On November 04 2008 02:57 bahaa wrote: Yeah it's impossible according to the USA to target "Al-Qaeda" in Iraq and Afghanstan without killing civilians, which makes it justifiable right? Then I will come and wage war on you and say it's impossible to tell where you are and drop a bomb to slay your whole neighborhood in the process. Human blood isn't cheap. Everyone who harms a fingertip of an innocent person will be held accountable for his/her actions on judgement day (that if you believe in it, depends).
=p The U.S. Spends billions of dollars on smart bombs to just take out certain positions with minimal collateral damage. We could have easily spend 1/4th that money on dumb bombs and level the entire place. Really it's just splitting hairs.
Get this: no one thinks its cool because someone has a lots of bombs. USA is so sad to brag about their guns and weapons all the time. Disgusting.
It's nice you find the stupidest people in America to broadcast. Hey you need someone to clean the toilets and do the work people with intelligence don't want to do. It's why i made threads like this. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=81441 There are stupid people all over the world =p get over it
On November 04 2008 03:40 IzzyCraft wrote: Being a president during a war that last more then 4 years is bad it usually breaks your political carrier. Democracy has a short attention span and quickly get sick of wars.
thats not really true, being involved in a war has been a good way to get reelected for american presidents.. both truman and roosevelt were reelected, both were involved in ww2, wilson was in ww1, also reelected, nixon was in vietnam war, also reelected.. lyndon.b johnson didnt apply for reelection..
On November 04 2008 02:57 bahaa wrote: Yeah it's impossible according to the USA to target "Al-Qaeda" in Iraq and Afghanstan without killing civilians, which makes it justifiable right? Then I will come and wage war on you and say it's impossible to tell where you are and drop a bomb to slay your whole neighborhood in the process. Human blood isn't cheap. Everyone who harms a fingertip of an innocent person will be held accountable for his/her actions on judgement day (that if you believe in it, depends).
=p The U.S. Spends billions of dollars on smart bombs to just take out certain positions with minimal collateral damage. We could have easily spend 1/4th that money on dumb bombs and level the entire place. Really it's just splitting hairs.
The reason why the US military developed those smart bombs because its a lot cheaper to deploy one or two and take out a specific target than just use one hundred normal bombs and maybe fail, its not because of the kindness of their hearts.
And the US goverment couldnt care less about civilian casualties (the Irak war showed us that), they just want to be able to show how "humane" they are by not bombing an entire city block just to take one terrorist.
that counters one of the 5 presidents I mentioned, and nixon was supporting the vietnam war from the beginning. and, nixon broke his political career by something not related to the vietnam war.
It's a question of whether one wants to sacrifice his own soldiers to save his enemy's civilian lives. Hard decision to make and I doubt anyone can fully understand the circumstances surrounding this issue unless he's a subject matter expert. Though they probably should've waited more than three days before dropping the second one.
You ask the average Japanese what the Nanking massacre was and they'll most likely not know. Lots of dead civilians there too. So maybe they had it coming, hard to say.
On November 03 2008 14:48 Savio wrote: People saying that these bombings were worse than Pearl Harbor are ignoring the fact that Pearl Harbor was an attack on a country they weren't even at war with!
If you start a war all on your own by hitting them before even announcing that you are at war, then YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE TO COMPLAIN ONCE YOU GET JACKED.
Of those 2 attacks, 1 was between 2 wartime countries and the other was between 2 countries that were currently at peace with eachother.
War is Hell and should be avoided. But when you are attacked first, you take the Hell to them until they quit.
In other words, Pearl Harbor justifies murdering over 100,000 civilians, including women and children?
The amount of posters here who apparently believe that civilians are legitimate targets in wartime (and who therefore don't believe in the concept of war crime) is truly astounding.
Rather than be astounded, why not consider the opposing points?
In true wartime there is no such thing as "rules". IF there are rules they are almost always retrospectively announced (after the benefits of the action in question are milked dry), and always is always performed by the winners, sometimes with the critical eye of history. The term "war criminal" is completely subjective, and if youre going to point to Nuremberg to make your point, dont; I do agree that what they did was completely reprehensible and horrible but if the Germans had won and the Nazi vision won out what do you think would have happened? In Hitler's vision, that was "justifiable".
I see your point that civilian lives should be a completely different category from that of a soldier (i mean, who wants to be involved in fighting right? I'm a pacifist too.), but if you think wars are just a chess match between countries your idealism is horribly, horribly misplaced. Wars are avoided because they can cause devastation to the most sacred untouchable parts of your life. Its a rape of culture, land and people on your enemy on a massive scale and the more critical the resources being fought over, the nastier all combatants will get.
World War II was epic in ways many people fail to comprehend the magnitude of the event. From the US perspective, after loosing hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both fronts, why in the living fuck would you risk any more of your soldiers to save ANYONE from a country that you were at war with? In a humanitarian perspective, 10 soldiers lost is equal to 10 civilians lost (though some of you would argue not). In that situation, wherein you have the choice of either
1. starving Japan through blockade 2. orchestrating a full-scale invasion of Japan 3. dropping the bomb
# 3 was the most capable of fulfilling the goals of the US, in minimizing casualties to its own people and economy, at least in the eyes of US brass AND politicians.
The problem with the term "justification" is that like many concepts considered absolute...its not. Its a relative term, dictated by the zeitgeist and those in power.
I'd like to pose this question too: If today the US was nuked by Russia (I know some of you consider that "justified" anyways. Fuck America, right?), what do you think the response would be? Would it be justified?
A very, very misguided post. Considering that I actually held the view that the a-bombs were justified for quite some time before changing my mind, I'm fully aware of the reasoning behind the "opposing points".
It is absolutely false and wrong to say that there are no rules in wartime. Yes, minor atrocities in warfare are generally unavoidable and it's unreasonable to expect war to be entirely "clean". But this in no way implies that there are no rules, period. Just because human beings can't act honorably and humanely all the time doesn't mean that we shouldn't even strive to be honorable and humane. Moreover, there is a MAJOR difference between spontaneous minor atrocities committed by soliders who are literally fighting for their and their comerades' lives, and a top-down POLICY of mass murder.
WHY was the unconditional surrender of Japan so necessary that it was worth it to destroy innocent human life on an unprecedented scale?
The point I'm trying to make here is that the agreed upon rules of engagement in wartime situations flies out the window when the stakes are high enough.
Therefore, it is acceptable to kill 100,000 noncombatants including women and children.
I am not saying that we shouldn't act reasonably or like human beings - I just wanted to shed light on the the greyish nature of "justification" and why people did what they did.
Whatever the case was, the fact that the bombs WERE dropped implies that there was "justification" for it by the government.
By your logic, a murderer ought to be excused on the grounds that "he has his reasons". Of course there was "a justification" for the bombing - pointing this out is redundant. The question is whether it was right.
You may disagree with their debriefed reasoning, but given the situation I suspect it had less to do with irrational hatred
Who said anything about "irrational hatred"? I have no clue where you got this from.
than than a cold, calculated maneuver to place the US at the top of the international food chain and thus justified (to Americans, of course).
Ah, and that is what makes it ok. If that's your argument, you've got to be kidding.
Unconditional surrender is meant to break morel of the losing side people to put end to the war in a manner that they cannot say they did something good about going to war. It's really meant to make it black and white your lost you where wrong. Also bombing cities back then was not an agreed upon no no. Only chemical warfare was banned by all country's back then. Bombing of cities was open game back then. Frankly put blame people for putting military purpose factories in cities. Hell Hollywood was a big plane manufacturer during the war. Simply put unless the city has no ties to the military it's hard to say they are civilians. Civilians make the guns Soldiers use the guns is it wrong to stop the civilian? Frankly people in this thread don't understand the times burning cities was common place back then it was very acceptable. I can say child labor is wrong now but i can't say it wasn't wildly accepted in the early 20th century and why not people need money to eat and competition for jobs in a poorly regulated country is hard. There is no point in calling progress wrong, how do you know it's wrong unless someone did it. The 1st bomb is fully okay the 2nd bomb may have been overboard but it did it's job got japan to finally accept a 1 condition surrender (being the emperor of japan would remain untouched).
On November 04 2008 04:03 Coca Cola Classic wrote: There's a reason another atom bomb hasn't been used since.
Frankly it's hard to even name a situation in which one could use it in present day i mean unless there was a full scale war which is highly unlikely it's hard to even consider it. I mean the only partially accepted use is a FUCK YOU retaliation of nuke to nuke MAD.
All other arguments aside, the one which really grates is the following: anything goes in war. It is stated by some with such confidence, as if it is reporting an obvious truth. As far as I am concerned it is an illegitimate abdication of one's responsibility as a moral agent, as a human being.
On November 04 2008 04:17 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: All other arguments aside, the one which really grates is the following: anything goes in war. It is stated by some with such confidence, as if it is reporting an obvious truth. As far as I am concerned it is an illegitimate abdication of one's responsibility as a moral agent, as a human being.
I'm not actually sure over 10% of the readers of this thread can understand the last proposal of the segment.
Human being isn't 100% logical and morality is nothing more then a construct in which survival out paces in any body that wants to live. Show me a man that wouldn't say kill a guy in order to save his entire family then i show you a man with either weak constitution or a stronger moral construct then the vast majority of a given population. Maybe in time such thoughts of war and other things will come to past but as long as we aren't living in a utopia can't say shit to the man that kills a few to save others.
On November 04 2008 02:57 bahaa wrote: Yeah it's impossible according to the USA to target "Al-Qaeda" in Iraq and Afghanstan without killing civilians, which makes it justifiable right? Then I will come and wage war on you and say it's impossible to tell where you are and drop a bomb to slay your whole neighborhood in the process. Human blood isn't cheap. Everyone who harms a fingertip of an innocent person will be held accountable for his/her actions on judgement day (that if you believe in it, depends).
=p The U.S. Spends billions of dollars on smart bombs to just take out certain positions with minimal collateral damage. We could have easily spend 1/4th that money on dumb bombs and level the entire place. Really it's just splitting hairs.
The reason why the US military developed those smart bombs because its a lot cheaper to deploy one or two and take out a specific target than just use one hundred normal bombs and maybe fail, its not because of the kindness of their hearts.
And the US goverment couldnt care less about civilian casualties (the Irak war showed us that), they just want to be able to show how "humane" they are by not bombing an entire city block just to take one terrorist.
This is total crap. Everything you wrote is wrong. You shouldn't even be posting.
He just needs to look up how much one of our smart bomb cost vs a dumb bomb Hint one is like 10000x more expensive. Hell our javlian RPG is a 3 million dollar rocket.
On November 04 2008 04:17 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: All other arguments aside, the one which really grates is the following: anything goes in war. It is stated by some with such confidence, as if it is reporting an obvious truth. As far as I am concerned it is an illegitimate abdication of one's responsibility as a moral agent, as a human being.
The real issue is that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not any different in terms of outcome than the bombing of any other city in WWII. Germans bombed the heck out of London (I'm sure that didn't kill any civilians).
Britain and the US bombed Berlin (again, surely there could have been no civilians killed).
Gernmany messed up Stalingrad and Leningrad with (I am sure) no civilian casualties.
And the US firebombed Tokyo.
In any of these, lots and lots of civilians died. The ONLY difference between those and the nukes is that the word "nuclear" is involved and that has more "shock value".
So people are basing their opinions on the shock value of the word instead of the outcome which is not that different from the bombing of these other large cities.
Its a sad thing to base opinion on. It shows some shallowness.
absolutely. the loss of human life was minimal compared to what would've happened if there was an invasion.
edit: A war is a war. Just as many noncombatants would've died anyways if Japan was invaded. The loss of civilian life in a conflict of that magnitude is reasonable imo.
On November 04 2008 04:17 Arbiter[frolix] wrote: All other arguments aside, the one which really grates is the following: anything goes in war. It is stated by some with such confidence, as if it is reporting an obvious truth. As far as I am concerned it is an illegitimate abdication of one's responsibility as a moral agent, as a human being.
The real issue is that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not any different in terms of outcome than the bombing of any other city in WWII. Germans bombed the heck out of London (I'm sure that didn't kill any civilians).
Britain and the US bombed Berlin (again, surely there could have been no civilians killed).
Gernmany messed up Stalingrad and Leningrad with (I am sure) no civilian casualties.
And the US firebombed Tokyo.
In any of these, lots and lots of civilians died. The ONLY difference between those and the nukes is that the word "nuclear" is involved and that has more "shock value".
So people are basing their opinions on the shock value of the word instead of the outcome which is not that different from the bombing of these other large cities.
Its a sad thing to base opinion on. It shows some shallowness.
The difference between nukes and more conventional firebombing is that nukes deal almost permanent damage on the target area. I don't have any numbers before me, but there have been a lot of lives ruined even in the past 50 years because of those bombs. you are correct though, the conventional weaponry used during WW2 was certainly capable of delivering death and destruction and ruin en masse, and enemy civilians were targeted by every single participant in world war 2. the firebombings of dresden lead to an unknown amount of dead, with numbers ranging between 25000 and 200000 depending on sources. (which usually means the number is somewhere inbetween. )
but the difference is that nuclear weapons deal long term damage unlike any other. of course, the world during WW2 was not aware of how severe these long term effects were (how much they knew I believe is impossible to ever find out), hence it becomes an even more difficult subject.. should they employ a weapon which is largely untested and which can have unknown sideeffects? after this, we have been more aware of these effects, which is why today, nuclear weapons are associated with the complete and total destruction of the human race : they make an area far less hospitable for humans who want to live there in the future.
I believe truman had no real choice based on the information he had. in retrospect however, you can make a case that they should never have been used. however, had they never been used and the long term effects shown themselves as less severe, I believe trumans decision would be equally debated, even more so on a short term basis.
EPT
