Hiroshima mon amour

The 60th anniversary of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has reignited a perennial debate over the morality of Truman’s fatal and fateful decision. Since we are presently entrenched in what some dub WWIV (The Cold War being WWIII), this issue has special resonance. I’m just going to venture a few comments of general applicability.

It is important to avoid two opposing extremes. As a kid growing up in the Vietnam war era, I used to see bumper stickers saying “America: Love it or Leave it!”; “My Country: Right or Wrong!” That kind of blind chauvinism is sub-Christian.

On the other hand, you have the hate-America club, consisting of Zinn, Said, Chomsky, Moore, Soros, and the like, for whom America is public enemy number one.

I. Getting it Right

When men talk about doing the right thing, the word can have more than one meaning:

i) Is it morally acceptable?

ii) Is it correct, i.e., did it turn out to comport with our prior expectations?

iii) Is it the best choice?

Now, these are three different concepts with different conditions.

Let’s agree that any action must satisfy (i).

One of the problems with (ii) is that we often cannot know if we are making the right choice, in this sense, unless and until we make it, at which point it might be too late to unmake it! That’s a practical paradox of being finite creatures.

So you must make a decision based on a “knowledge” of the outcome which you can only have after the fact.

Put another way, you have to make a decision based on insufficient information. We are, as Williams James has said, confronted with forced options in life. Is the tiger crouching behind Door A, B, or C? You can only try one door at a time. And each door locks behind you.

(ii), in turn, relates to (iii).

This assumes that there is a best choice. But perhaps each choice has its upsides and downsides.

And even if there is a best choice, we may not know what it is.

The bottom-line is twofold:

a) There may be more than one morally acceptable choice.

b) There may be more than one reasonable choice.

Oftentimes, we don’t know which choice is the best choice or the correct choice. But as long as it’s morally acceptable, and as long as it is reasonable, then it is, in my opinion, a licit choice.

II. Benefit of the Doubt

Critics of Truman’s decision say that since he didn’t know how much force it would take to make the Japanese capitulate, he should only have dropped the bomb as a last resort.

I’m inclined to disagree. Given the way in which the Japanese fought in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, as well as the example of the Kamikazes, I think Truman had good reason not to give the Japanese the benefit of the doubt.

Remember, this is a question of risk assessment. Do you put your own troops at greater risk to spare the enemy, or put the enemy at greater risk to spare your own troops? When in doubt, no rational commander can sacrifices his own forces to spare the enemy.

Since we did not invade Japan, we will never know for sure what the outcome would have been. Both now and then it was, at best, an educated guess over which differing experts differ. Supporters of the war offer high estimates while opponents offer low estimates. Either the supporters are overestimating the fatalities, or the opponents are underestimating the fatalities. Both sides can cite official sources.

But if that is so, then Truman’s decision was a reasonable one, and when we can’t know which choice is either the correct choice and/or the best available choice—assuming there even is a best choice from which to choose—in advance of making the choice, then we have to settle for a reasonable choice based on the best available information and analysis we have at the time, even if our information is inadequate and our analysis is flawed.

Put another way, you either go with what seems to be the most probable alternative or, in case of what appear to be equiprobable choices, any equiprobable alterantive is licit.

This is part of what it means to be a creature. Unlike God, we are not omniscient. We are fallible and shortsighted.

III. Immunity of Noncombatants.

Was it immoral to drop the bomb on civilian populations?

As a rule, I think we should respect innocent life when we can. But there are exceptions.

i) Japan was a warrior culture, part autocracy, part stratocracy. The principle of protecting woman, children, and other suchlike is an essentially chivalric ideal, alien to non-Christian cultures.

In Japanese statism, every citizen was called upon to die for the Emperor, and serve as human shields.

When confronted with an enemy of that stripe, it isn’t possible to be as discriminating as you would like. For the enemy itself does not allow you to winnow the combatants from the noncombatants.

ii) In a just war, it is the enemy that is putting you in a position to make these tragic choices. We are responsible for which forced option we choose, but we are not responsible for the forced options from which we must choose. The enemy is.

iii) We do not kill civilians for the sake of killing civilians. In that sense, they are not the target. Killing civilians is not the strategic objective. But it may sometimes be a tactical objective in the furtherance of a strategic objective.

iv) To my knowledge, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily significant cities, unlike Tokyo or Kyoto.

IV. How to Die

For some reason you have a lot of folks who freak out over the idea of death by a nuclear bomb. This strikes me as a basically emotional and irrational reaction. Death comes in two forms: fast and slow. Slow hurts. There are many forms of violent death, and most of them are not ouchless, painless affairs.

V. Body Count

Extrapolating from the searing experience of the Kamikazes and the island-hopping battles, it was felt by Truman that an invasion would be an exponential version of Iwo Jima or Okinawa. That strikes me as a reasonable apprehension. In war you must sometimes kill 10 to save 100, kill 100 to save a 1000, and so on.

VI. Ends & Means.

It is popular to say that the end doesn’t justify the means. But this is a mindless, thoughtless overstatement. Certainly the end doesn’t justify any means whatsoever. But teleological ethics, while insufficient by itself, is a necessary element of moral valuation. For example, there are certain high-risk medical procedures. These would be unwarranted, even immoral, if the patient were healthy. But if that procedure is his only chance at survival, then the chance of dying as a result of the procedure is offset by the greater chance of dying without it.