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Fojar38 posted:This example requires the presumption that the United States and Imperial Japan are morally equivalent actors and that seems to be the implicit assumption a ton of "Bombs were war crimes" folks seem to be making.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:31
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Fojar38 posted:This example requires the presumption that the United States and Imperial Japan are morally equivalent actors and that seems to be the implicit assumption a ton of "Bombs were war crimes" folks seem to be making. Like I said in the next paragraph you left out, this leads into weird and slippery situation where you can excuse war crimes if you are one of the "good guys". Problem is that every country sees themselves as such meaning that commiting war crimes becomes an acceptable strategy. Basically what I'm saying is that targeting civilians is always a war crime no matter how moral your war aims otherwise are.
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Oct 27, 2016 06:24
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Except when fighting Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan you actually are, in fact, the good guys.
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Oct 27, 2016 06:46
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We are the good guys compared to noted really really bad guys: ISIS, are we justified in committing war crimes?
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Oct 27, 2016 07:22
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Doing whatever it takes to end a war soon is not a crime, and strategic bombardment was considered a legitimate strategy in WWII because surgical strikes were impossible. The nuclear weapon made surgical strikes impossible by design, but in practical terms of 1945 the difference between it and a raid against a city was in how many planes were needed to deliver the payload. In general the firebombing strategy was an example of something that produced a disproportionate amount of destruction for what it was able to achieve, but I don't think it was a war crime since it was an expression of a state of the art knowledge about the nature of war, which only retrospectively was proven to be wrong and counterproductive. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 07:33
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VitalSigns posted:We are the good guys compared to noted really really bad guys: ISIS, are we justified in committing war crimes? ISIS is bad but also small time in the grand scheme of things; they haven't gone on any continent-wide conquest and murder-sprees yet and will never have the capacity to do so. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan on the other hand, not only had the capacity to do so but had demonstrated it.
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Oct 27, 2016 07:32
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steinrokkan posted:Doing whatever it takes to end a war soon is not a crime, and strategic bombardment was considered a legitimate strategy in WWII. What do you think about Rotterdam Blitz? Was it a legitimate strategy to end the war or a war crime?
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Oct 27, 2016 07:38
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Glah posted:What do you think about Rotterdam Blitz? Was it a legitimate strategy to end the war or a war crime? It was, on the account it broke the cease fire. It wouldn't have been considered anything special under other circumstances, except it was part of a larger crime (war of aggression) - but that was crime committed by higher command and politicians, not by the pilots and operational commanders. As I said, bombarding cities was something people thought to be an effective and demoralizing strategy, only to be proven wrong by later analysis of results.
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Oct 27, 2016 07:43
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Glah posted:What do you think about Rotterdam Blitz? Was it a legitimate strategy to end the war or a war crime? Yes, the nazis had no choice but to bomb Rotterdam as that pesky Dutch government refused to end their agressive war against Germany.
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Oct 27, 2016 07:59
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CeeJee posted:Yes, the nazis had no choice but to bomb Rotterdam as that pesky Dutch government refused to end their agressive war against Germany. Are we really comparing Imperial Japan being defeated by the US to the Netherlands being attacked by Nazi Germany?
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Oct 27, 2016 08:03
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Fojar38's argument is that Imperial Japan was an enemy so heinous, that any act taken against it was inherently just. Even if that action was the indiscriminate mass slaughter of civilians. Even if that action was the use of chemical weapons. Even if that action was attempting to starve an entire nation of people to death. In other words, Fojar38 is a horrible person and you should probably ignore their thoughts on moral philosophy
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Oct 27, 2016 08:44
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Hey if you ever get to the actual topic of this thread, give me a shout in the Finnish Politics thread or something because I'm unsubbing from this one.
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Oct 27, 2016 08:53
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Chomskyan posted:Fojar38's argument is that Imperial Japan was an enemy so heinous, that any act taken against it was inherently just. Even if that action was the indiscriminate mass slaughter of civilians. Even if that action was the use of chemical weapons. Even if that action was attempting to starve an entire nation of people to death. Forums Poster Chomskyan lives up to his namesake by being a hypocritical defender and apologist of genocidal dictatorships so long as they were enemies of the US. At this point you're essentially arguing that the US was wrong to fight Imperial Japan period, because any action that negatively affects civilians is wrong (but only in this one specific circumstance where it allows for smug moralizing at the US) Like your implicit argument with "that horrible action that was attempting to starve an entire nation of people to death!" line was that the US should have apparently been handing out food and other resources to Japan while also fighting Japan. Or leaving things like shipping alone so that Japanese civilians will always have something to eat? What sort of nonsensical video-game fantasy war are you envisioning? Do you think that wars are won by accruing points? Edit: Oh right, I just remembered that on the last page you explained that what you thought the US should have done was let Imperial Japan dictate the terms of its own surrender. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 08:56
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Anyway, if you are interested in immediate accounts of the bombings, check out this site, I fed relevant data into the search engine for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and set it to display only long journalistic pieces. It only archives Australian newspapers and gazettes, but it contains lots of good stuff on any WWII topic, and back in the day lots of articles were just bought for publication from outside sources so it contains lots of perspectives.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:07
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How many thousands of Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, etc. lives are worth sacrificing to avoid dropping nukes on Japan? Because I tallied it up in the last WW2 thread and Japan was killing about 12,000 innocent civilians in Asia every single day that the war continued.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:09
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Fojar38 posted:At this point you're essentially arguing that the US was wrong to fight Imperial Japan period, because any action that negatively affects civilians is wrong (but only in this one specific circumstance where it allows for smug moralizing at the US) Well this is obviously not the argument because the definition of a war crime doesn't include "any action that negatively affects civilians" but does include "directing attacks against civilians" and "using poison gas"
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Oct 27, 2016 09:11
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VitalSigns posted:Well this is obviously not the argument because the definition of a war crime doesn't include "any action that negatively affects civilians" but does include "directing attacks against civilians" and "using poison gas" Does a blockade count as directing attacks against civilians?
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Oct 27, 2016 09:12
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Fojar38 posted:Does a blockade count as directing attacks against civilians? No, but deliberate starvation of civilians as a weapon of war is its own war crime. The UN is condemning Assad for doing that right now, although he is doing it to try to win the war so maybe it's okay to do and the UN needs to stop the handwringing
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Oct 27, 2016 09:19
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VitalSigns posted:No, but deliberate starvation of civilians as a weapon of war is its own war crime. So a blockade is also out of the question, leaving the US with literally no moral options on the offensive as long as there are civilians about, in a war where the entire population of all belligerents has been mobilized for the war effort. It's almost like it was a really bad war and the entire post-1945 international order has been set up with the explicit intent of avoiding its repetition. So is that what this all comes down to? "Actually all war is immoral and all acts of war are crimes?" No poo poo, it's one of the reasons Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were such shits; they started the biggest war in history. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 09:27
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Sergg posted:How many thousands of Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, etc. lives are worth sacrificing to avoid dropping nukes on Japan? In what universe did Asian civilians stop being killed in wars when the Japanese surrendered. I am pretty sure in this universe the Allies continued colonial wars in Indonesia and Vietnam and were involved in the Chinese civil war as well. Like we allied with Japan to continue warring against the Vietnamese.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:29
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Should have left Hitler alone because Jews continued dying in Arab wars anyway and because Stalinists kept killing people in formerly German-occupied territories.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:32
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VitalSigns posted:In what universe did Asian civilians stop being killed in wars when the Japanese surrendered. They stopped being killed in the war that ended, friend. And I don't think "Well there will still be conflict in the region after so gently caress it who cares if the war ends" would be a particularly convincing argument to anyone at the time. Is this where we are now? Arguing whether or not it mattered that World War loving 2 ended?
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Oct 27, 2016 09:34
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The Hundred Days offensive broke the Germans' back, but people kept dying of Spanish flu after the war, so what good did it do. I'm sure Chinese and Korean people mourn the day Japan was forced to surrender to this very day.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:36
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The argument that the Allies were justified in nuking Japan because they wanted to save Vietnamese civilians is p ridiculous given that the Allies agreed with Japan that killing the Vietnamese to dominate their country militarily was the right thing to do and allied with Japan to continue doing it
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Oct 27, 2016 09:38
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This may come as a shock to serial war crime apologist Fojar38, but it is in fact possible to win a war without comitting war crimes. Notice for example that the war in Germany was mostly* won without deliberate mass killings of civilians. *exceptions exist, for example Dresden
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Oct 27, 2016 09:40
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Vietnam wasn't the only place on Earth where war was going on, my man.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:43
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Chomskyan posted:This may come as a shock to serial war crime apologist Fojar38, but it is in fact possible to win a war without comitting war crimes. Notice for example that the war in Germany was mostly* won without deliberate mass killings of civilians. Ever heard of the Eastern Front, friend, possibly the most brutal land war in history?
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Oct 27, 2016 09:48
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steinrokkan posted:Vietnam wasn't the only place on Earth where war was going on, my man. Okay but surely if we're retroactively justified in nuking Japan because we can tally the the number of people dying in Asia during the war, we'd have to exclude the places where the Allies allowed the Japanese to continue killing and/or just took over the killing once the Japanese soldiers surrendered to them.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:49
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Chomskyan posted:This may come as a shock to serial war crime apologist Fojar38, but it is in fact possible to win a war without comitting war crimes. Notice for example that the war in Germany was mostly* won without deliberate mass killings of civilians. The Red Army raped its way through East Prussia, herding a mass exodus of people in front of it. Which gets usually hand waved as "that's how things are in war".
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Oct 27, 2016 09:51
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steinrokkan posted:Which gets usually hand waved as "that's how things are in war". So just to be clear: handwaving away war crimes as "that's just how things are" is immoral?
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Oct 27, 2016 09:57
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Chomskyan posted:This may come as a shock to serial war crime apologist Fojar38, but it is in fact possible to win a war without comitting war crimes. Notice for example that the war in Germany was mostly* won without deliberate mass killings of civilians. Oddly enough, your go-to example is the exact some one the Nazi proanganda machine seized on as 'evidence' of Allied barbarity. Funny, that.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:56
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VitalSigns posted:Okay but surely if we're retroactively justified in nuking Japan because we can tally the the number of people dying in Asia during the war, we'd have to exclude the places where the Allies allowed the Japanese to continue killing and/or just took over the killing once the Japanese soldiers surrendered to them. Well, the issue is, just because, say, the Dutch wanted to take back East Indies by force doesn't mean Americans contemporaries ever had any intention of supporting that particular idea. After the war paths for individual territories diverged pretty wildly, and it was probably one of the larger failures of the Allies that they didn't really have a plan for handing over and / or reforming those polities in a coordinated fashion. So in my opinion the casualties in the colonial wars post-1945 are on account of the national governments which chose to pursue each individual case, and not something that can be pinned on the grand coalition that pursued the victory over Japan as a whole.
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Oct 27, 2016 09:57
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Fojar38 posted:Ever heard of the Eastern Front, friend, possibly the most brutal land war in history? OK, you're right. I was talking about the Western front. You still don't need war crimes to win a war
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Oct 27, 2016 09:58
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VitalSigns posted:So just to be clear: handwaving away war crimes as "that's just how things are" is immoral? Much like the Red Army did lots of regrettable things in its effort to get things over with, so did the Western Allies, and when we look back, we can see why and how those things should have been avoided. That doesn't mean in the day and moment of those events they were apparent as war crimes, rather than as continuing the war through means at hand. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 10:00
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Chomskyan posted:OK, you're right. I was talking about the Western front. You still don't need war crimes to win a war if somebody else on your side is committing them anyway. Fixed this for you.
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Oct 27, 2016 10:01
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Chomskyan posted:OK, you're right. I was talking about the Western front. You still don't need war crimes to win a war Because you can outsource them to the other front? What? Anyway, strategic bombing campaign over Germany and the blockade weren't nice things either, but Germany had the benefit of being in a more robust position so they shouldered them better than Japan. The difference wasn't as much in means, as it was in results. If anything, Germans were subject to more punishment, on account of the strategic preference given to the EUropean theatre in the US.
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Oct 27, 2016 10:04
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steinrokkan posted:Well, the issue is, just because, say, the Dutch wanted to take back East Indies by force doesn't mean Americans contemporaries ever had any intention of supporting that particular idea. After the war paths for individual territories diverged pretty wildly, and it was probably one of the larger failures of the Allies that they didn't really have a plan for handing over and / or reforming those polities in a coordinated fashion. So in my opinion the casualties in the colonial wars post-1945 are on account of the national governments which chose to pursue each individual case, and not something that can be pinned on the grand coalition that pursued the victory over Japan as a whole. You seem to be arguing that on the one hand the bomb is justified to prevent X people from dying per day, but on the other hand it's irrelevant whether those deaths were actually prevented because the allied command didn't give a poo poo. Surely even in a utilitarian argument for committing a war crime, we could only count deaths it prevented if those deaths were actually prevented. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 10:06
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steinrokkan posted:Much like the Red Army did lots of regrettable things in its effort to get things over it, so did the Western Allies, and when we look back, we can see why and how those things should have been avoided. That doesn't mean in the day and moment of those events were apparent as war crimes, rather than as continuing the war through means at hand. I will point out that bombings are at least nominally strategic in a way that rapes aren't.
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Oct 27, 2016 10:07
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VitalSigns posted:You seem to be arguing that on the one hand the bomb is justified to prevent X people from dying per day, but on the other hand it's irrelevant whether those deaths were actually prevented because the allied command didn't give a poo poo. They ended the war, and then went their separate ways. Some of them then decided to start wars of their own, which was wrong, but not a fault of the allied effort as a whole. It's not a utilitarian argument, it's a political argument. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 10:08
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Fojar38 posted:So a blockade is also out of the question, leaving the US with literally no moral options on the offensive as long as there are civilians about, in a war where the entire population of all belligerents has been mobilized for the war effort. Then I guess I don't understand the aversion to labelling strategic bombing against civilians and nuclear attacks on civilians a war crime. Surely the goal of avoiding the repetition of total war would be better served by discussing the magnitude and horror of it rather than by jingoistically downplaying them and talking up how much the bad guys deserved it.
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Oct 27, 2016 10:15
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