If it was not morally defensible there would be no ongoing debate. In contrast, no one debates the morality of the My Lai Massacre for example. Condon is a Brit and probably did not grow up, as I did, hearing at first hand from a fair number of Hiroshima Survivors, men who were scheduled to participate in the invasion of the Home Islands, and who assumed they likely were not coming back from the War. I had two future uncles, one a Sailor and one a Marine, who were among their number. Condon is able to understand that we should judge people and institutions by the standards of their time. Go here to read an article by him from 2018, noting, accurately enough, that the Spanish Inquisition was a moderate court by the standard of its time. Too bad Truman does not receive the understanding he accords the Inquisition. Thanks to Oppenheimer, I see, as I expected, that the Saint Blog’s August Bomb Follies are off to an early start.
Saint Blog’s August Bomb Follies
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Ed Feser also objects to it apparently.
https://twitter.com/FeserEdward/status/1680284594288082945
https://catholicherald.co.uk/ch/weigels-terrible-arguments/
That has always been Feser’s position.
Goes back to the original theological question: Do nations or Armies fight wars? The Japanese answered that pretty clearly on their part.
Is there a difference between a nuclear bomb and a conventional bomb dropped on a civilian population center? Not during WWII. We can look back in horror at the practice and hope the future doesn’t present the same, but at the time, that was accepted practice amidst total war. The saving grace of nuclear arms may be that they keep conflict limited.
I notice that none of the people like Condon and Feser, both of whom I greatly respect for their overall bodies of work, ever seems to address the consequences of the “it’s intrinsically evil so shut up” position, instead hiding behind fallible papal pronouncements, non-dogmatic Conciliar statements, and the CCC, which is also a fallible document. So JP II didn’t buy what he called “consequentialism.” Fine, but that was a fallible theological statement subject to debate, unless you’re a hyperpapalist who treats every papal utterance as the equivalent of Sacred Scripture. I wish Condon and Feser and their like could be made to explain in person to the descendants of the people, on both sides, who would have died in an invasion of Japan, why they believe those descendants should not be alive today. It seems to me that the moral calculus as to any act of war must be done in light of the capabilities of the available weapons and tactics at the time, and that the development of nuclear bombs inevitably changes that calculus. As terrible as the use of a nuke would be in any situation, it has to be examined for its possible consequences as well as compared to the available alternatives. Moral theology has no value if, when applied to actual situations, the result makes no sense. To me, forcing an invasion of Japan would have made no sense under the circumstances then obtaining, and thus cannot be said to be morally necessary in light of the nuclear alternative. In other words, I believe the “just war doctrine” needs to be developed to take the realities of 1945 into account.
Largely agree with Frank. Especially:
To me if the moral logic results in more innocent death than what you’re arguing against, I think there’s a bug in the code.
It also bugs me in these debates the use of the word “intrinsic.” Something could still be evil without being “intrinsically” evil.
Arguable, certainly.
The first amendment is supposed to guarantee such arguablity. Where there is no debate, tyranny is not far behind.
It also bugs me in these debates the use of the word “intrinsic.” Something could still be evil without being “intrinsically” evil.
In these discussions, it functions like the claim of “indefensible.”
It’s attempting to assume the conclusion.
Notably, things that are actually indefensible are very easy to form a rational argument against that does not involve further assumed conclusions, or equivocation, or….
If you believe something to be actually indefensible, form the arguments.
If you sincerely cannot see any reason for a position, other than “them evil,” you really do not understand well enough to be in the discussion. Cannibalism of infants has rational reasons to support it– it’s wrong because they are insufficient. (Goes on the same scale as most of the bad ideas in bioethics and making “efficient” use of net drains on productivity, for those curious.)
If someone truly thinks that a position is wrong, and is willing to go out and pick fights about it, then if they wish to actually make progress against the wrong they need to understand and be able to rationally answer the opposing viewpoints. The moral preening is worse than useless, it’s going to actively turn people from the truth… if what one says is true.
There were people during the Cold War who argued that enduring Soviet oppression would have been “more Christian” than possessing the weapons that forestalled it. I would say: “unless you’ve spent time in a gulag, you have no basis for your statement”. C.S. Lewis (a combat veteran of WWI) offered many sour comments on the “suburban pacifist” of late 1930s Britain.
“As terrible as the use of [abortion] would be in any situation, it has to be examined for its possible consequences as well as compared to the available alternatives. Moral theology has no value if, when applied to actual situations, the result makes no sense. To me, forcing [a young girl with severe medical risks to have a baby] would have made no sense under the circumstances then obtaining, and thus cannot be said to be morally necessary in light of the [life-threatening alternatives]. In other words, I believe the “[pro-life] doctrine” needs to be developed to take the realities of [2023] into account.”
You can check out Gandhi’s advice to the Jews of the Holocaust, as well.
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“As terrible as the use of [abortion] would be in any situation,”
Let me know when an uborn child sets out to conquer Asia, murdering 20,0000,000 civilians in China alone along the way. Imperial Japan was an appalling evil that had to be stopped at a dreadful cost. Thanks to Truman the cost wasn’t even higher.
There’s a good example of not understanding the argument, in D. Advocate.
A somewhat similar moral consideration would be found in the abortion discussion, yes.
Specifically, treatment to save the life of the mother which results in the death of the child.
But, as I predicted, equivocation and attempts to assume the conclusion are the go-to option.
Don you bring up a great point. The D.M. Giangreco video that I referenced in the Wipe the Blood Off Your Hands article went into the death toll in the Pacific. He said that too many people take a Eurocentric view of the war. He said that after the war the UN estimated that about 400,000 Asians were dying per month for every year the war went on. He said that the Pacific deaths were astounding in magnitude. He also said that it was difficult to apportion casualty counts in Okinawa because a little over half of the military were conscripted Okinawans. That entire video is a real eyeopener.
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There was a comment made in the video that when you try to have a negotiation that the people have to have a shared value system. Both Hitler and the Japanese military had a different view of the war than the Allies did. The D.M. Giangreco video is a goldmine of information.
I think the horror of what a fight for the Home Islands would be like was underlined by two events which occurred in 1945:
The battle of Okinawa which resembled World War I trench fighting and around 100,000 Okinawan civilians died, despite strenuous US efforts to avoid civilian casualties.
The battle of Manila, a doomed Japanese defense force fighting block by block, with 100k Filipino civilians dying, many of them deliberately massacred by the Japanese often after being tortured and, if female, raped.
D.M. Giangreco
The go to man on what an Allied invasion of the Home Islands would be like. His book “Hell to Pay” is invaluable. His new book Truman and the Bomb, coming out on August 1, looks to be equally ground breaking:
Myth: Truman didn’t know of the atomic bomb’s development before he became president.
Fact: Truman’s knowledge of the bomb is revealed in his own carefully worded letters to a Senate colleague and specifically discussed in the correspondence between the army officers assigned to his Senate investigating committee.
Myth: The huge casualty estimates cited by Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson were a postwar creation devised to hide their guilt for killing thousands of defenseless civilians.
Fact: The flagrantly misrepresented “low” numbers are based on narrow slices of highly qualified—and limited—U.S. Army projections printed in a variety of briefing documents and are not from the actual invasion planning against Japan.
Myth: Truman wanted to defeat Japan without any assistance from the Soviet Union and to freeze the USSR out of the postwar settlements.
Fact: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Truman desperately wanted Stalin’s involvement in the bloody endgame of World War II and worked diligently—and successfully—toward that end.
I’ve seen documentaries on the Soviet conventional land invasion of Berlin. Its casualty counts were up there with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was savage and brutal. The city was a wreck.
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According to the D.M. Giangreco video the Pacific component of Soviet lend lease had to be kept secret because the supply routes went by Japanese positions that could have disrupted the program if it had become known. It sounded like we shipped a serious amount of equipment through the Pacific Soviet lend lease. There was also Project Hula a secret Alaska base to train the Soviets.
The August bomb follies expose the ignorance of both history and moral theology of prominent Catholic figures including, sad to say, Dr. Ed Feser.
Even the Atlantic, of all rags, makes the point well. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-atomic-bomb-had-not-been-used/376238/?utm_source=fbb
Some scientists believed that with the detonation of the first atomic bomb the entire atmosphere would burn in the chain reaction.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an important deterrence to Japan’s aggression.
MAD Mutual Atomic Destruction resulted in much aggression being silenced.