Bulaba Jones wrote:Tailz wrote: And fire bombing entire cities created a death toll far beyond conceived by the weather patterns fire storms create. The fact that nukes and fire bombing are deadly, is not the issue. The atomic bombs were just another terrible tool in the area bombing campaign that already existed. That is the issue, not the nukes themselves, but destroying civilian populations as an act of war.
The point is that the destruction and deliberate targeting of civilian population centers was already a fact of life in WWII before the Allies began doing it themselves. The Axis made it habit and policy before the Allies did. If you want to blame someone 60-70 years ago for upping the stakes and escalating the intensity of the conflict, you need to blame the Axis.
Bombing cities is a concept that predates the Second World War, it didn't happen because the Axis did it first. Bombing was a strategic consideration of every world power before the start of World War II. All world powers were looking at the bombing of civilian populations as a means of attacking nations. Please do remember the following saying, predates WWII:
"The bombers will always get through!"Bulaba Jones wrote:If the Axis had the bomb, they would have used it against civilian population centers also. I can't even imagine there's a single person who would argue otherwise. We simply got there first.
It made no difference who got atomic bombs first, weapons will be used by those who have them and feel they need them to survive. Before atomic weapons, were chemic weapons that dated back to the First World War. While biological warfare was also being used, while conventional bombing was expanding with new earthquake bombs and methods of fire bombing. Nukes were just the next tool on the rack.
Yes the Nazi's would have used them if they had them, so would have the Japanese, or Stalin, or Churchill. Simply getting it first, is meaningless as all powers of the day and age would have used them, had they had them. Again your simply making excuses to exonerate the Allied powers.
Bulaba Jones wrote:Tailz wrote: No. It is a question that must be considered. If you want to turn this into a question of guilt, my approach puts that guilt upon any who engage in that deed. Allied or Axis.
I thought it was very clear from the fact I condemned the Allies' war record, albeit without going into a laundry list of particular examples, that both sides are guilty of war crimes, but that the Axis' record is worse.
Actually what you have been doing, at least from my reading, is making excuses that the Allies may have done the same as the Axis, yet the Axis powers were the criminals although the Allies did the same thing.
Bulaba Jones wrote:Tailz wrote: You have crafted an argument, purely to absolve the Allied powers of wrong doing. Creating such an argument ultimately ends in you justifying the mass murder of civilian populations, as long as it is done by "Our boys."
As you just did...
Tailz, you misunderstand me. I don't believe in nationalism or being proud of a country's war record. I was presenting to you the facts on the ground: bombing civilians was already a fact of life during the war before the Allies adopted that practice. I wasn't supporting it; however, since it was already being employed by the Axis, it followed that the Allies would utilize it in order to win the war. War is a terrible thing.
Bombing civilians was already a concept before any bombs were dropped during the Second World War. Could be dated back to the First World War, or to the Spanish Civil War. So your excuse that the Axis did it first so the Allies doing it second does not exonerate anyone, as everyone was looking at bomber formations before the war.
Bulaba Jones wrote:I somewhat went out of my way to point out that the Allies were far from "good guys" and that it was fairly routine to commit acts we easily condemned the Axis powers for. We did not establish death camps nor concentration camps, but that's almost as far as any possible claim to moral superiority on the part of the Allied powers goes.
Concentration camps were created by the British in South Africa during the Boer war. The Americans interned their Asian population in camps - while don't even think of the black and white segregation. Russian gulags swallowed up thousands of Germans, before, during, and after the Second World War.
The uniqueness of German camps, was the racial extermination - without that, the camps were just a reflection of what everyone had done before.
Bulaba Jones wrote:This is why I take a dim view on people who try to say or imply that our use of the atom bombs was somehow the most horrifying part of WWII, or that it was unjustifiable, while all the other bombings, mass killings, genocide is taken into account.
That is a statement I am not making, my point has been, that the atomic bomb, was simply the next tool on the rack, nothing more, nothing less. Yes, far more destructive, but so too had each tool been more destructive than the tool that was used before it, and the tool before it, and so on.
The military amateurs of mass murder, had become the industrial entrepreneurs.
Bulaba Jones wrote:People who fret over the atomic bombing of Japan seem to be focusing on Allied guilt when they should be focusing on the mistakes, arrogance, barbarism of the Axis powers who started the war in the first place.
But that point of view is not quite right ether as all you end up doing, as you have been doing, is creating excuses for why the Allies doing the same thing, is not that bad as the Axis doing it.
Bulaba Jones wrote:I simply notice it's a popular thing among Western liberals and left-leaning people to disproportionately condemn the atomic bombing of Japan.
In a way I agree, because what was doing, the massive loss of life, is deplorable. But making excuses for why "our boys" doing it is ok while had the enemy done it is bad, cheapens the argument.
The loss of life is deplorable, full stop, end of argument.