Musings of a Political Nature

Friday, March 07, 2008

Dropping the Bomb

I got in an argument today, and yes I mean argument, over whether or not dropping the bomb on Japan in WWII was justified. Now what is utterly bewildering to me is that both myself and my opponent have ages that hover around the quarter century mark; not your usual candidates for rehashing WWII military strategy. But more than that, it turned into an ACTUAL argument.
To clarify: It was totally justified to drop the bomb on Japan. We were at war and we wanted to win. Regardless of who the victims were, and I fully admit that they were mostly civilians, we needed a definitive military win to claim our victory. The reality of war is that people will die, and sometimes those people don't deserve it. Ultra liberals talk about how civilian casualty is unacceptable, but that begs the question is, are military casualties acceptable?

The 18 year old boys who were drafted into WWII were not necessarily "volunteers" and certainly the German and Japanese young men who served were not ALL the masterminds behind the attacks on the U.S. So was the killing of soldiers at all really anything less than cruel. OF COURSE NOT! Killing soldiers is what happens in war, young American men died, as did young Germans and Japanese soldiers. And the reality is, they were almost as innocent as the civilians; they were doing the bidding of their government. So to ask, was it justified to kill civilians to make a point? The answer in my book is yes.

I say this because in conflict some people die. Its not pretty, its not glamorous and its certainly not something to celebrate, but it is true. We killed people with those bombs, but so did they. And who is to say that if they had the technology that they wouldn't have done the same. But the long and short of it is that we're not always the good guy. Unlike in fiction the good guys don't always win. But we're American and we're pretty damn lucky to live the way we do, and if that means sometimes we have to be the bad guys, sometimes we have to drop the bomb, then so be it. It doesn't make me a bad person, or a bad liberal to say that. Being liberal means wanting the government to support education, technology, and the underprivileged. It doesn't mean being militarily soft.