EPTI also find it hilarious that the US is demanding other countries to stop nuclear weapons development. If I were those other countries, I would not take us seriously at all.
Nuclear Launch Detected... =o - Page 12
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ktp
United States797 Posts
I also find it hilarious that the US is demanding other countries to stop nuclear weapons development. If I were those other countries, I would not take us seriously at all. | ||
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CrimsonLotus
Colombia1123 Posts
But launch them on large cities was just criminal, there was absolutely no need to kill so many civilians, Japan had already paid really big for Pearl Harbor. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
From recollections of Okinawa, the Philippines and Iwo Jima, it's clear that the Japanese soldier, out of duty, was willing to fight suicidally against hopeless odds. However the figures extrapolated from Okinawa to establish the projected American casualties (at a million or more) in the invasion of Japan were extremely improbable. A redemption of the decision to use the Atomic Bomb hinges on these considerations: Japan must be defeated, the loss of Allied lives must be limited, and Japan continued to possess considerable powers of resistance. The relationship of these three facts posed a problem which could only be solved by eliminating one of these conditions: Japanese resistance could be reduced, a massive loss of allied lives could be accepted, or the goal of defeating of Japan could be abandoned in lieu of a negotiated peace. The breaking of enemy morale was the entire raison d'etre of carpet bombing, coined by Arthur Harris as a way of defeating Germany at a minimal expense in lives. The experience of 1940, as well as 1942-1945 ought to have this doctrine: the Blitz did not shake British defiance, nor did the death of half a million German civilians and displacement of millions of others radically alter the military consequences. By August 45, hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives had been destroyed by firebombing, without breaking national morale. The Japanese soldier fought after Hiroshima as he did before Hiroshima. The manner in which Japan finally surrendered was a repudiation of terror bombing. The limitation of allied loss of lives is an ipso facto objective of military action. The surrender of Japan, if it could not be achieved by breaking the enemy morale and preferably not achieved by physical exertions disproportionate to the purpose, was inevitably going to be a negotiated one. This is in effect what actually happened. The initiative was taken by Hirohito to attempt negotiations through the Soviet Union, with the objective of a negotiated capitulation. There existed a window of opportunity in the final months of the war to arrive at a conclusion by surrender terms short of unconditional surrender. If guarantees for the Emperor could be made, as well as for the civilian government, it would have been probable that these could have been divorced from the military hard-liners pressing for continuation of the war, and peace made without substantial material differences from the one extracted on Aug. 15. An even earlier peace would have been probable if the allies renounced the principles of unconditional surrender, regime change, war crime trials and the total physical occupation of the Japanese islands, all of which are innovations of modern war diplomacy, largely unpracticed before WW2. As it was, the formula of unconditional surrender was uttered again at the Potsdam conference, the Soviet Union harbouring its own ambitions against Japan did not facilitate negotiations, and after the A-Bombs, the Emperor overruled his cabinet and forced a semi-conditional surrender protecting the Imperial family. What happened at the end of the war was not a failure of morality (at least not more than what had already taken place in the war) but an mental inflexibility exercised by the victorious faction. The formula unconditional surrender stiffened resistance in both Germany and Japan and eliminated traditional diplomacy as a parallel strategy in wartime. By refusing to deal with certain regimes as a matter of principle, only the contest of force remains, and this contest must continue beyond the original points of contention, until the utter ruin of one side or the other. The Father of Western War Legality, Cicero, formulated two thousand years ago that war was justifiable only to exact unawarded reparation from undue injuries. The righting of wrongs originally committed ought to be both the cause and the end. The Second World War was conducted in a spirit anathema to such. | ||
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EmeraldSparks
United States1451 Posts
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. Meh, I was cheekily suggesting myself as a counterexample, which I presume would be enough to demonstrate empirical (evidence-based?) incorrectness. Not that I can actually demonstrate that I'm not a "member of the American mass media" but oh well. | ||
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Ethenielle
Norway1006 Posts
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Heyoka
Katowice25012 Posts
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Meiya
Australia1169 Posts
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-orb-
United States5770 Posts
Fucking NO | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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. so bad this must be a troll | ||
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Kong John
Denmark1020 Posts
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Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
On November 02 2008 21:09 EmeraldSparks wrote: Meh, I was cheekily suggesting myself as a counterexample, which I presume would be enough to demonstrate empirical (evidence-based?) incorrectness. Not that I can actually demonstrate that I'm not a "member of the American mass media" but oh well. Haha, I really had to consider that statement a while (which is why I took so long to post). It immediately felt wrong to me, but as you say, empiricism is based on evidence. However, in the end I decided that while your statement does supply counter-evidence, empricism is based on sensory evidence above purely-rational evidence, and thus it would still be incorrect. However, as long as you intentionally used empirical evidence I don't actually mind it though, it's when people say additional things which sound cool but are actually wrong that it bothers me. If you intentionally state something, whether it's techinically right or wrong, I don't mind! As I said, it's more a personal pet peeve than some need I feel to fix the world's choice of words! | ||
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Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
On November 02 2008 21:19 oneofthem wrote: stop trying to do metaethics. you are doing it wrong. kthxbai so bad this must be a troll Instead of just saying it's bad, perhaps explain what's wrong with his reasoning? | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
and national units are a horribly arbitrary and fail unit of moral community. imagine such an analogy being applied to the German Nation in ww2. moral relativism is either a condition relevant to political structure, which is not our topic here, or the statement that one cannot discursively deduce moral certainties. it is not meant to be applied to specific moral principles, since one moral position is not better protected from vulgar relativism than any other. in any case, the portion i quoted did not even make a relativist argument. it is just a nonsequitur that pretended to be a fallacious argument. | ||
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Lachrymose
Australia1928 Posts
On November 02 2008 15:03 Amber[LighT] wrote: and they had kamikaze pilots?! WTF is that shit? It's okay to kill yourself and take out "x" amount of lives, but it's not okay to end a war that would have had casualties that outnumbered those lost on the two bombings? are you seriously trying to make that arguement? that destroying a military target and therefore killing soldiers is the same thing as killing hundreds of thousands of civilians? that this is only true because they used a suicide attack and therefore "cheated"(???)? -_- | ||
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Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
On November 02 2008 21:33 oneofthem wrote: it is the classic vulgar relativism trap. saying "in practice, each nation looks to its own will" is preferable to any particular position is still taking a position. and national units are a horribly arbitrary and fail unit of moral community. imagine such an analogy being applied to the German Nation in ww2. It's not relativism, it's contextualism. He is not saying that there's no right or wrong, and that it is all relative, he is saying that what is right or wrong depends on the context. He also never said that no position should be taken, he said that no global or essential position can be taken. And your final argument seems to be that he is saying that each country is free to determine its own morality, which is not the way I interpreted that comment. I interpreted him to say that while nations do have the responsibility to act ethically (this is not mentioned, but you can assume that it is meant as he never states anything contrary to it), it is important that they place the needs of their own citizens first, which is a very characteristic trait of both individualism and capitalism. While the moral merits of such a trait is debateable, it's definitely not "so bad that it must be trolling". | ||
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BlackJack
United States10568 Posts
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
Indeed, in the excerpt you quoted, I decoupled good ethical philosophy from pragmatic implementations. I accused contradictions of being "unrealistic", that is, too ideological to measure against imperfect international governance (I never made a "should" statement). Then you storm in about how my deontology is problematic... Now who's a non-sequiter troll? | ||
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Klockan3
Sweden2866 Posts
In the end those nukes saved Japan from their horrible regime and it also saved a lot of American soldiers. And imo starving civilians to death by blockading the nation until they surrender would not be any better either, since the military got first dibs on all of the food the civilians would for sure be the first ones to suffer. Also both civilians and soldiers are as innocent. The soldiers are not those who started the war. The reason you generally do not slaughter civilians is that in a normal situation you gain almost nothing through it so it is just an act of terror, not because they are defenseless. The reason some still slaughter them is just because they are defenseless and thus therefore for the effort to kill them it could be worth it, and thats despicable. However against a nuclear raid both civilians and military are as defenseless, it do not really matter what they bomb. Note though that there are plenty of military bases compared to cities and as such to get the same effect they would have to throw a lot more nukes and therefore radiate the whole island instead of just these 2. They might have gone overboard with two nukes, but what they were after was the shock and for that two nukes are ten times as effective as a single one and if that were not enough to make them surrender you would have to throw even more at them next time. Normal bombing have almost no effect on these things since it just dwindles your population slowly while if you in an instant loses two cities you will almost doubtless surrender. At least it is in my opinion that this probably saved a lot in both japan and for the US. If they had thrown the two nukes earlier before all of the minor bomb runs they could have saved another million but oh well. And as said, starving them to death is no different than bombing them to death. | ||
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hiroxx
Ireland115 Posts
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ilovehnk
475 Posts
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