American People.

[Ed Normile]

Oh by the way Nihil, genocide is usually committed against defensless or underarmed peoples with the effect being of wiping them from the face of the earth. Japans being bombed was to stop a war machine that would have eventually took over the entire world, including Canada and England and yes, Australia too. We did not try to wipe out the Japanese, we rebuilt their country, government and aided their peoples, hardly sounds anything like a genocide does it?

ed

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Ed Normile' timestamp='1298871982' post='2216369']
Not really my friend, you may be ignorant of the fact that both Canada and England were major collaborators in the Manhattan project to develop the bomb which was used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, look up Tube Alloys, the code name for the joint England/Canada project that was actually the first nuclear weapon project that pre-empted the Manhattan Project and was later subsumed into the Manhattan Project. Also look up Chalk River Laboratories, the Canadian company that was instrumental in much of the Mahattan project.

ed
[/quote]
Maybe so, but thank God we didn't drop it. Can't blame Sam Colt for the people who die by gunfire.

[quote name='Ed Normile' timestamp='1298872261' post='2216370']
Oh by the way Nihil, genocide is usually committed against defensless or underarmed peoples with the effect being of wiping them from the face of the earth. Japans being bombed was to stop a war machine that would have eventually took over the entire world, including Canada and England and yes, Australia too. We did not try to wipe out the Japanese, we rebuilt their country, government and aided their peoples, hardly sounds anything like a genocide does it?

ed
[/quote]
Genocide need not be limited to underarmed or weak nations.
Merriam-Webster defines genocide as:
"the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group".
Now, obviously the Japanese were not utterly destroyed, so this would be 'attempted' genocide. However, in the atomic bombings, the Japanese people were targeted. Not military installations, but [i]entire cities[/i]. You can't just aim at military bases with bombs that size and with that sort of fallout. It's like going after a tumour with a wrecking ball.
It was murder.

[Ed Normile]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298872518' post='2216371']
Maybe so, but thank God we didn't drop it. Can't blame Sam Colt for the people who die by gunfire.


Genocide need not be limited to underarmed or weak nations.
Merriam-Webster defines genocide as:
"the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group".
Now, obviously the Japanese were not utterly destroyed, so this would be 'attempted' genocide. However, in the atomic bombings, the Japanese people were targeted. Not military installations, but [i]entire cities[/i]. You can't just aim at military bases with bombs that size and with that sort of fallout. It's like going after a tumour with a wrecking ball.
It was murder.
[/quote]

Murder? All war can be described as murder. Do you realize that japan had killed almost ten million Chinese civillians? That far more Allied civilians, not troops, died in the war than Axis civilians and troops combined? The Japanese war machine was unstoppable and very inhumane, look up the Nanking Massacre where over several hundred thousand chinese civilians were raped and killed. There were hundreds of thousands of people of Java forced into slavery to work for the japanese only just over 50 thousand lived to be repatriated to Java, they were brutal with their prisoners of war. The Japanese held more Allied prisoners of war than were killed during the bombings. Did you know that after the first bombing they were given a chance to surrender but refused? Would you have the world surrender to an insane regime and submit to its dominance or continue the war another 7 years.? Get real man.

ed

[4588686]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298863964' post='2216331']
Some might classify the bombings of Japan to be genocide.
[/quote]


They would be incorrect.

[4588686]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298872518' post='2216371']
Maybe so, but thank God we didn't drop it. Can't blame Sam Colt for the people who die by gunfire.



[/quote]

Allow America to get bloody hands in securing the Western world, decry those actions, continue to prosper under the blanket of security provided by America while decrying the actions used to provide that security. I'm glad that hasn't been the crux of Europe and Canada's foreign policy for the last 60 years.

Edited February 28, 2011 by Hasan

[4588686]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298872518' post='2216371']
Maybe so, but thank God we didn't drop it. Can't blame Sam Colt for the people who die by gunfire.


Genocide need not be limited to underarmed or weak nations.
Merriam-Webster defines genocide as:
"the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group".
Now, obviously the Japanese were not utterly destroyed, so this would be 'attempted' genocide. However, in the atomic bombings, the Japanese people were targeted. Not military installations, but [i]entire cities[/i]. You can't just aim at military bases with bombs that size and with that sort of fallout. It's like going after a tumour with a wrecking ball.
It was murder.
[/quote]

By your logic any war against a nation would constitute genocide. You can very plausibly argue that America committed war crimes against Japanese civilians. That doesn't make it genocide. We were not trying to ethnically cleanse Japan of Japanese people. We were not trying to obliterate the Japanese race.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Ed Normile' timestamp='1298873349' post='2216374']
Murder? All war can be described as murder. Do you realize that japan had killed almost ten million Chinese civillians? That far more Allied civilians, not troops, died in the war than Axis civilians and troops combined? The Japanese war machine was unstoppable and very inhumane, look up the Nanking Massacre where over several hundred thousand chinese civilians were raped and killed. There were hundreds of thousands of people of Java forced into slavery to work for the japanese only just over 50 thousand lived to be repatriated to Java, they were brutal with their prisoners of war. The Japanese held more Allied prisoners of war than were killed during the bombings. Did you know that after the first bombing they were given a chance to surrender but refused? Would you have the world surrender to an insane regime and submit to its dominance or continue the war another 7 years.? Get real man.

ed
[/quote]
I don't care what the Japanese did. Dropping the atomic bombs was murder on a staggering scale.

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1298874682' post='2216379']
Allow America to get bloody hands in securing the Western world, decry those actions, continue to prosper under the blanket of security provided by America while decrying the actions used to provide that security. I'm glad that hasn't been the crux of Europe and Canada's foreign policy for the last 60 years.
[/quote]
If dropping the atomic bombs was what it took to end the war (it wasn't, by the way), then the war was immoral to win. I have said nothing about foreign policy in this thread, and I do not intend to do so because of how stupid people are when they debate the subject.

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1298874863' post='2216380']
By your logic any war against a nation would constitute genocide. You can very plausibly argue that America committed war crimes against Japanese civilians. That doesn't make it genocide. We were not trying to ethnically cleanse Japan of Japanese people. We were not trying to obliterate the Japanese race.
[/quote]
I don't think genocide needs to imply ethnic cleansing. Anyway, it depends on how you define it. I honestly don't care about the specific definition, so I'll settle with war crime.

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298872518' post='2216371']Maybe so, but thank God we didn't drop it. Can't blame Sam Colt for the people who die by gunfire.[/quote]Some people could hypothetically argue responsibility.[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298872518' post='2216371']Genocide need not be limited to underarmed or weak nations.
Merriam-Webster defines genocide as:
"the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group".
Now, obviously the Japanese were not utterly destroyed, so this would be 'attempted' genocide. However, in the atomic bombings, the Japanese people were targeted. Not military installations, but [i]entire cities[/i]. You can't just aim at military bases with bombs that size and with that sort of fallout. It's like going after a tumour with a wrecking ball.
It was murder.[/quote]Hypothetically military operations may put civilians in real jeopardy. Moreover in bombings of any kind in this era. But the Japanese people were the target of the atomic bombings, it was used in hopes to convince Japan to surrender. Perhaps in a long-term strategy to possibly demoralize and weaken Japan to establish an effective blockade.

So the intention doesn't seem to be the systematic destruction of an entire racial, political, or cultural group.[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1298874238' post='2216378']They would be incorrect.[/quote]After careful consideration, I respectfully agree with you. Though it was thought provoking.[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1298874863' post='2216380']By your logic any war against a nation would constitute genocide. You can very plausibly argue that America committed war crimes against Japanese civilians. That doesn't make it genocide. We were not trying to ethnically cleanse Japan of Japanese people. We were not trying to obliterate the Japanese race.[/quote]Argumentatively Canada may have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention, in regards to the policies of forced assimilation into Canadian-European society of Aboriginals, in 1949 Canada formally signed into the convention and formally passed through Parliament in 1952. Because of this some hypothetically speculate the Canada could be tried for crimes against humanity.

Which seems to be a better argument, the Canadian government openly, deliberately, and systematically sought the disablement of an entire racial, political, and cultural group by any means necessary. The United States intentions in using the atomic bombs perhaps was less malevolent or at least more doubtful, by forcing a surrender in a tragic and terrible war. But war is something we do wrong because we believe it will bring a good, we try to do it as rightly as we can, but its almost a diametric contradiction.



We the United States are responsible. I hope that is something we do not forget or misplace. Moreover that the continued friendship and alliance between the peoples of Japan and the peoples of the United States is perpetuated.

Edited February 28, 2011 by Mr.CatholicCat

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Mr.CatholicCat' timestamp='1298880784' post='2216389']
Some people could hypothetically argue responsibility.Hypothetically military operations may put civilians in real jeopardy. Moreover in bombings of any kind in this era. But the Japanese people were the target of the atomic bombings, it was used in hopes to convince Japan to surrender. Perhaps in a long-term strategy to possibly demoralize and weaken Japan to establish an effective blockade.

So the intention doesn't seem to be the systematic destruction of an entire racial, political, or cultural group.After careful consideration, I respectfully agree with you. Though it was thought provoking.Argumentatively Canada may have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention, in regards to the policies of forced assimilation into Canadian-European society of Aboriginals, in 1949 Canada formally signed into the convention and formally passed through Parliament in 1952. Because of this some hypothetically speculate the Canada could be tried for crimes against humanity.

Which seems to be a better argument, the Canadian government openly, deliberately, and systematically sought the disablement of an entire racial, political, and cultural group by any means necessary. The United States intentions in using the atomic bombs perhaps was less malevolent or at least more doubtful, by forcing a surrender in a tragic and terrible war. But war is something we do wrong because we believe it will bring a good, we try to do it as rightly as we can, but its almost a diametric contradiction.



We the United States are responsible. I hope that is something we do not forget or misplace. Moreover that the continued friendship and alliance between the peoples of Japan and the peoples of the United States is perpetuated.
[/quote]

[quote] Some people could hypothetically argue responsibility.[/quote]
They'd be stupid to do so.

[quote] Hypothetically military operations may put civilians in real jeopardy. Moreover in bombings of any kind in this era. But the Japanese people were the target of the atomic bombings, it was used in hopes to convince Japan to surrender. Perhaps in a long-term strategy to possibly demoralize and weaken Japan to establish an effective blockade.[/quote]
Civilians were directly targeted. This is never moral- it is murder.
Furthermore "to demoralize and weaken Japan"... demoralize? Sounds pretty close to terroristic to me, albeit lacking guerilla tactics.

[quote] the intention doesn't seem to be the systematic destruction of an entire racial, political, or cultural group.After careful consideration, I respectfully agree with you. Though it was thought provoking.[/quote]
I will accept that it is unnecessary to define it as genocide, because definitions of "genocide" will necessarily be more or less broad depending on context. I feel no need to belabour that point. However I will continue to define the bombings as murder and war crimes.

[quote] Argumentatively Canada may have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention, in regards to the policies of forced assimilation into Canadian-European society of Aboriginals, in 1949 Canada formally signed into the convention and formally passed through Parliament in 1952. Because of this some hypothetically speculate the Canada could be tried for crimes against humanity.
[/quote]
Quite possibly. The treatment of First Nations people by the Canadian government has at times been inhumane and frankly inhuman. The reserves aren't a whole lot better, although it seems that many of the First Nations would much rather stay on the reserves. A sort of self-imposed ghetto, which I find somewhat regrettable.
Another example of reprehensible conduct by the Canadian government, which I've been told also happened in America, was the 'internment' of Japanese-Canadians in, for lack of a less emotionally charged word (I'm sleepy) were concentration camps.

[quote]Which seems to be a better argument, the Canadian government openly, deliberately, and systematically sought the disablement of an entire racial, political, and cultural group by any means necessary. The United States intentions in using the atomic bombs perhaps was less malevolent or at least more doubtful, by forcing a surrender in a tragic and terrible war. But war is something we do wrong because we believe it will bring a good, we try to do it as rightly as we can, but its almost a diametric contradiction.
[/quote]
Murder is murder, no matter the intention. Ends do not justify the means. As well, it does not take a moral philosopher to see that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were disgusting examples of brutality and savagery. If a war cannot be fought morally, it cannot morally be fought. If the nature of the United States' war on Japan required mass murder, then better to surrender than da[i][/i]mn their souls for their conduct. (and before we get into that debate, I'm not saying anyone in particular was da[i][/i]mned through their actions, though I think it highly highly likely)

[quote]We the United States are responsible. I hope that is something we do not forget or misplace. Moreover that the continued friendship and alliance between the peoples of Japan and the peoples of the United States is perpetuated.
[/quote]
You are not responsible. The people of the United States are not responsible. Harry Truman is responsible, whoever advised him is responsible, Leslie Groves is responsible, Oppenheimer is responsible (he helped choose targets, so he was obviously aware of the intended end of the Manhattan Project), the crew of the Enola Gay are responsible, and the crew of the Bockscar are responsible.
These people did shockingly evil things in those days.
They are the ones who dropped those bombs. Nobody alive today is responsible for what happened.
In the same way, nobody alive today is responsible for Japanese war crimes, German war crimes, etc.. We are responsible only for our own actions or omissions.

ETA:
As well, considering the Japanese citizens of the time, very few are guilty of any more than very remote material cooperation in Japanese war crimes, if even that. Just as we are not responsible for the barbaric murders of abortion in our own countries today, the Japanese people were not responsible for their government's own war crimes.

Edited February 28, 2011 by Nihil Obstat

[Nihil Obstat]

This is called the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, by Krzysztof Penderecki.
He composed it without a specific idea in mind, and after it was completed, recognized the "emotional charge" of his piece. He spent some time pondering what that charge meant, and decided to dedicate it to the victim's of the Hiroshima mass murder. For me, the piece accurately depicts my utter horror at what was done.



[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfBVYhyXU8o[/media]

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298882663' post='2216390']They'd be stupid to do so.[/quote]Dismissal.[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298882663' post='2216390']Civilians were directly targeted. This is never moral- it is murder.
Furthermore "to demoralize and weaken Japan"... demoralize? Sounds pretty close to terroristic to me, albeit lacking guerilla tactics.[/quote]Are you familiar with carpet bombings or total war?

The Japanese peoples of this time period were indoctrinated and policed into accepting their Emperor as a divinity, they fought for him. In some of the initial invasions of civilian populated islands allied forces found elderly and young Japanese strapping grenades to their chests running into American lines. We realized that because of the grip of their arrested culture, every Japanese civilian was a potential threat. Do you realize that the entire Japanese educational system was geared to instill extreme-nationalism and train them to be soldiers. With that we estimated an invasion of Japan costing millions upon millions of lives.

Terrorism, perhaps, but it worked. When the Japanese Emperor ordered the Japanese people to surrender, they surrendered. I recommend listening/reading the surrender speech, powerful.[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298882663' post='2216390']I will accept that it is unnecessary to define it as genocide, because definitions of "genocide" will necessarily be more or less broad depending on context. I feel no need to belabour that point. However I will continue to define the bombings as murder and war crimes.[/quote]In a broad sense, what war wasn't murder or criminal?[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298882663' post='2216390']Quite possibly. The treatment of First Nations people by the Canadian government has at times been inhumane and frankly inhuman. The reserves aren't a whole lot better, although it seems that many of the First Nations would much rather stay on the reserves. A sort of self-imposed ghetto, which I find somewhat regrettable. Another example of reprehensible conduct by the Canadian government, which I've been told also happened in America, was the 'internment' of Japanese-Canadians in, for lack of a less emotionally charged word (I'm sleepy) were concentration camps.[/quote]Possibly, a regretful event in modern American history. Though wrong these camps were more benign than some may imagine.[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298882663' post='2216390']Murder is murder, no matter the intention. Ends do not justify the means. As well, it does not take a moral philosopher to see that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were disgusting examples of brutality and savagery. If a war cannot be fought morally, it cannot morally be fought. If the nature of the United States' war on Japan required mass murder, then better to surrender than da[i][/i]mn their souls for their conduct. (and before we get into that debate, I'm not saying anyone in particular was da[i][/i]mned through their actions, though I think it highly highly likely)[/quote]I concede the atomic bombings deeply wounded humanity and were wrong. But a bloodless war seems unlikely and a free society has a costly price.[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298882663' post='2216390']You are not responsible. The people of the United States are not responsible. Harry Truman is responsible, whoever advised him is responsible, Leslie Groves is responsible, Oppenheimer is responsible (he helped choose targets, so he was obviously aware of the intended end of the Manhattan Project), the crew of the Enola Gay are responsible, and the crew of the Bockscar are responsible.
They are the ones who dropped those bombs. Nobody alive today is responsible for what happened.
In the same way, nobody alive today is responsible for Japanese war crimes, German war crimes, etc.. We are responsible only for our own actions or omissions.[/quote]If only it were that simple. Ramifications of our actions can last more than a generation. While we may not be personally responsible, we as a nation should be responsible.

Edited February 28, 2011 by Mr.CatholicCat

[add]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1298824107' post='2216124']
That is true, but saying other places are worse doesn't make America good.
[/quote]

I find your lack of faith to be disturbing.

[Papist]

I think the decision of President Harry Truman to use the Atomic Bomb to end World War II in the Pacific Theater was one of the most fateful decisions ever made in mankind's history.

Killing people is never a good activity. There are, however, various philosophic ways to justify the bombing. One American General is frequently quoted as saying, "Wars do not increased death because death is 100% in every generation."

While true, that view overlooks the lives that never had a chance to be lived out to their natural conclusion, absent war. It overlooks the unborn millions, caused by the death of a future parent. The particular justification for dropping the Atom Bomb (the one President Truman gave) was that the military estimates of American Casualities would be over 1,000,000 during an invasion of Japan. Dropping the bomb saved these American's lives, and those of many Japanese, Truman correctly argued. War causes man to be confronted with such terrible decisions.

The truth of the matter is that the Atom Bomb project had taken on a life of its own. Once underway, I doubt any one man could have stopped its development, here or elsewhere. [But, it did accelerate it's development and deployment].The momentum of the Manhattan project was such, that had Truman decided to postpone it's use, he very likely would have been ignored.

For an responsible treatment of the events leading to Truman's decision, read David McCullough's award winning biography of Truman, "Truman, Simon & Schuster, 1992". Truman wrote in his diary, after making his decision,"This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimpson, to use it so that military objective and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children."Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo, were the Imperial Palace had been spared thus far'. He [Simpson] and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one [Note: that didn't happen.] and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them a chance. "It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing every discovered, but it can be made useful." p. 444.

The genie was let out of the bottle with that decison, and no human knows how to coax it back into the bottle, and cork it permanently. The Atomic Bomb, now a Hydrogen Bomb with power exceeding that of the first one dropped by at least 20 times, has a lure to it. The lure is power. And with poor mankind in charge of it of the secret of nuclear chain reaction, it gives him the illusion the power in that reaction, is an extension of himself.As Alister Cooke put it, the Atomic Bomb possesses "an unholy beauty".

The War with Japan did end sooner--there can be no argument about this--because of the Atomic bomb. An economy of lives was saved in exhange for an unknown number of lives that might be taken with it down the road. We have to deal with it.

Edited February 28, 2011 by Papist

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Mr.CatholicCat' timestamp='1298883769' post='2216392']
[color="#000080"]1[/color] Dismissal.Are you familiar with carpet bombings or total war?

[color="#000080"]2[/color] The Japanese peoples of this time period were indoctrinated and policed into accepting their Emperor as a divinity, they fought for him. In some of the initial invasions of civilian populated islands allied forces found elderly and young Japanese strapping grenades to their chests running into American lines. We realized that because of the grip of their arrested culture, every Japanese civilian was a potential threat. Do you realize that the entire Japanese educational system was geared to instill extreme-nationalism and train them to be soldiers. With that we estimated an invasion of Japan costing millions upon millions of lives.

[color="#000080"]3[/color] Terrorism, perhaps, but it worked. When the Japanese Emperor ordered the Japanese people to surrender, they surrendered. I recommend listening/reading the surrender speech, powerful.In a broad sense, what war wasn't murder or criminal?Possibly, a regretful event in modern American history. Though wrong these camps were more benign than some may imagine.I concede the atomic bombings deeply wounded humanity and were wrong. But a bloodless war seems unlikely and a free society has a costly price.If only it were that simple. Ramifications of our actions can last more than a generation. While we may not be personally responsible, we as a nation should be responsible.
[/quote]
Numbered (In blue) for convenience.

1) Carpet bombing is also immoral, and is clearly murder. It kills indiscriminately. It does not, by its very nature, attack military targets. It is murder.

2) Killing in self-defense is not murder. Bloodless wars are unlikely, but murder may never be condoned. It must be condemned at every opportunity and in the strongest of terms.

3) Do the ends justify the means? Would you murder an innocent person to save ten others? Would you kill a hostage to get the bad guy? We are not utilitarians, nor consequentialists, nor relativists. We may not ever, for any reason, condone the murder that occurred that day.
And no, you have no guilt in that event. To say so is to ignore logic.
While the consequences last far longer, the personal guilt taken on by previous generations cannot be transferred. There's no such thing as collective responsibility.

Finally:
(Docu dump)

[spoiler][url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html"]Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by Ralph Raico[/url]

This excerpt from Ralph Raico's "Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution" in John V. Denson, ed., Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom (Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001), is reprinted with permission. (The notes are numbered as they are because this is an excerpt. Read the whole article.)

The most spectacular episode of Truman's presidency will never be forgotten, but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.87

Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different, and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him, Truman responded, testily:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.88

Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9, 1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."89

This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city — and escaped serious damage."90 The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."91 Wiping out another one hundred thousand people . . . all those kids.

Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command's list of the 33 primary targets.92

Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.93 The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll — nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War — is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush, who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American lives."94

Still, Truman's multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are understandable, considering the horror he unleashed. It is equally understandable that the U.S. occupation authorities censored reports from the shattered cities and did not permit films and photographs of the thousands of corpses and the frightfully mutilated survivors to reach the public.95 Otherwise, Americans — and the rest of the world — might have drawn disturbing comparisons to scenes then coming to light from the Nazi concentration camps.

The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96 The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical:

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.97

The political elite implicated in the atomic bombings feared a backlash that would aid and abet the rebirth of horrid prewar "isolationism." Apologias were rushed into print, lest public disgust at the sickening war crime result in erosion of enthusiasm for the globalist project.98 No need to worry. A sea-change had taken place in the attitudes of the American people. Then and ever after, all surveys have shown that the great majority supported Truman, believing that the bombs were required to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, or more likely, not really caring one way or the other.

Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in cost-benefit analysis — innocent Japanese lives balanced against the lives of Allied servicemen — might reflect on the judgment of the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of moral rules.99 When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested.100 Truman was a war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?

Anscombe's point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is that different from the atomic bombings?

By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil."101

That mad formula was coined by Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference, and, with Churchill's enthusiastic concurrence, it became the Allied shibboleth. After prolonging the war in Europe, it did its work in the Pacific. At the Potsdam conference, in July 1945, Truman issued a proclamation to the Japanese, threatening them with the "utter devastation" of their homeland unless they surrendered unconditionally. Among the Allied terms, to which "there are no alternatives," was that there be "eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest [sic]." "Stern justice," the proclamation warned, "would be meted out to all war criminals."102

To the Japanese, this meant that the emperor — regarded by them to be divine, the direct descendent of the goddess of the sun — would certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.103 It was not, in fact, the U.S. intention to dethrone or punish the emperor. But this implicit modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the Japanese. In the end, after Nagasaki, Washington acceded to the Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as emperor.

For months before, Truman had been pressed to clarify the U.S. position by many high officials within the administration, and outside of it, as well. In May 1945, at the president's request, Herbert Hoover prepared a memorandum stressing the urgent need to end the war as soon as possible. The Japanese should be informed that we would in no way interfere with the emperor or their chosen form of government. He even raised the possibility that, as part of the terms, Japan might be allowed to hold on to Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea. After meeting with Truman, Hoover dined with Taft and other Republican leaders, and outlined his proposals.104

Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid speculations. For instance: if the United States had not entered the war, then Hitler would have "conquered the world" (a sad undervaluation of the Red Army, it would appear; moreover, wasn't it Japan that was trying to "conquer the world"?) and killed untold millions. Now, applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war had ended in the way wars customarily do — through negotiation of the terms of surrender. And assume the worst — that the Japanese had adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have occurred.

But even remaining within the limits of feasible diplomacy in 1945, it is clear that Truman in no way exhausted the possibilities of ending the war without recourse to the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not informed that they would be the victims of by far the most lethal weapon ever invented (one with "more than two thousand times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam,' which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare," as Truman boasted in his announcement of the Hiroshima attack). Nor were they told that the Soviet Union was set to declare war on Japan, an event that shocked some in Tokyo more than the bombings.105 Pleas by some of the scientists involved in the project to demonstrate the power of the bomb in some uninhabited or evacuated area were rebuffed. All that mattered was to formally preserve the unconditional surrender formula and save the servicemen's lives that might have been lost in the effort to enforce it. Yet, as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century's great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:

Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.106

Isn't this obviously true? And isn't this the reason that rational and humane men, over generations, developed rules of warfare in the first place?

While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as unspeakable war crimes. Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of Hiroshima, including the "thousands of children trapped in the thirty-three schools that were destroyed." He called on his compatriots to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old Right, castigated the bombings as "the most powerful blow ever delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law." David Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued to denounce them for years.107 The distinguished conservative philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by

the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply "inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built."108

Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who is in the least troubled by Truman's massacre of so many tens of thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as anything the difference between today's "conservatives" and those who once deserved the name.

Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another obvious truth:

If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.109

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.

Notes

On the atomic bombings, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995); and idem, "Was Harry Truman a Revisionist on Hiroshima?" Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 29, no. 2 (June 1998); also Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage, 1977); and Dennis D. Wainstock, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).

Alperovitz, Decision, p. 563. Truman added: "When you deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true." For similar statements by Truman, see ibid., p. 564. Alperovitz's monumental work is the end-product of four decades of study of the atomic bombings and is indispensable for comprehending the often complex argumentation on the issue.

Ibid., p. 521.

Ibid., p. 523.

Barton J. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 257. General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. strategic bombing operations in the Pacific, was so shaken by the destruction at Hiroshima that he telephoned his superiors in Washington, proposing that the next bomb be dropped on a less populated area, so that it "would not be as devastating to the city and the people." His suggestion was rejected. Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 147—48.

This is true also of Nagasaki.

See Barton J. Bernstein, "A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (June—July 1986): 38—40; and idem, "Wrong Numbers," The Independent Monthly (July 1995): 41—44.

J. Samuel Walker, "History, Collective Memory, and the Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 320, 323—25. Walker details the frantic evasions of Truman's biographer, David McCullough, when confronted with the unambiguous record.

Paul Boyer, "Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 299. On the fate of the bombings' victims and the public's restricted knowledge of them, see John W. Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," in ibid., pp. 275—95.

Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 320—65. On MacArthur and Eisenhower, see ibid., pp. 352 and 355—56.

William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 441. Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Ibid., p. 442. Curiously, Truman himself supplied the foreword to Leahy's book. In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.

Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History 17, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 35—72.

One writer in no way troubled by the sacrifice of innocent Japanese to save Allied servicemen — indeed, just to save him — is Paul Fussell; see his Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York: Summit, 1988). The reason for Fussell's little Te Deum is, as he states, that he was among those scheduled to take part in the invasion of Japan, and might very well have been killed. It is a mystery why Fussell takes out his easily understandable terror, rather unchivalrously, on Japanese women and children instead of on the men in Washington who conscripted him to fight in the Pacific in the first place.

G.E.M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Degree," in idem, Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62—71.

Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Degree," p. 62.

Hans Adolf Jacobsen and Arthur S. Smith, Jr., eds., World War II: Policy and Strategy. Selected Documents with Commentary (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 345—46.

For some Japanese leaders, another reason for keeping the emperor was as a bulwark against a possible postwar communist takeover. See also Sherwin, A World Destroyed, p. 236: "the [Potsdam] proclamation offered the military die-hards in the Japanese government more ammunition to continue the war than it offered their opponents to end it."

Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 44—45.

Cf. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 254: "it does seem very likely, though certainly not definite, that a synergistic combination of guaranteeing the emperor, awaiting Soviet entry, and continuing the siege strategy would have ended the war in time to avoid the November invasion." Bernstein, an excellent and scrupulously objective scholar, nonetheless disagrees with Alperovitz and the revisionist school on several key points.

J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939—45: A Strategical and Tactical History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), p. 392. Fuller, who was similarly scathing on the terror-bombing of the German cities, characterized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "a type of war that would have disgraced Tamerlane." Cf. Barton J. Bernstein, who concludes, in "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 235:

In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. Thus, they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called alternatives to the bomb.

Felix Morley, "The Return to Nothingness," Human Events (August 29, 1945) reprinted in Hiroshima's Shadow, Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds. (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer's Press, 1998), pp. 272—74; James Martin Gillis, "Nothing But Nihilism," The Catholic World, September 1945, reprinted in ibid., pp. 278—80; Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 438—40.

Richard M. Weaver, "A Dialectic on Total War," in idem, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), pp. 98—99.

Wainstock, Decision, p. 122.

[/spoiler]

And:

[spoiler][url="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/lawrence1.html"]Rethinking Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by James R. Lawrence, III[/url]

Ten years ago, in response to the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Smithsonian Institution attempted to put on a display presenting the perspective of Japanese civilians living in the targeted cities. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, fresh off the ’94 Republican Revolution, denounced the Smithsonian’s efforts as the work of a "cultural elite" bent on making Americans ashamed of their history. Following an outpouring of indignation from veterans groups, Congressional Republicans led by Gingrich, and self-styled "conservative" patriot groups, the exhibit was cancelled.

What a difference 50 years makes. Although it is hard to believe now amidst the deluge of so-called "conservative" commentary emanating from talk radio and points beyond, there was once an American Right opposed to war and militarism in all its forms. It was precisely in this tradition that – while left-wing publications like The Nation and The New Republic rushed apologias for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to print – conservatives like Felix Morley (co-founder of the influential conservative journal Human Events), David Lawrence, and Richard Weaver castigated the bombings as unjustified and abominable. Echo the views of Felix Morley today though and you are likely to be denounced as "anti-American" by self-styled conservatives eager to defend the honor of Harry Truman. Two years ago, this young conservative would have joined them, but no longer.

The standard account of Harry Truman’s decision – which he reiterated consistently was his and his alone to make – to use the atomic bomb runs thus: faced with the implacable choice between the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a US invasion of Japan at the cost of a half-million American lives, Truman chose the bomb thereby shortening the war while saving millions of American and Japanese lives at the same time. Indeed, the ambiance of the bomb-or-boys premise to the entire historical question of the justification of Hiroshima and Nagasaki foreshadows the predictable answer – not only were the atomic bombings a military necessity, they were a humanitarian imperative. With this storyline in place, it easy to see why Truman is considered by many one of our country’s greatest presidents, but this is the stuff of enticing novels – not history.

The specter of a bloody US invasion of Japan along with its disturbing bomb-or-boys corollary forms the backbone of the case for those who affirm Truman’s decision. But the half-million American death toll routinely bandied about is, to put it lightly, inflated. To put this ridiculous claim into perspective, consider the fact that for the estimate of a half-million American deaths to be accurate, the invasion of Japan would have had to cost more American lives than the total number of US combat fatalities in all theatres of World War II. The reality, as Stanford historian Barton Bernstein has documented, is that the actual worst-case government estimate for a full-scale US invasion of Japan was around forty-six thousand lives lost – more than ten times less than the figure often set forth in American schoolbooks. This fact aside, the bomb-or-boys myth is completely punctured by the conclusion of the US government-sanctioned 1946 Strategic Bombing Survey, which – after conducting interviews with US and Japanese military personnel – found that Japan would have surrendered by the end of 1945 "even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

Beside the grotesquely inflated body count etched into the American psyche, is the myth that President Truman was faced with a stark bomb-or-boys decision in the summer of 1945 – he had other options. But surely, you might say to yourself, Truman would have acted on these alternatives if he really had them; surely he would have exhausted all other options before deciding to wipe over 200,000 innocent civilians off the face of the earth. The historical record, however, shows us just the opposite.

A major alternative discussed in detail by historian Gar Alperovitz in his indispensable book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb was the possibility of a negotiated peace with Japan involving a relaxation of the American demand for "unconditional surrender." In his monumental work, Alperovitz documents that from April to August 1945 the Japanese made a number of official attempts to secure a negotiated peace settlement and an end to the war. The major sticking point was the fate of Emperor Hirohito – would the man many Japanese considered to be divine be tried and hanged as a war criminal? In light of this concern, Truman was urged by many of his aides to alter the surrender formula to provide for the preservation of the Emperor as a constitutional monarch. Presented with opportunity after opportunity to craft a compromise, Truman refused to bend. Indeed, the most significant statement of Allied surrender terms prior to the bombings – the Potsdam Declaration issued July 26, 1945 – maintained the rhetoric of "unconditional surrender" while not even mentioning the fate of the Emperor. President Truman then most certainly acted without exhausting all other options – a gross violation of the jus in bello principles enunciated by the Christian Church for centuries.

The list of Truman’s military aides that believed the bombings were not a military necessity reads like a who’s who list of top US brass: Generals MacArthur and Eisenhower along with Under Secretaries of State and the Navy Grew and Bard respectively all dissented from the necessity logic. In 1963, an aging Eisenhower forcefully reiterated his position to Newsweek, saying, "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

Perhaps the most startling condemnation of Truman’s decision from a US military leader came from Admiral William D. Leahy, the president’s chief of staff. In his memoirs, Leahy denounced the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – an action he described as "not worth of Christian man" – as "of no material assistance in our war against Japan. By using it Leahy said the US had descended to "an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

Beside the condemnation of those who question the justification of the atomic bombings as "anti-American" a popular technique of those who defend Truman’s decision is to bring up the atrocities of the Japanese military. But, under what standards of morality are innocent Japanese men, women, and children legitimate targets because of the deplorable acts of Nanking and the Bataan Death March? Why should we, in a country where a majority claim to be Christian, shun the teachings of Jesus Christ and embrace the concept of total war? Now 60 years removed from the events of August 1945, it is past time for our nation to grapple with that question.
[/spoiler]

[Nihil Obstat]

1750 The morality of human acts depends on:
- the object chosen;
- the end in view or the intention;
- the circumstances of the action.
The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the "sources," or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.

[color="#000080"]The object chosen was undeniably evil.[/color]


1751 The object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of a human act. the object chosen morally specifies the act of the will, insofar as reason recognizes and judges it to be or not to be in conformity with the true good. Objective norms of morality express the rational order of good and evil, attested to by conscience.

1752 In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject. Because it lies at the voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end, intention is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action. the end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action. the intention is a movement of the will toward the end: it is concerned with the goal of the activity. It aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken. Intention is not limited to directing individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose; it can orient one's whole life toward its ultimate end. For example, a service done with the end of helping one's neighbor can at the same time be inspired by the love of God as the ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same action can also be inspired by several intentions, such as performing a service in order to obtain a favor or to boast about it.

1753 A good intention (for example, that of helping one's neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. the end does not justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention (such as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).39

1754 The circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act. They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts (for example, the amount of a theft). They can also diminish or increase the agent's responsibility (such as acting out of a fear of death). Circumstances of themselves [b]cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves[/b]; they can make neither good nor right an action that is in itself evil.

[color="#000080"]The threat of war and further killing does not change the morality of dropping those bombs.[/color]


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").
[b]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.[/b]

1756 It is therefore[u] [b]an error[/b] to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances[/u] (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.

[color="#000080"]It would, therefore, be an error to in any way fail to condemn the nuclear bombings of Japan, as well as the firebombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, Osaka, and any other place which was bombed with incendiary payloads or carpet bombed.[/color]


1786 Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, [b]an erroneous judgment[/b] that departs from them.

1787 Man is sometimes confronted by situations that make moral judgments less assured and decision difficult. But he [b]must [u]always[/u] seriously seek what is right[/b] and good and discern the will of God expressed in divine law.

1788 To this purpose, man strives to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times assisted by the virtue of prudence, by the advice of competent people, and by the help of the Holy Spirit and his gifts.

1789 Some rules apply in every case:
- [u][i][b]One may never do evil so that good may result from it[/b][/i][/u];
- the Golden Rule: "Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them."56
- charity always proceeds by way of respect for one's neighbor and his conscience: "Thus sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience . . . you sin against Christ."57 Therefore "it is right not to . . . do anything that makes your brother stumble."58


2261 Scripture specifies the prohibition contained in the fifth commandment: "[b]Do not slay the [u]innocent[/u] and the righteous[/b]."61 The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator. the law forbidding it is universally valid: it obliges each and everyone, always and everywhere.

[color="#000080"]Civilians are innocent until proven otherwise.[/color]


2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is [b]not an exception[/b] to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor.... the one is intended, the other is not."65

2312 The Church and human reason both assert the [b][u]permanent validity[/u] of the moral law during armed conflict[/b]. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out [b]does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties[/b]."108

2313 [b]Non-combatants[/b], wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. [b]Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out[/b]. Thus the extermination of a people, nation, or ethnic minority must be condemned as a mortal sin. One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide.

[size="5"][u][i][b]2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."109 A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.[/b][/i][/u][/size]