Isnt it ironic that a moral man like Harry Truman dropped the atomic bomb and set up the CIA?

Question

I think Harry Truman was a truly moral man - he had fine small town values - so to me it is rather 'ironic' that history chose him to be the one to take the decision to drop the atom bomb. As for the CIA I am not sure about the facts regarding the OSS but I recall reading in Trumans biography that in later years he regretted his role in setting up the CIA as he felt it had become something he had not intended.

Answer 1

Along with his morality, was his midwestern naivete'. He didn't realize the scale of the awesome power that was unleashed. All during FDRs administration he was kept in the dark about the Manhattan Project.

Regarding the CIA, i thought the OSS was the initial start of that organization,....long before Truman came to power.

Answer 2

As nasty as the atomic bomb was, it probably did save lives. I realize there was a surrender faction in Japan at the time, there was also a faction that attempted a coup to prevent surrender even after both bombs were dropped. As far as the CIA goes, at the time the OSS was founded the US was the only major country without a civilian foreign intelligence agency. Would the US have been better off if J. Edgar Hoover was the intelligence czar? In fact, one reason the OSS/CIA was founded was to keep Hoover off the case.

The real moral issue isn't the atomic bomb, it's strategic bombing in general. More people died in the fire bombing of Tokyo than at Hiroshima. To military planners at the time the atom bomb was just a really, really big bomb. The idea that killing people with an atom is morally worse than killing people with any other kind of bomb is just hindsight.

Answer 3

Don't fall into the trap of judging history with your knowledge of subsequent events as is all too common these days. After the carnage on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, how could anyone expect that an invasion of Japan would be less bloody? As for the CIA, it was the peacetime successor to FDR's OSS. The collapse of the USSR in the 1990s was not an obvious and foregone conclusion in 1946. Had the US just complacently tried to wait it out, the world would likely be a much different place today.

Being president involves making many difficult decisions. Ever notice how much the office ages those who occupy it? And how much more invigorated most of them look a year after leaving office?

Answer 4

Given the context in which they were done, there was nothing wrong at all in dropping the atomic bombs to end a nasty war and to set up a security agency to compete with other country's older and more experienced security agencies.

Consider the alternatives:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

And then the Soviet Union declared war against Japan and Stalin promised to invade Japan with a million Soviet Mongolian troops:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_atrocities

You also seem to forget that more people died in the firebombings of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya (called 'The Great Fire Raids') than in both atomic bomb droppings.

http://flgrube1.tripod.com/id13.html

President Truman actually saved millions of lives by bringing the war to an end. So there is nothing 'ironic' about it, Prez. Truman did the right thing.

Answer 5

I don't think I can add to what others here have said regarding the morality of dropping the bomb or the establishment of the CIA, but as a fan of Harry Truman, I think you should investigate the presidents since Truman and see how they stack up. Kennedy almost got us in a nuclear war between his liaisons with Marilyn Monroe. Nixon lied and cheated and eventually resigned under pressure. Ford was unprepared and incompetent. Reagan fiureheaded a Republican party bent on bankrupting the nation while the AIDS crisis went unchecked. Clinton got so booged down by Monica-gate and Whitewater that he could barely govern. And Bush is just plain stupid. To draw a comparison with Truman and another president, you have to go BACK to folks like Abe Lincoln, another country boy who had problems with an un-winnable war but was able to struggle with the morality of ENDING it and along the way abolished slavery.

Answer 6

I believe they actually figured that it would take the lives of 1 million American soldiers to take Japan. I do not find it ironic, because they did not know about the radioactive after effects of atomic war. plus, as the numbers were presented to him, less people would die, and many fewer Americans. He was the president of the united states, and as such it was his duty to protect his people. The thing that bothers me is how hard it must have been for a man like him to know whichever decision he made, a lot of people were going to die. That must have been hard to wrap around for him.

Answer 7

By the way the OSS the fore runner of the CIA was set up by FDR during wwii.

Answer 8

Lets look at the morality of his choices other than the atom bombs:

Blockade Japan until they surrendered - how long would a blockade have to last, while literally millions of Japanese starved to death?

Invade Japan - 500,000 US troop deaths and millions of Japanese deaths (women and children included), and the potential destruction of the entire Japanese culture.

Dropping the bombs was infinitely more 'moral' than the alternatives.

Answer 9

perhaps morality is overrated? The Taliban consider themselves to be very moral indeed.