X-Message-Number: 18058
Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 19:11:06 +0900 (JST)
From: "Matthew S. Malek" <>
Subject: Comment on nuclear weapons

Dear Mike, 

> nuking Japan in 1945 is generally thought to have saved millions of
> lives by ending WWII even if many thousands were killed.  

Keep in mind that many historians have concluded that this is _not_ true.
Remember that Germany's Third Reich fell in May of 1945.  The atomic bomb
was not dropped until August 6th, 1945 (8:15am JST).  At this point, it
was pretty clear that the was with Japan, the remaining Axis power was on
its way to completion, even with only conventional weaponry.  

Thus, it is highly doubtful that millions more lives would have been lost
in the atomic bomb had not been deployed.  Its use _did_ cost 200,000
people (mostly civilians) their lives.  Furthermore, the damage did not
end there, as many survivors (some of whom were in utero at the time of
the bomb) have lived with decades of health problems as a result of the
atomic bomb.  Indeed, many of these survivors are still alive, and in
their sixties and seventies.  Paying for the advanced health care that
some need is an ongoing problem.

Despite popular rhetoric to the contrary, it seems that the strongest
motivation for deploying the bomb was _not_ the "save millions of military
personnel by sacrificing hundreds of thousands of civilians".  The United
States and the Soviet Union had made a then-secret pact that the USSR
would enter the Pacific War three months after Germany's defeat.  
Although Japan was losing the war, the United States wished to hasten its
defeat so that the Soviets would not have a place at the bargaining table
when the post-war negotiations for the Pacific were made.  This is why the
bomb was deployed in the third month after the German defeat.  It also
puts former President Harry Truman the same class of politician as Adolf
Hitler.

=>Long Life to All,
=>Matthew

---------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
   Matthew S. Malek        |    "Judging by his outlandish attire, he's 
       |     some sort of free-thinking anarchist!"
---------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

	"When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, 
	 I felt a newly rediscovered sense of national security.
	 God Bless America."

				--Katie Sierra, 
				  West Virginian student suspended 
				  for expressing these words on a t-shirt
				  (in the so-called land of the free)
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