60th Aniversarty of Hiroshima - enola gay issue

[winoman]

nakahar - I don't entirely disagree with you - I think it was a horrible thing to do and very difficult to justify - but from the perspective of the time -and considering that Japan was comitting atrocities and was the aggressor and didn't seem as if it would surrender without a horrible and bloody fight - which would have involved attacks against Japan's infrastructure and a great many civilian deaths - perhaps more then what died in the bombings - well - the choice isn't so simple. At the same time I agree with much of what is said in the article that you posted. My oint was that we cannot just knee jerk condemn the decison/action - even believeing it to be the wrong decision and even knowing the outcome and the legacy. It is not such a simple thing as condemning Talat. Tlalt and the CUP knowingly comitted a great evil and for justification we can only think criminal insanity and hate. I don't at all think this was the case with the nuclear bombings - even if I agree that the action was misguided and in the scheme of things wrong and even knowing what terrible suffering of innocents it created. In that as well we must condemn Japan - don't you agree? Where the Armenians (as a people) share no real blame for what befell them and where the actions taken by the CUP were clearly criminal and deserving of full and unwavering condemnation.

[nakharar]

“I have become Death, destroyer of worlds”

I would never whitewash the sins of the Japanese. What they did in Asia and their barbaric treatment of civilians and prisoners of war was and still remains a stain on them. That they can't come to terms with their past has partly have to do with the dropping of those two bombs. They like to portray themselves as victims, the population of Nagasaki and Hiroshima definitely were vicitms, because of these attacks and gloss over their own crimes. The crimes the Japanese committed is still no justification for the wanton destruction and the massive and indiscriminate killing of civilians. Once the option of employing nuclear weapons is there and when there are people wiling to rationalize its use, you are opening the floodgates. It's like Pandora's box. The atomic bomb has a certain mystique and revulsion attached to it that doesn't exist in other forms of warfare. With one blink, man has attained the power to obliterate countries if not the world. That's too much power on anyone's hands.
With genocide there was intent as you clearly put it. Sometimes the outcome of things also determines intent.