Google| Subject | Re: Clobberin' Time... |
| From | James W. King |
| Date | 09/17/2001 16:02 (09/17/2001 16:02) |
| Message-ID | <20010917100253.20834.00000849@mb-cu.aol.com> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc |
| Follows | James Trory |
James Trory">Jack_Shappa@hotmail.com</A>): "They support these cowards, now they need to pay. Let's pray Bush has at least the balls of his dad (hopefully more). Give 'em a couple days to evacuate the cities of our choice, then waste 'em. Make terrorism very expensive for the nations that support it."
Cryofax (<A HREF="mailto:Jack_Shappa@hotmail.com
Paul "Duggy" Duggan: "And let's kill the families of murders... show them we won't put up with that sort of thing either."
Cryofax: "So basically you're saying any other country should be allowed to sponsor activity that leads to civilian casualities, but we should never retaliate against them because we might hurt their 'innocent' civilians? At least we'd have the decency to let them evacuate a city before we annihilate it."
Rakelle (<A HREF="mailto:celaeno@shavenwookie.nospam.com">celaeno@shavenwookie.nospam.com</A>): "Hiroshima. Nagasaki. And you don't know that a government has knowingly sponsored this."
Drew Stile: "Please don't compare Hiroshima to this. That was war, this was not."
James Trory (<A HREF="mailto:j_trory@yahoo.com">j_trory@yahoo.com</A>):"Civilians are civilians. 320,000... 400,000... They're still dead, and countless others suffered severe, deadly affects from radiation poisoning. Don't you dare tell me that because it was war it was okay."
James King: "It was not a matter of its being 'okay' as it was *pragmatically necessary* to prevent untold more deaths of one's own side's soldiers."
James Trory: "Oh horse shit, and you know it."
Uhhh, no, it's NOT "horse shit" or shit of any type. I don't subscribe to your more naively pacifist notions about war.
James Trory: "How can you justify killing over 300,000 (possibly 400,000) civilians to save the lives of a couple of thousand soldiers?"
The civilians in question were contributing to the continuation of the Japanese war effort and were de-facto cogs in the overall Japanese war machine. But on the contrary, in my opinion, I believe that President Truman was naive in okaying the atomic-bombing of a smaller Japanese city because it took NOT one BUT *two* -- count 'em, *2* -- atomic bombings before the Japanese decided to surrender. In my opinion, Truman should have considered bombing the major city of Tokyo from the outset for that may not have necessitated a second atomic bombing.
James Trory: "If you're going to spin that shit about civilians being unfortunate casualties of war, may I remind you that soldiers' specific duties are to die for their country in a time of war."
Bullshit! As our General George S. Patton once said, "The whole point in war is not for you to die for your country. It's to get the other poor damned bastard (the enemy) to die for his!"
James Trory: "That's what they're there for. To fight and to die. Now I'm not saying that's a good thing, but there's no way of knowing how long the conflict with Japan would've lasted had America not dropped the A bomb, but I'm willing to bet another 500,000 allied soldiers were not about to perish."
How conveniently for you to be so willing to bet on such an issue when you haven't offered any documentary evidence to back up such a convenient statement.
It doesn't matter whether it would have been even another 5,000 Allied soldiers who would have died, because we have already fought a multi-front war on two sides of the Earth, and quite frankly, enough was enough -- period.
James Trory: "A human life is a human life, no matter whose it is."
False issue. If that human life on the other enemy side is contributing to the war effort, then he is already perpetrating my own potential death as well.
James Trory: "Considering the fact that Germany had surrendered, as had Italy, and Russia was on the side of the allies, that leaves few people for the Japanese to turn to."
False issue. Japan would have had the home-field advantage if we had tried to land there to engage in infantry fighting.
James Trory: "With France, Holland, and other European countries liberated, and the support of America, I'm sure Great Britain and its friends would've beaten Japan fairly swiftly, even despite the fact that Japan is known for it's 'never surrender' mentality. I'm still of the opinion that America dropped the bomb to warn the Russians and to test the thing out on 'living people.'"
That might well have been part of the equation as well, but not the overriding concern. As it was, the Allied Forces' supply of military-age-qualifying young men was growing more depleted. And the imposing and savage battles that the Allied Forces had fought in the islands of the South Pacific had been brutal enough.
James Trory: "PS: I also admire America's insistance that Japan apologise for WW2 and yet there's no apology from America."
Why should we apologize to Japan when Japan was the aggressor nation which attacked us *first*?
We ended the war by means which, if not used, would otherwise have continued the war since the Japanese would not have wanted to surrender anyway once American troops would landed on Japanese beaches, thus invoking the "Protect the Homeland" mentality.
Can you tell me how *you* would had the Allied Forces end World War II by no later than August 1945 *without* using the atomic bomb and *without* incurring undue, needless bloodshed and body counts of your own Allied forces?
James King: "And unfortunately, that's what war is all about: deliberating exacting such a cost in human lives and property destruction of the enemy to the point that he is compelled to finally surrender."
James Trory: "I see what you're saying, but we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people here. In one go. Who you can't really class as 'military targets.'"
Again, if the civilians in question are contributing to their country's war effort, they are fair game in war, regardless of their numbers. Moreover, if they choose to continue to live near strategic targets such as factories or fuel/energy depots, they automatically put their own lives at stake.
James Trory: "Am I not right in assuming that one code of war is to minimalize civilian casualties wherever possible?"
*As long as it doesn't contribute to unnecessarily expending more of one's own forces.* Moreover, those civilians can't legitimately call themselves non-targets anyway if they're contributing to the war effort or living near strategic targets.
James Trory: "In the case of Tuesday and the scramble to get two fighter jets out to shoot down the second plane that, unfortunately, did hit the WTC, that decision was a correct one. Thousands of people would've survived if the second tower hadn't have been hit, for the cost of a few hundred who would've died anyway (though I don't take that lightly either). But trading in five thousand soldiers for 400,000 civilians just doesn't sit right with me."
If those 400,000 civilians are contributing to the enemy's war effort, they complicitly make themselve collaborators of their own accord and bonafide targets as well in cases where the use of the atomic bomb as a final resort is to be considered, especially if that populace doesn't openly show encouraging signs of resisting or revolting against their country's war aims.
James King: "Moreover, civilians are not merely innocent civilians in times of war if/when they're contributing to the war effort by way of working in factories and in industries that produce war materiel, munitions, food and supplies necessary for the sustenance and maintenance of the war machine. Moreover, if civilians actually support the aims of their government and don't oppose it, then they are acting in accord with their government's war aims just the same."
James Trory: "That's called patriotism."
Bullshit! No, that's called *Selling One's Soul to the Devil.* If more Germans in World War II had remained true to the prior ideals of their culture, they would have been truly patriotic by openly and more vociferously resisting their Nazi overlords in greater numbers.
Indeed, if they had been genuinely patriotic, there would never have been any Nazi overlords in the first place much less any such perverted imperialistic notion in song as the Nazi anthem "Deuschland Uber Alles" (Germany Over All [the Rest of the World]).
James Trory: "Nobody stopped America getting involved in the Vietnam war, even though it was none of their goddamn business to do so."
And your point is ... ?
James Trory: "Would it have been okay for your enemies in the jungle, had they been capable of doing so, of flattening New York? Or Boston? Or Washington?"
You're asking me to assume the enemy mindset and perspective. From my own perspective as an American, it would not have been okay; however, if I as an American perceived that the enemy had had a probable legitimate moral imperative that superseded the supposed integrity of purpose and presumed objectives for our fighting in that war, then no matter how misguided that I may have thought his tactics to have been, I might have to grudgingly concede in the final analysis that his use of the weapon may have been justified from his own perspective.
James Trory: "After all, the people living in those cities were not innocent civilians, right?"
By "those cities," you're referring to Vietnam. There were both innocent and enemy-collaborator citizens living in different cities, towns and hamlets in Vietnam. But Vietnam is NOT exemplary of a war with specific, justified and well-defined aims anyway. In fact, the U.S. never officially declared war on Vietnam. It was an escalating conflict which evolved into a de-facto war just the same. The U.S. should not have been involved in it from the beginning. But that's hardly the only case where the U.S. should not have been involved.
James Trory: "Because they [the Vietnamese people] were not opposing their governments war aims to such a degree that it halted the war."
Well, that's just it: The Vietnamese people did not have their own legitimate government in the first place. Vietnam was something more akin to a civil war in the first place with super-power players contributing to the fracas. South Vietnam's president was practically installed by the U.S.
James Trory: "Though I admit I have nothing to support this, I'm sure I'm correct in assuming that there were plenty of factories and civilians in those factories producing arms and supplies for the troops."
The factory-made war materiels and supplies were for the most part supplied by the neighboring Communist countries of the USSR, North Korea and China.
James Trory: "Also, what evidence do you have to support the notion that Japanese civilians *were* in support of their government's actions?"
They blindly obeyed their Emperor and their leaders for the most part and did not openly resist or revolt in substantial numbers -- if any at all -- against them.
James Trory: "I'm pretty sure the POW camps in Japan were not common knowledge to the Japanese people."
Then you would be pretty naive as well. Would you say the same about the POW, concentration and death camps in Nazi Germany and the other territories occupied by the Third Reich?
James Trory: "If you haven't noticed already, in a time of war, governments are very selective of what they tell their people."
But people talk and share gossip and actual first-hand accounts nonetheless. How else do you account for the admonition that Germans in some regions of Nazi Germany made to their children, namely that they had better be good or they too would "go up the chimney"?
James King: "Such a wayward country's leaders willfully accept the consequences of fomenting war, including the risk, if not probability, that they're also making their populace's subject to collateral death and damages incurred both in the fog of war and as the result of deliberate targeting of strategic targets (around which civilians might live)."
James Trory: "The bombing of two cities in Japan were not merely 'deliberate targeting of strategic targets around which civilians might live.'"
I never said they were, o' Disingenuous One. I was referring moreso to civilians killed by conventional weaponry as errant missiles in the fog of war as well as those who live too near or in the vicinity of legitimate strategic targets.
James Trory: "They [the citizens of Nagasaki and Hiroshima] were the deliberate targeting of highly populated civilian locations, the bombing of which were designed to scare the Japanese government into surrender. Over 300,000 Japanese were not 'accidently' killed because they were living near a military target."
Indeed, they were not, but again, in proper perspective, despite repeated warnings, by their failing to surrender, the Imperial Japanese Government by its obstinance for that second Japanese city to be bombed. Indeed, it took *two such atomic bombings* before the Imperial Japanese government surrendered.
Moreover, as I noted above, the U.S. *could* have targeted its far more populated capital city of Tokyo. That the U.S. did not target Tokyo speaks to the greater aim of preserving Japan for post-war reconstruction.
James Trory: "Yes, civilians get caught up in war and they die. The bombings of London and Birmingham in the UK by Nazis planes killed a lot of people, but like you say, they were living near factories and military targets, and we all have to accept those consequences."
Phony baloney! I said NOTHING OF THE SORT about the Nazi bombings of Britain. In fact, I never even addressed the Battle of Britain. I spoke only for our [American & Allied Forces'] considerations of using such weaponry in times of war.
In my opinion, the Nazi bombings of Britain were indiscriminate -- they were bombing everything and anything in and around major cities --- not just factories or industry.
James Trory: "But targeting civilians themselves is just plain wrong."
In the cases of our bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we weren't targeting civilians per se -- As a last resort to end the war quickly and expediently, we were targeting *everything in those cities, including the civilians who contributed to the Imperial Japanese war effort.*
And quite frankly, I don't consider those decisions to have been wrong. Unfortunate, but in the long run, absolutely necessary and defensible.
And if it had been finalized for use by January 1945, I would have agreed with its being used on Nazi Germany as well. Indeed, in such case, it might have led to Japan's earlier surrender, too, thereby avoiding our ever having to atomic-bomb Japan at all.
-- James King
09/11/2001-
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