General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: An overlooked A-bomb issue: the wait-a-couple-weeks argument [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)You write: "One thing I don't get is why the moral onus is so uniformly placed on the US."
First, it's because we're Americans and we see value in considering past actions of our government. For us to try to work out the details of what was done by the governments of the USSR and Japan is of some scholarly interest, but we feel a special responsibility to know all about what "we" did (even if most us weren't even alive then and none of us were among the decisionmakers).
Second, pointing to Japanese and Soviet misconduct is, in my opinion, among the weaker arguments made by defenders of the bombings. Yes, "the Japanese" committed atrocities at Nanjing, but that phrase is a bit loose. The government and its agents are the responsible parties. Many DUers seem to be willing to impute the actions of the government (a military dictatorship, as you mention) to a whole bunch of ordinary civilians, which I think is erroneous.
Third, some questions are closer and therefore more interesting than others. For example, you won't see much debate on DU about the rights and wrongs of slavery as practiced in the United States under the Constitution until the Thirteenth Amendment. We don't discuss it because no one would defend it. By contrast, as these several threads demonstrate, there are colorable arguments to be made on several sides of the A-bomb questions.