The Long Read

Here are some articles I recently read: The Drone Papers Snowden like cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. “We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.” Coding Great article on the all pervasive world of Coding. Really nice meaningful integration of text, graphic design and web coding. America’s Most Admired Law Breaker This one is from Doug I, in another thread. John Hershey’s Hiroshima in the New Yorker, 1946 At the time of writing the bombing had been widely written about, but the victims’ stories still remained untold. After going to Japan and interviewing survivors, Hersey decided to show the bombing through six pairs of eyes. Pond Scum Haven’t read this yet, so no idea how I feel about it. I prefer to link articles I actually read, but this might hit close to BPL core – a critique of Henry David Thoreau. FBI Hostage Crisis A bit like the Coding article in how it integrates media into the essay.

I just glanced at those. Very interesting. I'll have to read through them when I have spare time. Bookmarked it. Thoreau is "pond scum"? How could they say that?? Blasphemous!!! So, was Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing immoral, or was that better than the alternative, protracted invasion? Or should I better leave that question alone?

Jerry— To your question: I think of the documentary called Fog Of War and the long interview with once-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and this quote: "Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya." " This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve." "LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" These are McNamara's words.

I love that documentary, it was and may still be on youtube.

"Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan?" USSR