Human Shields and Choice

[Occhidiangela]

The general does not make the decision. The political leadership does. And Churchill was in the Loop on Dresden. THerefore I remind you, the fire bombing of Dresden was seen as politically necessary, if to give the Londoners a feeling of "we got those dirty bastards back" as for anything else. You need to learn, in my view, to understand the psychology of the Brits at war in WW II. That is why I label your PoV revisionist: it is made in complete absence of the emotional forces on a national scale that were present as part of everyday life in Britain in 1939 to 1945. It was a national war, not a limited war. The war in NOT over until the other side surrenders. Capice?

The Brits and Allies had not won. The war was still on. This is not some issue of a sporting chance, this is WAR in its most complete form. After six years of war, with the full emotion of a nation at war at work, the decsion was made to get payback, from what I have read, payback in spades for the Blitz.

Hiroshima. Do you feel the death of less than 100,000 Japanese was more acceptable to an American president than the death of 500,000 or so Americans, which was the CONSERVATIVE staff estimate? We were still at war with Japan, they had not given up, and the closer we got, the harder they fought, and the Japanese soldiers knew how to fight pretty darned well. They were not surrendering by the hundreds and thousands at a time the way the Germans were in 1945.

Nagasaki? That one I question more than Hiroshima, but I do have to ask this question: once Hiroshima, how could anyone in Tokyo NOT say "it is time to accept defeat."