Hiroshima

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Letum

"Primeminister, I have a plan to end the war a hour earlier! All we need to do is drop 150 nukes on the 150 cities that Angela Merkel could be in, then she will be dead and Mr P. Oppermann can declare the surrender a hour early!"

The priminister replies:
"but Mr Vogel! this will result in the killing of millions, the pollution of land for years to come and the total destruction of thousands of years of heritage!"

"don't worry about that" replies Mr Vogel "the only reason to be worried by that would be a sense of morality, but as I persuaded you earlier, morality is irrelevant in a time of war"

Again, the priminister replies:
"but what would we gain? our troops are not dieing in combat anymore and Germany is no longer a threat, they will surrender in a hour anyway"

To which Mr Vogel says:
"speeding up the war is a good thing, it is the objective of war, and there is no down side because we don't need the nukes anyway and it will cost far more to de-arm them then it will to launch them. All other considerations are moral ones and as I explained, moral considerations are unimportant when we have our eyes on military success."

So SB, the question remains exactly the same, but with a picture painted for you.

Surely you can not condone such a plan as Mr Vogel proposes, but if you consider morality to be absent from warfare, on what grounds do you discredit his plan?

Despite the ridiculousness of this scenario, its very ridiculousness makes it easy to counter. Practical advantages to not nuking:
1) More of Germany to provide reparations when this is over.
2) More of Germany to trade with (prosperity) once the occupation is over.

Well, two reasons are more than enough, considering the horribly marginal advantage of the nuking in your ridiculous scenario. Further, it is actually rather dubious that Mr. O will still be in the line of succession after being imprisoned by you, or even if he officially is will be recognized as such after you nuke Germany.

In fact, the most likely result of your ridiculous idea is that official surrender will be further delayed as what's left of Germany tries to find out who's the senior surviving leader, that the cloud of radioactive dust engulfs another country, including England itself, which creates definitie losses for England. In fact, your nuking may also serve as the catalyst that causes the remaining Germans to fight you even if they only have a pitchfork left (Germans apparently were much more enthusiastic in fighting the Soviets than fighting the Americans in WWII). When all that is considered, one hardly needs "morality" to accept that throwing away a sure thing 1 hour from now for a risk fraught thing one hour earlier is definitely a bad decision.

[Letum]

So, aside from financial reasons (reparations & trade), there would be nothing holding you back from launching the nukes?


Remember, it is not the example that is important, but what it shows.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Letum

So, aside from financial reasons (reparations & trade),

What is war but a fight for practical advantages? As far as a country is concerned, a war and its sacrifices are worth it only if some result is achieved favorable to the country. Maximizing the advantages of the war is a leader's job.

there would be nothing holding you back from launching the nukes?

Morally, there will be nothing. However, practically, it makes little difference because with the advantage so low (due to the artificiality of the scenario) there are a vast arsenal of reasons to use that are a lot less iffy than "morals" anyway.

Have you, BTW, considered Plan C. Since the Germans obviously are agreeing to surrender in principle, perhaps to get the 5PM surrender, perhaps you can just tell them you will nuke them at 5:10PM, and see if they surrender earlier?

Let's try a somewhat more realistic scenario:
You are a Russian commander in Chechenya. A bunch of Rebel boeyviki are hiding out in that village ahead. There are a bunch of civilians. You will suffer 60% casualities if you try to clear it man by man w/o artillery support or 30% if you use a pre-assault normative barrage, and do it faster and kill more boeyviki as well. The only hitch is that the civilians will likely suffer 80% casualites in the bombardment, while in the straight infantry fight their casualties will be 10%.

Assuming that this is the best knowledge you have, will you order the bombardment.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

You are a Russian commander in Chechenya. A bunch of Rebel boeyviki are hiding out in that village ahead. There are a bunch of civilians. You will suffer 60% casualities if you try to clear it man by man w/o artillery support or 30% if you use a pre-assault normative barrage, and do it faster and kill more boeyviki as well. The only hitch is that the civilians will likely suffer 80% casualites in the bombardment, while in the straight infantry fight their casualties will be 10%.

Assuming that this is the best knowledge you have, will you order the bombardment.

Yes, assuming that there is a military need that the village is being cleaned now and not later, or that the chance the enemy will surrender if I wait him out is non-existant. As leader of a military unit it is my duty to destroy the enemy, preserve as much of my combat force as possible to save my men and keep on fighting the other day. the well being of secondary parties is secondary concern to that as long as they pose no military threat or are no mission objective for some reason. I could not accept to sacrifice my men willingly and knowingly for no other reason than to save other people with whom I have any business. I would also compromise my combat püower by that: 30% or 60% losses both are considered high these days, but still make a difference.

The civilians have bad luck, and maybe should have left the combat area earlier when possible. Or if they willingly hide the enemy, then it would give them the message that they better dont, and are being seen as combatants without uniform, which makes them a valid target. Areas were this scenario also applies are the middle East, Africa.

Note that until today so-called collateral damage from aerial bombing is nothing more than the intentional acceptance of eventually killing civilians if they happen to be too close to the target. According headloines from Iraq and Afghanistan have been in the news at least once per month if not per week during the past years.

[Skybird]

the SS example is an example of intentionally targetting civil population to practice general, non-specified retribution, as the Nazis called it. This like many other massacres that division commited on and thorugh its way through France were not a military effort in my understanding, since the accusation of hiding explosives and weapons obviously was a foul esxcuse only in order to trigger the slaughtering for a reason. Also, that divisipon always had the option to differ between people who really may have had something to do with such accusation (if they had, they were targets indeed), and those who not: children for example. It would have had the option to do so without compromising it's military power and tactcial psoition, becasue these massacres were not taking place under fire and as a result from ongoing battle, but they were the mission objective.

Somewhere above I said that I see no reason why you should arbitrarily wish to kill non-fighting factions in war action, or intentionally target civilians for themselves. there is no military benefit from it, and it is outside the overall context of war. That'S why Mai Lai was defined as a crime, the bombing of Hiroshima not. I said the presence of civilians would not stop me to acchieve my military objectives, that is: kill the enemy, with as little losses to my own people as possible. that are two very different things, but the discussions we had over Lebanon last year already showed that some people do not understand this difference.

the SS massacres were no military efforts, they were crimes indeed, becasue they intentionally targetted civilians without a solid military reason. If the rsistance would have been hiding and fighting from that village, and their fighters hiding amongst the population, it would have been something different. Like Ceasar refused to accept to compromise his own force'S position by taking care of Vercingetorix' wifes and children that he had sent out, I would refuse to let the fighters escape in order to save the villagers. They either hand them over, and if they can'T or won'T, I would command the attack aimed at the fighters. Civilians killed are not my intention, but I accept that to happen, then.
Where is room for moral in that?

Saving the civilians and letting the fighters escape, by that I helpt to strengthen the enemy, I will loose more men,. give the enemy more opporntunities to strike at ma side, the war becomes longer, which offers for chances in time for people to die, short: things become worse. Now, where is room for moral in that?

And after the battle I walk the village and see some of my dead soldiers, and some dead villagers, and some dead enemies, and dead children and a prgnant wife lying dead on the ground. Moral, anyone?

Or you look at dead Iraqi soldiers, and you can't tell if they were following Saddam voluntarily, or had been pressed into service by their families being exposed to threat. Where is the moral to be seen here? Maybe there is a soldier who committed crimes indeed and now is dead, you then are saying it served him right. Beside him lies a Kurdish man, family father of 5, killed by the same grenade. Where has war created a moral lecture here?

War kills. That is all you need to know about it.

If you don't want to see the killing done, don't launch wars. If you launch wars, know what is coming at you. there is no clean war, and no just war, there only is war of needs, or war of choice. the first sometimes cannot be avoided. The latter you better stay away from. even the victor stands there after war with dirty hands, and even the side seing itself as the just cause will have commited many acts of questionable "morality".

War is not the viollation of moral versus keeping up moral: it is the complete absence of moral. Talking of moral wars and just wars only tries to keep the crowd cheering and to motivate soldiers to pull the trigger without getting a too bad conscience. In other words: it is psychological self-medication. Some people would loose their mind when not seeing a shining glorious value in the undiscriminative horror of war.

[TheSatyr]

I always believed that the A-Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had less to do with military reasons and more to do with political reasons. Japam would have been forced to surrender sooner or later anyway simply because of the blockade. However,the USSR was the 800lb gorilla in the corner and I feel the A-Bombs were dropped in an attempt to hasten Japan's surrender before the USSR could become more involved in the war against Japan.

Was dropping the bombs a war crime? I really can't answer that. It seems to fit inside a grey area

What I do consider to be a true war crime was the bombing of Dresden. It was a city with no real military value but with a large number of churches many of which were very old. To me,Dresden was just terrorism on a massive scale since the only target of the bombing were the civilians.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by TheSatyr

I always believed that the A-Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had less to do with military reasons and more to do with political reasons. Japam would have been forced to surrender sooner or later anyway simply because of the blockade. However,the USSR was the 800lb gorilla in the corner and I feel the A-Bombs were dropped in an attempt to hasten Japan's surrender before the USSR could become more involved in the war against Japan.

I agree. Without the atomic bombs the Soviets probably would have gone ahead with their plans to invade and occupy the northern island of Hokkaido. On the Asian mainland, the Soviets seized about 2.7 million Japanese nationals, only one-third military personnel. Of this total, some 340,000 to 370,000 perished in Stalin's hands. Taking this as a yardstick for the human cost of Soviet occupation of Hokkaido, another 400,000 Japanese noncombatants would have died.

[NEON DEON]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Saving the civilians and letting the fighters escape, by that I helpt to strengthen the enemy, I will loose more men,. give the enemy more opporntunities to strike at ma side, the war becomes longer, which offers for chances in time for people to die, short: things become worse. Now, where is room for moral in that?

This is exactly why you have incidents like Mi Lai and Malmedy. Because men with a bent moral compass reasoning that “hay if I slow down to process these 81 prisoners I could miss my objective causing the lives of more of my country men.” Or Cali’s point of view: “The Viet cong use the village at night and I know they are here and attack us by day and the only way to be sure I get the right ones is to kill them all.” This way they wont kill me or my men later on.”

So you see morals (good or bad) do play a part even in war.

[Letum]

With out morality in warfare you end up shooting civilians because they make better
target practice than paper targets. To train the men even harder, go for children, they
are smaller and make harder targets.

No morality? Then, if there is an advantage, why not!


Thankfully, all warfare has a minimum of compassion involved. The last 2 world wars
would have been far grimmer without it.

[Skybird]

"War is hell." - Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

Picked up and remembered that quote in a longer essay about the man's war biography that I read some years ago, more or less by chance: by saying that war is hell it seems he did not wish to say that it is immoral or moral, or that it is a bad thing if being judged by moral standards - but that war is amoral. He even did not say that it is "like hell" ( a comparison), but that it "is hell".

Maybe sometimes it is a war of needs. but never has the goings of a raging war any moral aspects - at least as long as non-martial deeds do not become a mission objective in itself that then sees operations carried out to acchieve this non-martial mission objective. Accepting that one cannot avoid a war of needs is accepting that one is forced to do soem,thing, there is then no free will to chose either this or that, and so moral plays no role in it. This only is moral in so far as to contrast it to accepting to launch a war of choice, not need, which i would consider almost always to be immoral a decision. It can also be immoral not to accept a war of needs. If you consider it a need by your values that in Darfhur the ingoing massacre of the Muslim militias must be stopped, failing to form a combat-capable and comabt-willing helping mission is immoral too (the now launched UN mission deserves maximum scepticism). - But all this is moral judging before the war is there.

And historical analysis is - judging by moral standards as well as others AFTER a war.

Some see the many cruel faces of war that never show any justice or morality and conclude necessarily there must be morality involved in any way in order prevent themselves from loosing their mind or being knocked down by existential despair, or still being able to justify the basic good nature of man that they assume to be there. Others see the same faces of war - and cannot evade to be kicked out of their moral categories, like me. I urge you to tell me again abiut morality if you see the good and the bad guy laying dead side by side in the ground, or the kid and the soldier. The immediate and direct experience of that either let'S your moral construction and any kind of philosophy collapsing, or it makes you desperately searchging for any such constructions that allows you to justify the world yopu live in nevertheless.

War is. It is like it is, and it is there. Nothing more it is than just this: war. It is part of reality, of the world, of man's life. Now die, or survive - more war does not know of.

If the absence of morals is too much for you to bear, better start no wars then, but don't deceive yourself by nice-thinking about it when assuming it sees moral included when carrying out that war.It is as much moral or imorl as the ocean is imoral when a tpurist at the beach has drowned, or is moral when the swimmer returns safely. If you do not wish to dance with the devil, don't be eager to visit hell. The moral aspect of it ends with your decision making of wether you do the trip, or don't. And afterwards, you can judge the thing by moral standards, yes. but in the middle of the sh!t - people just die or survive.

War is amoral. Can't put it any shorter.

Oh, but you are a number, former Number Six. I am now the ONE without a number.
Be Seeing You, Number One!

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The civilians have bad luck, and maybe should have left the combat area earlier when possible. Or if they willingly hide the enemy, then it would give them the message that they better dont, and are being seen as combatants without uniform, which makes them a valid target. Areas were this scenario also applies are the middle East, Africa.

Note that until today so-called collateral damage from aerial bombing is nothing more than the intentional acceptance of eventually killing civilians if they happen to be too close to the target. According headloines from Iraq and Afghanistan have been in the news at least once per month if not per week during the past years.

We had that problem when Iraq attacked us and invaded. It wasn't necessarily that the civilians hadn't chosen to leave as much as it was they had nowhere safe to go. Constant missile barrages, bombings, and shelling from Iraqi artillery. After a while, you just learn to adapt to it, you know? You know what to do and when to do it. The civilians were no different when Saddam shelled out cities.

Now Basra was a different case. If you were an innocent and were still there, you were shot. Pure and simple. You were warned, it was time to leave, and now we were going into the breach. For the conditions during the war and Basra, you could have been an Iraqi militant, and we didn't take chances. We played it safe, but we lost many, many good soldiers during that time.

[Skybird]

Are you Iranian or Kuwaiti - or what do you mean by "when Iraq attacked us and invaded", SH?

[joea]

SH is Iranian, as he has said before...anyway seems clear from the mention of the fighting around Basra. Nasty unknown war, the Iran-Iraq war.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by joea

SH is Iranian, as he has said before...anyway seems clear from the mention of the fighting around Basra. Nasty unknown war, the Iran-Iraq war.

My question was serious. I wanted to be sure that he is not american before jumping at his throat for calling 9/11 an Iraq-supported attack against the US.