[fuser]

Man, you are an angry little termite, aren't you?

sayeth the person who is constatntly breaking rule II here. Whatever I am still posting in style that I am comfortable with, now do you have any real arguments at all to make? or you will be discussing these trivial matters only?

If we are going to talk seriously on this then give me something serious to work with, and debate the whole post

Which I did but you didn't. What point of yours was left out, that I didn't addressed? none. What point of mine you have actually addressed? None. Go figure.

If you want to pull everything apart word by word looking for bullshit points then I'll go find another thread.

Seriously if that's so uncomfortable for you then actually do it rather than just whinning about it. You aleady have my answer, I am not changing my style.

But then Oh, lord what will happen to me if you don't debate with my points and leave this thread.


So, now do you anything to add that is relevant to this thread or my points that were made?

[Rojik of the Arctic]

sayeth the person who is constatntly breaking rule II here. Whatever I am still posting in style that I am comfortable with, now do you have any real arguments at all to make? or you will be discussing these trivial matters only?

Listen up for a minute, eh. I offered you an olive branch earlier because I realised I'd hit this subject hard based on people I'd dealt with a couple of years ago. I was wrong to go at it from that angle. But I'm not going to get into a point by point discussion of the abomb dropping. It covers a million miles of territory, and can go everywhere because it is so broad and huge a subject. You want to wah wah about this then so be it. You want to drop the bullshit for a moment and maybe we both learn something then I'm interested. I'll go you a step further than I planned and try and answer that fisk in a smallish essay when I get a real moment, but if you want to be a prick about it then I hope you go off and choke on your ignorance and misplaced arrogance.

It's the same BS that was here a couple of years back: lets all be polite cunts who are insulting without crossing the line, and dob on those that might know their stuff but be a little less tactful. And that's cool, if that's what you want, but smartarsery doesn't help anyone if we aren't learning from it.

So... I'm happy to admit I pushed too hard. If you want an e-handshake and a real debate give me a yay or nay, but if you want to fisk, and ignore the guts of what I'm saying then I'll know where things stand, and post accordingly.

[fuser]

Oh please, I have already said everything that was needed to be said. So, how about next time you post, try to argue with those points instead of these complete and utterly irrelevant clap trap.

So, let me spell out it for you for the last time, you don't get to decide how everyone should post/debate. But its an interesting tactics you have developed here for dodging the real issues here but you had to after all your whole premise has been blown away and you seem totally incapable to defend that.

[welcometohavoc]

Not at all. It was a political maneuver intended to be a deterrent to Soviet aggression after the war, and a symbolic gesture to the let the world know the mantle of power had been transferred from the British, to the Americans

[Godstud]

After all that I heave read and heard about it, I have changed my stance and think that it could have been avoided, and thus is probably unjustifiable. Whether or not it appeared as such, at the time, is up for debate.

[Tailz]

There is no moral or ethical justification, for war itself is not ethical or justifiable, nations kill people in war, both innocent and criminal. Every time we try to create a series of "laws of war" we end up seeing the political of conflicts and the battlefield situations twisting those "laws of war" to breaking.

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.

The use of atomic weapons in World War Two should be seen as a part of the already existing bombing that was already a standard part of warfare of the time. Atomic weapons just because another new kind of bomb that was used as a part of the existing bombing campaigns - lest we forget the firebombing of German and Japanese cites were just as destructive before the atomic bombs arrived.

So what your really asking, is: Was the bombing of civilian populations justifiable?

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

But there is no difference between the destruction wrought by a single nuke or the fire bombing of an entire city.

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.

So what your really asking, is: Was the bombing of civilian populations justifiable?

I think this is the wrong question because it places the burden of guilt on the Allied powers when it was the Axis who first utilized bombing against civilian population centers. The gloves, so to say, had already come off long before 1945. For many of the participants and the civilians, WWII was a total war. The only moral high ground the Allies can ever possibly take is that, excluding the Soviets, they did not establish camps designed to detain and kill off prisoners of war and civilians. Why should the Allies have refrained from bombing whatever they could of enemy territory and targets of interest? The Allied powers routinely engaged in the killing of prisoners, in torture, mass murder, and a general indifference to loss of civilian life on the enemy side. The Allied powers indoctrinated their soldiers and citizens with years upon years of propaganda designed to degrade the enemy and present the enemy as subhuman "huns" and "Japs".

I think people who fret so much over the ethics of your question are horribly naive (not meaning you, since you worded that as a hypothetical question) about Allied conduct and many people seem to think the Allies were a bastion of morally-righteous-for-the-most-part Western alliance of glorious and wonderful moralistic democracies of peace and liberty when in reality this is just crap.

[Rich]

So what your really asking, is: Was the bombing of civilian populations justifiable?

I think this is the wrong question because it places the burden of guilt on the Allied powers when it was the Axis who first utilized bombing against civilian population centers. The gloves, so to say, had already come off long before 1945. For many of the participants and the civilians, WWII was a total war. The only moral high ground the Allies can ever possibly take is that, excluding the Soviets, they did not establish camps designed to detain and kill off prisoners of war and civilians. Why should the Allies have refrained from bombing whatever they could of enemy territory and targets of interest? The Allied powers routinely engaged in the killing of prisoners, in torture, mass murder, and a general indifference to loss of civilian life on the enemy side. The Allied powers indoctrinated their soldiers and citizens with years upon years of propaganda designed to degrade the enemy and present the enemy as subhuman "huns" and "Japs".

I think people who fret so much over the ethics of your question are horribly naive (not meaning you, since you worded that as a hypothetical question) about Allied conduct and many people seem to think the Allies were a bastion of morally-righteous-for-the-most-part Western alliance of glorious and wonderful moralistic democracies of peace and liberty when in reality this is just crap.

This is better but it misses essential points. The demand for unconditional surrender from the axis powers was wrong. It lengthened the war adding tens of millions to the death tolls and guaranteed Soviet dominance of Asia and Eastern Europe.

No side was moral in the first or second world war. And no side is moral now. However I think it is undoubtedly the case that in 1914 the central powers were the least immoral. In as much as there was right the Central powers had right on their side in 1914 and the empires that covered most of the globe the US (non belligerent ally), Britain, France, Belgium and Japan were in the wrong. However by 1941 it was for the overall good for Nazi power to be broken and Japanese power by 1942.

[Tailz]

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.

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.

Tailz wrote: So what your really asking, is: Was the bombing of civilian populations justifiable?

I think this is the wrong question because it places the burden of guilt on the Allied powers when it was the Axis who first utilized bombing against civilian population centers.

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.

The gloves, so to say, had already come off long before 1945. For many of the participants and the civilians, WWII was a total war. The only moral high ground the Allies can ever possibly take is that, excluding the Soviets, they did not establish camps designed to detain and kill off prisoners of war and civilians. Why should the Allies have refrained from bombing whatever they could of enemy territory and targets of interest? The Allied powers routinely engaged in the killing of prisoners, in torture, mass murder, and a general indifference to loss of civilian life on the enemy side. The Allied powers indoctrinated their soldiers and citizens with years upon years of propaganda designed to degrade the enemy and present the enemy as subhuman "huns" and "Japs".

I think people who fret so much over the ethics of your question are horribly naive (not meaning you, since you worded that as a hypothetical question) about Allied conduct and many people seem to think the Allies were a bastion of morally-righteous-for-the-most-part Western alliance of glorious and wonderful moralistic democracies of peace and liberty when in reality this is just crap.

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...

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

This is better but it misses essential points. The demand for unconditional surrender from the axis powers was wrong. It lengthened the war adding tens of millions to the death tolls and guaranteed Soviet dominance of Asia and Eastern Europe.

No side was moral in the first or second world war. And no side is moral now. However I think it is undoubtedly the case that in 1914 the central powers were the least immoral. In as much as there was right the Central powers had right on their side in 1914 and the empires that covered most of the globe the US (non belligerent ally), Britain, France, Belgium and Japan were in the wrong. However by 1941 it was for the overall good for Nazi power to be broken and Japanese power by 1942.

I think we can all agree that both sides are guilty of causing a massive loss of life. The overall guilt and responsibility lies with the Axis powers and to a lesser degree the Soviets, but the Allies aren't blameless, either.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

I simply notice it's a popular thing among Western liberals and left-leaning people to disproportionately condemn the atomic bombing of Japan.

[Rei Murasame]

A famous Japanese pilot once busted up a centre-left moralising session on that subject by pointing out that "Had I been assigned a mission to drop a nuclear weapon on an American city, I'd have done it". I can't remember which one it was who said that, but I can try to dig up the name later.

But it's true. In war, all weapons are on the table, and civilians who work in industries are 'targets' in the sense that they oversee the production of the weapons being used. In that context the firebombing and the nuclear weapons both make sense. There are no 'innocent people'.

It was up to Japan to try to make sure that American pilots could not gain access to Japanese airspace, but unfortunately they were able to gain access pretty easily near the end of the war, so large attacks against Japanese cities became possible.

[Rich]

as soon as you take up a gun, or call the police to use violence on your behalf, to defend your self, your house, your daughter or wife from being raped, your child kidnapped by a paedophile, you risk killing innocent life. In fact you don't even need to do that. Driving a car risks killing innocent life. Virtually anyone is happier to risk or sacrifice the lives of strangers over their own family friends and loved ones. War is just this scaled up.

People's mistake is that they take the morality within a modern liberal democratic polity under an agreed rule of law, with a judiciary and government having extremely high levels of legitimacy and acceptance and try and apply that morality to situations where no common modern liberal democratic regime.

[ThirdTerm]

Truman had moral qualms about causing massive civilian casualties and he satisfied himself by thinking that both cities hosted large naval bases, making them legitimate military targets, and the US avoided bombing Kyoto because of its cultural heritage. There were military industrial factories in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it's estimated that a total of 70,000 Korean factory workers in both cities lost their lives due to the atomic bombings. In August of 1945, around 300 Korean women were forced into service as military nurses in places like Singapore and up to 500,000 Korean labourers were involuntarily sent to Japan in the final year of the war. In general, what happened during the Second World War cannot be judged based on moral values in today's society and it's understandable that the US government sees it inappropriate to apologise for the atomic bombings.

[Tailz]

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Thompson_NCL]

I am not sure the Yanks were morally justified, no. Had the Japanese inflicted massive civilian loss on life on the Americans, then they would be. But I don't think the Japanese-American war was ever comparable to the 'Total War' that we saw in Europe. Germany was more deserving of a nuclear bomb, and in Dresden that is essentially what they got.

That said, I don't consider it any sort of crime that the US used the bomb. War is hell, enough said.

[Rich]

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.

[Potemkin]

Someone has been reading his Schopenhauer....

[Rich]

Someone has been reading his Schopenhauer....

Wasn't he a composer or was that Schubert? No seriously, a lot of my ideas I've developed independently and only later seen written by someone else. As a child I concluded that free will was an oxymoron. Or

"Man can get what he wants, but he can't will what he wills"

As a child I concluded the God of the Bible was an utter bastard, but even God couldn't help being anything other than he actually was. But anyway looking at Schopenhauer on WIki I'm not sure he understood the above as I understood it when I first saw it as a denial of the possibility of free will. But anyway why the pessimism? Yes in life someone has to lose, but that someone doesn't have to be me. Yes we have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Libertarianism, westernised "rational" Buddhism, and the ever green hypocrisy of Liberalism, but at the end of the day life is still sweet.

As the great philosopher Jimmy Greaves said: "Well Brian its the team that scores the most goals that wins" With such home grown transcendental wisdom, why do we need to go in search of Eastern Gurus?

[anondragon2012]

The argument is about the morality of bombings in general.

It has to be left in a military context, because from a human perspective all war is criminal and immoral to begin with.

Personally, I think in a war a bombing is justified if it increased the chances of winning the war and defeating the opponent, but only in relations to the civilian damage that is incurred.

The equation looks like this.
Morality of bombing = (Defeat of opponent is hastened) - (civilian damage)

Basically if civilian damage is overwhelmingly higher than the military use for the bombing, then its not justifiable.

Personally I think that in general bombings of civilian centers doesn't hasten the war effort, especially if we are talking about Empires which are ruled by totalitarian regimes who do not care about civilian casualties.

I do think then that Hiroshima & Nagasaki, but also much of the firebombing of civilian towns wasn't justifiable and was a war crime.
This also applies to German terror bombing of civilian targets in Britain (the Blitz) or English & American firebombing of civilian cities.

However if the town in question was real military target, then by all means it was justifiable (in military term)

To be honest I think its a pity that there were only Nuremberg trials.
I think there should have been general trials for all parties involved, so in the spirit of the United Nations we could judge all wrongs no matter the side.
(This applies especially to the Soviets who commited atrocity after atrocity and went scot free after war).

[redcarpet]

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.

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?