
It would be true. He has warned before twice and twice he struck.
None of these objection far has given me sufficient proof that the US attack on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a deliberate killing of innocent people.
>”The LARGEST of Two Atomic Bombs used in the 2nd World War
was dropped on the only CHRISTIAN populated city in Japan.
This sounds plausible. Leftists hate Christianity big time. However, I doubt this is true. I don’t mind nailing leftists on their anti-Christian bigotry, but this is not a case of it.
Nagasaki was not the ONLY Christian populated city in Japan. It was the largest, yes.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896171,00.html
“Among the dead were 40% of Nagasaki’s Christian population, which for centuries has been the biggest of any Japanese city”
Since Christianity is about 1% of the Japanese population, it would not have been a huge player in the population statistics. Since the 19th century when Christianity was legalized, Christians spread out from Nagasaki and pretty much are uniform around Japan then and now with Nagasaki still being #1. If they wanted to target Christianity, Japan was the wrong country to target.
Dear BobCatholic
If, as you claim:
– warnings were given which were sufficiently clear and believed;
– and it was practicable for millions of non-combatants to flee 20 cities at short notice and live rough for an indefinite period.
Then why did no-one flee Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
Your claim/theory would not seem to fit the facts.
Leo:
As I mentioned, it’s impossible to evacuate any large city (especially in wartime, when civilian access to transport is severely limited) without cooperation from the authorities. That would seem to me to be the hole in Bob’s hypothesis.
As for the canard about targeting Japanese Christians: No, I don’t believe that story either. Millions of Christian civilians died during the war, most in the territories encompassed by the Russian front, but many in the saturation bombing of German cities. Far more Christians died at Dresden than at Nagasaki. And in fact Nagasaki was not designated as the primary target for Fat Man; the bomb was dropped there when cloud cover made it impossible to drop it on Kokura. If the U.S. had for some reason deliberately set out to target Japanese Christians, they would have made Nagasaki the primary target.
It is, of course, a terrible thing that so many Japanese Christians died at Nagasaki. On the other hand, if thousands of Japanese were going to die anyway, I’m actually somewhat glad that many of them were Christians and (presumably) had the opportunity to die in a state of grace. May the Lord rest them and keep them until the day of resurrection.
BobCatholic, great comments! I’m glad some people with military experiance are speaking up on this and other blogs to expose the ‘a-bombing of the Jap cities was a war crime myth’. The Catholic Cave Man over at The Lair of The Catholic Cavemen blog had two postings exposing this moronic myth too. He’s a military man too. The criticisms of Mark and Jimmy remind me of this joke. A preacher got lost trying to find a church. He then ran into a young man and asked him where the church might be. The boy replied, ” Oh, the church at on the corner of 4th and Main, preacher.” The minister, happy that he knew were the church was at, asked the boy,”Son, how would you like to know how to get to heaven.” The young fellow replied,” Preach, you can’t even find the church and your going to tell me how to get up there?” These two don’t understand war and they’re going to tell us how to fight one?
Sorry Jimmy, but a people who lets their government commit acts of violence, are in my opnion just as guilty as the government for those acts. Japan, Iraq, Vietnam. Those “innocent” people stood by and let their government do what it wanted. Therefore they share the guilt of their government. We would share the guilt of killing innocent people with the atomic bombs mentioned in your last post, but those people weren’t really innocent so we have no guilt.
Dear Greg E
a people who lets their government commit acts of violence, are in my opinion just as guilty as the government for those acts
This is the argument used by Jihadis to justify attacking civilians eg at 9/11 or the London 7/7 bombings. Do you believe that all those killed on 9/11 and 7/7 were legitimate targets? If you feel any outrage is a large part of it because the victims were non-combatants?
Pre-war Japan was not a democracy. Your argument might have some force in a perfect democracy. But are ALL Americans guilty of crimes in Vietnam? Guantanamo? Abu Ghraib? a possible illegal war against Iraq? etc..
Are Bob Catholic, Steve Dalton and Greg E,’just as guilty’ as the Obama government for [insert crime/error you believe he has committed here]?
Were the babies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki complicit in their government’s aggression? and therefore legitimate targets?
There are grey areas between combatants and non-combatants as twilight is a grey area between day and night, but we do know what day and night are.
Denying the distinction between combatant and non-combatant and failing to avoid non-combatant deaths means that no-one, not even you and your family, could ever claim to be innocent victims in warfare or terrorism.
I may be getting off-topic here, but there’s something that’s been bothering me for a long time.
To keep it simple, I am having a hard time understanding how killing an innocent is an intrinsically different action from killing someone who is not innocent. Specifically, I am having trouble seeing a non-circumstantial difference between murder and justified self-defense.
As far as I can tell, the difference between cold-blooded murder and reluctantly killing someone in self-defense is consequentialism, plain and simple. The act is the same; the only difference is the circumstances and intentions surrounding the act.
Am I being dense? Is there some intrinsic difference between the acts that I’m missing? I’ve been asking for clarification on this issue ever since George Tiller was killed, and I feel like I’m still missing something that everyone else seems to understand.
Leo,
The difference is that the jihadists are being proactive and not reactive. Had we (the U.S.) actually committed hostilities against the countries the jihadists live in then they would have justification. In all instances the U.S. has been reactive, in that there was violence committed against our people first. If we let our country commit an active of violence without provocation, then we would share in the guilt of that action.
>Then why did no-one flee Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
Nobody fled? I’m sure some people fled. Those who didn’t, were likely told by the evil Japanese government a bunch of lies and they believed them. Ever hear of the Stockholm syndrome?
Just because people make bad decisions (believing lies told by the Japanese government) does not mean the USA committed a war crime.
I make the case that if someone is being held hostage by an evil terrorist, it is morally right to shoot the terrorist, even if there is a risk that innocents can die from that action. This is the principle of double effect.
Unless I’m totally missing something here, why aren’t the bombings covered under this same principle? We warned the people in advance. We threatened 20 cities but only 2 were hit. We showed the people great mercy in advance and even during the attacks. We could have nuked 20 cities, as we warned. But we didn’t. We nuked one. The Japanese government continued its bloodshed. So we nuked another. Then it surrendered. Millions of lives were saved. You will notice that there was no third bombing. If the USA was really trying to committing a war crime, there would have been a third bombing.
War is horrible. It is bloody. And innocent civilians will get hurt in a war. When two elephants (governments) fight, the ants (civilians) will get hurt. There’s no way around that. The Catholic Church does not declare war as an instrinsic evil despite the INCONVENIENT fact that innocent civilians die in it.
War is imperfect. The war crime is whether civilians were targetted on purpose. The warnings are proof that the USA’s was NOT targetting the civilians on purpose.
So please, enlighten me – what am I missing here?
>Your claim/theory would not seem to fit the facts.
Actually, the warnings were a fact. And last time I checked, people do know how to walk. Even the poorest of the poor could have walked. Those who were disabled and could not walk could ask their friends and family to help. All governments have people who disagree with its policies, and I’m sure they would have grabbed the fliers and escaped. The Japanese government does not have a 100% brainwashing rate (unlike what many seem to be saying)
>I’m glad some people with military experiance are speaking up
I have little military experience, I just did some googling, that’s all. I just am a guy who doesn’t think the USA is evil (despire what our current administration thinks)
Actually, the warnings were a fact. And last time I checked, people do know how to walk. Even the poorest of the poor could have walked. Those who were disabled and could not walk could ask their friends and family to help. All governments have people who disagree with its policies, and I’m sure they would have grabbed the fliers and escaped. The Japanese government does not have a 100% brainwashing rate (unlike what many seem to be saying).
Propaganda leaflets were a common thing during the War. Communication for the masses was not as rapid as it is today so there would be little opportunity to confirm or deny the information. It is highly conceivable that the inhabitants thought these leaflets were another scare tactic. These sorts of leaflets are not very effective, especially in war, where information is fluid. The argument that they were warned is a very weak argument.
These two don’t understand war and they’re going to tell us how to fight one?
italics off
Dear GregE
The difference is that the jihadists are being proactive and not reactive. Had we (the U.S.) actually committed hostilities against the countries the jihadists live in then they would have justification.
The jihadists see the first Gulf War with its ‘infidel bases on the holy land of Saudi Arabia’, US support for ‘Israel against the Palestinians’, US support for ‘decadent rulers and US puppets’ in mainly Muslim countries including the Gulf and the Shah of Iran etc. as the US provocation and proactive imperialism which justified their response which included deliberately killing non-combatants on 9/11 and 7/7.
Attempted moral justifications based on provocation only, quickly descend into a “you started it first by doing X at time T1”. “No we didn’t, you started it first by doing Y at time T0.” and so on back to Adam.
Culpability is more than provocation and who started it – as our parents might have told us and we might say to our own children. Responses to injustice must be proportionate. Just because someone else started it does not mean that you can deliberately kill non combatants as a means towards an end.
Imperialism by the Japanese government did not justify Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Imperialism by the US government did not justify 9/11.
Those acts were unjustifiable because non-combatants were deliberately killed as a means towards an end.
Dear BobCatholic
I make the case that if someone is being held hostage by an evil terrorist, it is morally right to shoot the terrorist, even if there is a risk that innocents can die from that action. This is the principle of double effect.
Except that in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 200,000 of the hostages were killed as a means to get the terrorists to surrender. This is not double effect.
Please read my link above to Anscombe’s ‘War and Murder’ to avoid double think on double effect.
From your name I’m sure you are trying to be faithful to the teaching of Christ revealed through His Church – even when those teachings are costly. What is your response to the teaching of the Fathers at the Second Vatican Council:
Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.
Would you dilute ‘unequivocal’ and ‘unhesitating’ by adding “unless there was a sort of warning first”?
If the USA leafletted 20 cities and warned them of upcoming attacks, and told people to leave the area where the attacks were planned to happen…..how is that deliberately targetting innocent people? It was obvious the goal was to destroy military targets and not to kill innocent people.
If there was a deserted island near Japan and we dropped a nuke on it, would that have given the same message to the Japanese? (also assuming such a deserted island exists too…)
Bob, you seem to be contradicting yourself (although perhaps I am just misnderstandig your comments). At first you say by leafletting, we showed we did not intend to target civilians, but your follow-up seems tio imply that had we just bombed a deserted isalnd, it would not have had the ame impact on the Japanese command that we were looking for. Therfore, it seems we had to target the civilians in order to get that “shock and awe” we wanted.
Had we hit empty military bunkers or factories, would it have had the “shock and awe” we wnated. No. That is why we wanted civilian casualties – to intimidate the Japanese into surrender.
Sorry Jimmy, but a people who lets their government commit acts of violence, are in my opnion just as guilty as the government for those acts.
So every American is just as responsible for every bomb dropped by American forces as Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II and Obama are for ordering such attacks? In that case, no American can complain about terrorist acts on US soil agaisnt civilians, since there are no such things. A Pakistani would be justified in taking down a building in NY because of a US drone taking out his brother’s wedding party?
We could have nuked 20 cities, as we warned. But we didn’t.
We only had two bombs at the time, so it was no great act of mercy that we refrained from nuking 20 cities, when we had in fact used our entire stockpile.
Worst spelling on Jimmy’s blog ever goes to c matt:
“Bob, you seem to be contradicting yourself (although perhaps I am just misnderstandig your comments). At first you say by leafletting, we showed we did not intend to target civilians, but your follow-up seems tio imply that had we just bombed a deserted isalnd, it would not have had the ame impact on the Japanese command that we were looking for. Therfore, it seems we had to target the civilians in order to get that “shock and awe” we wanted.
Had we hit empty military bunkers or factories, would it have had the “shock and awe” we wnated. No. That is why we wanted civilian casualties – to intimidate the Japanese into surrender.”
Congrats c matt!
>Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.
Pay attention to the key words: “along with their populations”
We made sure to warn them in advance. People could have left. They didn’t. The advance warning was proof civilians were not targetted on purpose.
Intention is a key part of moral theology. The intention was not there to kill civilians.
>Had we hit empty military bunkers or factories, would it have had the “shock and awe” we wnated. No. That is why we wanted civilian casualties – to intimidate the Japanese into surrender.
Was there any empty military bunkers or factories that could have been hit? I am not aware of any decemt military only targets they could have hit.
Remember, we did warn them we were going to attack 20 cities. Perhaps we should have hit the Emperor’s palace? That would definitely cause a lot more “shock and awe” than 2 cities gone.
Intention is a key part of moral theology. The intention was not there to kill civilians.
The U. S. leaders wanted the Japanese to think that we had 100 atom bombs, so they bombed two cities to try to bluff the point. It was certainly not targeted to military targets. It was almost certainly meant to shock the population.
I say, again, the leaflet warning was useless and I suspect the leaders knew this. Leaflets had been dropped before. They rarely can be trusted during war. I have been reticent to make any indictments of Truman’s actions in the past, but the more I study the situation, the more I think that there are grounds to think that consequentialist thinking was involved.
The Chicken
Dear BobCatholic
The intention was not there to kill civilians.
If the intention did not include the deaths of non-combatants then why was the [first] weapon not dropped on a largely unpopulated area?
In case anyone missed ‘Catholic Answers Live’ last night, you will be excited to know that Karl Keating is taking on this subject in his next book.
He has asked that people “friend” him on Facebook (whatever that means) so they can share sources and comments.
Thank you, Jimmy (and all you comboxers) for clarifying the many moral issues surrounding this historic anniversary.
I wrote my own article for my parish bulletin and posted it at my Orlando Roman Catholic Examiner page.
I had to keep it short for the bulletin, but I think I made the point by letting my readers know: we hit our own that day.