1. Is Mr. Hanson familiar, one wonders, with the doctrine of double effect? Roughly, it states that it may be permissible to perform an act with both a good effect and a bad effect, provided that the latter 1) is outweighed by the good effect and 2) is a mere side effect; if it is either your goal or a means to your goal, then the act is forbidden.

Thus bombing a munitions factory may (though not necessarily) be OK even though some civilians may die as an unintended side effect, while deliberately bombing civilians in order to, for example, break a country's will to fight is morally wrong, as it involves doing evil so that "good" may come out of it. The prohibition, then, is against intending harm.

This moral rule prohibits nuclear bombing of Japan for the reasons our author offers.

2. Now it is true that the nuclear bombing ended the war; however 1) Could the war have been ended in some other, less wicked, way? 2) Surely, Hanson does not condemn all war negotiations because of Hitler's rise to power? (And Hitler is a separate subject altogether.) 3) How does he know that "dropping the bomb on Hiroshima probably saved millions of lives"? Why not, say, merely thousands of lives? (By way of comparison, during the entire WW2 there were around 400,000 American deaths.)

Also, consider this quote by Ludwig von Mises: "The wars fought by primitive tribes did not affect cooperation under the division of labor. Such cooperation by and large did not exist between the warring parties before the outbreak of hostilities. These wars were unlimited or total wars. They aimed at total victory and total defeat. The defeated were either exterminated or expelled from their dwelling places or enslaved. The idea that a treaty could settle the conflict and make it possible for both parties to live in peaceful neighborly conditions was not present in the minds of the fighters." Is Hanson defending the ways of primitive tribes? Must the enemy be destroyed utterly for peace to endure?

3. Mr. Hanson is not suggesting, I hope, that "more than a half century of Japanese prosperity, security, and liberal government" can compensate those who died in the blasts? Is he saying that economic benefits to some arbitrary group of people can make up for hundreds of thousands of unjustly murdered? Is living well really the best revenge? And was demanding an unconditional surrender and nuclear bombing the only ways of instituting liberal government in Japan? Could a less immoral way have been devised? Whatever happened to the power of ideas?

4. Of course, "dropping a bomb on the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd Army to force a military cabal to surrender" is much worse than "blowing up an office building", because the former killed a lot more innocent people than the latter, precisely as a means to forcing an unconditional surrender.

5. Finally, it does not, in fact, it seems to me, make a "difference who starts wars, much less whether they are fought by fascists or democracies" with regard to the just way of waging wars. Bombing innocent people is wicked regardless of whether their government started the war or committed atrocities elsewhere. There is a difference between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Hanson ought to reconsider his collectivism.

August 30, 2005