[csee]

You would trade off 200k Japanese civilians for, say, 1000 allied lives? What ratio is morally justified?

If you are arguing that a 200:1 ratio is acceptable, I believe this is a morally bankrupt perspective, given that the consequence of this is a genocide of a people who are otherwise perfectly normal without the broken software that was running in their minds and their society at the time, and given that it is a collectivistic perspective that assigns moral guilt to an entire civilian population (including children) instead of the specific individual bad actors that caused the situation.

Regarding the latter point - on this premise that every single Japanese person shared moral culpability for what Japan was doing - it can't be squared with an understanding of what actually happened. I mean, the existence of children is a QED against it. But even just talking adults - At that stage the country was a fascist dictatorship, with multiple democratically elected leaders assassinated by the military (which was taken over by a fanatical fascist contingent in the 1930s) and a tremendous propaganda effort by the military to control all information and brainwash the general public into thinking they were doing good and just work overseas. Combine this with a poor, ignorant farmer population, and I don't think the simple moral prism that you're applying works.

[nradov]

What ratio are you arguing is morally acceptable? Please give us a specific number with justification.

It's easy to act morally superior decades later. We're not the ones who were forced to make a hard decision in extreme circumstances. How could President Truman possibly morally justify telling Americans that even one more of their sons had to die in order to protect enemy civilians?

[csee]

Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?

If it's 10:1, then that's basically saying that Japanese adult civilian lives are worth absolutely nothing and can be killed without any moral concern, but Japanese children are worth the same as allied lives.

Going any further (e.g 200:1) is unjustifible unless we adopt the collectivistic moral guilt framework where one has moral guilt (including children) simply for existing in that country at that time, irrespective of individual culpability.

  "How could President Truman possibly morally justify telling Americans that even one more of their sons had to die in order to protect enemy civilians?"

Just because the general public would find it difficult to put moral worth into civilian lives of an enemy doesn't make those lives worthless.

I also don't like the language of calling them enemy civilians. They are civilians who live in a country that's currently an enemy.

[xibalba]

> Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?

Are you asking a question?

> Going any further (e.g 200:1)

You're engaging in pseudo-intellectual quantification that is meaningless and unbound by anything objective. But that's besides the point.

The point is, the U.S. was pulled into war by Japan and did not have had any obligation to lose even one more person to end the conflict. And yet the calculus was clear: the loss of life by the U.S. was going to significantly increase per unit of effort/victory as it approached mainland Japan.

> doesn't make those lives worthless

No one is arguing this. But when it comes to the life of my son or brother vs. the life of someone I don't know, I know what my choice will be every single time. And I would bet my entire net worth that 999 out of 1,000 people would choose similarly in that situation. The instinct to stay alive completely outstrips armchair intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight.

[csee]

I am offering my opinion, but you already knew that and were just being sarcastic.

It is also not meaningless, you simply totally ignored the rationale I provided for the 10:1 figure. It's the ratio that roughly equalizes the moral worth of allied troops with Japanese children.

Admittedly this is all subjective, but that also applies to your opinions.

  "The point is, the U.S. was pulled into war by Japan and did not have had any obligation to lose even one more person to end the conflict."

The US wasn't pulled into war by Japanese children, though, and you seem to be perfectly fine with their extermination under your perverse doctrine of collective guilt.

  "No one is arguing this. But when it comes to the life of my son or brother vs. the life of someone I don't know, I know what my choice will be every single time. And I would bet my entire net worth that 999 out of 1,000 people would choose similarly in that situation. The instinct to stay alive completely outstrips armchair intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight"

People decide to do lots of shitty things for all sorts of reasons. The mere act of deciding to do said shitty thing and the fact that that shitty thing is a popular choice doesn't make it less shitty and doesn't serve as a moral justification.