Los Alamos: We Have Become Death

Tremendous piece from Brian Zahnd.

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At Los Alamos we intruded upon what previously only God possessed: the capacity to undo humanity. In yielding to the temptation to harness the fundamental physics of the universe for the purpose of building city-obliterating bombs, have we again heard the serpent whisper, "You will be like God"? I believe so. Of course, when humankind tries to act like God in terms of omnipotence, we do not become God-like, but demonic.

Am I suggesting that the creation of the atomic bomb was wrong? I'm not suggesting, I'm saying it outright it was a sin! A grave sin. To create a devise whose only purpose is to kill multitudes of people in a single instantand then to create ten thousand more!is unspeakably immoral. If one of the earliest revelations of God's will is, "thou shalt not kill," then the invention of bombs capable of killing a million at a time is to sin against what we've known ever since Moses came down from Mount Sinai.

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So here we are seventy summers after Los Alamos, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and the question remains: Can humanity possess the capacity for self-destruction and not resort to it? The jury is still out. But this much is certain: If we think the ideas of Jesus about peace are irrelevant in the age of nuclear weapons, we have invented an utterly irrelevant Christianity!

But Christ is not irrelevant. He is Lord. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Christ has come to us refusing the warhorse and riding the peace donkey. His crown was of thorns, his throne was a cross, his coronation was by crucifixion. He died faithfully showing us the way of the Father. Now the Father has vindicated Jesus in resurrection and exalted him to authority over the nations. We live in the days of the prophets' dreams.

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Let's start with a couple of simple facts...

Hitler's genocide killed way more people. Stalin killed an order of magnitude more than Hitler's extermination.
The a-bomb resulted in fewer deaths required to end the war.

Once these are understood an honest discussion can begin.

A bomb was a blessing.

Ignore that fact and I cannot give your opinion the time of day.

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Let's start with a couple of simple facts...

Hitler's genocide killed way more people. Stalin killed an order of magnitude more than Hitler's extermination.
The a-bomb resulted in fewer deaths required to end the war.

Once these are understood an honest discussion can begin.

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1) Yes, Hitler and Stalin killed far more. That has no bearing on the morality of the atomic bomb though.
2) As for resulting in fewer deaths, I'm not much of an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

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A bomb was a blessing.

Ignore that fact and I cannot give your opinion the time of day.

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That's an opinion, not a fact.

Watch 24 and grow a pair.

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At Los Alamos we intruded upon what previously only God possessed: the capacity to undo humanity.

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Humans have possessed the capacity to undo humanity for as long as we've been human. All the bomb does is give us more creative and efficient ways of achieving that end.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. . . and those with guns do it more efficiently than those without.

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1) Yes, Hitler and Stalin killed far more. That has no bearing on the morality of the atomic bomb though.
2) As for resulting in fewer deaths, I'm not much of an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

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1) It does have bearing when you claim that "At Los Alamos we intruded upon what previously only God possessed: the capacity to undo humanity." That was introduced by Hitler.

2) These are the tough decisions that had to be made in the real world. If you were Truman and know it would take about a million more US lives and at least as many Japanese lives to end the war in the Pacific or you use the a-bomb and end the war much sooner. If you choose an option that would cost millions more lives than plan b then you definitely qualify for the "Undo humanity like God can" award.

On a side note - Richard Feynman's lecture Los Alamos from Below as a thoroughly enjoyable listen.

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As for resulting in fewer deaths, I'm not much of an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

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What are the acceptable means for ending the war?

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As for resulting in fewer deaths, I'm not much of an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

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What are the acceptable means for ending the war?

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It starts with not killing innocent civilians.

I gathered that. So what are the acceptable means of ending the war?

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I gathered that. So what are the acceptable means of ending the war?

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Since the Americans had broken the Japanese codes, the US government knew that Japan was looking for a way to surrender with dignity for 6 months prior to the bomb. The bomb was more about sending a message to the Soviets than about getting the Japanese to surrender. The US knew the Japanese wold never accept their terms for unconditional surrender.

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As for resulting in fewer deaths, I'm not much of an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

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What are the acceptable means for ending the war?

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It starts with not killing innocent civilians.

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Ya and I wan't a million dollars. Never gonna happen.

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I gathered that. So what are the acceptable means of ending the war?

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Since the Americans had broken the Japanese codes, the US government knew that Japan was looking for a way to surrender with dignity for 6 months prior to the bomb. The bomb was more about sending a message to the Soviets than about getting the Japanese to surrender. The US knew the Japanese wold never accept their terms for unconditional surrender.

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And yet, they did accept unconditional surrender. I guess use of the bomb did shorten the war and save lives.

Blockade and containment would have been just as effective. They were severely limited in resources by that point. Cutting off their access to the Indies and the rest of the South Pacific would have crippled the Japanese.

How many Catholics know what Thomas Merton thought about the invention of the bomb?

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As for resulting in fewer deaths, I'm not much of an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

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What are the acceptable means for ending the war?

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It starts with not killing innocent civilians.

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Ya and I wan't a million dollars. Never gonna happen.

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There's a difference between targeting civilians and accidentally killing civilians.

We targeted infrastructure.

We had no luxury to think of civilians. All we could think of of was American lives and whatever would save the most the most efficiently.

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I gathered that. So what are the acceptable means of ending the war?

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Since the Americans had broken the Japanese codes, the US government knew that Japan was looking for a way to surrender with dignity for 6 months prior to the bomb. The bomb was more about sending a message to the Soviets than about getting the Japanese to surrender. The US knew the Japanese wold never accept their terms for unconditional surrender.

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And yet, they did accept unconditional surrender. I guess use of the bomb did shorten the war and save lives.

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After the war it was determined that the Soviets entering the Pacific war by invading Manchuria caused as much or more consternation to the Japanese leadership as did the A bombs. It was a one-two punch that forced their hand.

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We targeted infrastructure.

We had no luxury to think of civilians. All we could think of of was American lives and whatever would save the most the most efficiently.

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There are ways to showcase the potential of a weapon of that scale without preserving a city for maximum destruction.

Not when you are fighting an country with an abundance of citizens happy to die for their emperor and soldiers that are happy to give their lives to make a good weapon.

As has been stated, Japan was not in a position to fight to the last. They were looking at alternatives. The bomb was intended for a wider audience.

And so what if it was? Did we have a nuclear war with Russia? No.

Japan signed it's own death warrant.

The cavalier attitude towards human life just because "that's war," truly disturbs me. Have you had to walk the aftermath of a battlefield? See the corpse of an infant? I learned not to assume death is the best answer from doing so.

Hey, remember. Infants get to go to instant heaven when they die.

I'm sorry but without that cavalier attitude the US would have been defeated long ago.

Yep.

I highly recommend watching "Fog of War" with Robert S McNamara. He knew more about the fire bombing and subsequent nuking of Japanese civilians than just about anyone, as he was part of Lemay's Harvard team that planned it all.

We destroyed 50 - 90 percent of every major city in Japan.

He goes into the surrender issue as well. The Japanese had one condition, to keep the emperor - which we pragmatically allowed after slaughtering somewhere north of a million civilians.

American mythology is foul.

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Hey, remember. Infants get to go to instant heaven when they die.

I'm sorry but without that cavalier attitude the US would have been defeated long ago.

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We lost in Vietnam in part because of that cavalier attitude.

I'm not defending what the Japanese did, but you don't have to rack up civilian deaths by the millions to win a war.

Agreed Sapper.

Japan wasnt as bad as Vietnam, however, where McNamara says we killed 3.4 million. Again, I'd say he knew a thing or two about the war in Vietnam.

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We lost in Vietnam in part because of that cavalier attitude.

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WTF??

We lost because the Democrat Congress defunded the war and our aid to South Vietnam.

WTF was cavalier about that?

You obviously know more than the main Sec of Defense for the Vietnam War .

3.4 million civilians not enough for you?

I know Vietnam signed the peace treaty because they knew they were defeated.

I know we had a promise to support South Vietnam if the North attacked them and we didn't.

I know the North Vietnam were testing (by their own words) Ford who they saw as a weak leader compared to Nixon and our Congress left him out to dry.

They "left him out to dry" because the support at home dried up. And under the Paris Peace Accord, the NVA was still permitted to supply its forces in the south. They were not defeated.

In fact, Tho honorably refused the Nobel Peace Prize when the war criminal Kissinger accepted it because Tho said peace had not been achieved.

My advice for people who love American mythology more than America is this, from William Faulkner:


"You don't love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."

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And under the Paris Peace Accord, the NVA was still permitted to supply its forces in the south. They were not defeated.

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And the US was permitted to resupply the South.

Viet Kong leaders all but admitted they would have given up had the US actually continued to support the South.

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"You don't love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."

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I love because our virtues were 10000000 times better than any other country on earth that ever existed. Not because of some blind belief that we were a perfect nation.