I think not said:
nitzomoe said:
Every soveriegn nation has the right to defend itself, however the use of nuclear, chemical, biolgical weaponry however passes a threshold I dont think any nation has the right to do. Especially a country that prides itself on its "moral standards".
Evaluating the justice of the bombings, one should go beyond abstract principles of international morality and look at the concrete motives and causes of the war. War is unforgiving, there is a descriptive phrase, "The Fog of War". War is so complex that the human mind is incapable of taking under consideration all the variables, wars kill, civilians and military personnel,
DIE UNNECESSARILY, this has been true throughout the history of warfare.
The subject of morality during an era when the world was at war, holds no value when one diminishes its "value" by a game of numbers and statistics. The atom bombs killed ten fold what fire bombs did, and? Morality, and human rights grow and expand as humans become more civilized. What is unthinkable today was not so unthinkable 60 years ago when the instinct of self-preservation came into play.
What exactly should of been done when the Japanese and Germans were trying to develop the bomb before the allies? Sit back and wait to get hit so revisionist historians can point the finger at Japan? I don't think so.
there is a very big difference between unintentional civilian casualties or civilian casualties caused by rogue agents and
INTENTIONAL targeting of civilian areas to maximize death and carnage. The Nuclear bombings were intentional targetting of civilian area which did not have large troop stationed or infrastructure that supported the military of Japan. there is no fog of war that blinded american planners, they targetted a civilian compound. ALso fog of war actually is a term applied to soldiers on teh ground not military planners far away in america. they knew what they were doing, they showed a callous disregard for human life and a willingness to shed civilian blood to achieve their aims, notably an end to hostilities.
we can relegate the actions of a single soldier and companies of men who have engaged in known human rights violations to the fog of war but not military planners or expresident Truman. They are all responsible.
Just because previous conflicts employed barbarous and cruel methods does not mean the US needed to do so. Thats a black and white approach to history. Even though I would not have condoned it, bombing a military target such as the IJN headquarters with nuclear weapons holds more legitimacy than what the americans did. Its is similar to "he did it so why cant I?" sort of thinking.
The Allies were supposed to have something called the moral superiority in this war, the only thing that makes them different than the nazis and japanese. If you want to use "fog of war" to defend such a barborous action as nuclear bombing then the japanese can just as easily defend the torture of Allied POWs and thus the military tribunals for japan war criminals are illegal in nature.
The whole concept of war crimes gets thrown out the window with such arguments as the ones you are using. All of what your saying goes to defend ppl like Herman Georhing, Albert Speer and the like who were simply fighting to defend the german ppl.
In terms of the race the germans had been neutralized in Norwary a while back and intelligence reports showed that they had marginal access to chemical weapons at most. I applaud the combined, dane/british/american and french response to germany's attempts at aquiring nuclear weapons, they went directly ot the source and destroyed it.
Dont forget that we condemned admiral Donitz commander in chief of Kriegsmarine to death for "intentionally attacking civilian vessels, administering offical policy for such actions, showing negligence in complying with international standards and disregard for human life by not picking up survivors" The arguments ITN make simply go to show the hypocrisy of the war crimes court in charging any of the nazi and imperial japanese military for their actions.
and as a minor aside: What was thinkable back then is just as thinkable rite now. The US army is in gross of violation of many if not all Geneva conventions.
Even if we are to disregard the geneva conventions, they are in gross violations of the policies that they have used to condemn Saddam Hussein for.There has been no increase in civility whatsoever especially in a thing as uncivilised as Aggressive and illegal warfare, of which america is jsut as guilty as UK, France and Russia.
you can say my arguments are revisionist history(there not in anyway) but yours is blatant falsification of history. It is the sort of actions colonial powers take to defend their horrible crimes. The facts on the ground are very different from what american historians like to believe or for that matter teach american children. If the allies (including america) truly had the high ground as we all like to believe, that high ground was demolished by the usage of the nuclear weaponry on civilian targets, that high ground was levelled by the bombing of nurembourg and other CIVILIAN cities using incendiary weaponry to burn and kill as many civlians as possible and finally that high ground collapsed in on itself when they hung nazi/japanese war criminals for the same activities the allies were themselves guilty of!
hypocrisy at its highest level, this is why I have always condemned the international war crimes tribunal as nothing more than a tool of neocolonialist powers.
