by ericmay | 2026-01-08 16:55:09+00:00
> Well, better read more closely then before replying :)

Nope. I prefer to read not so close and just reply anyway.

> Understood. Unfortunately, you got confused about who you were replying to; it wasn't me who argued the calculation mattered. I actually argued the calculation was a retroactive justification, not the actual one. I can see you got lost here. Maybe for the benefit of, you know, your "broader audience" you could have replied to that other commenter.

I'm saying that it doesn't need to be retroactively justified, and even if the numbers are high or low it doesn't matter. The action was justified until Japan formally surrendered and ended the war. What you're trying to debate it seems to me is around agreements or disagreements about the justification of using the bomb, my criteria is that we were still at war with Japan, and so the justifications, either accurate at the time or retroactive, are irrelevant. It's possible that what you are suggesting around the number of lives saved was a revision, which I don't agree or disagree with, but you are later implying a moral failure because of that revision, and I am rejecting that there was ever a moral failure by using the bomb provided we were still formally at war.

If you want to reject a moral claim about the revision of the justification, I don't really have much to debate here. Whatever the facts are, are the facts. But if you are making a moral claim about the usage of the bomb, that's different.

> This thing you're doing is really bizarre, claiming to know my thoughts. I find it fascinating. Do you always debate like this?

I debate and discuss things depending on various contexts.

In this context you're engaging in a group of common debate tactics (for example, you're afraid to say what country you are from, yet you're happy to speak English and criticize the United States and only the United States) that are a well-known pattern of anti-American and anti-Western sentiment. I just noted the patterns and identified your discussion points as being among them.

For example, let's change the subject and talk about the evils of the Soviet Union. And no we don't have to stay on topic, nobody is reading our nonsense anyway.

I know you won't do that though, because you don't know much about Soviet atrocities, and you won't be able to engage in a strict criticism of Soviet actions unless you introduce nuance (excuses) and find ways to make Soviet atrocities the fault of western countries.

If that's not true, prove me wrong. Let's spend some time now talking about the awful things the Soviets did.

> Nope. I was explaining the nuances of a situation which had more angles than what you implied. You were asking me to read on Molotov-Ribbentrop, yet you don't seem much well read on the subject if you ignore these nuances...

> Both matter: broader actions and nuance. Being aghast at someone who claims 40 million people deserved to die has nothing to do with Molotov-Ribbentrop or any pact. Again... I'm aghast but not in defense of the Soviets, just at your callousness.

Actions matter more than nuance, the nuance is just an excuse to justify the actions of the side you want to support. It sucks that so many Soviet Union, uh, members I guess? I'm not sure how to best describe that hellish autocratic government, but at the end of the day the Soviet Union colluded with the Nazis, and so I'm not really shedding a tear for them losing soldiers or civilians fighting the same maniacs they colluded with.

> Ok, this is a straightforward, honest position. You think dropping the Bomb was ok because it won the war. Also you make some non sequitur about the Bomb turning Japan into a peaceful democracy (completely bizarre logic, it doesn't follow that it was the bomb).

Well I said we bombed Japan, not necessarily it was because of the atomic bomb. But I acknowledge of course that specific context could be interpreted differently than my intention.

I'm suggesting that dropping the bomb, or any other action was just another action that our civilized country took and the end result was that we took over influence of Japan and civilized it and made it a peaceful democracy.

(besides obvious stuff like just raping people or whatever)

> You've repeatedly ignored arguments by me, and others here, that argued that it wasn't necessarily the Bomb that won the war, but whatever. I understand this is your position; I think it's wrong.

I think it's very much up for debate whether the bomb was actually what got the Japanese to surrender. It's possible and debatable that we could have just continued to bomb Japan without the atomic bomb and we would have seen a surrender anyway.

But it is not up for debate that the Japanese military were very much divided on whether or not to continue to hold out against the United States up until the usage of the atomic bomb and some were still holding out (if my memory serves correctly) even after the reports of the first bomb. You're suggesting that I'm ignoring your arguments, but I'm not, I'm disagreeing with them.

> Do you understand the expression "let's take for granted"? It seems you're hell-bent on arguing where there's no argument.

The specific language used matters. When you introduce the term "let's take for granted" you are implying that there is another option to be considered, such as that the Japanese weren't rampaging, murdering lunatics at the time. It's not an assumption to be taken for granted that the Japanese were as I described, it's simply a fact.

Another way to look at it is you can replace "let's take for granted" with "let's suppose" or "let's pretend". That term or variation of those terms, in my view, aren't valid to be used here because we don't suppose that the Japanese were rampaging murderous lunatics from around 1938, they were as a matter of fact.

> My opinion doesn't change because you don't like it either. But, I posit, by sounding jingoistic you're not doing yourself any favors.

I'll posit by sounding anti-western and anti-American you're not doing yourself any favors.

> Why does it matter?

Why are you afraid to say where you're from?