Antiwar.com Blog » Nukes http://www.antiwar.com/blog Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:21:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Hiroshima AND Nagasaki: The Inside Story http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/08/11/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-inside-story/ http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/08/11/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-inside-story/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:09:28 +0000 L. Reichard White http://www.antiwar.com/blog/?p=6007 At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki. … [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower said in 1963 "It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
    … Besides the Manhattan Project’s internal momentum was an external motive. Its leaders had to justify the $2 billion ($26 billion in today’s dollars) expense to Congress and the public… Byrnes…warned Roosevelt that political scandal would follow if it [the atomic bomb] was not used. … "How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research [after the war] if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?" …the U.S. had produced two types of bombs–one using uranium, the other plutonium. Whenever anyone suggested that the moment the bomb was dropped the war would be over, [bureaucrat] Groves countered, "Not until we drop two bombs on Japan." As [historian] Goldberg explains… "One bomb justified Oak Ridge, the second justified Hanford." Hiroshima was hit with the uranium bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy"; the plutonium bomb, "Fat Man," was used against Nagasaki.

From Why We Dropped The Bomb By William Lanouette, CIVILIZATION, The Magazine of the Library of Congress, January/February 1995

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ADDENDUM (After 32 comments):

It’s hard for Americans who identify with the U.S. Government to accept the idea that that organization could have engaged in such horrendous acts — twice in three days — without pristine motives.

Here’s what Vietnam era U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara — who was part of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s command when the bombs were dropped — thought about it:

McNamara: “He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.”

]]> http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/08/11/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-inside-story/feed/ 47 If North Korea is bad… http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/05/25/if-north-korea-is-bad/ http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/05/25/if-north-korea-is-bad/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 14:03:38 +0000 Tim Swanson http://www.antiwar.com/blog/?p=5714 … for detonating a nuclear bomb comparable to the one dropped at Hiroshima, then what about Truman and the crew of the Enola Gay?

How was Harry’s decision any different than Kim’s? After all, as David Kramer recently noted, if Truman executed 144,000 Japanese civilians by firing squad, his actions would have been described as a mass murderer — which is just what Kim would be branded as.

Time to come clean about this whitewashed travesty.

See also: Nagasaki Mayor Says, ‘Thanks for Putting Us On the Map’
Jon Stewart: Wimp, Wuss, Moral Coward

]]> http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/05/25/if-north-korea-is-bad/feed/ 36 Should the Israelis Arrest Benny Morris? http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/07/21/should-the-israelis-arrest-benny-morris/ http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/07/21/should-the-israelis-arrest-benny-morris/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:48:11 +0000 David Henderson http://www.antiwar.com/blog/?p=4444 As Justin Raimondo points out in his article this morning, “A Brazen Evil,” noted Israeli scholar Benny Morris wrote an op/ed in Friday’s New York Times, “Using Bombs to Stave Off War,” in which he advocated that the U.S. government or the Israeli government attack Iran. In his op/ed, Morris wrote, “if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.”

Why is this quote so striking? Because Morris implicitly admits that the Israeli government has nuclear weapons, even though that government has never so admitted. In 1986, Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, revealed that fact and for his troubles, was kidnapped by the Israeli government, tried for treason in secret, and forced to spend 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement. His treason? Revealing Israel’s nuclear weapons program. It’s true that he violated a non-disclosure agreement, but that’s not treason. Presumably the treason is that he revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program, with the non-disclosure agreement being irrelevant.

Guess what? In last Friday’s New York Times, Benny Morris revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program. So shouldn’t he be charged with treason too?

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