Changes
this is minority view, a revisionist take on the bombings, but interesting, well referenced.
After [[World War II]], nuclear weapon research continued with the development of the [[fusion]] or [[thermonuclear weapon]]. Many tests of these weapons were conducted during the [[Cold War]], but most of these tests took place on remote Pacific islands that were US territories or in the upper atmosphere. These weapons massively exceeded the power of the [[fission]] bombs dropped on Japan. Simultaneously, and as a civilian spinoff from the military program, there were developments in the production of clean and efficient [[nuclear energy]] for civilian electrical generation. The threat of the use nuclear bombs was a major issue in the [[Cold War]]. Today, the thirty-year threat of the use of nuclear weapons to prevent international aggression have been credited by many with helping avoid another world war.
==Atomic Bombings as Instances of State Terrorism==
Some legal scholars, [[historians]], other governments, and human rights organizations have characterized the United States' [[World War II]] [[Nuclear warfare|nuclear attacks]] against the [[Empire of Japan]] as state terrorism. The [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] remain the only time a state has used nuclear weapons against concentrated civilian populated areas. Some commentators hold that it represents the single greatest act of state terrorism in the [[20th century]].<ref>
{{cite book
| last = Frey
| first =Robert S.
| title = The Genocidal Temptation: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda and Beyond
| publisher =University Press of America
| date =2004
| id = ISBN 0761827439 }} Reviewed at:
{{cite journal
| last = Rice
| first =Sarah
| title =The Genocidal Temptation: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Rwanda and Beyond (Review)
| journal =Harvard Human Rights Journal
| volume =Vol. 18
| date =2005
| url = http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss18/booknotes-Genocidal.shtml
| accessdate = }}</ref><ref>
{{cite journal
| last = Dower
| first =John
| title =The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory
| journal =Diplomatic History
| volume =Vol. 19
| issue =no. 2
| date =1995
| url =
| accessdate = }}</ref>
The role of the bombings in [[Surrender of Japan|Japan's surrender]] and the United States' justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for decades. J. Samuel Walker writes in an April 2005 overview of recent historiography on the issue, "the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue."<ref> {{cite journal|title=Recent Literature on Truman's Atomic Bomb Decision: A Search for Middle Ground|journal=Diplomatic History|date=[[2005-April]]|first=J. Samuel|last=Walker|coauthors=|volume=29|issue=2|pages=334|id= |url=|format=|accessdate=2008-01-30 }}</ref> Most interpretations of the atomic attacks as "state terrorism" center around the alleged targeting of innocents to achieve a political goal. Some allege that the Target Committee, on May 10–11, 1945, rejected the use of the weapons against a strictly military objective, instead choosing a large civilian population to create a psychological effect that would be felt around the world.<ref>{{cite web | title=Atomic Bomb: Decision — Target Committee, May 10–11, 1945 | url=http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html | accessmonthday= August 6 | accessyear= 2005 }}</ref> The attacks in this context were thus seen as both militarily unnecessary and as transgressing moral barriers.<ref>
{{cite book
| last = Eisenhower
| first = Dwight D.
| authorlink =Dwight D. Eisenhower
| title = The White House Years; Mandate For Change: 1953-1956
| publisher = Doubleday & Company
| date =1963
| pages = pp. 312-313
| id = }}</ref><ref name="Hiroshima: Quotes">
{{cite web
| title=Hiroshima: Quotes
| url=http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm
| accessmonthday = August 6
| accessyear= 2005 }}</ref><ref name="Bard Memorandum">
{{cite web
| title=Bard Memorandum
| url=http://www.dannen.com/decision/bardmemo.html
| accessmonthday = May 8
| accessyear = 2006 }}</ref><ref>
{{cite web
| title=Decision: Part I
| url=http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm
| accessmonthday = August 6
| accessyear= 2005 }}</ref><ref name = "CD"> {{cite journal
| first =Robert
| last =Freeman
| coauthors =
| year =2006
| month =August 6
| title =Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan Necessary?
| journal =CommonDreams.org
| volume =
| issue =
| pages =
| id =
| url =http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0806-25.htm
}}</ref><ref>
{{cite web
| url = http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS-PTO-Summary.html#jstetw
| title = United States Strategic Bombing Survey; Summary Report
| accessmonthday = July 28
| accessyear = 2006
| author =
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| date =
| year = 1946
| month =
| format =
| work =
| publisher = United States Government Printing Office
| pages = pg. 26
}}</ref><ref name = "CD" />
The sociologist Kai Erikson has alleged that the attacks "...were not 'combat' in any of the ways that word is normally used. Nor were they primarily attempts to destroy military targets, for the two cities had been chosen not despite but because they had a high density of civilian housing...the attacks were to be a show, a display, a demonstration. The question is: What kind of mood does a fundamentally decent people have to be in, what kind of moral arrangements must it make, before it is willing to annihilate as many as a quarter of a million human beings for the sake of making a point?"<ref name="ZinnBreakingSilence"> {{cite web|url=http://polymer.bu.edu/~amaral/Personal/zinn.html |title=Hiroshima; Breaking the Silence |accessdate=2008-01-30 |first=Howard Zinn }}</ref>
Historian [[Howard Zinn]] writes: "if 'terrorism' has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."<ref name="ZinnBreakingSilence" />
[[Michael Walzer]] wrote of it as an example of "...war terrorism: the effort to kill civilians in such large numbers that their government is forced to surrender. Hiroshima seems to me the classic case."<ref>{{cite journal
| author = Walzer, Michael
| name = Dissent Magazine
| title = Five Questions About Terrorism
| publisher = Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc.
| date = 2002
| url = http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/LpB/Lehre/WS%2002-03/Walzer%20on%20Terror.pdf
| volume = 49
| issue = 1
| accessdate=2007-07-11}}</ref>
Professor [[C.A.J. (Tony) Coady]] is head of the [[Australian Research Council]] [[Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)]] and studies political violence, [[Just War Theory]], [[Terrorism]], and [[Humanitarian intervention]].<ref> {{cite web|url=http://www.cappe.edu.au/staff/tony-coady.htm |title=Professor Tony Coady |accessdate=2008-01-30 }}</ref> He writes in ''Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World'': "Several of the contributors consider the issue of state terrorism and there is a general agreement that states not only can sponsor terrorism by non state groups but that states can, and do, directly engage in terrorism. Coady instances the terror bombings of World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as acts of terrorism."<ref>{{cite book|title = Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World |publisher = Melbourne University Publishing |year = 2004 |month = June |last = Coady |first = Tony |ISBN = 0-52285049-9 |pages = XV}}</ref>
Mark Selden, professor of sociology and history at [[Binghamton University]] and author of ''War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century'', writes, "This deployment of air power against civilians would become the centerpiece of all subsequent U.S. wars, a practice in direct contravention of the Geneva principles, and cumulatively the single most important example of the use of terror in twentieth century warfare."<ref>{{cite news | first=Mark | last=Selden | coauthors= | title=Terrorism Before and After 9-11 | date=[[2002-09-09]] | publisher=[[Znet]] | url =http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=2310 | work = | pages = | accessdate = 2008-01-30 | language = }}</ref>
[[Richard A. Falk]], professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at [[Princeton University]] has written in some detail about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as instances of [[state terrorism]]. He writes "The graveyards of [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] are the number-one exhibits of state terrorism... Consider the hypocrisy of an Administration that portrays [[Qaddafi]] as barbaric while preparing to inflict terrorism on a far grander scale... Any counter terrorism policy worth the name must include a convincing indictment of the First World variety."<ref name="falk" />. He also writes:
{{quote|Undoubtedly the most extreme and permanently traumatizing instance of state terrorism, perhaps in the history of warfare, involved the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in military settings in which the explicit function of the attacks was to terrorize the population through mass slaughter and to confront its leaders with the prospect of national annihilation....the idea that massive death can be deliberately inflicted on a helpless civilian population as a tactic of war certainly qualifies as state terror of unprecedented magnitude, particularly as the United States stood on the edge of victory, which might well have been consummated by diplomacy.|Richard Falk|''War and State Terrorism''<ref>Falk, Richard. "State Terror versus Humanitarian Law",in Selden,, Mark, editor (November 28, 2003). War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.. ISBN 978-0742523913. ,45</ref>}}
While paying tribute to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, [[Hugo Chavez]] - President of Venezuela - referred to the bombings as "the greatest act of terrorism in recorded history."<ref>{{cite news | first=Maria Salomé | last=Campanioni | coauthors= | title=Chavez Calls Dropping of A-Bomb, 'Greatest Act of Terrorism in Recorded History' | date=[[2005-08-08]] | publisher= | url =http://www.watchingamerica.com/radiorebelde000001.html | work =watchingamerica.com | pages = | accessdate = 2008-01-30 | language = }}</ref>
Burleigh Taylor Wilkins states in Terrorism and Collective Responsibility that "any definition which allowed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to count as instances of terrorism would be too broad." He goes on to explain "The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while obviously intended by the American government to alter the policies of the Japanese government, seem for all the terror they involved, more an act of war than of terrorism."<ref>{{cite book|title=Terrorism and Collective Responsibility |publisher=Routledge |last=Wilkins |first=Taylor |isbn=0-41504152-X |pages=11}}</ref>
==References==
