Quote :

"WHAHH?!!!"

I'm not saying he is wrong, but his comments are not valid on the subject. Listen to the joint chiefs of staff, or the general directing the war in the pacific for a valid answer. Not Ike who was in Europe for the length of the war.

9/20/2005 3:29:01 PM

Quote :

"Quote : "But Japan surrender before Nuclear weapons were launch at the cities." 1) Learn english. 2) Learn history. 3) Profit."

hahahaha amen to that

9/20/2005 3:31:24 PM

I only read half of the first page and........CAN ANYBODY SPELL/TYPE/FORM A COHERENT SENTENCE USING PROPER GRAMMAR IN THIS THREAD? WOW

9/20/2005 3:34:24 PM

Quote :

"I think it is more wrong to murder a female civilian with a gun/knife than it is to kill the same civilian by bombing his city. The person doing the bombing could at least argue his target was the city itself, which was daily producing soldiers and weapons, where-as the later murderer has no such argument, valid or not."

in facist countries, making babies so that they could be soldiers was an explicit goal among many


...don't get me wrong, i'm not arguing against your point though

9/20/2005 3:34:55 PM

^ There was a fear in Nazi Germany that due to a lower birthrate during the Depression years, there would be a shortage of soldiers in the late 1940's and early 1950's.

9/20/2005 3:40:58 PM

Quote :

"The person doing the bombing could at least argue his target was the city itself, which was daily producing soldiers and weapons, where-as the later murderer has no such argument, valid or not."

Basically, this is the legal distinction between specific and general intent. Specific intent is the intent, specifically, to kill someone. General intent, is the intent to act in such a way as to produce the death of someone, with full foreknowledge of the consequences, when such action is aimed at some other objective besides specifically killing them.

I admit, there is a legal distinction that is made in these circumstances, when they occur in the course of private life and are brought before a court to be judged.

However, law is not morality. Morally, they're both premediatated murder. However, I don't think that even the legal distinction can be drawn here, as the intent of the terror-bombing campaign in general, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in specific, was indeed explicitly to kill and terrorize millions of unarmed civilians.

9/21/2005 6:49:58 AM

Quote :

"SNuwPack: I only read half of the first page and........CAN ANYBODY SPELL/TYPE/FORM A COHERENT SENTENCE USING PROPER GRAMMAR IN THIS THREAD? WOW"

Actually, there were some rather eloquent observations by Smoker4, Fry, and a few others on the 2nd page. Of course, I probably found their commentary more memorable b/c it appealed to my own ideology - if you happen to be in the US-are-Evil-Pigs and/or Soviet-Russia-Wasn't-Half-Bad camp(s), Mathfreak and a few others had some arguments that'll probably be more appreciated.

9/21/2005 8:53:25 AM

A Japanese friend and I had a conversation about this one day.
He said that in Japanese culture, they would rather get fried than give up a fight, and that the use of such a powerful weapon was the only way to end the war -- period. There *had* to be such devastating destruction in order to shut them down. His point was that the Japanese would rather have to endure (or die trying to survive) such an attack than cave in any way, and that the US actually did the right thing.

I wish that the use of such force and cause of such destruction and suffering was preventable, and I tend to be anti-war, but I try to get a good understanding behind the reasons and pray for the people who are in a position to pull such triggers (as well as for those who are targeted). Sometimes you just have to let go of the need to feel in control these things and sadly let human nature run it's course ...

Quote :

"It saved the lives of american soldiers. Period."

What a dumb thing to say.

9/21/2005 9:31:48 AM

Considering what went on in POW camps and the Sino-Japanese war, I would say the Japs deserved a lot more than 2 puny nukes. It's amazing that this is still being debated. They would have used nuclear weapons on us.

[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 10:20 AM. Reason : -]

9/21/2005 10:07:49 AM

none of that means shit.

their entire population didn't deserve to be wiped out. to say that they deserved to be nuked more than twice when twice did the job is stupid.

and of course they would've nuked us if they could've. what they'd do to us doesn't mean shit, though. we don't go chopping off people's heads in iraq, do we? we don't execute people who surrender. none of that is in OUR best interest.

9/21/2005 10:29:43 AM

^^^ why exactly was that a dumb thing to say?

9/21/2005 10:30:55 AM

Quote :

"Considering what went on in POW camps and the Sino-Japanese war, I would say the Japs deserved a lot more than 2 puny nukes. It's amazing that this is still being debated. They would have used nuclear weapons on us."

I question your logic here. Whether the japanese GOVERNMENT would have used nukes on us shouldn't affect how we treat the japanese CITIZENRY, who were largely unable to make any decisions as to what their government did.

And no, it's not amazing this is still being debated. It's the one and only use of a nuclear weapon, the circumstances around it are suspect, and hundreds of thousands of people died. You can hardly say it's not a debatable situation.

Americans were led to believe that we were entering this war because we wanted to liberate the people under Hitler's stranglehold and, of course, because the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Though obviously an immoral act on the part of the Japanese, it was not the least bit unexpected by the American military. America had imposed sanctions on Japan that threatened its very existence, as even one of the judges in the Tokyo War Crimes Trial after WWII admitted. Zinn notes that "the records show that a White house conference two weeks before Pearl Harbor anticipated a war and discussed how it should be justified."

However, even though the war may have been good for the U.S. and not just a humanitarian effort, the main point was to help the millions of Jews and others being oppressed by Hitler, right? Well, in order to answer that, simply ask yourself this question - was the united states, itself, an extremely humanitarian nation at the time? Whites and blacks were still very segregated, both socially and legally. Even the blacks who volunteered to fight in the war were segregated to the point that they were placed in the boiler rooms and bottom levels of military ships on the way to battle.

Japanese citizens were arrested in the U.S. after Pearl Harbor to be placed into interment camps, and Roosevelt in February 1942 signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the army the power to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast - 110,000 people. Even the Supreme Court upheld this action. All of this happened without the knowledge of the general American public until several years later. One congressman is noted as saying

Quote :

" I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps...Damn them! Let's get rid of them!"

Now, obviously this sentiment wasn't quite so strong throughout the government, but it must have been strong enough for Roosevelt to sign the order to toss them away and throw away the key for several years.

The war all but ended, of course, when America dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated total of 150,000 Japanese (mostly civilians) and leaving tens of thousands to die later from the radiation. This of course followed the firebombing of Tokyo which killed 80,000. Indeed, a war against fascism and oppression.

Finally, we can only speculate as to the imperialist reasons behind America's entry into the war. However, one distinct possibility sticks out. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey decided based on interviews carried out right after the Japanese surrendered that they would have done so even if the bombs had not been dropped. American Intelligence, it appears, relayed the message to the President before this mass murder was committed, but it obviously didn't change the outcome. Why, then, would the U.S. have still dropped the bomb? British scientist P.M.S. Blackett suggests that America wanted to drop the bomb before Russia entered the war, which it had secretly agreed to do ninety days after the end of the European war. That would have been August 8, but by then there was no war. We had already wiped the Japanese out with the bomb.

This, of course, made the U.S. the sole occupier of Japan, whereas Russia had hoped for a piece of the pie. This, by the way, was the first act of the so called "Cold War." And so, America had secured economic interests abroad while quelling problems at home by providing tons of new jobs and a new enemy - "The Commies." The world was once again safe for Democracy.

[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 10:55 AM. Reason : .]

9/21/2005 10:52:39 AM

^^The lives of American soldiers obviously mattered a great deal, but that is NO sole reason to nuke the amount of people who were nuked.

9/21/2005 10:58:57 AM

listen the bombs saved lives. they saved american lives, they saved japanese lives, they saved japanese civilian lives. an invasion of japan would have been a fight for every inch, and could have added YEARS onto the war.

(and i know this has probably been said in one form or another already.)

9/21/2005 11:07:29 AM

Yeah, yeah, the same old lines:

"Bombing noncombatants saves them."

"War is peace."

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

"Freedom is slavery."

Yawn.

9/21/2005 11:20:10 AM

the fact is that had we invaded japan, MANY more deaths (military AND civilian) would have happened.

9/21/2005 11:40:58 AM

"The fact is," we could've offered conditional surrender before we nuked them, rather than after.

Not that we all knew this at the time. I think using the bomb was an ok decision based on the information we had at the time. 20/20 hindsight tells us it was unnecessary, which you seem to be contesting.



[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 11:56 AM. Reason : .]

9/21/2005 11:53:57 AM

^^^^^^ link?

9/21/2005 11:58:07 AM

Quote :

""The fact is," we could've offered conditional surrender before we nuked them, rather than after."

The fact is, the japs could have not invaded mainland Asia. They could have not bombed Pearl Harbor. The ball was in their court first. By the way, the japs unconditionally surrendered. http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/japsurr.html

Quote :

"^^The lives of American soldiers obviously mattered a great deal, but that is NO sole reason to nuke the amount of people who were nuked. "

The loss of one American life compared to the entire island of Japan is reason enough. It is war, get over it. Words such as innocence and morality are nothing more then philosophical debates for sensitive, touchy feely people on internet boards. All that matters is winning and winning as best you can, that is the nature of nation state warfare. If you don't like it, then don't start a war. If you don't like your government's decision, then pull a Cindy Sheehan or throw yourself a Boston Tea Party, otherwise the world is Machiavellin. To borrow from ol'Bill

"....But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disquise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; then lend the eye a terrible aspect...."

9/21/2005 12:28:25 PM

Yet we gave them a conditional surrender anyway.


HAAAAAAY


btw, how often to you jerk off to how totally awesome war is? Two, three times a day?

9/21/2005 12:40:41 PM

^^about as often as you do, to little boys being raped by satanic clowns that resemble your mother, who ridicules you for having a small penis.

9/21/2005 12:47:20 PM

ehe, not only was that a really dumb post, but you directed it at yourself.

Quote :

"^^about as often as you do, to little boys being raped by satanic clowns that resemble your mother, who ridicules you for having a small penis."

[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 12:50 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2005 12:48:57 PM

Sure thing Freud, been to the circus lately? or are you saying you do jerk off to that?

[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 12:55 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2005 12:52:09 PM

Quote :

"All that matters is winning and winning as best you can, that is the nature of nation state warfare. If you don't like it, then don't start a war."

good advice. someone should tell that to the people who start wars.

9/21/2005 12:52:53 PM

^^ que?

9/21/2005 12:56:18 PM

Quote :

"good advice. someone should tell that to the people who start wars."

Exactly Greek, but the people who tend to start these wars have never fought in one or ever will. Perhaps an argument to make it a criteria for politicians to serve in the military before being eligable for election. Just one idea. They need at least some kind of humanitarian based reference in order to have a vested interest in solving problems another way.

[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 1:03 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2005 1:00:48 PM

Somebody's been hitting the Heinlein a little too hard...

Quote :

"All that matters is winning and winning as best you can"

No. That's not all that matters. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, losing can mean the destruction of everything you hold dear. However, if what you hold dear is a set of principles, and you destroy them yourself in order "win", that can hardly be called an unequivocal victory. Winning is important, no doubt, but so is maintaining and preserving that which makes victory worthwhile.

Quote :

"If you don't like it, then don't start a war."

That's the best idea presented in this thread yet.

Quote :

"Perhaps an argument to make it a criteria for politicians to serve in the military before being eligable for election."

They would still have no relivant, first-hand, personal experience to draw from unless they had actually fought in a war. Which would put the nation in the improbable position of constantly fighting wars to give future politicians the experience necessary to prevent them from starting future wars. I'm all for limiting access to public office, but this is just dumb.

[Edited on September 21, 2005 at 1:56 PM. Reason : ']

9/21/2005 1:43:02 PM

Lokken, use your fucking head.
jeez.

9/21/2005 2:52:31 PM

^^ You can always rebuild your principles after the war.
Principles are easier to rebuild than an entire nation. You go on the radio and say "I acted unAmerican, and thereby resign/retire, enjoy the peace I purchased with my inhuman activities."

9/21/2005 3:17:24 PM

Quote :

""Bombing noncombatants saves them.""

Don't mischaracterize the argument. Bombing some noncombatants saves others, in certain situations.

Quote :

"Yet we gave them a conditional surrender anyway. "

That was our mistake, not using the bomb. We should have made it unconditional and we should have hanged the Emperor and been done with it.

Quote :

"someone should tell that to the people who start wars."

You're right, someone should have told that to the Japanese.

9/21/2005 3:36:29 PM

Quote :

"we should have hanged the Emperor and been done with it."

The populace would've loved us executing a deity!

9/21/2005 3:39:48 PM

Quote :

"There *had* to be such devastating destruction in order to shut them down."

There's a good Churchill quote along those lines:

Quote :

"[We had] shaped our ideas towards an assault upon the homeland of Japan by terrific air bombing and by the invasion of very large armies. We had contemplated the desperate resistance of the Japanese fighting to the death with Samurai devotion . . . I had in my mind the spectacle of Okinawa Island, where many thousands of Japanese . . . destroyed themselves by hand-grenades . . . All this nightmare picture had vanished. In its place was a vision . . . of the end of the whole war in one or two violent shocks. I thought immediately myself of how the Japanese people, whose courage I had always admired, might find in the apparition of this almost supernatural weapon an excuse which would save their honor and release them from their obligation of being killed to the very last fighting man. "

9/21/2005 3:42:31 PM

Quote :

"The populace would've loved us executing a deity!"

I don't say this often, but when your "deity" is a war criminal on that order and you want to throw down on his behalf...

"Let them hate as long as they fear."

If they want to rise up in defense of that sort of behavior, well, there's more uranium where that came from.

9/21/2005 3:50:18 PM

should've nuked the Krauts like it was originally intended

9/21/2005 6:59:48 PM

^ Yeah, but the krauts surrendered in May and the first test explosion was in July.

9/21/2005 7:57:21 PM

Quote :

"ehe, not only was that a really dumb post, but you directed it at yourself. "

Heh, I remember being a n00b and not understand how ^'s were used...

Ah, memories...

Quote :

"Don't mischaracterize the argument. Bombing some noncombatants saves others, in certain situations."

Yeah, I know. That's not as snappy, though.

And yes, maybe that argument is correct. Still, nasty, though, and not something I want to establish as acceptable conduct. That's why this debate still matters.

Quote :

"I don't say this often, but when your "deity" is a war criminal on that order and you want to throw down on his behalf..."

Hehehe... I know this bad, but I can't resist... sorry...

Read the Old Testament much?

Quote :

"should've nuked the Krauts like it was originally intended"

Don't worry, plenty of krauts (civie and soldier) died too.

9/21/2005 8:41:20 PM

Quote :

"the fact is that had we invaded japan, MANY more deaths (military AND civilian) would have happened. "

that's not really the argument. anyone who believes that an invasion of Japan wouldn't have been a COLOSSAL bloodbath is a lunatic.

the argument is whether or not we ever would've had to invade at all.

in hindsight, my guess is "maybe. probably a very good chance that we wouldn't have had to."

based on what we believed at the time, i'd say that nuking them was a pretty acceptable decision.

9/21/2005 10:23:29 PM

A single raid firebombing Tokyo during the same period killed over 100,000 people in one night. The army air force was just as capable of doing the exact same thing to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or any other Japanese city with conventional bombs had they decided to. In some regards, the fact that it was a single nuclear weapon as opposed to hundreds of tons of napalm is just a technicality. It certainly was a more fearsome weapon, however the US was perfectly capable of leveling cities without it.

9/21/2005 10:36:03 PM

right, but we covered that a long time ago.

9/21/2005 10:41:46 PM

At the time we had possesion of the bomb. I fail to see how anyone thinks we would have ran a full invasion into the country while we had posession of nuclear weapons. We wouldn't have. Was the destruction of 2 cities necessary and ethical at that time?

9/21/2005 11:16:50 PM

Quote :

"Read the Old Testament much?"

If the Philistines or whoever the fuck ever win a war against us, they have my permission to execute God. Oh wait...

I mean, wtf do you want? They crucified my deity, sounds a damn sight worse than hanging to me. When you worship a tangible, living man, you run into certain consequences. If you're wrong (and even if you're right), your dude can get fucked up all kinds of ways. As in, hanged by a War Crimes Tribunal.

Quote :

"And yes, maybe that argument is correct. Still, nasty, though, and not something I want to establish as acceptable conduct. That's why this debate still matters."

I'll establish it as acceptable all day long, because it stands up pretty well. If you can save 2,000,000 by killing 2,000,000, and that's the only way you can do it, you fucking do it, and then pat yourself on the back for saving 1,800,000 people in the process. Of course that's a simplified account. You have to take the longview. But if, taking everything conceivable into account and weighing the odds, you end up with that situation...well, load up Enola and let's go to town.

9/22/2005 1:04:43 AM

Quote :

"that's not really the argument. anyone who believes that an invasion of Japan wouldn't have been a COLOSSAL bloodbath is a lunatic."

Uh, some military reports projected that the American casualties in the first thirty days of an invasion of Kyushu would not exceed 31,000 killed, wounded and missing.

Truman's 500,000-1,000,000 figure is total fiction.

As for the "OMF they're Samurai!" argument, at Okinawa, 7,400 Japanese soldiers surrendered.

Quote :

"If you can save 2,000,000 by killing 2,000,000, and that's the only way you can do it, you fucking do it, and then pat yourself on the back for saving 1,800,000 people in the process."

Your math is fucked. That aside, I think it a pretty shitty thing to uphold. The obvious problem is being sure. If you fuck up (and everybody fucks up) then you just killed a bunch of people with little cause.

Even if by some magic you have certainty, it's still a questionable moral standard. Tens of thousands of people in one city die... for what? To scare the pants off their political leaders and thus "save" fellow countrymen? They died for no fault of their own, only because the situation "required" it. Why should they be responsible for lives of those people they "saved?"

If few sacrifice themselves, okay... otherwise, maybe the many should just fuck off.

It's a moral code of convenience and litte more.

9/22/2005 1:34:58 AM

Quote :

"you can't hug your children with nuclear arms"

9/22/2005 1:38:37 AM

Ahahaha, sorry. Obviously enough, one of those was supposed to be 200,000. I got a little zero happy.

Quote :

"The obvious problem is being sure."

We can get into a drawn-out discussion about how you can't be "sure" about anything. Sometimes you have to make jumps based on high probability. Based on everything we had at the time, it looked pretty damn likely that invading Japan was gonna kill a fuckload more people than nuking Japan would.

Quote :

"They died for no fault of their own, only because the situation "required" it."

They had at least some fault. Any sane and physically able person who willfully submits to the enemy is aiding the enemy. Not that it matters much here.

Quote :

"Why should they be responsible for lives of those people they "saved?""

Here's the crux of it. No, nobody should die, but somebody has to. One of the following things is going to happen:

1) We invade Japan, X number of people die.
2) We nuke Japan, Y number of people die.
3) We just kind of sit back and don't do much of anything, and either:
a) The goddamn Communists invade and occupy Japan, killing Z people
b) The goddamn Communists don't invade, Japan just sits there taking pot shots when it can, still occupying territory it stole, and either getting bombed and blockaded to death or just building up until it can start a fight again, killing A people.
4) We let the Japanese surrender on their terms and just kind of hope that they will transfer to a more peaceful form of government without anyone having to die.

How likely do you think option 4 is to succeed? If you said, "Almost as likely as Grumpy growing wings, voting straight Green Party, and farting out entire troops of lowland gorillas," you're right.

Meaning we're left with four situations in which some number of people, innocent people, are going to die to acheive a peace of some kind or another. None of them should die. But some of them are going to.

We're left with that situation. We have what we had, not what we wish we had. So, with that, how is it possibly immoral or wrong to make sure that the least number of people die, the least number of people live under horrible oppression, the least number of people face the probability of future conflict?

9/22/2005 2:15:16 AM

Quote :

"Sometimes you have to make jumps based on high probability."

Surely you understand why folks have reservations about killing tens of thousands of people based on probability?

Quote :

"Based on everything we had at the time, it looked pretty damn likely that invading Japan was gonna kill a fuckload more people than nuking Japan would."

If the ratio sayed the same as it was in Okinawa, perhaps 65,000 Japanese noncombatants would have died in the first thirty days of the invasion of Kyushu. How many German noncombatants died when US troops marched in? I've never heard that it was in the hundreds of thousands, but maybe it was.

Of course, there's very little evidence, if any, that Truman and company factored Japanese lives into the equation.

And your numbered list of options perfectly illustrates why this kind of morality bothers me. At least with the nukes or the invasion, we'd either be killing X or Y people, so it makes sense for us to choose the lower number. But killing thousands of people to stop the commies from killing more? That's what fucked over Asia and Latin America in the Cold War. Not acceptable.

On balance and limited to its own context, I don't really mind the air campaign against the Japs. I think Truman and company could have been more creative, but it was fucking World War II. Though I can never really approve of killing noncombatants, it was understandable and justifiable. However, I absolutely oppose viewing it as a standard to be used in other cases.

Quote :

"So, with that, how is it possibly immoral or wrong to make sure that the least number of people die, the least number of people live under horrible oppression, the least number of people face the probability of future conflict?"

To me it just means all choices are immoral. In such a situation I'd either run away or commit suicide.

Of course, world leaders can't get away with those actions...

The other argument is that with a bit more creativity a better choice can always be found. Call it the Vash Theory, if you will...

9/22/2005 9:38:22 AM

^ hah-hah anime geek.


But really though, GrumpyGOP is simply using utilitarian morality, which was probably necessary when running a world war.

9/22/2005 9:43:40 AM

the arguments in this thread seem useless when you consider what myself and A Tanzarian have presented on the subject. Was anyone paying attention to it?

9/22/2005 9:47:56 AM

Quote :

"I fail to see how anyone thinks we would have ran a full invasion into the country while we had posession of nuclear weapons. We wouldn't have. Was the destruction of 2 cities necessary and ethical at that time? "

again, you're missing the point. of course we wouldn't have invaded while holding nukes as an ace in the hole.

the argument is that there's a considerable chance that Japan would've folded without us levying EITHER scenario against them, at least in hindsight.

[Edited on September 22, 2005 at 1:49 PM. Reason : with what we believed at the time, yeah, i'd be hard pressed not to nuke 'em.]

9/22/2005 1:49:11 PM

Quote :

"hah-hah anime geek."

Quote :

"simply using utilitarian morality, which was probably necessary when running a world war."

And when fighting communism... and capitalism... and imperialism... and terrorism...

Aw shit.

[Edited on September 22, 2005 at 2:10 PM. Reason : image, not link]

9/22/2005 2:09:54 PM

I made a dead baby joke at the end of that one. My gf never forgave me.

And yes, I'm not much of an ends justify the means sort of person either. I'm just saying that it's understandable.

9/22/2005 2:38:44 PM