EPTNuclear Launch Detected... =o - Page 11
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Meiya
Australia1169 Posts
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Arbiter[frolix]
United Kingdom2674 Posts
I am always interested to see the sheer number of people who are willing to stand up and defend to the hilt the right to indiscriminately kill tens of thousands of civilians in order to achieve a political/military objective. Further, even on practical grounds the "we needed to do it to avoid a terrible invasion of the Japanese mainland" does not stand up to serious scrutiny. That "justification" was a very successful propaganda victory. Actually, I seem to recall some posts by mensrea a few years ago on this forum on this very issue which neatly exploded that particular myth. | ||
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stenole
Norway869 Posts
You could argue that civilians are valid targets because they are part of the infrastructure that powers a waring empire. That kind of logic can lead to some other gruesome conclussions though. | ||
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jtan
Sweden5891 Posts
On September 11 2004 22:25 mensrea wrote: I am constantly amazed at the level of ignorance on this board. There are now literally dozens of well-researched books on this topic. They are all based on newly de-classified documents and records from that era. None of them even tries to suggest anymore that nuking Nagasaki and Hiroshima "saved" lives. That was the line that was given to the American people by Harry S. himself 60 years ago. The only people who repeat this ridiculous fabrication are members of the American mass media - and dumbass highschool teachers who failed history 101 when they themselves went to school. Look, kiddies. Let me try to make this simple for you. Japan is an island. The US had at its disposal the greatest navy known to human history during WWII. The reason why Japan will never ever become a superpower (at least not without another landgrab) is precisely because it is susceptible to a naval blockade. Blockade the island and the nation will, literally, starve to death. If the US was REALLY engaged in a soul-searching balancing game of choosing the "lesser of the two evils," they had open to them the simple solution of waiting out the Japs and it would have been over in another few months. Japan's desperate position before the dropping of the two bombs is confirmed by actual internal documents from that era, both Japanese and American, that confirm that the Japanese, as soon as they lost Iwo Jima, and well before any mushroom cloud made an appearance, were seriously considering surrender. What choice did they have? They thought (wrongly, as it turned out) the Americans would carpet bomb the island into oblivion (as the Americans were already doing) while the US navy slowly squeezed Japan's lifeline (i.e. food + oil - Japan was not, and still is not, self-sufficient in either of these) until the country simply either died or gave up. Given this prospect, it's now known that all but the few die-hard fanatics left within the Japanese military high command were ready to settle for peace. Like I said, what other choice did they have? The stories about an entire nation armed to the teeth ready to die for their Emperor is a fantastic generalization. It's the stuff of movies. Not real people. But, of course, for simpletons looking for a way to justify mass muder on an unprecedented scale, it's all too easy to assume that 100 million people with normal wants, needs and motivations would be just like the heavily indoctrinated (and tranquilized) kamikaze pilots. So, the US went ahead and dropped Little Boy and Fat Man anyway (That's TWO bombs, not one. And nobody wonders why. But, that's another story and a half...). The Americans couldn't wait a few months and it was in no mood to negotiate a peace. It certainly wasn't interested in saving people's lives (American or otherwise). I was originally going to discuss this important topic in more detail, but I'm thinking now it may be a waste of my time. I mean, if some of you are still at the level of "well, we saved millions by killing 500,000 Japs who were all ready to die anyway" then there's little point in going into complicated issues of geopolitics and brewing ideological conflict I think. It's all public information anyway. And google's always ready to help out. Just stop this nonsense about the US using nukes on 500,000 innocent civilians to "save lives." You guys make Bin Laden sound sane. EDIT: And no, I'm not anti-American. I'm anti-bullshit. | ||
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EmeraldSparks
United States1451 Posts
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
On November 02 2008 19:50 Daigomi wrote: To justifty something means to make it just (as in justice). That means it concerns more than just our selfish wants, or what benefits us. It has to do with a global good or bad, wrong or right. Like, if your father killed a person, you might say that you would prefer it if he wasn't sent to prison, but that doesn't make not sending him to prison justifiable. Problem here. Justice exists only as interpreted by the acting sovereign entity, making sense of justice, or "will of god", etc, to be internationally relative, not globally constant. And while it is a good philosophical exercise to abstract certain principles to the universal, there exists no absolute standard, and in practice, each nation looks to its own will. To expect anything else, is unrealistic. Frankly, I want my country to have a bias towards its citizens. This leads to a broader subject about global government, but that's clearly off-topic. Application to nukes in japan: well that's already been well-discussed. There are many paradigms you can analyze the situation with respect to, and when it comes to raw human life (no more of this "civilian lives are worth more" fallacy please) I choose a utilitarian perspective: lowest net-deaths is best choice, and bombs clearly made that happen. I take as a given that the Unites States' cause was just, and am simply evaluating the means (use of bomb) only. But I like that you are uneasy with a "ends justify the means" approach. I normally avoid this too. In this thread, I venture that those who see the bombs as "unjust" would be forced to label all wars as "unjust" because there is essentially nothing different, it's just an effective weapon. War is hell. Seems a lot of people have the postWW2 view of the united states as a big brother in the world, who has to make "nice" wars. It makes me laugh, that people don't know what war is. | ||
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ItchReliever
2489 Posts
On the second day after the Nagasaki bomb, Truman stated: "The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him like a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true". (from wiki) | ||
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Dagor
Germany64 Posts
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EmeraldSparks
United States1451 Posts
The only people who repeat this ridiculous fabrication are members of the American mass media - and dumbass highschool teachers who failed history 101 when they themselves went to school. You are empirically incorrect. I fall into neither two of those categories. Blockade the island and the nation will, literally, starve to death. If the US was REALLY engaged in a soul-searching balancing game of choosing the "lesser of the two evils," they had open to them the simple solution of waiting out the Japs and it would have been over in another few months. In another few months, a few hundred thousand more people would have died. Given this prospect, it's now known that all but the few die-hard fanatics left within the Japanese military high command were ready to settle for peace. What constitutes a few die-hard fanatics? There were many die-hard fanatics that weren't ready to surrender after the second bomb dropped. In a hypothetical absence of nuclear weapons and carpet bombing, this faction would have been substantially, substantially stronger. The stories about an entire nation armed to the teeth ready to die for their Emperor is a fantastic generalization. It's the stuff of movies. Not real people. So, the first-hand Japanese accounts I've read on how they were trained in the use of spears was a fabrication? It certainly wasn't interested in saving people's lives (American or otherwise). Even if saving lives wasn't the first interest of the American high command (if one is to consider American lives only that is certainly up for dispute,) if an analysis concludes that it did save lives I don't believe the former invalidates the latter. | ||
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
TRUMAN! Did u know that u can liek to'lly just blockade the island instead? ez gg no re | ||
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Louder
United States2276 Posts
On November 02 2008 14:54 baal wrote: you dont kill children to save soldiers You can invade a country the size of Japan without excessive civilian casualties in any case. Naive much? | ||
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
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Motiva
United States1774 Posts
On November 02 2008 20:28 HeadBangaa wrote: I still don't understand why a child is worth more than a soldier. How many USD? | ||
Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
On November 02 2008 20:09 HeadBangaa wrote: Problem here. Justice exists only as interpreted by the acting sovereign entity, making sense of justice, or "will of god", etc, to be internationally relative, not globally constant. And while it is a good philosophical exercise to abstract certain principles to the universal, there exists no absolute standard, and in practice, each nation looks to its own will. To expect anything else, is unrealistic. Frankly, I want my country to have a bias towards its citizens. This leads to a broader subject about global government, but that's clearly off-topic. Application to nukes in japan: well that's already been well-discussed. There are many paradigms you can analyze the situation with respect to, and when it comes to raw human life (no more of this "civilian lives are worth more" fallacy please) I choose a utilitarian perspective: lowest net-deaths is best choice, and bombs clearly made that happen. But I like that you are uneasy with a "ends justify the means" approach. I normally avoid this too. In this thread, I venture that those who see the bombs as "unjust" would be forced to label all wars as "unjust" because there is essentially nothing different, it's just an effective weapon. War is hell. I do understand that perfectly, I even made a post about it how the context might make the nukes justifiable a bit earlier in this thread, and you might remember the very long discussion on "objective truth" in some Richard Dawkins post a while ago. I was just simplifying it a bit for the purpose of explanation. I generally agree with you on the idea of a utilitarian perspective on lives, with less being better. I further agree with you that civilian lives are not "worth more" than military lives. However, civillians being killed is fundamentally different, to me at least, from soldiers getting killed. Killing civillians is, as I explained earlier, a very slippery slope, as it leads to more violent wars with as no more, or even less, results. Also, utilitarianism's great problem is with human lives, because human lives cannot be given a "value". If we take a purely utilitarian point of view the government should be allowed to take you from your home and inject you with a potentially lethal injection if it might save other people's lives, or any other form of sacrificing one person's lives for others. The thing with war is that soldiers sign up for war, and by signing up they accept that they might potentially die. This is very similar perhaps to the way in which a gang member or drug dealer accept that in their line of work they may die (although obviously the soldier is dying for a good cause, while the drug dealer isn't). Thus when a soldier dies, it's sad but it was in his job description. However, when a civillian dies because of war (which is a soldier's business), it's the same as if innocents die when a drug deal goes wrong. I think it's because of this that we need to respect soldiers so much. They are basically taking the responsibility of saving our lives into their own hands, and they do it knowing that they might die. It's a very noble ideal (although the execution is obviously not always that noble). | ||
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CruiseR
Poland4014 Posts
justified | ||
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kemoryan
Spain1506 Posts
I thought the poll would result in a pretty much 99% saying NO. But I was amazed almost half of the people thought it was justified. Damn... | ||
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Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
A fallacy refers very specifically to a flaw in logical deduction, and while children's lives might be worth more or less in war is up for debate, it's definitely not a fallacy. The same can be said for when someone calls someone else ignorant. Ignorance implies that someone doesn't know better. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that they are ignorant, so don't use the word ignorant unless someone very specifically doesn't have the knowledge necessary to argue what they are arguing (like micronesia could say there is a lot of ignorance in this thread, while I couldn't say that even if I disagreed with other people's opinions). Finally, from this thread, being "empirically incorrect" means that the knowledge they received from their senses is incorrect. Since we are speaking on the internet, and we are talking about abstract categories like "members of the mass media", it's very difficult for him to be empirically incorrect. You could however say he is "rationally incorrect", which sounds stupid, but is actually rationally correct. Just say what you want to say. | ||
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
I had more to say but honestly I'm 4 beers in and I can't remember my thoughts. | ||
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luiohh
Bangladesh78 Posts
Reenactment of hiroshima bombing | ||
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
On November 02 2008 20:46 Daigomi wrote: Something that really bothers me is when people use words incorrectly. A fallacy refers very specifically to a flaw in logical deduction, and while children's lives might be worth more or less in war is up for debate, it's definitely not a fallacy. I know you aren't aiming directly at me, but behind most wrong notions is a logical fallacy, given that the person put any (mis-)thought into their opinion. I never judge people on their conclusions, and always by their logical primitives. I assume when someone says, "a civlian is worth more than a soldier" they are committing an appeal to emotion. In every post in this thread, I've purposely provoked the defense of this notion, to no avail! | ||
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