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Isn't this just "Vigilante dad kills child molester" at an impersonal scale? You can be against murder, but also not lose any sleep over that sort of thing happening. Admittedly for firebombings it's more like setting the child molester's house on fire while the rest of the family is there too.Chamale posted:The US doctrine against Japan was to kill as many Japanese people as possible and eventually they'd surrender. It worked, and it was a war crime. Maybe they could have won the war with fewer casualties if they hadn't done war crimes but that's not a question history is equipped to answer. Slavvy posted:Dumb hypothetical: if someone in west Germany ~1950 found a way to round up a bunch of former SS camp guards and killed them, would that person have been prosecuted in an earnest way?
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Oct 14, 2021 06:17
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Weka posted:Presumably a bunch of these civilians being warcrimed are children. they knew what they signed up for
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Oct 14, 2021 06:33
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A Buttery Pastry posted:They'd be prosecuted as a Soviet infiltrator, for attacking NATO personnel.  fantastic
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Oct 14, 2021 06:36
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Weka posted:Presumably a bunch of these civilians being warcrimed are children. that happens in every war, even hollywood doesn't pretend there's such a thing as a military conflict where civilians don't get hit they just focus on the mental anguish of those doing the hitting A Buttery Pastry posted:They'd be prosecuted as a Soviet infiltrator, for attacking NATO personnel. loving lol
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Oct 14, 2021 08:10
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it's also revisionist to imply there was no german civilian resistance, both violent and non-violent. it is a great historical irony that madame la guillotine was not used on the many many, many many many fascist civilians who deserved it and instead was used against the tiny minority who wrote pamphlets like this:quote:Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way ... The German people slumber on in dull, stupid sleep and encourage the fascist criminals. Each wants to be exonerated of guilt, each one continues on his way with the most placid, calm conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!
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Oct 14, 2021 13:11
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Allen Dulles made overtures to Prince Max von Hohenlohe and SS officer Karl Wolff for a separate peace with the Nazis near the end of the war. After the war Reinhard Gehlen was handpicked to run west Germany's intelligence service (later the BND), and he was one of the architects of Operation Gladio with his plan for anti-communist terror campaigns in western Europe waged by "werewolves" who would be normal citizens by day, terrorists by night. Meanwhile, in the GDR,Michael Parenti posted:In comparison, when the Communists took over in East Germany, they removed some 80 percent of the judges, teachers, and officials for their Nazi collaboration; they imprisoned thousands, and they executed six hundred Nazi party leaders for war crimes. They would have shot more of the war criminals had not so many fled to the protective embrace of the West.
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Oct 14, 2021 13:42
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Slavvy posted:This is reasonable, just want to note I don't somehow feel bad for any of the war crime dudes, don't know why it got taken that way. I just thought it was weird that one kind of war crime was ok but another wasn't; if the consensus is the concept of a war crime is, itself, bullshit then ok I'll take that. If we're talking what people 'deserve' then yeah the SS etc deserved the worst and hopefully most of them got it, I don't know why I have to say this. Every combatant nation during WW2 committed war crimes. The thing that makes them official "war crimes" war crimes is whether they won or not. The people in charge of the US submarine campaign against Japan openly admitted that if they had lost the war they would have been prosecuted for war crimes the same way they prosecuted the losers. None of them are okay, but a major part of the concept of total war is that enemy civilians are enemy combatants because they are contributing to the productive forces of the enemy nation, and therefore become legitimate targets for warfare, and every side was just as committed to this way of thinking as each other. Considering every combatant country was on a sliding scale of badness with "literally doing the Holocaust with widespread civilian knowledge and support" at the bottom end, you can condemn war crimes in the abstract while still recognizing that your condemnation doesn't make any difference, and not lose much sleep over it. Slavvy posted:Dumb hypothetical: if someone in west Germany ~1950 found a way to round up a bunch of former SS camp guards and killed them, would that person have been prosecuted in an earnest way? You don't have to get hypothetical about this. After the war a small group of Jews known as the Nakam tried to do just that, including a mass poisoning of thousands of imprisoned SS soldiers and officers that made them sick but didn't manage to kill any of them. Members of the Nakam then had to flee to Israel because the poisoning was a crime, and when they admitted that they had done it in the late 90s Germany considered prosecuting them even then. Slavvy posted:Yeah this is what I'm thinking about. The Nazis were explicitly genocidal so the war crimes were the point and they were big and bold. But with the allied nations it's a question of restraint vs whether bombing the poo poo out of cities impacted axis industry badly enough to be morally ok I guess, idk I'm just some idiot. Afaict the shipping blockades were what did most of the damage to the axis ability to fight. Bombing the poo poo out of cities didn't achieve much in the grand scheme of the war, but it's also important to remember that postwar Germany and postwar Germans intentionally played up the bombing of cities to try and create an equivalence between German suffering and the suffering of Germany's wartime victims. The firebombing of Dresden was a bad thing to do, achieved no military goals, and killed approximately 25,000 people - for comparison, fewer than the number of people killed in a single massacre of Jews at Babi Yar. In total, the highest estimate for German civilian deaths from strategic bombing is still an order of magnitude less than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, to say nothing of the millions of other "undesirables" that Germany exterminated. But after the war, in an effort to try and say "well both sides were bad", there was an intellectual trend within Germany to play up the strategic bombing as an equivalent atrocity - the German far right still refer to the bombing of Germany as the "Bombenholocaust" to make the equivalence explicit. You see the same double standard applied to things like executing POWs - some Germans played up the occasional execution of German POWs to try and make a moral equivalence between the two sides, which helped absolve them of starving literally millions of POWs to death. Yes, strategic bombing and unrestricted submarine warfare were war crimes no matter which side committed them (both sides committed them). Yes, a morally superior version of humanity might hypothetically have taken stock after the war and prosecuted literally every leader from every nation for war crimes. But I'm not going to pretend that the Allied war crimes were somehow comparable to the genocide they ended by defeating Nazism. CoolCab posted:it's also revisionist to imply there was no german civilian resistance, both violent and non-violent. it is a great historical irony that madame la guillotine was not used on the many many, many many many fascist civilians who deserved it and instead was used against the tiny minority who wrote pamphlets like this: There was indeed civilian resistance, and the people who resisted should be commended. It's also important to remember that people who resisted were a very small minority of the German population, comparable to the handful of diplomats who wrote thousands of visas to help Jews escape Europe rather than the majority of diplomats who did nothing. I know less about this part of it than about the playing up of the bombing campaign, but I'm fairly certain that a similar trend in postwar Germany played up the minuscule resistance to Hitler as a way to try and say that Germany did not deserve collective guilt or punishment, when the reality was that the vast, overwhelming majority of Germans either passively did nothing or actively helped the Nazi regime. Here's a passage from an article about it: quote:Consider this numbing statistic. After the war, allied officials identified 13.2 million men in western Germany alone as eligible for automatic arrest because they had been deemed part of the Nazi apparatus. Fewer than 3.5 million of these were charged and, of those, 2.5 million were released without trial. That left about a million people - and most of them faced no greater sanction than a fine or confiscation of property that they had looted, a temporary restriction on future employment or a brief ban from seeking public office. By 1949, four years after the war, only 300 Nazis were in prison. From an original wanted list of 13 million, just 300 paid anything like a serious price. When I've talked about this with other people, the discussion eventually boils down to: at some point you have to draw the line and say you're going to stop prosecuting people, because otherwise there won't be anyone left to drive trains and plow fields and run shops, because everyone was guilty. In my opinion the Allies didn't draw that line far enough, and ended up essentially rehabilitating Nazism by letting Nazis run the institutions of postwar West Germany, and by bringing thousands if not millions of them into the West's Cold War apparatus in the name of anticommunism. You can decide where you would draw that line, and you can argue that collective guilt and punishment is wrong (which it is), but I think it's immoral to place the war crimes of the two sides in this particular war on anywhere near the same level, even as a thought experiment.
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Oct 14, 2021 15:05
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there are many times and places in human history where if we hung everyone who deserved it we'd run out of trees before we ran out of necks
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Oct 14, 2021 15:32
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CoolCab posted:there are many times and places in human history where if we hung everyone who deserved it we'd run out of trees before we ran out of necks Just another reason why we need to be planting more trees...
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Oct 14, 2021 16:00
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vyelkin posted:Bombing the poo poo out of cities didn't achieve much in the grand scheme of the war, but it's also important to remember that postwar Germany and postwar Germans intentionally played up the bombing of cities to try and create an equivalence between German suffering and the suffering of Germany's wartime victims. The firebombing of Dresden was a bad thing to do, achieved no military goals, and killed approximately 25,000 people - for comparison, fewer than the number of people killed in a single massacre of Jews at Babi Yar. In total, the highest estimate for German civilian deaths from strategic bombing is still an order of magnitude less than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, to say nothing of the millions of other "undesirables" that Germany exterminated. But after the war, in an effort to try and say "well both sides were bad", there was an intellectual trend within Germany to play up the strategic bombing as an equivalent atrocity - the German far right still refer to the bombing of Germany as the "Bombenholocaust" to make the equivalence explicit. You see the same double standard applied to things like executing POWs - some Germans played up the occasional execution of German POWs to try and make a moral equivalence between the two sides, which helped absolve them of starving literally millions of POWs to death. the intersection of this with the japanese on the other side of the war is especially interesting because while they did commit a lot of war crimes most of them were against the chinese who nobody in the west even pretended to care about especially after they turned commie consequently hiroshima and nagasaki are the main important points of reference for war crimes in the pacific theater yet apologism for them is tactical not contextual for the entirely sensible reason that nobody in american command thought the japanese had committed war crimes at all then in japan itself you have the entire idea of the japanese empire being so insanely unpopular that the government is successfully bullied into not rebuilding its military at all probably the single greatest antiwar achievement in all of human history yet one thats never talked about because it defies the commonly understood stereotype of the japanese as a noble warrior race culture so most people just assume we did that despite the records quite clearly showing we wanted japan to rebuild their military and were mad at their refusing to
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Oct 14, 2021 16:21
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjL3MCOGb4k
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Oct 14, 2021 17:02
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Now let's argue about the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. How was that justified? From an international law standpoint, how was that less bad than Nazi Germany conquering neutral Belgium and Denmark? The answer is the Allied nations won the war, so gently caress you.
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Oct 15, 2021 03:17
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Oops wrong thread
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Oct 15, 2021 03:29
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Now let's argue about the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. I didn't know about this, the wiki article has some choice quotes like quote:The Shah demanded to know why they were invading his country and why they had not declared war. Both answered that it was because of "German residents" in Iran. When the Shah asked if the Allies would stop their attack if he expelled the Germans, the ambassadors did not answer. The Shah sent a telegram to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pleading with him to stop the invasion. As the neutral United States had nothing to do with the attack, Roosevelt was not able to grant the Shah's plea but stated that he believed that the "territorial integrity" of Iran should be respected. quote:Soviet troops did not withdraw from Iran proper until May 1946, following Iran's official complaint to the newly formed United Nations Security Council, which became the first complaint filed by a country in the UN's history, and a test for the UN's effectiveness in resolving global issues in the aftermath of the war. However, the UN Security Council took no direct steps to pressure the Soviets to withdraw.
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Oct 15, 2021 03:36
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the soviets also tried to set up a splinter socialist iranian-azerbaijan and kurdish states in the part they occupied
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Oct 15, 2021 03:49
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Re: war crimes: there seem to be three positions, always: 1. X is wrong and it's always wrong and we should always be against it 2. X is an okay thing to do 3. X is wrong and it's a universal truth that X is wrong but somehow it's only wrong when the people we defeated did it 3 is the position that has held true for basically ever but especially during the 20th and 21st century
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Oct 15, 2021 03:50
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Re: war crimes: there seem to be three positions, always: i'll take #4. X is wrong, it's a universal truth that X is wrong but only the defeated get punished for it can i also get a frosty
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Oct 15, 2021 03:52
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Slavvy posted:I didn't know about this, the wiki article has some choice quotes like Pretty cool that the Tehran conference and the Stalin/FDR/Churchill meeting is so well known but why it was even held there is memory holed.
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Oct 15, 2021 05:02
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https://mobile.twitter.com/SorayaMcDonald/status/1448458376673959938
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Oct 15, 2021 05:12
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i'll take #4. X is wrong, it's a universal truth that X is wrong but only the defeated get punished for it No that's still #3
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Oct 15, 2021 05:12
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There's a really long piece that is yet to be written in The Atlantic that compares the rise of the nu-Klan due to Birth of a Nation with the rise of domestic terrorist organizations due to Avatar
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Oct 15, 2021 05:15
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Some Guy TT posted:the intersection of this with the japanese on the other side of the war is especially interesting because while they did commit a lot of war crimes most of them were against the chinese who nobody in the west even pretended to care about especially after they turned commie consequently hiroshima and nagasaki are the main important points of reference for war crimes in the pacific theater yet apologism for them is tactical not contextual for the entirely sensible reason that nobody in american command thought the japanese had committed war crimes at all People do talk about what the Japanese did in Nanjing a lot to rile up tojoboos. It is pretty funny that the Japanese military only began to be a thing due to the Korean War which itself happened because the soviets had august stormed all the way into korea and stopped moving southwards.
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Oct 15, 2021 17:24
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also topical on the subject of german civilians https://mobile.twitter.com/dotorii_muk/status/1449155430022795266 these kinds of stories are extremely common in korean communities in the diaspora and no one seems to notice the irony of thinking their ancestors were basically good people while also thinking japan hasnt done enough to answer for their crimes in world war two theres also the irony of the winning south korean political faction not just doing the same thing to communists but simply calling literally anyone who expressed any opinions contrary to their own a communist just to have a plausible excuse for their american overlords why they needed to be murdered
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Oct 17, 2021 14:44
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Yeah but Superman destroyed the Klan, so it’s impossible to say if content is good or bad.
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Oct 17, 2021 15:26
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Some Guy TT posted:also topical on the subject of german civilians Wasn't Japan's rule in Korea relatively light handed? I'd hesitate to be too harsh to someone working some low level civil service job.
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Oct 18, 2021 00:33
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Weka posted:Wasn't Japan's rule in Korea relatively light handed? I'd hesitate to be too harsh to someone working some low level civil service job.
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Oct 18, 2021 00:53
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that's not so bad, much better than the survival rate in squid game the whole peninsula was just treated as a slave labor camp
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Oct 18, 2021 00:58
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Weka posted:Wasn't Japan's rule in Korea relatively light handed? I'd hesitate to be too harsh to someone working some low level civil service job. Taiwan flipped back and forth between the integrationist/assimilationist, developmental model colony approach with an eventual planned path to accession as one or more prefectures Ryukyu/Okinawa style, roughly the Belfast of Asia, and a harsher style based on British policies in India and Africa. There was also a preexisting split between a Han colonist majority and various aboriginal minorities, and between the initial occupation (harsh for everyone) and the war years (lenient other than cultural assimilation, in order to increase production output and draft compliance) the Han were typically given the carrot while the aboriginals were typically given the stick. Korea and Manchuria were almost entirely on the India/Africa model, though that did still mean opportunities for compradors to earn a fortune (and the burning hatred of their countrymen they sold out), and the rest of China was less any sort of colonial effort even on that level and more "we have all these fascists in our armed forces and they keep attempting coups, if we let them do a genocide over there it might work the bloodshed out of their systems." Mandoric has issued a correction as of 03:11 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 03:09
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Weka posted:Wasn't Japan's rule in Korea relatively light handed? I'd hesitate to be too harsh to someone working some low level civil service job. this isnt wrong but its literally the exact same argument japanese nationalists use to argue that crimes against korea were no big deal theres something very obviously stupid about saying that a minor japanese civil servant in korea was the vanguard of a genocidal empire but a minor korean civil servant who looked and acted the exact same way is beyond reproach whether thats actually what was going on with kangs grandfather i honestly have no idea the story is vague to the point of being suspicious a civil servant could be anything from a bookkeeper to a police officer and an anticommunist meeting could be anything from a book club to a terrorist cell
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Oct 18, 2021 15:52
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https://mobile.twitter.com/Johnny_suputama/status/1450079048118546432 https://mobile.twitter.com/Johnny_suputama/status/1450082676900306951 Some Guy TT has issued a correction as of 19:48 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 19:45
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https://mobile.twitter.com/emollick/status/1450707400634376202
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Oct 21, 2021 18:58
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Why was the Falklands War morally bad? The Brits were on the defensive and the Argentine government was a right-wing junta. Why was the First Gulf War imperialist? Bush's ambassador hosed up an avoidable war, but that aside wasn't it also defensive war against authoritarian aggression, that had sanction from the international community?
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Oct 23, 2021 05:38
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Oct 23, 2021 06:01
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Maximo Roboto posted:Why was the Falklands War morally bad? The Brits were on the defensive and the Argentine government was a right-wing junta. cause like four thousand people died in a meaningless conflict over territory neither side actually cared about or wanted. both right wing governments went in to it to shore up domestic support with a good old fashioned war despite the fact the falklands is a rock rich only in penguin poo poo, which is horrific.
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Oct 23, 2021 11:42
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also the victor in the conflict used that increased domestic support to ruin their country, so at least all those people died to make sure poor people don't have a roof over their heads or food
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Oct 23, 2021 11:43
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when loving ray gun is the voice of reason saying entirely reasonable things like "you are allies you loving idiots" and "you're both in my sphere of influence what the gently caress who cares about loving penguins" you know you have a really moral, justified and sane conflict.
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Oct 23, 2021 11:46
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By the Pretty Borders Doctrine, Las Malvinas son Argentinas.
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Oct 23, 2021 11:55
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is there oil or some rare fish around the falklands? why does anyone care much about rocks with ~3k people on them
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Oct 23, 2021 12:02
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Prestige.
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Oct 23, 2021 12:06
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Raskolnikov38 posted:is there oil or some rare fish around the falklands? why does anyone care much about rocks with ~3k people on them there's a bunch of oil near the Falklands yeah but it's not being exploited yet. i think jingoism is the better reason for why both the Argentinians and British cared so much in the 1980s - both sides hoped an easy war would rally the populace behind an unpopular government (and it worked for Thatcher).
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Oct 23, 2021 12:07
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