Was the nuclear strike on Imperial Japan justifiable? - Page 12 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The Second World War (1939-1945).
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
#14409153
redcarpet wrote:There is such a thing as unexploded bombs. All three branches of the US military suffered a lot of inefficiencies from the military industrial complex. The US Air Force in particular.

Whether we're talking about dud torpedoes of US submarines or US Air Force bombs, failure rates were probably the highest for the US than any Allied Power.

Didn't you know that, sir?


What you've just written has nothing to do with what Tailz, myself, and others were discussing.

Tailz wrote wrote:As for nukes, we place atomic weapons upon a pedestal in the panthon of weapons of war because these were the first weapons humanity created that could wipe out a city with one device, plus building them was such a technological advance and required so much in the way of resources. But there is no difference between the destruction wrought by a single nuke or the fire bombing of an entire city.


Tailz was making a point how the act of destruction of a city by a multitude of bombs or a single powerful bomb has no physical difference. While I still agree that this is an obvious fact, that a city destroyed by a rain of bombs is as destroyed as a city destroyed by a massive solitary bomb, I responded to him by mentioning the effects of nuclear contamination which makes a great difference:

I wrote wrote:Actually, there is. This is measured in terms of radiological effects on survivors and people living in the area for decades, or centuries (depending on the level of radioactive contamination). There is also, in addition to radiation, the effects of nuclear fallout in the event of a nuclear war.


We weren't discussing unexploded munitions or how many bombs or torpedoes fired by ships (what the hell are you even talking about? Did you even read the thread title or notice what we were talking about?) exploded on contact or how many failed to detonate, nor is it relevant. You decided to wait 3 weeks after Tailz and I exchanged posts in order to try to deliberately throw a thread off-topic?
#14409158
How about a nuke dropped on a suburban black community? Personally I think that would be horrific and unjustifiable but some people who are racist and think suburban black people are violent might welcome that. Would a nuke dropped on an African city be any different from a nuke dropped on a suburbanite African neighborhood?
#14409160
Would a nuke dropped on an African city be any different from a nuke dropped on a suburbanite African neighborhood?


What an interesting question, if only we were Australian centre rightists masquerading as socialists we might know the answer to that very tricky quandry but sadly we will never know. Unless there is someone here who could help us that is?
#14409163
We also have the absurd argument that somehow, you can't/shouldn't post to a thread 2-weeks after the last post.

This is the best some posters can do, instead of focusing on the facts in the issue, or probing for holes in another poster's argument.

Australian centre rightists masquerading as socialists


Oh? So in the Australian Labor Party, I'm a member of the Labor Unity faction instead of the Socialist Left faction? If you're going to attack people don't make things up Decky. The pattern is easy to spot

Tailz was making a point how the act of destruction of a city by a multitude of bombs or a single powerful bomb has no physical difference. While I still agree that this is an obvious fact, that a city destroyed by a rain of bombs is as destroyed as a city destroyed by a massive solitary bomb


Saying my post wasn't relevant in a one-line assertion doesn't prove my point was off-topic. A hole in your argument is the irrational assumption that all conventional bombs would explode immediately, or over the same area, with the desired effect of political pressure to produce a surrender. Which had not been fully achieved because the US wanted unconditional surrender. The Japanese had a position for conditional surrender.

And of course, me saying this is probing for holes in infantile arguments made in defense of Japan's stance, particularly by apologists in Japan and elsewhere today. That's not a violation of forum rule 2.

Read Mill's essay On Liberty and maybe you'll learn how to debate properly.
#14409711
Bulaba Jones wrote:How about a nuke dropped on a suburban black community? Personally I think that would be horrific and unjustifiable but some people who are racist and think suburban black people are violent might welcome that. Would a nuke dropped on an African city be any different from a nuke dropped on a suburbanite African neighborhood?


I have absolutely no idea how these debates came to this thread.
But I will tell you something: Give nukes to any third world people. Most likely they will use it on first world people. Its about money not race. Thats why only first world nations which happen to be white have nukes.
#14410010
anondragon2012 wrote:I have absolutely no idea how these debates came to this thread.
But I will tell you something: Give nukes to any third world people. Most likely they will use it on first world people. Its about money not race. Thats why only first world nations which happen to be white have nukes.


The white Afrikaaner government in South Africa voluntarily dismantled their nuclear weapons and their nuclear program itself, and as fuser and Decky have noted, you seem incredibly confused about facts.
#14426791
Rich wrote:Tailz wrote: The loss of life is deplorable, full stop, end of argument.
Loss of life deplorable, what an odd thing to say. its loss of life that has fuelled our evolution from primitive bacteria 3 billion years ago. Until a few centuries ago in Britain the world's population was always fairly close to its limit. Essentially If you wanted an extra child to live then a child of someone else had to die. People talk about genocide like its something immoral. The people who wrote the Bible weren't so dozy. They knew that if Abraham or who ever's descendants were to cover the earth then a lot of other people had to be exterminated. It was simple math, the Jews knew it, the Spartans knew it, the Mongols knew it, everyone knew it.

As vast empires replaced the smaller tribal nation states then internal competition tended to supersede external. The rich reproduced a lot, the poor a little. The poor tended to die out and the rich's descendants worked their way down the social hierarchy replacing them and so on an endless cycle. Life was cheap in the past. unwanted babies were thrown on rubbish tips. Christianity was based on a simple understanding of this reality. If you wanted to be good the best thing you could do was not have any kids.

The whole of modern liberal morality is based on less than two hundred years of unusual and almost certainly unsustainable conditions.

All your doing with this gigantic excuse, is justifying collective punishment. Which we obviously know, is wrong as you end up punishing innocent people for crimes they did not commit. This is the problem with the concept of bombing population centers - it is collective punishment.

As for bacteria, the Spartans, or the bible... it's 2014, not the dark ages. We have moved on from those things - well, at least most of us have.

A baby somewhere else in the world, didn't die when I was born.
#14553628
Tailz wrote:As for bacteria, the Spartans, or the bible... it's 2014, not the dark ages. We have moved on from those things - well, at least most of us have.
Ah you being obtuse? Modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years. We've had moderate abundance for less than 200 years in Britain, much less in other parts of the world. So you base your moral system on an an economic base that has existed for less than a tenth of a percent of human history.

Predicting the future accurately is very hard. Neither the doom mongers nor the optimists of the 1960s have proved correct. The doom didn't arrive but neither was productivity growth sustained at the levels of the 1950's and 1960s. Hence we see rising inequality and stagnating median incomes in the West. There are multiple ways that our system may collapse, may be unsustainable. It only has to fail in one way for us to be in massive trouble. Mathusianism ruled for 3 billion years, but on the basis of a 200 year long boom, Malthusianism is pronounced dead and gone for ever.
#14559061
From a military point of view, it is not justified, it is recognized General MacArthur. Oh, it is, believe me, he has more information. From a political point of view - it was a move that would show his fist to the Soviet Union. Drop the bombs on the Soviet Union was immoral - because they were allies. In any case, it is - dirty politics.
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