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Tezzor posted:Hm. Or they could have surrendered to the US on reasonable terms without the use of nuclear weapons against civilian population centers. Note that this unlike your self justifying fantastical scaremongering is actually plausible inasmuch as it is something they actually attempted to do They should've offered some reasonable terms to the US.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:17
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VitalSigns posted:No I disagree, I think the Geneva Conventions are actually good, and the Rape of Nanking, the mass murder of Poles, the Armenian Genocide, etc are, in fact, bad and we can condemn the people who did those things instead of saying "well it was war what do you expect". And it's not something that any person would do, because you had high-ranking members of the US military like MacArthur and Leahy and Eisenhower calling the targeting of civilians unnecessary and a war crime even at the time, not just in hindsight. rudatron fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 06:23
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Chomskyan posted:Hey guys, anything that isn't explicitly outlawed in customary international law at the time it occurred is completely OK. That's why people should stop whining about the Holocaust. It's almost like people continuously form new ideas about what is and is not morally acceptable. VitalSigns posted:Why sign any of those conventions at all, do you think? I think you're gimmick is great. I get it. Keep posting! 
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Aug 9, 2015 06:30
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rudatron posted:All 3 of the atrocities you mentioned were not related to any military actions, they were committed in territory already captured and controlled by the side that committed them. They were not acts of total war, in the sense that they were not actions committed as part of the process of warring with another state of similar capabilities (ie- they were not proportional). The Japanese definitely engaged in terror bombings of Chinese cities like Chongqing to try to break their will and get them to give up and those were definitely war crimes. rudatron posted:When two states go to war, it is inevitable that both will use whatever means necessary to win, that goes double for conflicts in which both sides have similar powers. That's just the logic of the situation. Well no, this isn't true. Both sides refrained from using poison gas in Europe because of the Geneva conventions and because they didn't want the other side to use it against them. Targeting ambulances and field hospitals has an obvious military benefit, but warring states can and do reduce the instances of that happening by mutual agreement. There's sometimes an advantage to be had in killing POWs rather than having the logistical issues in transporting and feeding them, but warring states can and do observe mutual agreements not to do this. If the US gets in a war with a major power again, I would support us adhering to the Geneva conventions and not nuking population centers. Even if you don't give a poo poo about enemy women and children, you still don't want your family to be burned alive in their own homes. rudatron posted:The rape of nanking had no logical justification, and neither did the holocaust. Conflating acts of war between states and pointless killing is transparent dishonesty clearly motivated by a desire to moralize and feel smug. It is a moral condemnation in search of facts, not a honest, just and fair accounting of wrongs committed. Who decides who has a logical justification. The problem with saying "targeting civilians on purpose is okay as long as you're the good guys" is that all sides think that they are the good guys. Terror-bombing isn't okay just because we're the ones doing it.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:37
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Arglebargle III posted:It's almost like people continuously form new ideas about what is and is not morally acceptable. I am pretty sure people knew the Holocaust was wrong in the 1940s. Should we have accepted the Nazis' argument at Nuremburg that their crimes weren't technically against international law and let them go with a pat on the butt? Arglebargle III posted:I think you're gimmick is great. I get it. Keep posting! It's a serious question. You're claiming that something isn't wrong if it's not against international law yet. How do you decide what to outlaw if you don't identify which things are wrong to do and should be outlawed? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 06:39
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VitalSigns posted:Who decides who has a logical justification. The problem with saying "targeting civilians on purpose is okay as long as you're the good guys" is that all sides think that they are the good guys. Terror-bombing isn't okay just because we're the ones doing it. Genocide.. is.. wrong?
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Aug 9, 2015 06:39
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Poison gas does not work. Targeting hospitals and ambulances does not win battles. Killing POWs makes opponents refuse to surrender. What you're describing are practical issues.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:41
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If, as mass murder apologists argue, Osama bin Laden is right and the civilian population of a country (in this case, Japan) is a legitimate target because they are morally responsible for its government's polices, this seems incongruous with their other claim that the bombs were a great act of morality because they allegedly saved more Japanese lives. Weren't the Japanese scum who deserved to die because military officers ordered serious war crimes? Then why was saving their lives a good thing? The only explanation I can come up for this discontinuity is that the mass murder apologist feels a lot better claiming the moral high ground while justifying atrocities motivated and justified by revenge
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Aug 9, 2015 06:45
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Chantilly Say posted:Poison gas does not work. Targeting hospitals and ambulances does not win battles. Killing POWs makes opponents refuse to surrender. What you're describing are practical issues. Terror-bombing doesn't work either. And are you arguing that killing POWs shouldn't be punished as a crime, because it's just a poor tactic and not actually wrong to do?
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Aug 9, 2015 06:45
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Tezzor posted:Hm. Or they could have surrendered to the US on reasonable terms without the use of nuclear weapons against civilian population centers. Note that this unlike your self justifying fantastical scaremongering is actually plausible inasmuch as it is something they actually attempted to do Imperial Japan surrendering reasonably would be like expecting ISIS to convert to Mormonism or something.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:46
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VitalSigns posted:Terror-bombing doesn't work either. At the time terror bombing was viewed as an effective tactic I don't think raping women in Berlin was eve considered an effective tactic
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Aug 9, 2015 06:46
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Smoothrich posted:Genocide.. is.. wrong? Not before 1949 it wasn't, according to the legalist argument being made here, viz Arglebargle III posted:Could you tell us what part of the 1864, 1906, or 1929 conventions on prisoners of war, hospitals and shipwrecked mariners the atom bomb violated? The 1949 convention had of course not taken place in 1945.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:46
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VitalSigns posted:Terror-bombing doesn't work either. Yes, and I agree that terror bombing is wrong. I don't know what the disagreement is there. Killing POWs is a crime along the same lines; it has no utility so why are you doing it? Bloodthirst?
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Aug 9, 2015 06:48
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Smoothrich posted:Imperial Japan surrendering reasonably would be like expecting ISIS to convert to Mormonism or something. I know that's what they told you in middle school but it is factually inaccurate http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
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Aug 9, 2015 06:49
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Typo posted:At the time terror bombing was viewed as an effective tactic It was viewed inaccurately, and the military forces that used it were at best negligent in their responsibility to know and use the best tactics and of course at worst war criminals/Bad Guys.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:50
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Typo posted:At the time terror bombing was viewed as an effective tactic ISIS considers rolling up into a village and beheading anyone of the wrong religion, and anyone who doesn't agree to help them an effective tactic. Okay to do? The Madrid train bombings succeeded in getting Spain to withdraw from the Iraq war. Legitimate tactic then? The only criticism we can make of 9/11 is that it didn't kill enough people to actually get the US to withdraw from the MIddle East?
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Aug 9, 2015 06:51
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Chantilly Say posted:It was viewed inaccurately, and the military forces that used it were at best negligent in their responsibility to know and use the best tactics and of course at worst war criminals/Bad Guys. But often you don't know the effectiveness of a tactic until you tried it out. The theory behind terror bombings working were reasonable.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:53
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VitalSigns posted:ISIS considers rolling up into a village and beheading anyone of the wrong religion, and anyone who doesn't agree to help them an effective tactic. Okay to do? quote:The Madrid train bombings succeeded in getting Spain to withdraw from the Iraq war. Legitimate tactic then? The only criticism we can make of 9/11 is that it didn't kill enough people to actually get the US to withdraw from the MIddle East? I don't' see the war Al-Qaeda declared against the US as legitimate either Typo fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 06:55
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Typo posted:But often you don't know the effectiveness of a tactic until you tried it out. The first forces to employ terror bombing in WWII were the Nazis, so after the Blitz other forces had a very small platform from which to claim it might work if they just did it bigger, and with more fire this time.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:56
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Chantilly Say posted:The first forces to employ terror bombing in WWII were the Nazis, so after the Blitz other forces had a very small platform from which to claim it might work if they just did it bigger, and with more fire this time. But that's the thing though. The Nazis never had a real strategic bombing force, London was bombed with tactical bombers. The issue with the Blitz could reasonably being seen as not effective because it was lacking in scale.
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Aug 9, 2015 06:57
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Typo posted:No, because I don't consider the war ISIS as waging as legitimate in the first place. What about the Iraq War itself. Which side was justified in destroying whole cities there? Did Spain participate in an illegal preemptive attack on a country that never did anything to them and so brought the train bombings on themselves? You see what the problem with "anything goes if you're the good guys" in the context of international law and the Geneva Conventions right? Because both sides think they are the good guys and it's okay for us to use poison gas but not for the savage Hun. The whole point of making certain tactics off limits is to reduce as much as possible the unnecessary suffering of civilians in a war between governments.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:00
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Typo posted:But that's the thing though. Well, and lacking in consistency. They actually managed to do some real strategic damage when they were focusing on airfields and manufacturing. As soon as they turned the bombing campaigns into terror raids, they lost their effectiveness quickly, making any losses the Luftwaffe incurred for naught. Smoothrich posted:Genocide.. is.. wrong?  Better letter Imperial Japan know that.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:00
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CommieGIR posted:Well, and lacking in consistency. They actually managed to do some real strategic damage when they were focusing on airfields and manufacturing. As soon as they turned the bombing campaigns into terror raids, they lost their effectiveness quickly, making any losses the Luftwaffe incurred for naught. But from the PoV of someone in 1943 or so, the failure of the Blitz can be seen as due to the lack of Luftwaffe capacity bomb cities effectively.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:04
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The Japanese and Nazis used POWs as slave labor - about 3.3 million soviet POWs were worked to death or killed by exposure by the Nazis. The only reason chemical weapons weren't used is because they're useless - it's notable that even in the trench-warfare stalemate of WW1, they were not terribly effective, they would have been useless with more mobile warfare. There was essentially no 'mutual' agreement, and this is especially the case on the Eastern front, which is where the majority of the war took place.quote:Who decides who has a logical justification.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:06
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Tezzor posted:I know that's what they told you in middle school but it is factually inaccurate http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
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Aug 9, 2015 07:06
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Typo posted:They did, but crucially they failed to knock the RAF out of the fight and thus caused the switch-over to blitzing cities in the first place. Yeah, they never had the aircraft to do it with. It was the same issue their Panzer forces suffered from: Too many vehicles of too many different types. No common parts and uncommon makes.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:06
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VitalSigns posted:What about the Iraq War itself. Which side was justified in destroying whole cities there? Did Spain participate in an illegal preemptive attack on a country that never did anything to them and so brought the train bombings on themselves? quote:You see what the problem with "anything goes if you're the good guys" in the context of international law and the Geneva Conventions right? Because both sides think they are the good guys and it's okay for us to use poison gas but not for the savage Hun. If you are going to defend your position on the basis of international law then you have to start justifying why international law should be applied ex-post facto. You can cite the Nuremberg trials but incidentally that's one of the major arguments for why the trials were illegitimate and constitutes a victor's justice: at least for certain defendants anyway. quote:The whole point of making certain tactics off limits is to reduce as much as possible the unnecessary suffering of civilians in a war between governments. Which basically translates into tactic which aren't effective but causes a lot of harms anyway. Except in 1942 or so it wasn't terribly clear if terror bombings fell into this category.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:11
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VitalSigns posted:ISIS considers rolling up into a village and beheading anyone of the wrong religion, and anyone who doesn't agree to help them an effective tactic. Okay to do. No they don't? They're not doing it because they believe fear is an effective tactic at controlling a population, they're doing it because they are religious fanatics who think anybody who does not believe the same as them should be executed.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:13
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CommieGIR posted:Yeah, they never had the aircraft to do it with. It also had to do with the fundamental fact that German industry in the 1930s were genuinely pretty weak and France/Uk were outproducing them by 1940 in terms of warplanes. Like strategic bombing forces takes lots and lots of resources to build and were basically outside of Germany's price range. The US OTOH had plenty of industrial power to build a huge strategic airforce.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:13
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Garrand posted:No they don't? They're not doing it because they believe fear is an effective tactic at controlling a population, they're doing it because they are religious fanatics who think anybody who does not believe the same as them should be executed. Fear is an effective tactic for controlling a population. Just because they're also religious fanatics doesn't mean they don't recognize this.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:14
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VitalSigns posted:That's different from firebombings and terrorbombings which explicitly targeted civilians. Even if one accepts the argument for strategic bombing despite the unavoidable civilian casualties, that doesn't compel one to agree that it's okay to send out extra missions to kill as many civilians as possible to terrorize the people. Nope. All "strategic bombing" that was carried out by the RAF and USAAF in Europe (and not just Dresden) was literally called "terrorangriffe", or terror attacks by the Germans and pretty much all "strategic bombing" included mixing explosive and incendiary bombs to generate the most amount of damage via fire storms without any regard for civilian life in the area, especially the night time RAF raids. Pretty much 90% of all "strategic bombing" carried out by the allies in WW2 were designed to inflict the most amount of damage on population centers so the only real difference between that and Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the number of planes / bombs dropped. e: In hind sight I do actually think that things like Dresden/Tokyo/Hiroshima/Nagasaki were morally wrong, but looking at it within the context of when they happened and why based upon what commanders thought were the best tactics of the day it's a bit of a stretch to say it was a legit war crime. A Winner is Jew fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 07:14
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rudatron posted:The Japanese and Nazis used POWs as slave labor - about 3.3 million soviet POWs were worked to death or killed by exposure by the Nazis. The only reason chemical weapons weren't used is because they're useless - it's notable that even in the trench-warfare stalemate of WW1, they were not terribly effective, they would have been useless with more mobile warfare. There was essentially no 'mutual' agreement, and this is especially the case on the Eastern front, which is where the majority of the war took place. Chemical weapons were used in WWII though, just not between the major powers. Italy used them in Ethiopia and Japan used them against China. The Nazis did treat the Soviet POWs horribly, because they considered them subhuman and the Nazis were hideous. They treated British and American POWs much better in general. And Americans and British did the same with Nazi POWs, so your argument that laws of war are pointless because states will do whatever makes it easier to win is incorrect. Assuming a ruthless enough viewpoint, there would have been logistical advantages to executing or enslaving German POWs (if we didn't care what they did to ours and didn't care about getting our guys back at the end of the war), yet we didn't do that. So it seems international agreements do serve some purpose. rudatron posted:If you are honest enough to take context into account, then you too can make that decision. So far, you have not. Whether I believe the Japanese war aims were justified (they weren't) is irrelevant. The whole point of international agreements is to save lives and reduce suffering during the war on all sides. It's better if both sides, say, refrain from working POWs to death or blowing up millions of civilians than it is to do those things and pat ourselves on the back afterwards for having a more moral cause.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:15
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Typo posted:If you are going to defend your position on the basis of international law then you have to start justifying why international law should be applied ex-post facto. You can cite the Nuremberg trials but incidentally that's one of the major arguments for why the trials were illegitimate and constitutes a victor's justice: at least for certain defendants anyway. Except I'm not calling for Truman to be resurrected and tried under an ex post facto law? The point of deciding whether nuking civilians is wrong or not is because the question might come up again and we should use the benefit of hindsight to decide what to do. Typo posted:Can Al-Qaeda legitimately claim to be the national government of Iraq in exile or something and can therefore can bomb Spain for it? So the only criticism of the Madrid bombings is that it wasn't planned by people claiming to be the Iraqi government in exile? If that had somehow been a contingency plan by Saddam, it would have been cool? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 07:16
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VitalSigns posted:Except I'm not calling for Truman to be resurrected and tried under an ex post facto law? But that's the thing though. We are not talking about whether we should nuke Pyongyang tomorrow or something, we are talking about the morality of decisions which were made 70 years ago when the set of knowledge people had were completely different and hence cannot be subjected to the same standards we would have today.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:21
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VitalSigns posted:
I think it would be a lot more legitimate, yes.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:21
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VitalSigns posted:Except I'm not calling for Truman to be resurrected and tried under an ex post facto law? If that's the case then yeah, it was morally wrong and shouldn't happen again obviously. On the bright side this is pretty much agreed by every single nation in the world that possesses nuclear capability. Now at the time was it "indefensible" or "morally wrong" or even a "war crime"? I personally don't think so based upon what we know the people that order those attacks believed at the time.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:25
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VitalSigns posted:Whether I believe the Japanese war aims were justified (they weren't) is irrelevant. The whole point of international agreements is to save lives and reduce suffering during the war on all sides. It's better if both sides, say, refrain from working POWs to death or blowing up millions of civilians than it is to do those things and pat ourselves on the back afterwards for having a more moral cause. The morale cause was to end a war that had drug on long enough, and to force the hand of an opponent that was simply sitting on his hands hoping that it would come out in their favor in the end. What more moral cause could you find? Pretending that bombing during war is somehow IMMORAL ignores the whole point of it being a total war. The goal of the bombs was to convince Japan there was no way out and end the war quickly, instead of having to invade and force them to possibly endure even more brutal combat that would likely lead to far more causalities and far more suffering
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Aug 9, 2015 07:25
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Typo posted:We are not talking about whether we should nuke Pyongyang tomorrow or something, we are talking about the morality of decisions which were made 70 years ago when the set of knowledge people had were completely different and hence cannot be subjected to the same standards we would have today. It was criticized by no less than General Eisenhower at the time, people disagreed with it 70 years ago using the standards of 70 years ago. Typo posted:I think it would be a lot more legitimate, yes. Okayyyyy...well at least you are consistent. In that case we're at an impasse so I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree on the morality of terrorism to achieve political and military goals.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:25
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VitalSigns posted:It was criticized by no less than General Eisenhower at the time, people disagreed with it 70 years ago using the standards of 70 years ago. The point is that you need an actus rea and a mens rea for a crime to be commissioned. Had RAF bomber command woken up and say "gently caress those germans, we are going to kill as many of them as possible event though it will have little/no effect on the war because they piss me off" then I think it would not have being morally justifiable. But the fact is that people really did think this was going to be a silver bullet to shorten the war. quote:Okayyyyy...well at least you are consistent. In that case we're at an impasse so I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree on the morality of terrorism to achieve political and military goals. Every single war in history ever waged probably killed some civilians and kids and involved terrorizing somebody. This is the product of an anarchic international system in which states -have- to be ruthless when it comes to national survival, and WWII was probably the last time any western country could have claimed to have being fighting for national survival (even if the US wasn't, the UK was). States which aren't tend to be destroyed in the Darwinian struggle of international politics. Tragic? Yes. But that doesn't make it any less real.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:31
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Garrand posted:No they don't? They're not doing it because they believe fear is an effective tactic at controlling a population, they're doing it because they are religious fanatics who think anybody who does not believe the same as them should be executed. I've recently heard an analyst describe this as a tactic ISIS is taking from the Mongols. They terrorize one town as a example and the rest capitulate without a fight. I bet for the most part besides that, similar to the Nazis actually, ISIS also massacres as a collective reprisal punishment when people take arms against them. Their religion doubles as a convenient Holy War casus belli.
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Aug 9, 2015 07:34
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