[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
You’re surprised he’s free? Are you kidding? He did what needed to be done when it had to. It was a world fucking war with a psychotically nationalistic country trying to take over an entire hemisphere-[/quote]
Let me stop you right there…
Now, which country instituted and upheld the hemisphere-demanding Monroe Doctrine?
Congratulations on achieving the pinnacle of ignorant American exceptionalism.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Forget about the past.
Forgive, but never forget.
“He who forgets history is destined to repeat it.” - George Santayana
And there’s no big need for apologies, except when justice is denied. Justice itself serves retribution enough.
BTW, I hear Robert McNamara, one of the firebombers of Tokyo and more than 50 other Japanese cities, is still alive… Yet, strangely, not in prison. Fuck.
His victims weren’t that lucky.
Not surprising he’s free, I suppose, when previous posts on this thread indicated a bold ignorance to the fact that Tokyo was attacked as with an atomic weapon (flesh and rivers boiled) with 100,000 dead.
And to think, the T-Nation audience is probably more intelligent and more informed than the general population shudder[/quote]
Oh btw have you heard of a guy called the Emperor, that sob lived until 1989, he should have been swinging with Tojo, as well as not forgeting history, don’t forget that you reap what you sow.
I always thought that America did what it had to do to stop the war. I still think the dropping of the A-bombs may have been the right call. But shame on many of you for your complete lack of humanity. Do you consider all the young children and women who were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as complicit in the atrocities of their country?
If you go to the peace museum in Hiroshima, you see pictures of people with half their skin burned off. Or people whose bodies were embedded with shards of glass from windows which shattered next to them. Six year olds with half a face vomiting blood and shitting themselves and then dying. That’s the reality of the A-bomb. So maybe it was the quickest and most painful way to end the war. But don’t glorify it, or say that Japanese atrocities in Asia meant that they deserved it.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
You’re surprised he’s free? Are you kidding? He did what needed to be done when it had to. It was a world fucking war with a psychotically nationalistic country trying to take over an entire hemisphere-
Let me stop you right there…
Now, which country instituted and upheld the hemisphere-demanding Monroe Doctrine?
Congratulations on achieving the pinnacle of ignorant American exceptionalism.
[/quote]
lets try not to compare the Japanese taking over everything from australia to the soviet union and the US telling the rest of europe to stay the fuck out of the western hemisphere.
We made no attempt to militarily take over the whole entire hemisphere. The closest you could come would be the mexican american war, spanish american war, and the war of 1812…i really dont think you want to go there.
[quote]deanosumo wrote:
I always thought that America did what it had to do to stop the war. I still think the dropping of the A-bombs may have been the right call. But shame on many of you for your complete lack of humanity. Do you consider all the young children and women who were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as complicit in the atrocities of their country?
If you go to the peace museum in Hiroshima, you see pictures of people with half their skin burned off. Or people whose bodies were embedded with shards of glass from windows which shattered next to them. Six year olds with half a face vomiting blood and shitting themselves and then dying. That’s the reality of the A-bomb. So maybe it was the quickest and most painful way to end the war. But don’t glorify it, or say that Japanese atrocities in Asia meant that they deserved it. [/quote]
the question is where the fault lies. With the Japanese for starting the war and refusing to end it…or the US for ending it.
No one is saying that the loss of innocent life isnt ashame. But the horror is because of the Japanese government, not the US.
My general problem is that I still think, despite all this discussion, that no one is willing to admit that Hiroshima was a war crime. Attacking civilians is never OK. Yes, I know the Japanese were brutal and completely inhumane, but it doesn’t mean that we should’ve stooped to their level.
Now I do grant America this: they truly believed that the A-bomb was the quickest, most humane thing to do. Especially when the decision whether or not to drop it was really being taken, since millions of Americans would’ve flipped the shit if after spending huge amounts of money on building a weapon, we instead scrapped it and sent thousands of men to die overseas.
So I do grant that it was a difficult decision to make, and I can’t provide a better answer. But it’s still a war crime, and it was still an atrocity.
All war is a crime. That is the nature of war.
Winners determine what are war crimes and what are not.
The US determined dropping atomic bombs Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the best strategy.
The US won so it was not a crime.
Before you naive kids get your panties in a wad the US does prosecute its own when they commit war crimes.
[quote]danmaftei wrote:
My general problem is that I still think, despite all this discussion, that no one is willing to admit that Hiroshima was a war crime. Attacking civilians is never OK. Yes, I know the Japanese were brutal and completely inhumane, but it doesn’t mean that we should’ve stooped to their level.
Now I do grant America this: they truly believed that the A-bomb was the quickest, most humane thing to do. Especially when the decision whether or not to drop it was really being taken, since millions of Americans would’ve flipped the shit if after spending huge amounts of money on building a weapon, we instead scrapped it and sent thousands of men to die overseas.
So I do grant that it was a difficult decision to make, and I can’t provide a better answer. But it’s still a war crime, and it was still an atrocity.[/quote]
We didn’t stoop to their level. We offered them a chance to surrender, they did not. We warned them that we would use the bomb. They did not surrender. W e dropped a bomb on Hiroshima, the control center of the 2nd army which protected southern japan.
We then warned them again: “Surrender or we will drop another.” They did not, so we dropped a bomb on nagasaki, a major industrial site that BUILT WEAPONS for the Japanese war machine.
We warned them. We offered them a chance to surrender. We bombed them. We warned them. We offered a chance to surrender. We bombed them.
What more can you honestly expect us to do? Blame the japanese elite for what they FORCED on their own population.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
You’re surprised he’s free? Are you kidding? He did what needed to be done when it had to. It was a world fucking war with a psychotically nationalistic country trying to take over an entire hemisphere-
Let me stop you right there…
Now, which country instituted and upheld the hemisphere-demanding Monroe Doctrine?
Congratulations on achieving the pinnacle of ignorant American exceptionalism.
[/quote]
Bullshit. The US didn’t even use the Monroe Doctrine in force until the 1960s/70s, when they began overthrowing leftist regimes in Central/South America.
I don’t agree at all with what the US did in those days, because they were either populist revolutions or freely elected, and the US loves fucking with little nations.
However, comparing that to a literal invasion, and a long list of atrocities that Japan commited, the US pales. We were terribly wrong in the 70s, but not nearly as bad as the Japanese in the 30s and 40s.
If you think they are comparable in scope and brutality, you are mistaken.
You honestly don’t see the difference between the numerous atrocities the Japanese committed and dropping the atomic bomb, which was a legitimate act of war?
There were no harmless places in imperial Japan. Every city and every citizen was part of the war effort. They would have nuked Detroit and Washinton DC if they could have.
Normally an apology would be given by the person or nation that committed the “wrong” act. Not by the person defending themselves.
The Germans apologized for the holocaust. No one expects the Jews to apologize for the Germans they killed fighting in the ghettos to save their lives.
[quote]danmaftei wrote:
I’m glad I pissed so many people off, so let me continue.
Don’t any of you also find it hypoctritical that you say “me as a citizen should not say sorry for what my country did” yet you still feel like those Japanese should say they’re sorry?
If you want the Japs to give you an apology, you should give them one too. I don’t want to hear any of this “we did them a favor” shit, we dropped nuclear weapons on relatively harmless places.
Frankly, I don’t think anyone should apologize. Those drunk Japanese shouldn’t have asked for an apology and you shouldn’t give a shit or ask them for one back. War is war, it sucks, shit happens, people do fucked up things, and that’s that. Forget about the past.
[/quote]
[quote]danmaftei wrote:
My general problem is that I still think, despite all this discussion, that no one is willing to admit that Hiroshima was a war crime. Attacking civilians is never OK. Yes, I know the Japanese were brutal and completely inhumane, but it doesn’t mean that we should’ve stooped to their level.
Now I do grant America this: they truly believed that the A-bomb was the quickest, most humane thing to do. Especially when the decision whether or not to drop it was really being taken, since millions of Americans would’ve flipped the shit if after spending huge amounts of money on building a weapon, we instead scrapped it and sent thousands of men to die overseas.
So I do grant that it was a difficult decision to make, and I can’t provide a better answer. But it’s still a war crime, and it was still an atrocity.[/quote]
I don?t like that kind of reasoning, because it is an attempt to have your cake and eat it too.
Unless of course you are arguing about legal technicalities; like what is a war crime, does Hiroshima fit that decription…
In that case all you will get is:
Well maybe it was, but we would do it again if necessary, which is hardly an apology.
Kailash,
Jared Diamond “Guns, germs and steel: The fate of human societies”
The American Indian days were numbered when they had killed all large land mammals before developing husbandry and even then, the north-south axis of the Americas would have been a great problem.
It is not as if invading European hordes killed of all Indians, they merely finished off the last ones, and the American Indians would have gladly done the same to Europe if it had been the other way around.
[quote]danmaftei wrote:
My general problem is that I still think, despite all this discussion, that no one is willing to admit that Hiroshima was a war crime. Attacking civilians is never OK. Yes, I know the Japanese were brutal and completely inhumane, but it doesn’t mean that we should’ve stooped to their level.
Now I do grant America this: they truly believed that the A-bomb was the quickest, most humane thing to do. Especially when the decision whether or not to drop it was really being taken, since millions of Americans would’ve flipped the shit if after spending huge amounts of money on building a weapon, we instead scrapped it and sent thousands of men to die overseas.
So I do grant that it was a difficult decision to make, and I can’t provide a better answer. But it’s still a war crime, and it was still an atrocity.[/quote]
You need to study the concept of “Total War”. WW2 was total war society vs. society. The civilian population supports the military. We made war against all levels, as did they.
The modern type of war we tend to fight these days is a cleaned up version with lot’s of rules for our side. Not so many for the enemy. You need to read history in the context of the times in which it occured to understand it.
The problem we have now with post combat operations is the lack of fear the defeated enemy has. They know we will behave according to humane rules. Imagine the old Soviet Union or the the Chinese PLA occupying Iraq. You tend not to set off an IED if you know your entire neighborhood will be destroyed if an enemy soldier gets killed. That’s how most armies fight. Not the US however.
Apologise foe Hiroshima. Not in my lifetime. Like I said before two or three generations from now who knows.
You who criticize my posts completely miss the point, weighing one act of evil against another -
You justify barbarity, I condemn it across the board… and throw it back in your sickling faces.
The United States was, is and has always been a homocidial machine for avarice - just as all hierarchically structured super-tribes spanning the millenia of "civil"ization.
Fuck them all, and fuck any cheerleaders and apologists for rationalized or institutional psychopathy.
Raise your expectations to the level of fully-human, please. No more needs be said.
[quote]Kailash wrote:
You who criticize my posts completely miss the point, weighing one act of evil against another -
You justify barbarity, I condemn it across the board… and throw it back in your sickling faces.
The United States was, is and has always been a homocidial machine for avarice - just as all hierarchically structured super-tribes spanning the millenia of "civil"ization.
Fuck them all, and fuck any cheerleaders and apologists for rationalized or institutional psychopathy.
Raise your expectations to the level of fully-human, please. No more needs be said.[/quote]
Please grow up and accept human beings for what they are and do not condemn them because they do not feel the desire to live up to your expectations.
Your idea of fully human is a ascetic/narcisstic fantasy.
It is easy to throw stuff in our sickling faces when you are typing at you computer in a country defended by so many evil barbarians. My problen is that your post are bullshit. First, I would like you to name any society that isn’t a homocidal killing machine. If there ever was one, they would have been slaughtered and eaten by a society that wasn’t completely weak. The only peace, love, and happiness proponents that survive are people who live in safe well defended societies. You can only have your differing opinions because of the very thing you hate.
And to put things on the most basic level. Killing bad people isn’t bad. No matter how painfully they die or sad they look when they die, it is good to kill bad people. If you have problems telling the bad people from the good people here are a few questions you can ask to figure it out.
Are they randomly killing, raping, and pillaging. If so they are probably bad.
Have they openly stated that they must subjugate everyone who is not like them. If so…bad
Do they have a plan for global domination that includes stacking skulls as high as they possably can. This is very, very, bad
remember kids- fighting solves everything!
[quote]Kailash wrote:
You who criticize my posts completely miss the point, weighing one act of evil against another -
You justify barbarity, I condemn it across the board… and throw it back in your sickling faces.
The United States was, is and has always been a homocidial machine for avarice - just as all hierarchically structured super-tribes spanning the millenia of "civil"ization.
Fuck them all, and fuck any cheerleaders and apologists for rationalized or institutional psychopathy.
Raise your expectations to the level of fully-human, please. No more needs be said.[/quote]
This isn’t our natural state. Thomas Hobbes never apparantly considered that humanity is a highly evolved mammalian social species that benefits most from cooperation (like wild primates or wolves). He saw us as at odds like warring insect colonies.
Hobbes was a damn fool, but his line of thought has infected the power elite since time immemorial, who thrive on such self-justification for their evil.
Read “The Human Zoo” by Desmond Morris, and get some insight into why humanity is this way. Thesis: It’s our unnatural environment, and we’re throwing feces like a caged monkey. He provides examples of animals in zoos compared to their natural state, which relates closely to modern human behavior.
Then maybe you can come back here and post about human nature with some actual authority, instead of party line for a degraded status quo.