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Whether or not something is analytical and/or quantitative doesn't mean it's a science. I.E. Music and history are not sciences. Economics is a science in the same way that rap is music. It's a social science, which isn't comparable to the hard sciences. The heart of the hard sciences are based on exact reproducibility. Economics is inextricably bound with human affairs and everything that comes with it: personal agendas, emotions, and shortcomings. It's no more a hard science than politics is.

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As a last comment on the atomic bombs. For me PERSONALLY the one redeeming thing there is my conviction that, given the nature of humanity and the global situation in the 20th century, chances are that someone would have dropped a bomb somewhere anyway, and chances are that it wouldn't have been done with ONE then. The US drops over Japan showed everyone the terrible effects and may just have had the deterring effect necessary to avoid a global desaster.
Not that that would have been their intention, of course. But still...

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Clearly, by these bombings the US meant to demonstrate its absolute military superiority over all other countries-allies and enemies alike--in the whole world -- and to establish itself as the preeminent and unrivalled postwar superpower. The bombings were also a "live experiment" to measure the actual devastating power of the atomic bomb, with the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki chosen as guinea pigs. They were special targets because supposedly they had been unscathed by previous allied bombings.

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The US meant to intimidate and blackmail the whole world into submission to its wishes. But by producing its own atomic bombs, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) frustrated the US design and ended US monopoly of these weapons of mass destruction. A nuclear stalemate ensued and deterred the US from further using its atom bombs. Later, Britain, France and China were able to produce their own atomic weapons.

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The US has produced some 70,000 nuclear warheads since 1945. It engaged the USSR in a strategic arms race even as it waged in nonnuclear wars of aggression and military intervention worldwide to expand and consolidate global hegemony. However, under the intimidating shadow of the US nuclear umbrella, hundreds of millions of people came under the oppression and exploitation of the US and local reactionaries. Tens of millions were killed in US wars of aggression and intervention in Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and elsewhere. Millions of people were also massacred in Indonesia and other countries under puppet regimes of terror directed by the US.

The US forces invaded Iraq in 2003 under the pretext of destroying mythical weapons of mass destruction allegedly possessed by the Saddam regime. But it is the US, which has the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, biological, chemical and nuclear. The US has nuclear weapons with no less than 10,600 nuclear warheads intact, 8,000 of which are considered active or operational and 3,000 ready to deploy from its "Enduring Stockpile".

The US has also used 320 tons of depleted uranium artillery in the 1990 Gulf war. This has accounted for the eventual illness and death of tens of thousands of US troops after the war. Depleted uranium has also been used in the US wars of aggression against Yugoslavia. It is still being used in the renewed US aggression and occupation of Iraq despite the deadly effects and numerous health risks to soldiers and civilians.

US imperialism has long been the top World Merchant of Death. It amassed immense profits from selling armaments to both sides in the two world wars of the 20th century before joining the fray and collecting further spoils. Since 1990, the US has exported USD 152B worth of weapons in the form of sales and assistance. In 2001, it exported war material to no less than 170 nations and has earned USD 13.1B in that year alone, under the aegis of the "war on terror".

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