On Hiroshima

Analyses that talk about how difficult it would have been to conquer Japan without Hiroshima usually all tend to dismiss the real important question. Had we not been so obsessed with unconditional surrender, would Japan have been willing to surrender to us without the bombings?

The idea that requiring that surrender be unconditional is the sine qua non of war, and that it is justifiable to do anything in order to avoid putting conditions on surrender is a brutal and barbaric philosophy.

So were the bombings necessary? Perhaps. But I wish that someone would actually take some time to defend requiring unconditional surrender instead of just assume thnat unconditional is the only type of surrender we can accept.

That is all.