The Ultimate Ethics Test: A Manhattan Project Poll

[yellowdingo]

WHere do you stand on Nuking population centres?Take Test here

[Studpuffin]

Why didn't your thing link?

Take the test here!

Edit: Oh I see, you did the wrong slash at the end of your BBCode tag...

[jocundthejolly]

Linky. You would computers would be smart enough by now to figure out that you are doing some html and just picked the wrong \/

Take Test here

[Studpuffin]

Mwahahaha! I win!

[yellowdingo]

Studpuffin wrote:

Mwahahaha! I win!

Link fixed...odd keyboard generated the wrong slash. I only checked for viruses last night.

[Blame On!]

I CAN'T SEE RESULTS.

[Uzzy]

It was morally, ethically, politically and militarily justified. There.

[yellowdingo]

Uzzy wrote:

It was morally, ethically, politically and militarily justified. There.

A room full of Amorals looking to test nukes on small children are always gonna vote 'justified'.

[Uzzy]

yellowdingo wrote:

Uzzy wrote:

It was morally, ethically, politically and militarily justified. There.

A room full of Amorals looking to test nukes on small children are always gonna vote 'justified'.

Those small children asked for it!

[Ambrosia Slaad]

Uzzy wrote:

yellowdingo wrote:

Uzzy wrote:

It was morally, ethically, politically and militarily justified. There.

A room full of Amorals looking to test nukes on small children are always gonna vote 'justified'.

Those small children asked for it!

Yeah! They're like two-legged bald puppies! And when Simon Cowell votes you off, he means it!

Is Amoral a new Outsider type? :)

[Mr.Fishy]

Short people freak Mr. Fishy out. What are they doing down there?0

PLOTTING! That's what!

[yellowdingo]

Mr.Fishy wrote:

Short people freak Mr. Fishy out. What are they doing down there?0

PLOTTING! That's what!

Thats right! The little buggers is using Black hole Weapons on your Eyeballs so you forget they is actually there to convince you that the oldfolks home is a good idea...so they can take your house and car.

[Sharoth]

The bombing has saved many more lives than it has cost. I think it sucks and I feel sorry for the people who lost their lives, but in war you do not fight fair. You fight to win or you should not be there.

[Adam Daigle]

Weapons of mass destruction are sooooooo 1945. ::eyeroll::

[Jared Ouimette]

We DID give them fair warning. Twice. They chose to disbelieve the first warning and honor or politics or what have you caused them to decide against surrendering even though they knew a second bomb would be dropped.

It's unfortunate that all those people were killed, but if they had listened at least the second time that would have halved the death toll. Maybe they thought we only had one or something. I do know they dismissed the first nuke as a gas line explosion or something.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

YOU ALL SAW IT! THAT ORPHANAGE ATTACKED ME!

[Jared Ouimette]

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

YOU ALL SAW IT! THAT ORPHANAGE ATTACKED ME!

At least they won't be missed...

[LazarX]

Sharoth wrote:

The bombing has saved many more lives than it has cost. I think it sucks and I feel sorry for the people who lost their lives, but in war you do not fight fair. You fight to win or you should not be there.

Do you feel the same way knowing that among the lives lost were American POWs?

[Xpltvdeleted]

LazarX wrote:

Sharoth wrote:

The bombing has saved many more lives than it has cost. I think it sucks and I feel sorry for the people who lost their lives, but in war you do not fight fair. You fight to win or you should not be there.

Do you feel the same way knowing that among the lives lost were American POWs?

Sacrifice a few to save thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? That's the ultimate "greater good" question.

If you can't sacrifice your own then you're doing it for the wrong reasons. The fact that there were American POWs in there assures me that the most correct decision was made.

[BLAMMO]

But no one ever stops to think about one family's tragedy. My older brothers Fat Man and Little Boy gave their lives that day.

Will no one shed a tear for the loss of two valiant bombs? I'm all alone in dis woild now. <sniff>

[Xpltvdeleted]

BLAMMO wrote:

But no one ever stops to think about one family's tragedy. My older brothers Fat Man and Little Boy gave their lives that day.

Will no one shed a tear for the loss of two valiant bombs? I'm all alone in dis woild now. <sniff>

Your time will come, young Blammo, your time will come.

[BLAMMO]

Xpltvdeleted wrote:

BLAMMO wrote:

But no one ever stops to think about one family's tragedy. My older brothers Fat Man and Little Boy gave their lives that day.

Will no one shed a tear for the loss of two valiant bombs? I'm all alone in dis woild now. <sniff>

Your time will come, young Blammo, your time will come.

::Wipes eyes dry::

Shucks, mistah. Tanks!

[Sharoth]

LazarX wrote:

Sharoth wrote:

The bombing has saved many more lives than it has cost. I think it sucks and I feel sorry for the people who lost their lives, but in war you do not fight fair. You fight to win or you should not be there.

Do you feel the same way knowing that among the lives lost were American POWs?

~sad sigh~ Have you ever seen the movie "The Great Raid"? Watch it and do some reading.

As for the fact that there were POWs in there? Yes, it was still the right move. Sometimes you just have to do somethign horrible to stop something worse. Also, have you looked at what the casualty rate would have been if we had invaded Japan? Both US and Japan lives lost? Oh, both sides got off cheap.

[LazarX]

It's a comforting thought to think about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki purely in terms of ending World War 2. But I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject and it turns out that the decision making process was a lot more complicated than that.

There were several other factors that went into the decision to bomb and where to bomb.

1. The original first target was Kyoto, the city that's essentially Japan's cultural heart. The debate went on long and fierce, the city was eventually passed over with the view that bombing this particular city would seriously hamper the plan on turning Japan into an ally against our-then ally, Soviet Russia.

2. As a corollary to 1, it's important to realise that Japan was not the only target for the Bomb. American post war strategy was shaping to use the Bomb as a "big stick" to leverage American policies in the shaping of the post war world. Several hints had been dropped to Krushchev that the United States was planning on unveiling a big surprise. Unfortunately this not only failed but backfired as the Soviets had already penetrated the Manhattan Project and had pretty much obtained the goods despite the extreme efforts spent in maintaining security on our batch of captured German scientists, and were already working on duplicating it using THEIR batch of captured German scientists.

3. One of the greatest worries of the planners was in fact that the war might end before they got to show off their new toy. There's no better demonstration than nuking a real city, preferably one that had not been touched by earlier bombing raids. Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Nagasaki were all in this category due to their lack of importance as military targets.

4. The decision to bomb the cities in Japan shared a few factors in common with the decision to burn Dresden. Both were cases where there was no significant military presence so it was a deliberate decision to target civilian populations, and both populations were targeted with one of the primary aims of using them as weapon test targets. The bombing on Dresden was specifically to test the technique of creating city-wide firestorms, a technique that would be used to great effect on Tokyo.

As to whether both sides got off "cheap". That's still to be determined. If Germany had developed the Bomb first, they still would have lost the war, and the Bomb would have been discredited as a means to achieve foreign policy.

[The Crimson Jester, Rogue Lord]

Just a thought, or question rather, If Germany had developed the bomb, do you honestly think they would have lost? Or is it that they were so far gone by the time of the bombs development that they just had no chance of winning and could have only gone scorched earth with its use?

[LazarX]

The Crimson Jester, Rogue Lord wrote:

Just a thought, or question rather, If Germany had developed the bomb, do you honestly think they would have lost? Or is it that they were so far gone by the time of the bombs development that they just had no chance of winning and could have only gone scorched earth with its use?

Yes.. There was no way that Germany could have won the war with the Bomb in any reasonable scenario. The Bomb required massive production facilities which were already stretched to the limit. Germany lost both World Wars despite being the country that invented, the Tank, the Jet Plane, and long range missiles. Even with the worst case scenarios and say maybe they managed to produce one or two bombs, (The Americans with thier vast productivity advantage were stressed to crank out 4-6 on schedule) all they would have done would have been to push the Allies, especially Russia that much harder. Given that the Russians had already lost about 40 million people to the war, a bomb that might take out a hundred thousand at a pop would not have deterred them in the slightest.

Actually when it came to scorched earth tactics, only the Russians pursued them to any extent.... denying the Nazis any advantage from the territory they took.