Is the focus of this discussion the morality of using the atom bomb to kill "civilians" or the morality of killing civilians to begin with? Don't forget we were already bombing the hell out of their cities by the time the a-bombs fell. Take for example the fire bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10th 1945, which resulted in 16 square miles of Tokyo being destroyed and over 100,000 dead. Just about the same effect of an atomic bomb but it took a lot more planes and a lot more bombs.
It is hard to ever justify the killing of civilian populations but it was a standard all the major powers of WWII commonly practiced. If the a-bombs had not been dropped more Japanese would probably have died from the bombing of the cities BEFORE any invasion anyway. Doesn't make it right but, being an American through and through, better them then a million of our troops to invade.

Yes, I realize that. "Their idea of an offensive was a kamikaze attack" was meant as a pointed, sarcastic statement.

To take this in order:

1. The annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are worse than that of Tokyo not because they were atomic, but because they were undertaken when peace was at hand, meaning those who lost their lives there lost them even more senselessly than those lost up to that point. But I will readily grant that the whole war was a senseless bloodbath the U.S. should've abstained from entering.

2. Yes, it was the policy of all sides in WW2 to roast civilians alive by the thousands. One conclusion that might be drawn from this fact is that describing WW2 as a "good war" in which we, on a white horse, faced down fascist evil, on a black horse, is essentially bullshit. Oddly that conclusion, intuitive though it is, is not a popular one.

3. "Our" troops? They were Roosevelt's troops. The idea that the government protects any of us via war is kneejerk imbecility. The truth is exactly the other way around; we save their bacon from their enemies--at least those of us gullible enough to follow their cynical call to arms.

WTF, I thought my reading comprehension was pretty good but I must have been wrong.
I thought I just read you believe the United States should not have entered WW II. Again I must be mistaken. :mg:

Again I return to the important questions. What did Truman know? What did he think Japan knew? Remember, America was about to embark on an invasion of Japan that was estimated at up to ½ million American casualties. It demonstrates what their (American) perspectives were. To judge, one must first define 'their' perspective. Even having been asked those same questions that Kennedy asked, then would Truman have dropped those bombs? Yes. Again, you may think peace was at hand. But Japan gave America no reason to believe that to be true.

Talk is cheap. Without some action to demonstrate talk as something more than fiction, then talk has no merit - no integrity especially in a war so violent. Especially when we again take a most dominant American perspective. Japan was talking peace while ‘Pearl Harboring’ America. Don’t ever forget how powerful that American perspective was back then. Always appreciate why that was a most powerful 'smoking gun'. It is why America was so empowered as to even consider ½ million American casualties to achieve 'unconditional surrender'. Peace was not at hand IF one considers the American perspective.

So tell me who is good and who is evil. Just another jab at the naive (children) who view and decide in terms of good and evil.

Is it just me or is tw channeling George Bush? From his perspective Iraq makes sense. America's WW2 Presidents had already proven their willingness to spend lives at this point. It was now time to stare down our commie allies by showing them what a bunch of bastards we really were.

OK, let me simplify it for your dyslexic mind.

Fuck World War 2.

Better?

The German "perspective" was that the Jews were in the way of stopping Bolshevism. If we are simply going to trade crazed ideological or nationalist perspectives, there's not much point debating because there is no common frame of reference.

Reality is not a competition between subjective "perspectives." The sort of arguments pro-warriors make these days are like Kantianism gone haywire.

As for good and evil, there is a fundamental error almost everyone on earth who believe that there is a difference between good and evil make. There is a sort of irrational, subterranean belief that if your enemy is "evil", that is sufficient to make you "good" regardless of what you are actually doing. This belief is the source of nearly every war in modern times. All one has to do to be given a blank check to practice limitless evil with the approval of one's own conscience is to prove that one's enemy is evil.

Now that is a fairly good moral-philosophical-political racket, and the masses usually do fall for it. Anyone capable of genuine reflection does not.

And yet that is not the point of Hilter's Mein Kopf. Hitler's underlying points were to subver the intelligent Germans (intellectuals and merchant class), play up to the ignorant (as Rush Limbaugh does today), and then create an enemy that the simple minded would understand - the Jew. Hitler's agenda was about recruiting the simple minded into extremism for the greater glory of his Nazi party. This Hitler did better than those early Nazi's before him.

Hilter had a purpose for the Jew - to use the Jew in a game of "them verses us" so that Hitler could recruit the simple minded to his growing party of 'Brown Shirts', etc.

The only part I am not answering here is why Hitler so craved this power. From his book, he is more concerned as to why Germany lost the first WW rather than a hate of Bolshevism.

You have failed to comprehend how the more informed people actually view the world. 'Good verses Evil' is how we channel - redirect - the little people. Great leaders tend to confess in their memoirs about a conflict more in terms of differing interests. Indeed the Civil War was not about slavery. However to simplify a war down to something that the 'less intellectual' could comprehend, then slavery became a Civil War rallying cry. Those evil southerners who enslaved black men - they must be evil.

Meanwhile almost all southerners had no slaves - therefore were not evil. So we forget to tell that to the little people.

Civil War was more about a complex set of disagreements between Northern and Southern states. A conflict that almost broke out ten years earlier in Congress had not some great men found a compromise (I believe this is one chapter of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage).

Those reasons of 'good verses evil' are for the naive. There is no good and evil. There are power brokers with strongly differing opinions and perspectives. Indeed, Japanese in WWII assumed they had a right to build an empire just like Europeans and Americans. Japanese would have avoided war had the US, et al cut off their oil. So, in the Japanese perspective, an evil US was denying the Emperor of "Japan's rights to oil". Ergo - Pearl Harbor.

Ever been to the Arizona? Many tourists are Japanese. What is rarely admitted: USS Arizona represents a Japanese glory. Understand perspectives. Pearl Harbor, to many Japanese today, was not an evil surprise attack. It was a great Japanese victory. This perspective is quite difficult for Americans to comprehend. Again, differing perspectives that, this time, do not result in war.

But war is due to differing perspectives – a total breakdown at the negotiation table. The purpose of war: to take that dispute back to a negotiation table. Hopefully with two parties who now have different perspectives. "Good verses Evil" is a myth about war; promoted so that 'cannon fodder' will make that frontal assault "for the greater glory of god and country". But a myth about 'good verses evil' lives on.

Don't tell an 18 year old. Otherwise he will not be a good soldier. And yet notice how 'good verses evil' becomes nonsense once we define the real purpose of war - to return the conflict to a negotiation table. "Good verses Evil' are only myths for those who don't understand the purpose of war.

War is bad, peace is good. OK, most Americans would agree with that, except UG and the administration in Washington. However, not everyone in the world feels that way.

The reality is there are people that would harm us in unspeakable ways, given half a chance, that's why the Constitution provides for the military to defend our borders. I believe the last time this happened was WWII, all subsequent wars do not qualify.

So if you want to rail against the misuse of the military, pick any other war. :)

The Axis Powers--even assuming they had the intent--didn't have "half a chance." The United States was not conquerable. The Germans couldn't manage to cross the English Channel, for Christ's sake!

As far as Japan goes, they did not attack the American homeland--they attacked a military base in a stolen colony after a good deal of intentional provocation. They were not about to land in San Francisco and rape everyone's sister.

WW2 is not the most justifiable American war--when looking at the global picture, and setting aside grade-school nonsense about how Hitler was uniquely evil--it is the least justified. A war in which Hitler, Tojo, Chiang, Mao and Stalin all met ruin at one another's hands was a fantasy almost too good to be true. But it would've been true had we not screwed it up, just as we always manage to do when interventionists are in power.

With the US in the war, the Germans couldn't cross the English channel. They probably would have otherwise.

They intended to invade Britain in 1940. The U.S. entered the war in December 1941, by which time the British had whipped the German Air Force.

Yeah, right.......no way Hitler ever could have beat Britian. :rolleyes:

Aired originally in Sept 2004, this PBS documentary called Battlefield Britian discusses this desperate attempt to keep Britian from being invaded. It is also airing on some PBS stations tonight 1 Mar 2006. Details by going here and then clicking on the entry for:
Battlefield Britian
This hyperlink for those nearby The Cellar. Others should select their own PBS stations at http://www.pbs.org .

Even if Hitler could've beaten Britain--which was just barely possible in 1940, and not possible at all in 1941--that's a far cry from being able to cross the Atlantic ocean and invade the United States. Invading a country, occupying it, and governing it are rather different animals.

Ever hear of Rommel? If Hitler had won the war in Europe, he'd have brought the US to its knees. It might have taken time, but he would have done so. The America's would have stood alone against the rest of the world. And there's this little thing called oil. Had Hitler invaded Britain, this board would be written in German. Hello? :eyebrow:

1940 Britain was a country with almost no tanks, nearly no artillery, and few guns. It still had an air force and a navy.

But a navy without air cover could never defend against Stuka dive bombers - as was proven time and time again. This is why Hitler only needed to conquer the RAF. Churchill understood this quite well. The only reason the channel was an obstacle to Germany was that Germany could not and did not conquer the RAF.

Eventually, Britain would rearm. Their armies lost most everything in Dunkirk except men. Once those men could be rearmed, then Britain would again become a military power. America was so essential to Britain. Both the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic were examples of Britain on the ropes and about to go down. It is an extraordinary story of history. One that every educated person should appreciate not just in the story, but the whys behind why Britain came so close to being conquered.

Germany had already massed sufficient forces to successfully invade Britain in summer or fall 1940. The Royal Navy could only stop that invasion IF the RAF could protect the navy. Britain came that close to being conquered.

Churchill understated it when he said something to the effect of, "At no time in history did so many owe so much to so few.” Only one class of military weapon kept Britain from being conquered in 1940. The RAF saved Britain's ass - completely. It was a desperate battle.

Forget Rommel. That's like saying Patton alone conquered Germany. Rommel was only one piece of a very crowded gameboard. To cite Rommel as significant is to be manipulated by both historical myths and propaganda of that time.

Yes, I've heard of Rommel...he's the fellow who was soundly whipped by the supposedly impotent British in North Africa, prior to being "suicided" by his own superiors. From the sound of it, you imagine him as some sort of demigod.

There was no reason for America to "stand against" anyone in the world; our geography enables us not to be concerned with whether the 'right people' are ruling other countries or not, and all we have to do is recognize it. Indeed, we are just about the only country on earth that is in, or has ever been in, that position. Instead we fritter this gift away with all our stupid hand-wringing over whether one gang of tyrants is going to beat another gang of tyrants. Well, we deserve what we get...

The superiority of the U.S to Vietnam in 1965 and Iraq in 2003 is incalculably greater than the superiority of Germany to Britain in 1940. Yet we subdued neither.

If you define occupation of the capital city as victory, there is a slim chance Hitler could've achieved it--and even this vanished after Barbarossa. However, in the long run occupied territories tend to be a thorn in one's side.

And the idea that German troops were ever going to land in Boston and rape everyone's sister is too neurotic to bother refuting.

Complete nonsense. America was not a nation dependent on foreign trade even if Germany had the resources for a blockade. The American red-neck is fully capable of running an effective guerilla campaign. Like djacq75 said the Russian and German tyrannies should have been allowed to bleed each other out until their people rose up. If we had allowed that to happen our present course of democratic fascism could have been averted.

I cite Rommel because he managed to take quite a bit of territory in northern Africa - places where there is this little thing called oil. Had Germany gained control over the oil producing countries of the region, the US would eventually have been brought to its knees. Not right away, of course, but ultimately. I was not saying that Rommel could have invaded the US or anything like that. Actually, Rommel WAS a very good general and tactician, however. He tried to kill Hitler at the end, if you'll recall. I was always sort of fond of him - for a Nazi General, that is.

I think Germany would have beaten Russia if it hadn't had to worry about the British and American forces. Germany's problem was that it was fighting a war on two fronts. If the US had stayed out of the conflict, Britain would have gone under. The Germans were quite efficient at disposing of those who disagreed with them. A significant portion of those killed in the death camps were Russian prisoners of war. The US would have been isolated in a world where two enemies - Germany and Japan - controlled all the rest.

Neither country may have had any interest in invading this one - it would have been a formidable task, I agree. But the resulting geopolitick would have meant that the US would have become a seriously weakened nation and not the world power it is today. IMO.

1. To a person of humane and decent instincts, it's better to be a weak power at peace than a great nation at war.

2. That Germany and Japan were our enemies was largely our decision. They would've preferred to live and let live, as far as the United States was concerned. (Pearl Harbor was not the bolt out of the clear blue we like to imagine it was.)

3. The U.S., Mexico, and Venezuela produced all the oil we needed. We would not have been able to live like hogs, perhaps, but that is not to be confused with a threat to our national existence.

4. Partly because of the Axis defeat, within 35 years the U.S. was "isolated" by hostile Communist or radical governments in the USSR, China, and most of the Third World. Yet we somehow made it, against an enemy even more ruthless than the Axis Powers. To say we could not have survived an Axis victory ignores the fact that we survived something worse.

If I'm not mistaken the US was still a net exporter of oil when WWII came along and we have vast reserves to this day.(I couldn't find the import numbers to balance that chart since apparently the gov has only tracked that since 1949.) The Japanese were p.o.ed, in part, because we cut off our exports of aviation fuel to them. What I believe we're witnessing in this thread is the remnants of the old propaganda campaigns about the dire threat our enemies posed. These campaigns are pernicious, just ask G W Bush now that his paranoia campaign just bit him on the ass over the port sale.

OK, I'll admit that the US would not have been brought to its knees. And, yes, I am aware that back then the US was a net exporter of oil. I am such an old dinosaur that I'll be contributing to the oil fields one day soon myself. Why, I remember when gasoline was 22 cents a gallon, you young whippersnappers! I also remember the price shock of the oil embargo back in the early 70's. We are certainly not a net exporter of oil now, and he who controls the world's petroleum supply, controls the world. If Hitler had been able to secure the Mid East petroleum supply for Germany, that nation would definately have quite a bit of leverage at this point. I guess I am mostly pissed about the stupid war we are currently fighting which seems to have no real basis other than to give us a foothold in the Middle East oil fields. I imagine that had Hitler managed to take all of Europe and Russia, the same uneasy stance as we had during the cold war with the USSR would have been the most likely result.

In other words, after 400,000 dead and who knows how many more maimed, we ended up with just about what we would've ended up with anyway. Thank you for getting it! :lol:

Your praise of Rommel are both accurate and worthy of the man. Furthermore, his objective was Suez. This would have caused major fuel and supply problems for Britain as well as another Dunkirk type defeat. Rommel did amazing things with virtually little material. He was not defeated (actually he was removed before the defeat) until the US and British put him into a squeeze from both east and west.

Don't forget for a minute why the US was so soundly defeated in their first major African battle.

How did Montgomery defeat Rommel? Montgomery had more materials, men, and supplies. Therefore Montgomergy simply kept shifting his attack so that Rommel had to run here and there. Rommel had too few resources. And yet still Rommel did amazing things in his defense - by doing things offensive. British forces would suddenly discover that Rommel was completely behind them.

You have drawn conclusions without first learning underlying facts. In Vietnam, without a strategic objection and with Generals (Westmoreland) who literally violated well proven principles of war, wll of course a major military (US) would be defeated. That has nothing to due with German operations in 1940 Britain.

Meanwhile, look who is not winning the "Mission Accomplished" war. Again the example does not prove your point once we apply necessary details.

Meanwhile, I don't have a clue as to why you mention Germans invading Boston. I intentionally avoided the whole topic because the number of variable make any reasoning nothing more than personal biases speculation.

The one thing we do know is that without an RAF, Germany had sufficient resources, weapon superiority, and intent (the strategic objectives) to successfully invade Britain. Without the RAF, Britain just could not have stopped a 1940 cross channel invasion.

Errrr... You're leaving out one minor detail - the 6 million killed in the death camps. Hell alone knows what that number might have been had Hitler conquered Britain and Russia both. :eyebrow:

Never lose sight of a strategic objective. Kudos to Griff for the reminder.

Not to mitigate Hitler in any way, but Stalin did a fair bit of that himself, more than Hitler even. So it might have been a bit of a wash on that front as well.

Ummmmm... Stalin was most certainly a nasty character and I suspect the extent of his atrocities will never be fully known. Given the information available, though, Hitler out did Stalin nicely and I'm sure he would have out paced him when it came to exterminating the Russian people. At least the Gulags did not prominently feature creamatoriums. And don't forget the Jewish population of Britain who would have been wisps of smoke floating across the Atlantic. :headshake

Hitler outdid Stalin? Hitler was an amateur.

20,000,000.

Stalin was able to spread it out and hide it better because he was an equal opportunity killer.

Also because he never lost the war and had enemy troops uncovering his secrets.

Don't forget Germany had a lot of friends in South America.
Had they won in Europe they were in position to establish a foothold there, also :cool:

Truth, I'm back to reading the Rise and Fall blah blah and references keep coming about so and so, just back from Bolivia. However, I stand by the point no way we get rolled by an OUTSIDE power. We also need to remember that, like Castro, Hitler had a limited shelf life and it's really hard to smoothly replace an absolute dictator.

Well, going back to the OP and national soul searching, yeah right. We had someone jump on the thread and claim the ridiculous number of 400,000 or so war dead in the name of pacifism. Whatever. We've had a disagreement over who was worse- Stalin or Hitler? I've read stat's on Hitler that put him reponsible for 20 million deaths directly and 44 million indirectly. ABCXYletter pudding head would have us forget about everything, including the current war in Iraq and bury our heads in the sand and say, Hitler did it. We have Busterb posting live from one of the worst disasters in recent American history and detailing the lack of response from ANYONE except people here on the Cellar. We have Keryx posting back and going "nyah, nyah, stupid Katrina victims get what they deserve!" We have tw's ever growing thread on Bush's shrinking safety zone. Hell! W. didn't have a safety zone 5 years ago before 9/11 ever happened! What's he got is a wealth and power zone and that has NOT changed.

So when is the last time a single one of you - left, right, center, communist or libertarian has written a single letter to your state representative, attended a single session of your local town council, written a letter to the editor of your local paper, or donated an hour of your own time to whatever cause is most close to your own heart? Its easy to debate Stalin versus Hitler. How about doing something real? 60 years ago today, Americans were dancing in the streets and Japanese children were watching their faces peel off. So fucking what?

I agree, as long a we had the foresight to maintain enough military strength to stop an initial attack. It's one of those, if you can stand the first punch, then you'll be ok.

Last time? Two days ago. And more times than I can count but the only thing I probably accomplished was stress relief for myself.

Oh, and I try not to tell other people what to do with their money. :headshake

To return more consistent with Griff's recent post: Fundamentals behind this discussion were previously posted at Morality

Meanwhile below is a typical response posted previously. A response created by propaganda from a mental midget president and his mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh. They do this because so many citizens did not understand the purpose of war and did not appreciate why a 'smoking gun' is so critical. Did not learn from history and even ignored numbers about those aluminim tubes. We know UT was deceived by propaganda from facts in another series of posts - Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency and from Poll finds that most U.S. troops are in favor of withdrawal Each are only symptoms of mistakes made at the highest levels of the American government because a president is a mental midget. Its not nice, but the conclusion is based in facts which explains why we are in a "Mission Accomplished" war that cannot be won. No strategic objective and therefore no exit strategy. This also defines the word "Morality".

Notice how clean and more complex war - its purpose and its propaganda - can become. To keep it simpler, we tell the common man that "they (others) are evil". It is why we are in a "Mission Accomplished" war. A mental midget president is a genius at convoluting the truth. He has lesser intelligent among us thinking we are fighting a war against bin Laden - who runs free because our president is so immoral as to let bin Laden run free.

Years ago, MaggieL and I had a long discussion where I defined the invasion of Iraq as wrong for so many reasons. I was roundly in the minority then and have been proven today to be more accurate than even I had hoped. Those reasons, from historical lessons, were based in above concepts including the strategic objective, the smoking gun, and other lessons from history. That is why we When a president so routinely lies as this one does to the destruction of America, well, that is why citizens are suppose to be learned in history. A country with more intelligent people and less Christian religious extremists would not be fighting a war against those who were not a threat. It would again be safe overseas to let others know you are American. These extremist anti-Americans who don't advocate the president's impeachment make it dangerous to be an American citizen where Americans were once so welcome.

If there is an 'evil' in Iraq, it is the American 'crusader' invader. If there is 'evil' in Afghanistan, it is bin Laden who the American president protects by letting him run free. Lessons we all should have learned from 60 years ago.

For starters, the death camps weren't death camps until after the Wannsee Conference in 1942. What is generally thought of as the Holocaust--the Final Solution--was not proposed or implemented, much less known about, until after the U.S. entered the war, and therefore cannot be used to justify its entry.

Prior to 1941, if you had stacked up Hitler's murders against Stalin's, Hitler would've come out looking like a kitten by comparison. Only with Barbarossa did he begin to catch up to Stalin's record.

But all of this begs the question: is it America's job to police the world? And if so, should we have invaded the USSR in 1932 or 1933 to stop the deliberate starvation of 7 million Ukrainians--rather than extending the red killers diplomatic recognition, as FDR enthusiastically did? If your answer is no, then don't come with any sob stories about the Holocaust. The principle is the same.

The purpose of war is nearly always to convince semi-literate clods to die for a cause that has nothing to do with them, but which you are too much of a pussy to die for yourself.

Because cattle like you are still nuzzling the cold, dead bum of an epic criminal like Roosevelt who caused that to happen. If you won't admit your fuck-ups, you're doomed to repeat them...or something like that.

Um, I was not asking why we should know what Roosevelt and Churchill's strategic objectives were. I asked why we should give a damn whether they were accomplished if doing so was to cost an additional 120,000 lives.

Which goes right back to the purpose of war. If at a negotiation table were honest men negotiating, then human life has value. Once one party makes human life irrelevant, then either the other party must surrender (Chamberlin) or all parties must now regard human life as only secondary (war).

In war, human lives are wasted - spent like capital funds. War derates the value to human life to be only another military resource. Don't for one minute forget that. Never worry about human life as paramount once war breaks out. That only makes one a loser. Once in war, human life must lose value for more important purposes.

Suggested is that war could have ended without those additional 120,000 lost lives. But that is irrelevant. We were no longer at a negotiation table where human life has such value. Until we get back to a negotiation table, then human life is only another expendable military asset or target. Cold, hard, and it is called reality. Anything less means war may be lost or that another war must be fought. This from someone that Urbane Guerilla considers too liberal or Democratic and that MaggieL did not understand? You tell me how someone so ruthless could be so.

I don't like it. But that reasoning is also why we must have a smoking gun to justify war. BTW it is also why Patton was so good (old blood and guts) and yet probably saved so many American lives.

Bottom line point is that if one goes to war, then human life must be regarded as something completely expendable until negotiations will start. If one is not willing to make that commitment, then one does not belong in war or may just create another war - ie WWI may have only created WWII. Welcome to justification for the liberation of Kuwait AND why Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfovitz, et al only destroyed (squandered) an oppurtunity created by Swartzkopf and Powell. If you don't understand what 'squander' means here, then you are not ruthless enough to call for war.

Whether those 120,000 lives could have been saved is secondary. Until a conflict gets to a negotiation table, the leader spends people like a corporate president spends his capital. Most coporate advertising dollars are wasted. But he must spend anyway. Currency is what human life becomes once negotiations break down into war.

To worry about 120,000 lives when war has not yet terminated is to be too liberal or simply too naive. Or it is to be too right wing conservative as to get into a war due to penis based intelligence. Either extreme: both are examples of why extremists tend to be of lesser intelligence.

It is war. Life is something to be spent. Be very careful before another president in 30 years lies like Johnson & Nixon in 1960s and George Jr in 2002. Such men forget they work for us - forget what is an American patriot. Such men think we are only capital for them to spend - defines a dictator mentality. If one needs a definition of evil, two examples are Nixon and George Jr. Both would kill rather than solve problems at a negotiation table - all for their own personal glory and in the name of god. Country and intelligence had nothing to due with Nixon's and George Jr's wars.

Defined is also why containment is so effective at solving world problems. And why preemption is strongly based in extremist propaganda. Demonstrated is that one, declared a liberal by some, is more ruthless than the weak kneed Urbane Guerilla who thinks nothing about going to war at the drop of a feather. We need cannon fodder which is why we need Urbane Guerrilla types. But worry when these types get us into a war. Demonstrated by the number of above words, war is not something to enter without both good and deep seated reasoning since 120,000 people suddenly have no significant value.

No, I actually don't think it accomplishes much either, but I do feel a certain sense of satisfaction after sending one of my mass e-mails to the Colorado State Legislature. Sometimes, I even get replies. :D

That they will be regarded as expendable by the criminals who launched the war goes without saying. And while it is true that the decent members of the human race should demand an end to the war, if it were hypothetically within one's power to hold the casualties caused by a given war to 100,000 instead of 1,000,000, it is absurd to pretend that the two scenarios make no difference to anyone. That our leaders treat lives as cannon fodder merely establishes that we should be as unlike our leaders as we can manage.

It is also too much, even for a joke, for a belligerent leader to refuse to conduct negotiations (as Truman did in July 1945)--and then use the lack of negotiations as an excuse to unleash whatever destruction tickles his fancy.

Well, tw, in post #104, p.7, you said something smart. Good going.

djacq, you got some holes yet: what the decent members of the human race should demand is an end to the indecencies of oppression. You've been sucked in by the specious arguments of the moral-equivalency set, and you should not have been so deceived.

Democracies avoid oppression(s), though without complete success, owing to human nature: the root of prejudice is that man is a categorizing animal, and the two largest categories are Me and Not-Me. It is all too easy to be disdainful of the Not-Me, which can lead to attacking and abusing such Other. The faculty of self-restraint is a happy one here, and we both know it's not always present.

Non-democracies, on the other hand, mostly exist to oppress somebody, somewhere, somehow. Being unaccountable to their subjects, nondemocracies make war on, well, whim.

Your last paragraph needs taking apart, as it misrepresents Truman's motivations and policy: Japan's government sent out peace feelers in mid-1945, asking about terms for peace. Since we Allies had decided at Yalta in 1942 that the only peace would come with the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, and Truman did not waver from this when he inherited the Presidency, the kindest thing to say about Japan's representations in 1945 was that they were the product of wishful thinking. Truman could see the whole thing was bootless. Since there was still the war to win, it was time to shock and awe the Japanese into unconditional surrender. This was done. In large measure, come to think of it, this was done by Hirohito telling the generals it was time to quit, and it seems looking back that we were duly grateful.

If Roosevelt made a deal with the devil, it was not Truman's job to carry it out without question. He chose to sacrifice 120,000 civilian lives for the dubious privilege of being allowed to hang the Emperor if we chose (which, of course, we didn't.)

Unconditional surrender by each of the Axis powers doesn't sound like a deal with the devil.

And to the Japanese, I would ever point this out: Hiroshima died that Japan might live. And live it did; it's a better Japan now.

..and Nagasaki?

That's like hearing the 9/11 hijackers telling us they did it for the good of the USA.

Were you by any chance name 'Mr. Sensitivity' in your high school yearbook?

I would think that those "really sensitive people" are elderly Filipinos that still remember the Japanese occupation.

Paraphrasing from a conversation with one;

Do we feel bad for those Japanese people? No. We were hoping that the US had more such bombs to drop there.

Which is why I find it so funny when Michelle Malkin soothes the conservatives by stating that the US interment of Japanese Americans was necessary. The racists among them simply see an Asian-American granting absolution without considering the fact that she is Filipino-American. This is like consulting an Armenian-American about the treatment of Turkish-Americans. Only a racist who lumps all Asians into a single group or someone who is ignorant of world history would be dumb enough to make that kind of generalization.

The Japanese abuse of the Filipinos served the important purpose of making our abuse of the Filipinos seem enlightened by comparison. We were literally the lesser of two evils. In the end, we did give the Phillipines their independence after WWII. Up until that time, freedom for the Phillipines meant picking their colonial masters (Spain, the US, or Japan).

Point of technical fact, Michele Malkin is an American. No hyphen.

Further point of technical fact, Michele Malkin being female would be: Filipina American.

Are you saying that noone pays any special attention to her comments based on her race? Are we really such a democratic society that we have become truly colorblind and there are no racial or cultural perspectives? Or are you just saying that I shouldn't have placed a hypen there?

IMO, the reality is that there are still Polish Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, etc. How much these distinctions affect attitudes depend on how insular was the community in which an individual was raised.

My point is that some people give Ms. Malkins words additional weight in issues such as the internment of Americans in the US during WWII because of her race, ignoring the cultural and political bias she may have inherited.

By hyphenating you intimating she is bias. :eyebrow:

Rich, I know this is just a typo, but it's too good to gloss over:

About two days postmortem, it is necessary. [Emph mine]

I wasn't ignoring Nagasaki, merely constructing a better-flowing and more concise sentence; it starts to clunk if I go for a pedantic completeness. I could have written precisely the same sentence of Nagasaki. Hiroshima carries the greater weight of meaning because it was the first.

No; the purveyors of antidemocracy do not have the moral authority to make such an argument believable. We, being a free people, in contention with anti-freedom people, do. That you choose not to accept that view has very little effect on its rightness.

What I'm saying is that Michelle Malkin describes herself as an unhyphenated American.

The idea that democracy possesses any inherent moral authority is one of the more contemptible forms of modern self-induced moral vacuity.

HEH! Urbane could be the poster child for Orwellian thought.

Let's take a closer look at his statement:

"purveyors of antidemocracy" - Would have the reader beleive that there is a group out there who fully understand the principles of democracy and have rejected them. In fact, there are many such groups "out there," but I would submit that the group to which UG refers - Muslims - are more xenophobic and religous fundamentalist than they are "antidemocracy." The deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians have only served to fuel UG's "antidemocracy" movement.

Democracy - from the Greek - demos - government by the people. Only someone who has no idea of what democracy actually is could beleive that a foreign nation can invade another country's borders, kill 100,000 people, and then call the result "democracy." The correct term is "military invasion" NOT "democracy."

"Moral authority" - an interesting term. Please define "morality." Please define "authority." Please state under which conditions a given group has "moral authority" over another. Please use premises that all parties agree to be correct, and please use logic in your reply. Points will be taken off for empty rhetoric and propagandist replies will receive a failing grade.

"We, being a free people" - "We" who, white man? Please define what it is to be a "free" person. Please state in which ways the average American is more a "free" person than the average Iraqi. "My son is in the US Army and my money goes to Halliburten." When I walk into the polling booth, I may choose one outrageous liar versus a second outrageous liar. My letters to my elected representative are met with form replies, if I'm lucky enough to get a reply at all. My country's leader is worse than an inept, bungling fool. My country's leader has done more to take away the constitutional rights and freedoms of my people than any other leader in my country's history. My country's leader has been responsible for the deaths of 100's of thousand of innocent people, including my own countrymen. Please explain how I have greater freedom than an Iraqi citizen.

"That you choose not to accept that view has very little effect on its rightness." i.e. "I'm right because I say so," or, my personal favorite, "I'm right and you're stupid." That you choose to assume YOUR view is the only correct one has NO effect on the actual truth of your position, especially when you do not back your position up with accurate facts and logical conclusions.

By the way, djacq, there ARE other threads on the Cellar. You don't have to keep bringing this one back up to the top. Its wandered so off topic that I don't even remember what it was originally about, anymore. :eyebrow: