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Hunt11 posted:Nobody is arguing that the Allies didn't do horrible things to win the war. It is just that what the Axis powers were doing, and would have done if they had won was so much worse. Max Hastings put it well: The difference between Allied crimes and Axis crimes is that the Allied crimes were all committed as a means to the end of the war - and could have been ended earlier by the surrender of the Axis powers. The Axis crimes on the other hand were committed as ends in themselves and they would have continued and even been expanded had the war ended with their victory.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:01
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MikeCrotch posted:The equivalent today is all-volunteer militaries who are predominately drawn from the poorer echelons of society, meaning that nowadays most people aren't directly affected by the decision to go to war overseas and therefore are not so opposed to it. Look at the people who still want to go into Syria and Iran even after the lessons we have llearned from Iraq and Afghanistan. The USA has fought 7 wars since the end of the Cold War, there's no way that would have been possible with a conscript military. At least for the US I think the middle class is where the bulk of manpower comes from
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Nov 26, 2016 20:09
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Well, how was the WW2 billed in UK? Save Poland/France? Sure, it might sound false in light of imperial policies and occupying Places of Non-White People, but as far as protecting-people-that-currently-count-as-people it seems to count. And we can hope that in 70 years since we have come to a some measure of better empathy for others. I would hope that the NATO could intetvene in Khmer Rouge today, but it seems that it's only Russia that does intercening abd it's never on the side of any people who need saving. Pls listen to Polyakov and don't advocate peace when LGM start interrupting my commute and T-72s start drifting in the town square.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:09
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lenoon posted:I agree with the sentiment that it's dangerous to take either extreme position on war, but disagree that Korea and the Gulf were fought to save people who couldn't save themselves - even if that's what those wars became that half way through. Korea was in no way fought to save the country from a dictatorship, but to arrest the spread of an ideology - and then resulted in a pretty hosed up military dictatorship regardless. North Korea launched an unprovoked invasion of South Korea and the United Nations authorized an intervention. It was so unprovoked that even Stalin was pissed off about it behind the scenes. I'm no fan of Syngman Rhee and his various thuggish successors but there's no whitewashing necessary to say the Korean War was, at first, a perfectly justifiable intervention by the U.S. It turned into a clusterfuck later on thanks to MacArthur's dumb rear end attempt to beat the commies, but that doesn't mean the initial involvement wasn't justified. quote:Did we fight in the gulf to save the Kurds? Or the Iraqis? Or the Iranians? If so we made a piss poor job of doing any of it - and then left saddam in place until NATO countries could come up with a flimsy excuse to finally take him out. The Coalition fought to throw Saddam's army out of Kuwait, a sovereign state that he had his army invade. Again, there isn't any need to whitewash the Coalition's motivations even if the aftermath was (and still is!) supremely hosed up.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:09
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FastestGunAlive posted:At least for the US I think the middle class is where the bulk of manpower comes from Low middle class at least. A lot of troops go in for the GI Bill and other kinds of welfare.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:10
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Alchenar posted:Max Hastings put it well: The difference between Allied crimes and Axis crimes is that the Allied crimes were all committed as a means to the end of the war - and could have been ended earlier by the surrender of the Axis powers. The Axis crimes on the other hand were committed as ends in themselves and they would have continued and even been expanded had the war ended with their victory. the rape of berlin definitely shortened the war. the betrayal of the cossacks even managed to shorten the war after the war ended! e: dear my sweetheart, here is a jap skull. i send you this to make the war shorter love john
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Nov 26, 2016 20:16
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JcDent posted:Well, how was the WW2 billed in UK? Save Poland/France? Sure, it might sound false in light of imperial policies and occupying Places of Non-White People, but as far as protecting-people-that-currently-count-as-people it seems to count. After the fall of France and until the US joined in it was balls to the wall defend the shores because at the time we thought Nazi Germany could actually invade. Imperialism was already being quietly written off behind the scenes, places like Singapore and Hong Kong were pretty much at the bottom of the list of places that needed to be reinforced. Keeping the country in the war was more important. Hell it sealed the deal for Indian independence after the war.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:23
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CoolCab posted:the rape of berlin definitely shortened the war. the betrayal of the cossacks even managed to shorten the war after the war ended! You're probably not going to do very well in this thread
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Nov 26, 2016 20:25
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JcDent posted:No LAVs in USSR! Yes there were, and you could even fly with them!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcdmq07u2T8 
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Nov 26, 2016 20:26
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:There WERE Japanese Fifth Columns like the Shindo Renmei in Brazil but they were not a threat that warranted such drastic measures. I was not aware of that group, but it seems they were a group of deluded extremists acting on their own (after the war ended) rather than a legitimate fifth column.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:31
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It feels like the topic has sort of slid dramatically from 'it's ironic that WWII caused such high casualties despite it being, on the side of the allies, having a much more black and white morality than most wars', to an argument about um, whether or not the war is 'completely just' in that the allies committed absolutely no atrocities or not.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:34
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bewbies posted:You're probably not going to do very well in this thread look, don't get me wrong, it's unambiguously and screamingly clear that the broad strokes of what he was saying is right, but saying all the allied crimes were committed as a means to end the war is absolutely farcical. wars are really unpleasant things, lots of unpleasant things happen in them, a vast, overwhelming majority of the unpleasant things the allies did were towards shortening the war and it's a sharp contrast to the vast, overwhelming majority of the unpleasant things the axis did for much worse reasons (many of which, like the holocaust, actually made it more difficult for them to successfully end the war). WW2 is probably the single most unambiguously black and white war there has been in recent memory but that does not mean there wasn't plenty of grey.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:35
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Alchenar posted:Max Hastings put it well: The difference between Allied crimes and Axis crimes is that the Allied crimes were all committed as a means to the end of the war - and could have been ended earlier by the surrender of the Axis powers. The Axis crimes on the other hand were committed as ends in themselves and they would have continued and even been expanded had the war ended with their victory. While this well seems pretty fouled I don't think it's the case all Allied atrocities tried to end the war. There are some that hit that kind of area (strategic and nuclear bombing, unrestricted submarine warfare, etc) but the allies also did their fair share of gory poo poo that happened because hosed up poo poo happens in wars.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:37
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TheLovablePlutonis posted:Low middle class at least. A lot of troops go in for the GI Bill and other kinds of welfare. Would be interested in numbers on that. Also, "welfare"
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Nov 26, 2016 20:40
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Alchenar posted:Max Hastings put it well: The difference between Allied crimes and Axis crimes is that the Allied crimes were all committed as a means to the end of the war - and could have been ended earlier by the surrender of the Axis powers. The Axis crimes on the other hand were committed as ends in themselves and they would have continued and even been expanded had the war ended with their victory. Some 20k Poles buried in Katyn might disagree...
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Nov 26, 2016 20:40
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Max Hastings is a pretty good example of what I referred to earlier as the jingoistic stream that would give you the ooorahrah about Britain's Finest Hour on one hand and then write screeds in the Daily Mail about how immigration and the Muslim 'enemy within' is the greatest threat to Britain since 1945. Edit: ^^^ This is more of a pedantic point, I really wouldn't call the Soviets part of the Allies ahead of Barbarossa. Fangz fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Nov 26, 2016 |
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Nov 26, 2016 20:45
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War is one of the fundamental ways that nations express themselves. In a way, they wouldn't be nations if they didn't have men with guns they could order around. You have to work out some point where you reconcile everything together, but it's not easy. I suppose the way you'd put it is that while the process of war is thoroughly undesirable, theoretically the end goal is good. I've been catching up on the revolutions podcast, and I got to the part where Simon Bolivar declared his intent to have every spaniard in the americas killed unless they assist him in his goal, and...  . Different wars have different tolls, but some of them just involve so many people dying, and then even become wrapped up in a lot of important philosophical notions, and it's so bizarre to try to work out how to feel about all of it. I guess I should count myself lucky that there aren't so many mass murderers in my country's national myth*. You can even still see people looking favorably towards killing more recently, where a man who earned the nickname of "the butcher" is unironically put on t-shirts. It's all so hard to put together in my head.*Native americans notwithstanding, at least our revolution was one of the "cleanest" covered by the Revolutions podcast so far.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:47
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Well What Now posted:North Korea launched an unprovoked invasion of South Korea and the United Nations authorized an intervention. It was so unprovoked that even Stalin was pissed off about it behind the scenes. I hate this viewpoint and don't really understand how it's become universal, as though Kim Il-sung was Hitler rolling into Poland or whatever. The Koreas had been disunited for 5 years. After more than 1000 years of unity. The cultural and economic disparities that are so entrenched today were practically nonexistant at the time. It wasn't an "unprovoked" invasion, it was a reunification war; Kim had an opportunity to reunify his people and he took it. I hate North Korea as much as the next person (in fact, probably significantly more) and of course the North Korean and Chinese viewpoint of "Yankee aggression" or whatever, as though America started the war, is even more bullshit. But why we're so set on treating what were at the time two fairly illegitimate states- that had been made along a totally arbitrary line by a couple of dudes in one night from a foreign country who knew nothing about the place, using a map that was too small to make out more than the broadest physical details- as though they were entrenched nation states that needed to be "saved" from foreign aggression, is silly.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:49
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Koramei posted:I hate this viewpoint and don't really understand how it's become universal, as though Kim Il-sung was Hitler rolling into Poland or whatever. Additionally, the South Koreans did launch border raids into the north prior to the invasion; it wasn't as though the South was minding their own business.
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Nov 26, 2016 20:54
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There have been, are and will be again, invasions that meet no military response from the international community- defence is a reason but not the only reason. I'd say it's exceptionally naive to say that the Korean War was the UN leaping to the defence of South Korea for the sole reason that it was acting altruistically, which ignores the wider political context of the war - and then despite a UN resolution, you have China, the USSR and a lot of the soviet bloc providing support in some form to the North Koreans; hardly a unanimous defence of South Korea's territorial integrity. Same wth the Gulf, remember that when Iraq invaded Iran in 88 the US supported them in the crazy knock-down drag-out chemical warfare bullshit that followed they were supporting the aggressor after the tide of the war turned. Foreign policy in the gulf for the US aimed to counter any attempt at establishing political hegemony, be it Iranian or Iraqi. These wars were for defence, but situated within the political and economic contexts of their time - additionally interesting with Storm when you take into account the fact that Kuwait and the Saudis picked up so much of the bill. The choice to go to war for defensive reasons does not exist in isolation - impossible for it to do so. War is too expensive in economic and political terms to do it out of the kindness of your heart and pity for the little guy, the country committing to warfare on behalf of another state must justify it both to politicians and public. I'm not actually attempting to cynically paint all war as inherently evil, despite my personal political views, but to acknowledge the incredible rarity of altruistic conflict.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:02
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Koramei posted:I hate this viewpoint and don't really understand how it's become universal, as though Kim Il-sung was Hitler rolling into Poland or whatever. Reuniting the peninsula through military conquest was not a precedent the UN was willing to tolerate. It still isn't, which is why Russia's invasion of Crimea is illegitimate.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:15
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... and why NATO has leapt to the defence of Ukraine.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:18
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Deteriorata posted:Reuniting the peninsula through military conquest was not a precedent the UN was willing to tolerate. It still isn't, which is why Russia's invasion of Crimea is illegitimate. Yeah but you also can't ignore the context of the postwar US occupation and how its suppression of leftists in the South created the division.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:20
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Fangz posted:Yeah but you also can't ignore the context of the postwar US occupation and how its suppression of leftists in the South created the division. Ah, so once again everything is America's fault. Thanks for the insight.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:22
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Fangz posted:Yeah but you also can't ignore the context of the postwar US occupation and how its suppression of leftists in the South created the division. Because nothing like that happened north of the 38th parallel.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:23
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Deteriorata posted:Reuniting the peninsula through military conquest was not a precedent the UN was willing to tolerate. It still isn't, which is why Russia's invasion of Crimea is illegitimate. That wasn't really my point, and for that matter I don't think Crimea is a clear parallel since it had been separated from Russia for decades (and was significantly less Russian in the first place) rather than just a few short years. e: if you want a parallel, I think colonial divisions of Africa are more apt. or for that matter, Vietnam Koramei fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Nov 26, 2016 |
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Nov 26, 2016 21:28
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Oookay?  I'm saying that talking about the US entry into the Korean war as this war of the US leaping in to defend a country from an 'unprovoked' foreign attack is rather silly. The war is more accurately seen as the culmination of great-power politics, crossed with a civil war. You could equivalently claim that French involvement in the American revolutionary war was good old France leaping in to defend America from an unprovoked attack by the British, and it would be more or less as silly. The fact that the US had a hand in creating the division, and that neither side of the Korean peninsula recognised the legitimacy of the other, changes the situation a lot from merely an altruistic and defensive war. "It's all the Americans' fault" and "the other side didn't do anything similar" are strawmen. Fangz fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Nov 26, 2016 |
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Nov 26, 2016 21:39
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Wasn't Vietnam supposed to have democratic elections for unification that got cancelled when it seemed like the Communists were going to win?
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Nov 26, 2016 21:47
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Deteriorata posted:Ah, so once again everything is America's fault. Thanks for the insight. No one is making this point. Context is history, history is context. The Korean War was complex, who knew?
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Nov 26, 2016 21:54
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I think this shows why we don't argue war ethics in this thread 
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Nov 26, 2016 21:57
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For the record I'm not arguing against UN intervention in Korea (for personal reasons I'm in fact extremely glad it happened), just that the notion that (from my observation) most westerners have of Kim Il-sung as Korean Hitler steaming over the border in an act of bold faced aggression is overly simplistic. And I think one of the legacies of Cold War bias when we look at history that especially in this thread we've tried to totally rid ourselves of. We can see nuances to history in Vietnam, in WW2, but when it comes to the Korean War, maybe since North Korea still exists and is still awful and still our enemy, people tend to ignore any nuances to what happened.
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Nov 26, 2016 22:03
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lenoon posted:... and why NATO has leapt to the defence of Ukraine. Because that would result in...what kind of positive?
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Nov 26, 2016 22:06
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Koramei posted:For the record I'm not arguing against UN intervention in Korea (for personal reasons I'm in fact extremely glad it happened), just that the notion that (from my observation) most westerners have of Kim Il-sung as Korean Hitler steaming over the border in an act of bold faced aggression is overly simplistic. And I think one of the legacies of Cold War bias when we look at history that especially in this thread we've tried to totally rid ourselves of. We can see nuances to history in Vietnam, in WW2, but when it comes to the Korean War, maybe since North Korea still exists and is still awful and still our enemy, people tend to ignore any nuances to what happened. And I was more asserting that while Kim Il-Sung had legitimate grievances, invading the South was the wrong way to deal with them and guaranteed they would never be addressed.
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Nov 26, 2016 22:09
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Nov 26, 2016 22:14
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chitoryu12 posted:Because that would result in...what kind of positive? Ukraine would become the most free, self-illuminating, glass-floored parking lot in the world!
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Nov 26, 2016 22:17
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Deteriorata posted:And I was more asserting that while Kim Il-Sung had legitimate grievances, invading the South was the wrong way to deal with them and guaranteed they would never be addressed. I thought we were talking more about whether the US decision to intervene was as clear cut as WWII? To be a bit trollish though, it's not like the US has much of a leg to stand on if it comes to the question of whether military action to reunify is justified when the southern half of a country decides to break away for some reason...
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Nov 26, 2016 22:18
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spectralent posted:I think this shows why we don't argue war ethics in this thread D&D is leaking again... Let's get it back on track- EE I suggest the char b!
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Nov 26, 2016 22:18
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Fangz posted:I thought we were talking more about whether the US decision to intervene was as clear cut as WWII? The US didn't intervene, though. The UN did after the Soviets walked out of the SC meeting. The US ended up being the primary contributor to the effort, but it was not a unilateral action.
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Nov 26, 2016 22:20
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I was being intentionally kind of broad, I really do believe that Gulf 1 was mainly enacted to throw Saddam out of Kuwait and i think that view is backed up by the fact that we did not then seize the opportunity to topple Saddam even though we were capable of doing so, (Despite arguments that we should at the time being very forcefully put.), the crimes that Saddam was committing in Kuwait were pretty horrific and were a large part (in my view) of convincing the public to support that view, going in to Iraq to enact Regime Change without a plan to do so was essentially the basis of Gulf 2, and i dont think it would have ended any better had we tried it then than when we tried it in 2003. (Given that is essentially what happened). Korea is a knotty issue, and im not attempting to paint the various dictatorships of South Korea as paragons of virtue, but i do think that a large impulse behind the process was the desire to enforce the peace that had been created by WW2, i dont think that anyone really anticipated that China would join and that the war would become as massive as it had, the idea was to stop war as a means of national dispute resolution and especially of ideological exportation, the Russians had been quite open for a long time about their desire to export revolution throughout the world, and containment as a philosophy i think originated from pure motives, by 1949 i cannot imagine that the US administration were under any illusions as to the ultimate intent of the USSR, the Berlin airlift had occurred and people had decided to take a firm line with Communism and its attempts to export itself to other areas forcefully. This was before the time that the concept of World Socialism being achieved peacefully came to the fore. The idea was to hold up the expansion of totalitarian ideals everywhere in order to protect people from them, never give an inch and stop the spread. It is arguable whether that motivation was self-centered on the part of the US or whether that was a genuine desire to protect people from Communist totalitarianism or other, i tend to land on the other side of that, i think that politicians in general often try to do what they think of as the right thing, but i have found myself in slim company. Its certainly a complex issue. Ultimately dividing countries does not help, Britain has proven this again and again with India, Ireland, Cyprus and Palestine, but the realities of politics meant that it kind of had to be done, the effort to try and maintain the status established by international treaty is i think ultimately a good reason to fight, i don't think necessarily either Korea could claim to be the more legitimate one, but one did launch a massive invasion against the other. No war will ever be fought for completely altruistic reasons, politics doesn't work that way, but i think that for these wars the main desires were more weighted in protecting the interests of others rather than neccesarily just those of yourself. E: I just read that and saw how rambling it is, sorry I just got back in from a somewhat convivial evening.
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Nov 26, 2016 22:33
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chitoryu12 posted:Because that would result in...what kind of positive? That's what I mean! "Desire" to leap to the defence other national interests is balanced by the reality of international politics.
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Nov 26, 2016 22:36
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