Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
So, the question is, was President Truman a war criminal? Or did he make the hardest decision that any nation's leader ever had to face?
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I would answer 'yes' and 'yes'. I agree it probably saved many lives and shortened the war, but it doesn't negate the fact that it still constituted a war crime by definition. I believe that one doesn't necessarily cancel out the other, as it were.
I recommend 2003 documentary "Fog of War", with Macnamara discussing the use of the atomic bombs...
Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.
LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?