Hiroshima

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by Reaves

You said Truman should have been imprisoned for killing civilians. Well my response was that Churchill was the first to initiate full scale city bombing. This was in response to a bomb dropped on London by accident by a German bomber. Therefore Churchill is responsible for many civilian deaths as well. Is it differant because one bomb was bigger?

I think he already said Churchill should go to jail too.

What w-subcommander clearly subscribes to is deontological ethics, where everything is compared to an absolute rulebook- there are certain recommendations in creating that rulebook, such as "Imagine if everyone did your action, would that be good". So lying and killing are clearly bad. But the important thing is that the rulebook is absolute.

Once engraved in the rulebook, it cannot be broken for any reason, no matter what the utilitarian gain. If you are a hardcore deontologist, you won't lie to save a friend from a murderer, so by that standard, whatever the correct amount of people saved overall is, killing is wrong so the dropping of the A-bomb is wrong.

[w-subcommander]

08-08-2007, 01:49 AM #76 Kazuaki
DOMO! Arigato. Thank you. I m in debt.
Exactly my point!!!
Unfortunately my English still is not so perfect to make deep responses. Thank you again for helping me out.
PS if I right remember one of the main deontologists was Immanuil Kant?

[Iceman]

Originally Posted by Chock

It's difficult to put yourself in the shoes of people at the time, and that is what you have to do when thinking about how the two atomic bombs were used in WW2. Most of my relatives who served in the Pacific theatre (sadly all now deceased), wouldn't have p*ssed on a Japanese person if they were on fire as a result of what they saw and experienced when fighting the Japanese, particularly those who ended up as POWs, and while this may seem harsh to us, it is nevertheless true.

Having endured several years of war in which barely a family in the entire world hadn't experienced some tragedy or other, it's obvious that most people on the Allied side would have wholeheartedly approved of the attacks, although with the caveat that most people at the time would have had little understanding of the effects of radioactivity, or the tremendous damage from blast and fire.

It should be noted that several raids using conventional munitions exacted larger initial death tolls than the atomic attacks, including one on Dresden and one on Tokyo, both of which started firestorms.

Hard as it seems, some good has come out of the attacks, in that it has served to show people what a terrible thing a nuclear weapon is.

In the UK, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, who was invited as an observer on one of the nuclear raids, said that it made him very anti-war, and in fact ended up driving him to pursue a very humanitarian life afterwards, culminating in his creation of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation, which provides charity sheltered housing for the infirm in the UK. An organisation from which many thousands of people have benefitted (and still do).

Chock

Some excellent points Chock again...

I think that it is a missed point that Americans were deeply hurt and felt betrayed by Japan for the Sunday attack that came like thief in the night...I cannot help from working with many many retired WWII vets that they felt some revenge/retrobution or whatever was in order as the above Quote from the president makes me lean to agree with that like unto 9/11 attack,the pain of such attacks, out of the blue hurt...and hurt alot of people in different ways...

President Truman announced, "If they do not not accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.

I do not condone the use of such weapons either but it is worth noting to see that none again have been used again in such anger...hopefully cooler heads will always prevail...and keep these weapons out of the hands who would use them without forethought of the consequences for our times.

[Reaves]

Originally Posted by w-subcommander

08-08-2007, 01:49 AM #76 Kazuaki
DOMO! Arigato. Thank you. I m in debt.
Exactly my point!!!
Unfortunately my English still is not so perfect to make deep responses. Thank you again for helping me out.
PS if I right remember one of the main deontologists was Immanuil Kant?

I understand what you are saying but I don't know WHY you would believe it?

Are you serious that if country A was attacked by country B and all of country B's weapons were stored in a major city, country A is not allowed to bomb that city? That is folley and will lead to the country who holds these high morals (as theoretically righteous they are) to be destroyed.

In a perfect world your way of thinking would work and there would be no victims of war. But in a perfect world, war would not exist.

I'm sorry but I just think that you saying Truman should have been imprisoned is short sighted and ignoring the realities of war.
If someone is trying to kill you, you kill them. There is a saying that I feel states my point of view.

"THE NEEDS OF THE MANY OUT-WEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW"

As much as I hope an atomic bomb/nuclear weapon is never used again, I am more concerned about a World War 3. No one deserves to die, but sometimes the alternatives are a worse option. Which I believe an invasion of Japan would have been. They fought with honour and bravery. Unfortunately they were governed by a person who considered himself godly and used his peoples loyalty and lives to keep himself in power.

[joegrundman]

For me, events like the atom bombing and the conventional bombing of Germany and Japan are beyond my capacity to grasp, and any attempt falls flat.

It was war, six years of it. We were the good guys (British). It helped us to win (didn't it?).They had it coming, surely (especially Germany). In Japan's case, i agree entirely that it spared not just american lives but also japanese military and civilian lives from the horrors that a US and USSR invasion would have caused.

So we deliberately aimed to kill the civilian populations of the bad guys.

We reckon upwards of 600,000 Germans (mostly civilians) died as a result of RAF bombing. That is 50% more than the entire British fatalities of the war, military and nonmilitary.

I can tell you right now, if British and American soldiers had marched through Hiroshima and Dresden killing the approriate number of men, women and children at the point of a bayonet, as was done in Nanking, we would not find it at all acceptable.

The rape of Nanking (100,000 - 300,000 dead ) was presumably done for similar reasons - to terrify the population beyond their point of resistance, but we find no problem in condemning it, do we?

How much does it come down to the fact that it was done from a sanitised height, where the blood and gore is not all over the hands of those who did the killing?

I only really get fed up with people that cannot accept that by 1945 the allies were not playing nice anymore. We have this mythology about the golden heroes of the era. They fought hard and bravely, no doubt about it, but then so did the soviets, and so did our enemies. Unfortunately not everything we did was noble and just and not everything the japanese and germans did was always terrible.

We know about the sins of the losing side. That's beside the point. The point is that the allies, the western allies inparticular, did some things that 60 years later we find hard to accept, and to some degree wish hadn't turned out like that.

Even at the time we felt the bombing of Germany may have been a step over the line. Sir Arthur Harris, director of bomber command, was pointedly not given his share of post-war honours. Immediatley at wars' end the scale of the catastrophe was hushed up for fear of startling the good British populace with evidence of what had been done. I think the same happened in the US too, after reading Vonnegut.

Also, let's face it, the Atom bombs had a sobering effect on the US too. We knew it was too far really. That's why we are so scared of them. That's why they weren't used in Korea, or Vietnam, or even Iraq.

But does it mean we shouldn't have done it?

I can't answer this question.

[joea]

Originally Posted by w-subcommander

Thank you for trying to understand.
Answering your question: of couse not!!!!!!
but I mean that sitting 1 day in a jail for civilian losses in total war is a good example of moral responsibility!!!

Sure, but as you are Russian I have to ask, should Stalin have done the same for the Germans expelled by the Red Army from East Prussia and Katyn etc.?

I never said the Allies don't have blood on their hands but that the Axis have the blood of both their dead as well as Allied.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by August

Hitler didn't create the nazi party though.

No he just co-opted it and radically altered its base ideology eventually eliminating its original leadership.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by bradclark1

Hitler - Nobody. Without him Nazi Germany wouldn't have been.

Not sure, Brad. Not many people do know that the first events of massive Jewish shop crushings - did not taken place in Germany during the 30s or during the Reichskristallnacht, but already over ten years earlier, in the early twenties - in Austria. The Nazi's unmistakable pong already was in the air, together with strong antisemitic sentiments throughout Europe: Austria, Germany, and France and England as well. Probably there would have been noone able to put up such a giant horror show like Hitler did, but another leading figure making something out of the constellation surely would have shown up. Maybe even some of the names that under Hitler raised to power.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Reaves

"THE NEEDS OF THE MANY OUT-WEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW"

(^ Spock, ST2)

"Not always does the need of the many outweigh the need of the few." (Kirk, ST3)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Serious, although I think I get what you mean, and use this saying myself quite often, one should always be aware that in principle - it is a card blanche-kind of excuse for establishing a totalitarian system. It is dangerous to believe in slogans and catchphrases only, and not reflecting on them, and it is unwise to try to judge the diversity of reality by a handful of handy blueprints only.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

For me, events like the atom bombing and the conventional bombing of Germany and Japan are beyond my capacity to grasp, and any attempt falls flat.

It was war, six years of it. We were the good guys (British). It helped us to win (didn't it?).They had it coming, surely (especially Germany). In Japan's case, i agree entirely that it spared not just american lives but also japanese military and civilian lives from the horrors that a US and USSR invasion would have caused.

So we deliberately aimed to kill the civilian populations of the bad guys.

We reckon upwards of 600,000 Germans (mostly civilians) died as a result of RAF bombing. That is 50% more than the entire British fatalities of the war, military and nonmilitary.

I can tell you right now, if British and American soldiers had marched through Hiroshima and Dresden killing the approriate number of men, women and children at the point of a bayonet, as was done in Nanking, we would not find it at all acceptable.

The rape of Nanking (100,000 - 300,000 dead ) was presumably done for similar reasons - to terrify the population beyond their point of resistance, but we find no problem in condemning it, do we?

How much does it come down to the fact that it was done from a sanitised height, where the blood and gore is not all over the hands of those who did the killing?

I only really get fed up with people that cannot accept that by 1945 the allies were not playing nice anymore. We have this mythology about the golden heroes of the era. They fought hard and bravely, no doubt about it, but then so did the soviets, and so did our enemies. Unfortunately not everything we did was noble and just and not everything the japanese and germans did was always terrible.

We know about the sins of the losing side. That's beside the point. The point is that the allies, the western allies inparticular, did some things that 60 years later we find hard to accept, and to some degree wish hadn't turned out like that.

Even at the time we felt the bombing of Germany may have been a step over the line. Sir Arthur Harris, director of bomber command, was pointedly not given his share of post-war honours. Immediatley at wars' end the scale of the catastrophe was hushed up for fear of startling the good British populace with evidence of what had been done. I think the same happened in the US too, after reading Vonnegut.

Also, let's face it, the Atom bombs had a sobering effect on the US too. We knew it was too far really. That's why we are so scared of them. That's why they weren't used in Korea, or Vietnam, or even Iraq.

But does it mean we shouldn't have done it?

I can't answer this question.

A very reasonable post, thank you. I not saying I agree or disagree, but anyway: I respect the spirit in which it was written.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Not sure, Brad. Not many people do know that the first events of massive Jewish shop crushings - did not taken place in Germany during the 30s or during the Reichskristallnacht, but already over ten years earlier, in the early twenties - in Austria. The Nazi's unmistakable pong already was in the air, together with strong antisemitic sentiments throughout Europe: Austria, Germany, and France and England as well. Probably there would have been noone able to put up such a giant horror show like Hitler did, but another leading figure making something out of the constellation surely would have shown up. Maybe even some of the names that under Hitler raised to power.

I recall reading that as a young man Hitler spent some influential years in Vienna as he was studying, or attempting to anyway, to become a painter at the Vienna School of Art. I believe what I read said that the city at that time left great mark on him and that he considered it to be a model city. Perhaps Hitler's rampant anti-semitism might partly have a root in this period.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

For me, events like the atom bombing and the conventional bombing of Germany and Japan are beyond my capacity to grasp, and any attempt falls flat.

It was war, six years of it. We were the good guys (British). It helped us to win (didn't it?).They had it coming, surely (especially Germany). In Japan's case, i agree entirely that it spared not just american lives but also japanese military and civilian lives from the horrors that a US and USSR invasion would have caused.

So we deliberately aimed to kill the civilian populations of the bad guys.

We reckon upwards of 600,000 Germans (mostly civilians) died as a result of RAF bombing. That is 50% more than the entire British fatalities of the war, military and nonmilitary.

I can tell you right now, if British and American soldiers had marched through Hiroshima and Dresden killing the approriate number of men, women and children at the point of a bayonet, as was done in Nanking, we would not find it at all acceptable.

The rape of Nanking (100,000 - 300,000 dead ) was presumably done for similar reasons - to terrify the population beyond their point of resistance, but we find no problem in condemning it, do we?

How much does it come down to the fact that it was done from a sanitised height, where the blood and gore is not all over the hands of those who did the killing?

I only really get fed up with people that cannot accept that by 1945 the allies were not playing nice anymore. We have this mythology about the golden heroes of the era. They fought hard and bravely, no doubt about it, but then so did the soviets, and so did our enemies. Unfortunately not everything we did was noble and just and not everything the japanese and germans did was always terrible.

We know about the sins of the losing side. That's beside the point. The point is that the allies, the western allies inparticular, did some things that 60 years later we find hard to accept, and to some degree wish hadn't turned out like that.

Even at the time we felt the bombing of Germany may have been a step over the line. Sir Arthur Harris, director of bomber command, was pointedly not given his share of post-war honours. Immediatley at wars' end the scale of the catastrophe was hushed up for fear of startling the good British populace with evidence of what had been done. I think the same happened in the US too, after reading Vonnegut.

Also, let's face it, the Atom bombs had a sobering effect on the US too. We knew it was too far really. That's why we are so scared of them. That's why they weren't used in Korea, or Vietnam, or even Iraq.

But does it mean we shouldn't have done it?

I can't answer this question.

Best post so far I'd say. Very articulate.

[bradclark1]

Originally Posted by August

Hitler didn't create the nazi party though.

No he didn't but he made it into as we know it. He made it into the Third Reich. The Nazi party was whatever Hitler said it was once he joined them and became leader. Who else could have drawn and held together that psychotic gang of misfits?

[bradclark1]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Not sure, Brad. Not many people do know that the first events of massive Jewish shop crushings - did not taken place in Germany during the 30s or during the Reichskristallnacht, but already over ten years earlier, in the early twenties - in Austria. The Nazi's unmistakable pong already was in the air, together with strong antisemitic sentiments throughout Europe: Austria, Germany, and France and England as well. Probably there would have been noone able to put up such a giant horror show like Hitler did, but another leading figure making something out of the constellation surely would have shown up. Maybe even some of the names that under Hitler raised to power.

True, but Hitler put into extreme action the ideology. The 'Jewish Conspiracy' was a part of it. The Nazi party would still have been but I'm sure there would not have been extermination camps, nor would there have been a world war.

[August]

Originally Posted by bradclark1

True, but Hitler put into extreme action the ideology. The 'Jewish Conspiracy' was a part of it. The Nazi party would still have been but I'm sure there would not have been extermination camps, nor would there have been a world war.

I think you give him too much credit Brad. For every dictator there are a thousand wannabe dictators running around that for one reason or the other never get to realize their dreams. I firmly believe that had hitler died in WW1 we would be spitting on some other nazi dictators name now. Maybe himmler, maybe rohlm, maybe some schmoe we never heard of but there would have been someone to take hitlers place.