Truman on Trial: Guilty

The arguments presented by Nobile and Radosh, stripped of their scholarly references, can be summed up as follows:

Prosecution:"That wasn't a nice thing to do."

Defense:"But it worked, didn't it?"

Prosecution:"It wasn't necessary."

Defense:"Yes it was." [Insert iterations of"no it wasn't","yes it was" ad naseum]

Prosecution:"There are rules against this sort of thing."

Defense:"They did nasty stuff first."

Prosecution:"That's no excuse."

Defense:"We didn't think we had any choice."

Prosecution:"You always have other choices." [Insert iterations of"no we didn't","yes we did"]

Defense:"Well, they would have died anyway, no matter what choice we made."

Prosecution:"Barbarian. Racist neo-fascist."

Defense:"Wimp. Commie intellectual."

The problem with this dialogue is that the two sides are not really arguing about the same things. The defense does not accept the prosecution's premise that there are absolute limits on weapons and methods; the prosecution does not accept the defense premise that apparently abhorrent acts must be contextualized. Ironically, scholars on the prosecution side are more likely in other contexts to accept culturally relativistic arguments, and scholars on the defense side tend to view cultural/historical relativism as politically and intellectually suspect. This is perhaps a function of the ahistoricity of the question. Whether or not the bombs were necessary or determinative are historically indeterminate, in spite of excellent scholarship on both sides. History is not a controlled experiment, and the situation in August 1945 was too complex for simple answers.

Whether the bomb was"necessary" or"better than the alternatives" is the wrong question. The question of war crimes, particularly when applied to such an effective and dramatic act against a clearly aggressive and brutal enemy, can be distilled down to the question" can there be meaningful restrictions on the conduct of war?"

That civilians can be killed in military operations is now enshrined in our language:" collateral damage" rather than"innocent bystanders." The deliberate attempt to destroy morale by targeting civilian populations or economic targets without significant military strategic value is called"terrorism."

Ironically, the new wing of the Hiroshima Peace Museum, which documents the history of Hiroshima, makes it very clear that the city was a significant command-and-control center for Japanese forces in Asia, a role it had played in every Japanese war since 1895. It also documents the wartime industrial production in the city. But even the defense acknowledges that the atomic bomb was a blunt instrument used to force the Japanese to give up hope, to demonstrate and threaten more unpredictable destruction, death and terror, than the conventional weapons that had already devastated Japanese industry and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

What are the limits on warfare? A society that values efficiency over humanity is properly defined as inhumane; these are the values of corporations, not communities. I am not in favor of losing wars against unprincipled aggressive enemies. But I am also not in favor of becoming an unprincipled aggressor. That the atomic bombings were effective is unquestioned; the question is, are we prepared to sacrifice civilized legal behavior to accomplish our aims? I am not.