LewRockwell
I have not yet seen Oppenheimer but from what I gather about the film, it does not dwell on the massive death and suffering that the U.S. government inflicted on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the nuclear bombs dropped on those two cities.
What the film has done is revive the popular justification for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is the following: That the nuclear attacks on those two cities obviated the need to invade Japan and, therefore, supposedly ended up saving many more lives than those killed in the nuclear attacks.
In other words, the justification has long been a sort of cost-benefit analysis. Letâs assume that 300,000 people would die in an invasion, including U.S. troops. The estimated number of people killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was around 100,000. Therefore, the argument goes on balance the nuclear attacks on those two cities was beneficial because it brought an early end to the war and, therefore, spared, say, 200,000 more deaths that would have occurred in an invasion…
