Posted on 09/18/2019 8:47:03 PM PDT by Morgana
Saw that. They were prototypes! LOL!
IF you don't think you can win the war don't start one.
But if you do and you lose, don't cry about how bad you got your tail whipped.
Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany declaring war on The United States of America has to be among the stupidest ideas anyone ever came up with.
That's how we even "know" that abortion is murder. Because it is intentional, without concern with whether the individual victims, however many, merit execution.
Pete Buttigieg says "Let's not politicize this" (translation: shut up!) because "So many women need healthcare" (Shut UP!), yet he enabled and gave political protection the killer's ghastly business in South Bend (Shut $^@ %$@% UP!)
Got the memo. Nothing to see here.
I agree with his excuse... You have to be a really sick F*CK to be an abortion doctor.
All true — and of course this “doctor”, now dead, escapes accountability and won’t be remembered for his crimes by the Left any more than Kermit Gosnell, that other prolific champion of “women’s rights”.
He was a one-man nightmare; he appears to have been perversely inspired by Slaughterhouse-Five.
He was there.
Yes, I saw that, and I read SlaughterHouse-Five a long time ago (there’s the movie too). That’s the reference I was making. Kurt Vonnegut was there too.
Regarding the bombing of civilian targets....
Much of the reason we used nuclear weapons against Japan was the estimated one million Allied causualties that were to be the result of the invasion of mainland Japan, and the noted suicidal tenaciousness of the Japanese on the various islands we encountered on the way to the mainland. By shocking the Japanese with one big bomb at a time, one plane per bomb, we upped the psychological ante a hundred-fold, even compared to the Tokyo raids of March ‘45, that resulted in over 80,000 or more deaths (in two nights). We demonstrated, and implied further, that we could wipe out an entire high-profile city with one plane, one bomb. The result was the Emperor overruling his Bushido-traditioned, fanatical military leaders, to end the war.
If we had developed the bomb before February 1945 (Dresden), who knows. Long before then we were involved in “total war” with the Germans and Japanese, in which civilians were considered targets too. It probably started with the German’s bombing of London in 1940 (Battle of Britain). But it certainly didn’t end there. Area bombing was considered more effective than precision bombing because, well, there really wasn’t any precision high-altitude bombing in WWII. The accuracy was terrible. The Allies, as policy, used “area bombing” to “ravage the German economy, break the morale of the German people and force an early surrender”.
Another reason we wanted to end the war sooner was the fact that the Russians were about to overrun Europe — if they had progressed further west the Iron Curtain might have been much further west too.
I don’t believe the bomber crews that devastated Dresden were murderers.
But objectively, they were intending the physical destruction of whole civilian populations as a means to an end. Objectively, it's like mass abortion to save the planet--- if that's what you think you're doing.
Well at least you're honest.
And by extension that same logic, during the post-WWII Cold War, our side's designation of Soviet nuclear missile launch pads near or upwind of populated cities was immoral ('murder of civilians, objectively') -- therefore we should have simply declared unilaterally that enemy launch fortifications placed near cities would be off limits as targets. The Soviets would decline to enact their own target self-limiting schemes, and would be amazed by our weakness.
Of course our own policy would give the enemy a first-strike capability, and second-strike survivability and capability. Any nuclear exchange would kill millions of our civilians, but few of theirs, because our policy would ensure that their nuclear missiles were safe as long as the launch pads were positioned near their cities -- therefore ensuring that most of their launch silos would be purposely positioned near or in their cities. In a nuclear exchange their silos would not be targeted, guaranteeing their first-strike capability and a reliable retaliatory strike capability if they were struck first.
If the balloon went up, we would all be dead, but at least we would have occupied the moral high ground....
So much for M.A.D., the policy that kept the peace for over 40 years, until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Our WWII bomber crews targeting Dresden were not murderers, and neither were the men that dropped Fat Man and Little Boy over Japan, let alone our post-WWII Cold Warriors that kept the peace in excess of 40 years.
On the one hand, if you willingly choose a weapon of mass indiscriminate destruction and by intent use it against a city as such, city = target, you are willing the killing of the innocent intentionally, as a means to an end.
On the other hand, it's not really a matter of what kind of weapon. Properly speaking, it doesn't matter whether you do it with a bomb, abortion or a baseball bat.
This is not a pacifist nor even an anti-war argument, because not all acts of war have this quality; in fact, I think in general, most do not. Most acts of war are directed against military targets, not the nation's civilian population as such.
Even in situations where precision bombing is impossible (e.g. most of WWII), the intent to obliterate military targets can justify certain collateral damage, within limits. The amount of carnage the Japanese were very likely to commit, for instance, would have made an awful lot of collateral damage proportionate.
What's wrong is the targeted or strategic or intentionally indiscriminate killing of civilians. A good soldier will not do this; it's against the UCMJ and U.S. as well as international law; more importantly, against God who calls it an "abomination" and strictly forbids the deliberate shedding of innocent blood.
Your argument is too broad and unspecific. It didn't address my post as an argument, it's an outpouring of emotions. Like listening to Democrats running for President, it's based on feelings, and didn't mention the other two specific historical events I cited: the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, and the nuclear targeting of silos in and near cities during the Cold War.
So I'll ask you more directly: were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki moral? You said
On the one hand, if you willingly choose a weapon of mass indiscriminate destruction and by intent use it against a city as such, city = target, you are willing the killing of the innocent intentionally, as a means to an end.
It does appear you are saying the use of the two nuclear weapons against Japan was immoral. So what should we have done to end the war with Japan?
Given your position that the bombings of Dresden were immoral, and the perpetrators murderers, it follows that you think the Cold War targeting of nuclear silos were immoral. Do you disagree? What are the strategic implications of your answer?
In the Cold War, was it immoral for either side to target the other's nuclear silos positioned next to cities? Was it necessary, considering the enormous blast radius and nuclear fallout?
You need to answer without filibustering, without simplistic platitudes and generalizing, because there were many difficult moral choices about the use of force made during WWII and the Cold War that weren't as simple as you make them out to be (yes I can name some more). I was talking about specific situations regarding questions of strategy posited to our leadership, the most difficult choices with the lives of millions in the balance, that I think our leaders correctly made. They thought their choices through. You avoided addressing those examples directly, thereby avoiding the consequences of your simplistic thought process, though like most protesters you selfishly see no irony in your criticism.
Really???
I will cop to "moral judgment," but not to emotionalism. I didn't say a word about my feelings, nor base any of my reasoning on sentiment. Kindly take a moment and show me where I did.
In 1945 the guy who designed the AK was still a member of the Red Army.
What's wrong is the targeted or strategic or intentionally indiscriminate killing of civilians. A good soldier will not do this; it's against the UCMJ and U.S. as well as international law
The first three Geneva Conventions dealt with combatants. It wasn't until the fourth Geneva Convention that issues of civilians in a war zone were dealt with. Guess when that was?
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IV GENEVA CONVENTION RELATIVE TO THE PROTECTION OF CIVILIAN PERSONS IN TIME OF WAR OF 12 AUGUST 1949
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf
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And you're also flat WRONG about the UCMJ: the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) was signed into law on May 5, 1950 by President Truman.
https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/UCMJ_summary.pdf
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Now if you'll answer my questions previously presented in post #33 I'll be happy to challenge your answers.
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