National Council of Churches: Feel Good Liberalism Means Never Having to Worry about Consequences
Now that we've turned off our spam filter and gone back to getting the National Council of Churches' weekly emails, it's one less blog post that we have to think about every week. Say what you will about the NCC, they are a fount of useful case studies in how not to build your political ideology. This week - why sometimes reflexive pacifism often gets more people killed. Sixty years later, the best they can come up with about Hiroshima is that they would've told Truman not to drop the bomb. Good thing they weren't in charge:
Frank thinks that without Nagasaki and Hiroshima, not only Allied but the Japanese loss of life would have been horrendous. It was predicted that we would lose 250,000 on invasion, with another 750,000 casualties. It would have been equally catastrophic for Japanese citizens. During the war, Japan imported 95% of its foodstuffs by boat. We had managed to sink a greater portion of that fleet, in addition to destroying the railroads that delivered this materiel to the people. He estimates that by the end of 1945, there would have been a famine that might have turned the tide by starving millions - not hundreds of thousands but millions - of Japanese civilians.
Historians will continue to debate whether the Japanese would have surrendered short of either a horrific land invasion or the detonation of atomic weapons. But to take a simplistic line that Hiroshima was an obvious, unmitigated, and irredeemable crime does nothing but demonstrate that one is uninterested in serious discussion.
Frank thinks that without Nagasaki and Hiroshima, not only Allied but the Japanese loss of life would have been horrendous. It was predicted that we would lose 250,000 on invasion, with another 750,000 casualties. It would have been equally catastrophic for Japanese citizens. During the war, Japan imported 95% of its foodstuffs by boat. We had managed to sink a greater portion of that fleet, in addition to destroying the railroads that delivered this materiel to the people. He estimates that by the end of 1945, there would have been a famine that might have turned the tide by starving millions - not hundreds of thousands but millions - of Japanese civilians.
Historians will continue to debate whether the Japanese would have surrendered short of either a horrific land invasion or the detonation of atomic weapons. But to take a simplistic line that Hiroshima was an obvious, unmitigated, and irredeemable crime does nothing but demonstrate that one is uninterested in serious discussion.
