From: Gene McAloon 

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 13:36:42 -0500, "John Beamish"
 wrote:

>No, it is not.  Comparing the effect of a raid using tens of thousands of
>bombs with the effect of a single bomb does not make an atomic bomb "just
>another weapon".  It does show that two different approaches can have the
>same devastation.

Indeed it show just two different appoaches, which is precisely my point.
>
>You also make my point by correctly posting the rhetorical question:  who
>remembers [the Tokyo fire bombings] when only conventional weapons were
>used?  Many/most don't; but almost anyone who has even a vague interest in
>history knows the significance of August 6, 194three 5 and August 9, 1945.
>
>Even when it comes to conventional weapons, we have "rules"
about what is
>permitted and what is not.  A saw-toothed bayonet is banned; dum-dum bullets
>are banned.  Each isn't "Just another weapon" -- each is seen as being
>'beyond' what is acceptable.

Unfortunately for that argument, use of atomic weapons has never been
deemed unacceptable. There are major powers and who knows how many smaller
powers that have them and there is no law regarding their use, none.
>
>It is irrelevant whether you are right or wrong when you choose to
>categorize nuclear weapons as "just another weapon".   But
when you make
>that choice, you do choose to stand with an extremely small group of people.
>
I am not interested in what the publc may think about their use. I am
talking about the reality of their use if it should ever be necessary to
use them. That they would be used under certan circumstances has was 
always been a part of national sucuriey planning by both the US and USSR
during the Cold War years.

The whole concept of MAD was to prevent pre-emptive use of them. The public knew
that. We all knew it. It mattered not in the slightest that many were
horrified that they might be used. Used they would be if necessary and that
is as true today as it was back in the Cold War years.

It is not I who stands with an extremely small group of people. It is you who do
so because you and they are horrified at the possibility of their use and
suppose because you are horrified that therefore they cannot and must not
be used, that their use is unacceptable. That is great, but it is also
contrary to what everyone else in fact knows to be the truth.

>"Gene McAloon"  wrote in message
>news:1baauv80avurbnddrl1mj0k5rfq9v5td9u{at}4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:58:27 -0500, "John Beamish"

>wrote:
>>
>> >"just another weapon" -- hardly.
>>
>> It is indeed just another weapon. On one night in Japan some 100K Japanese
>lost
>> their lives in Tokyo as a result of American bombing. All they did was
>drop
>> incendiary cluster  bombs. But who remembers that when only conventional
>weapons
>> were used?  When similar mass killings occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
>the
>> weapon was new and different and very photogenic in the mushroom cloud
>structure
>> it produced.
>>
>> I am sure the pictures of all those badly burned survivors would have been
>as
>> ghastly as anything produced by the nuclear bombs, but where are those
>pictures?
>> Well, the media didn't see anything really headline grabbing in that, but
>did in
>> the new, exciting stuff of atom bombs and all that. Because they did is
>why the
>> world has since attached an importance to them out of all proportion to
>their
>> reality. There was even fantasizing about nuclear winters and all that
>garbage
>> which Hollywood then latched onto until now it has become part of the
>> conventional wisdom about what would happen in an all-out nuclear war.
>>
>> Would the destruction and aftermath of such a war be worse than use of
>more
>> conventional weapons?  Of course. That has been true of every major
>advance in
>> weaponry. But much more than that? No.
>>
>

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