- 12 Sep 2017 21:52
#14843060
The Second World War happened over 70 years ago. War is, by definition, immoral, awful, ugly, etc. A lot of bad things happened. A lot of people died. Most of the people who died weren't even combatants.
You are severely misreading my comments on things that happened before most of us were born, and seeming to imply I am saying it's OK to indiscriminately slaughter civilians. I will rephrase what I'm saying, then.
During the war, each side killed civilians, deliberately. The killing of civilians, on countless occasions, was deliberate. It wasn't necessarily that each side, every single time, thought to themselves, "Say, let's bomb this area because there's civilians here, let's deliberately do that." An area had something valuable: factories, industry, railroads, other infrastructure, or even simply a relatively intact city that ought to be leveled to reduce the enemy's morale and their capacity to fight.
The functioning air force of each side engaged in the bombing of population centers. WWII became a total war.
That being said, the destruction we've seen in pictures and video of the explosions and the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was akin to a single-serving intense carpet bombing of population centers. There were literally countless Hiroshimas and Nagasakis during WWII. There were literally countless towns, villages, and cities completely burned out, leveled, destroyed, and countless millions slaughtered.
The point is that there is nothing intrinsically worse about Hiroshima and Nagasaki than any of the other population centers the Allies and the Axis powers wiped out. In both cases, the destruction was instantaneous and the majority of the dead died in the first moments rather than a period of days, weeks, or months in other cases, but the suffering was as real, and the carnage as real, and the destruction and devastation as real as any other city wiped out during the war.
When a state of total war exists, it isn't necessarily right or wrong, but simply a matter of survival and winning the war at any cost. The USSR had to fight back against Nazi terror with an equal measure of total war in order to survive: the quicker they defeated the enemy, the quicker the war would be over, and a quick end to the loss of life.
The indiscriminate killing of civilians is of course, by definition, immoral. But, as I already said, we (and the other side) were already engaged in the bombing and destruction of whole cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply two more destroyed cities, and were simply two more such atrocities in a countless list of atrocities seen in WWII, committed by every side.
foxdemon wrote:What! You are joking, right? You are trying to argue that any things goes. This is not true in reality as there is conventions and laws which attempt to limit behaviour in war.
The Second World War happened over 70 years ago. War is, by definition, immoral, awful, ugly, etc. A lot of bad things happened. A lot of people died. Most of the people who died weren't even combatants.
You are severely misreading my comments on things that happened before most of us were born, and seeming to imply I am saying it's OK to indiscriminately slaughter civilians. I will rephrase what I'm saying, then.
During the war, each side killed civilians, deliberately. The killing of civilians, on countless occasions, was deliberate. It wasn't necessarily that each side, every single time, thought to themselves, "Say, let's bomb this area because there's civilians here, let's deliberately do that." An area had something valuable: factories, industry, railroads, other infrastructure, or even simply a relatively intact city that ought to be leveled to reduce the enemy's morale and their capacity to fight.
The functioning air force of each side engaged in the bombing of population centers. WWII became a total war.
That being said, the destruction we've seen in pictures and video of the explosions and the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was akin to a single-serving intense carpet bombing of population centers. There were literally countless Hiroshimas and Nagasakis during WWII. There were literally countless towns, villages, and cities completely burned out, leveled, destroyed, and countless millions slaughtered.
The point is that there is nothing intrinsically worse about Hiroshima and Nagasaki than any of the other population centers the Allies and the Axis powers wiped out. In both cases, the destruction was instantaneous and the majority of the dead died in the first moments rather than a period of days, weeks, or months in other cases, but the suffering was as real, and the carnage as real, and the destruction and devastation as real as any other city wiped out during the war.
When a state of total war exists, it isn't necessarily right or wrong, but simply a matter of survival and winning the war at any cost. The USSR had to fight back against Nazi terror with an equal measure of total war in order to survive: the quicker they defeated the enemy, the quicker the war would be over, and a quick end to the loss of life.
The indiscriminate killing of civilians is of course, by definition, immoral. But, as I already said, we (and the other side) were already engaged in the bombing and destruction of whole cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were simply two more destroyed cities, and were simply two more such atrocities in a countless list of atrocities seen in WWII, committed by every side.
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