Quibbling Over Nomenclature Regarding the Atomic Bombings

I cannot agree that, to quote Mike Cote’s title and piece on the subject, that “Dropping the Atomic Bombs Was Good, Actually.”

Atomic Bomb-Nagasaki, 1945. Battered religious figures stand watch on a hill above a tattered valley. Photographed by September 24, 1945. Official U.S. Marine Corps Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives

Things that are different are not the same.

The distance between the concept of “justified” and the concept of “good” has a river of moral conundrums flowing through it. When talking about dropping the atomic bombs on Japan, Paul Tibbets who flew on the missions put it this way: “I do not dwell on the moral issue. The thing is it did what it was supposed to do. It brought peace to the world at that time.”

While I was watching the Oppenheimer film in the theater, I was mentally braced for how the debate over the dropping of two atomic bombs onto Japan was going to be handled. All in all, as I wrote in my own review of the film which you can read here, I think Christopher Nolan and crew handled it pretty well. The relevant bit.

Using two atomic bombs on Japan is something that humanity will not only always debate but should always debate and wrestle with. The film did a good job covering all the bases and arguments that went into the decision and not only the morals and strategy involved, but how personalities and fears both known and unknown played into it. Lending…