Your Churchill example is not germane. Look at my comments above. I suggested Dresden as a candidate for failure to follow just war theory. It is not in the same category as Hiroshima.

Also, the following statement “If one cannot win a war justly, then one simply cannot win a war.” is off the mark. No one doubted the US was going to win WWII one way or the other. Truman use of nuclear weapons was not an act of desperation to win an otherwise unwinnable war. It was, in a sense, an act of harsh kindness to bring the horror to an end as quickly as possible.

Finally, I am willing to grant that some people believe that Truman’s use of nuclear weapons in a bid to shorten the war and thereby save millions, if not tens of millions, of lives did not comport with traditional notions of just war theory. That those people would sacrifice millions, if not tens of millions, of lives to their theory of just war. That is a problem with their just war theory and their moral judgments, not Truman’s.

If you want to demonstrate how the obliteration of babies and grandmothers is consistent with the just war tradition’s prohibition of attacks on noncombatants, be my guest. I rather think you bear the greater burden of proof. Indeed, it’s the sheer fact that arguments like yours continue to be made against the great weight of theological and historical evidence to the contrary (which Joe Carter, to his credit, at least appears to accept) that led me to make my original comment.

Here’s what Father Neuhaus had to say on the subject in 2006: “No one should doubt that Churchill was a great historical figure and that his cause was our cause and that cause was just. But the man was also possessed of a deeply shadowed side. In addition to condoning the reprisal killings of civilians, Churchill is also supposed to have said of the obliteration bombing of cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, ‘Bomb and bomb until you’re bouncing the rubble.’ This is barbarism of a low order, and the fact that it was waged against barbarism of a lower order does not mitigate the abandonment of the moral order upon which civilization depends. Just as casually, many people, including many Christians, have accepted the intrinsically evil bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as justified by the assumed shortening of the war.”

And here’s a quote from another First Things piece, written by Brian Graebe and published earlier this year, that connects this same line of criticism with the distinguished English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. Notice that Anscome objected to the consequentialist justification of Truman’s actions: “Traditionally, people of faith have formed the vanguard against such consequentialist equations. Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, while a fellow at Oxford, famously protested the university’s decision to grant Harry Truman an honorary degree. Denouncing Truman for crimes against humanity, Anscombe rightly saw Hiroshima and Nagasaki as egregious violations of just war principles. Civilians can never be targeted as ends, and Truman’s rationale of a hastened victory and avoidance of further casualties rang hollow to Anscombe. If one cannot win a war justly, then one simply cannot win a war. Anscombe understood that the price of war is high, but it is not to be paid with one’s soul. Unfortunately, one finds Catholic theologians today–and I mean the good kind–who will yet obfuscate the clear principles of intrinsic evils when the desired end looms large.”

You repeated your matter-of-fact assertion that these bombings were grave moral evils in nearly every post (including the necessity for morally serious people to insist that America be “brought to justice for its actual murderous evildoing”). When challenged, you counter with more assertions of a simplistic demarcation between “combatants” from “innocent civilians” and their indiscriminate murder.

Both of these are personally held assertions rather than obvious, unquestionable, or mutually agreed upon facts. That you hold these opinions with great fervor and passion is not in question. The matter of who in this particular situation was a combatant and who was not and to what degree these acts did or did not conform with just war theory are precisely what are in question and should be argued rather than self-referentially asserted.

You commit two serious errors. First, you assume my estimate of millions of deaths is high, but if anything, it is low. The Japanese Homeland Battle Strategy Plan called for “100 million people to arise from the vantage ground of their sacred land to strike the invaders dead.” The Japanese had 2.5 million soldiers in the field, and 32 million civilian militia sworn to fight with sticks, spears and bows and arrows if necessary. There were even plans to strap explosives to children who would throw themselves under American tanks. Projecting from Okinawa, the casualties could easily have run past the millions into the tens of millions.

Secondly, you assume a strict demarcation between combatants and non-combatants in Japan. The Japanese made no such distinction. They were willing to throw ever last man woman and child into the fight.

The militant fanatics in the Japanese cabinet wanted to on fighting even after Nagasaki. Even rational Japanese were grateful for the use of the atomic bombs. After the war one of the emperor’s close advisors said: “the presence of the atomic bomb made it easier for us politicians to negotiate peace. Even then the military would not listen to reason. The only reason the Japanese Army stopped fighting was because the emperor ordered them to do so.”

Despite you facile dismissal, my train metaphor remains apt. Truman knew the America people would not tolerate less than unconditional surrender in the Pacific. The allied armies were on track A, the invasion of the Japanese mainland, which would inevitably have led to millions, perhaps tens of millions, of civilian casualties. Track B was dropping the bombs, which led to approximately 160,000 civilian casualties. He pulled the lever for Track B. It was not murder. It was mercy.

How utterly depressing that you fail to notice that the “millions of real lives” saved is your own (theoretical!) projection, and that the real (and innocent!) lives that were actually “snuffed out” in 1945 came via Truman’s manifestly indiscriminate (and therefore unjust) use of nuclear weapons. With respect, this is not a question about Truman’s preference, or your grandfather’s. This is a question about the morality of intentionally targeting and killing non-combatants as a tactic of war. And this is not “my interpretation” of the just war tradition. Non-combatant immunity is at the very heart of the just war tradition.

DBP: what about the babies obliterated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? They were fair targets as well? And what question am I begging when I appeal to the significance of non-combatant immunity? Please educate me.

I hope Joe Carter is still paying attention, for this is just the sort of evasive logic that inspired my initial post.

Rather than the proper application of just war theory in relation to the use of nuclear weapons, this discussion has been primarily an exercise in begging the question.

I am certain that Truman would have been happy to trade the opprobrium of having failed to live up to your interpretation of just war theory for the gratitude of the millions of people whose lives were not snuffed out because he did what he did. My grandfather, for example, was in the Pacific awaiting orders to board the troop ships for the invasion. He died in 2008, not 1945, as would have been likely had Truman elevated arid theory over obvious justice. The alacrity with which some people will trade millions of real lives for the sake of their pet theory (e.g., Marxist-Leninism) never ceases to amaze.