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Originally Posted by bey
yeah but our killing people with the bombs stopped them from killing people.
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Again, you're delineating an either/or blame situation in the war. This is never the case, as I have pointed out in the previous thread. I do not place
all blame for the end of Japan's part in the war at the feet of the Americans, nor do I place it all at the feet of the Japanese.
If it had gone another way, eg more carpet bombing, blockading, or any other too-intensive process that was eventually discarded in favour of their new toy, I still wouldn't. The blood of civillians that die during a conflict in their own country are as much on the hands of their leaders as they are on any invading forces. Especially when - as is usually the case - they are mostly starving bastards just trying to survive in absolutely horrible situations.
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Originally Posted by bey
us killing germans stopped hitler from rounding up people and putting them in gas chambers.
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I find this argument difficult to stomach considering your moral-by-numbers stance. The final tally of murdered persecuted-non-combatants at the end of the war in Germany was great enough to be labelled an
atrocity. "Stop" is stretching the truth a bit further than is logical. "Slowed down a bit" is probably closer to the reality.
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best strategic and moral option.
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And I'd agree with this, if I believed half the propaganda printed about the ultimate US military decision. The fact is, I don't. I'm far too cynical to believe the US did it really because they were such caring bastards that they gave two fucks for the lives of their sworn and hated enemies, ruled under the thumb of equally incompetent military idiots, and whether more would die via firebombing, nuking or starvation over a protracted period of time.
Puhlease get a reality check. The only thing they gave a fuck about was that their Big Bomb made their dicks hard. That is not a "moral option". And it only counts as a "strategic" option by a hair's breadth.
I don't think that phrase means what you think it means. Do you mean the North or the South? Which "we" are you referring to? And how recently?
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where japan was testing plague on real live chinamen.
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And the US gave immunity and repatriation to European death-doctors to prevent the information they discovered during their work for Germany falling into Russia's hands. What's your point about "violations of human rights" again? Please, name one war, one honest-to-god war, where the US has ever
really*, given a shit about human rights?
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Note: Reality =/= Propaganda. Remember this fact. If you have an issue with this, please refer to Godfry's post re:US war policies & previous bombings in Germany and Japan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bey
and the effects on people's lives
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You keep saying this and this is what I keep trying to point out to you: No other country in the world has suffered a single, short, intense event the way Japan has with the bomb. This was a weapon that killed so many people in such a short time that we still can't comprehend it now. It is something the nation, as long as it exists in some form of the way it is now, will never forget, ever. It's a cultural scar on-par with US slavery, the German holocaust, and such paradigm-defining historical incidents. It transcends time and place, like a memory of an attack a victim keeps living over and over again because it had such a big impact on them. Whether or not the victim deserved the attack isn't the point. It wasn't just a "regular" weapon attack such as carpet bombing, cavalry invasion, drawn-out troop battles, etc etc, as had been known up to that point. The nuclear bomb ushered in the new age of weapons technology, and you simply can't seperate the country that was the victim of that first step from the step itself.
I'm certain I still haven't made clear what I'm trying to get across in the last paragraph, because I'm not satisfied with it myself. I'm not saying it would have been better one way or another - by any sides' numbers or death count or moral balance over the other - to choose another path. That's the problem with hindsight on a time dominated by the military: You will never have the truth, or anything vaguely resembling it, because of the nature of the institution itself dominating the time period. That doesn't mean I have to accept phrases like "necessary", "morally right" or "inevitable" to describe the event that did happen, especially an event I understand to have been brought about for cynical and gross reasons, and which had such an ineffable effect on the country it happened to. In fact, it means I have even less reason to accept them than I would if it was a time of peace for the nations in question.