(January 29, 2009 at 5:32 am)dagda Wrote: Rather than use a hypothetical senario, we will use a real one. The nuclear bombing of Japan at the end of the 2nd world war killed thousands of innocent people. This could be said as morraly wrong.
However, the alternitive was far worse. A land invasion of Japan would have turned out like Okinawa (spelt wrong?) where thousands of Japanese died rather than surrender. This carnage could be mulitplied 100 times for the mainland.
We have the situation that it was either thousands of deaths or millions. In the long run, millions of lives were saved at the expense of thousands. This does not make the deaths any better or morraly right but it does justify the act. In a democracy everyone is equal hence the rights of the many must be taken over the rights of the few.
However, that being said there is certianly a grey area.
Even if the first bomb was necessary, did they really need to drop a second one? I don't think this is a question of what is morally right; it is a question of what is less morally wrong. I was also under the impression that the "millions of deaths" was an exaggeration and tool of propoganda to justify the bomb, while other estimates were in the low thousands. Obviously this could be due to poor sources, but there seems to be a lot of citation within them:
http://www.doublestandards.org/blum5.html
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/educato...p-bomb.htm
