Roman Catholic Bishop Wants Everyone to Call God 'Allah'

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When Curtiss LeMay arrived and took command in January 1945, he ordered a switch from high altitude high explosive precision daylight attacks to night area bombing with a mixture of incendiaries and antipersonnel weapons. This prevented the firefighters from putting out the fires, which spread wildly.
From March 1945 through the end of the war, many Japanese cities were subjected to area bombing with incendiaries. Tokyo, Osaka, and many other cities were burned out by firestorms that reached over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. The bombings may have killed as many as 500,000 people.

http://worldwar2database.com/html/japanbom.htm

The only reason I include this, is because it is obvious that civilians were the target in these raids, for they were carpet/fire bombed, with a mix of bombs specifically designed to prevent firemen from putting out fires.

Why then should the use of an atomic bomb against civilians be surprising?

Quote:

May 31
The Interim Committee agrees that "the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses."

June 1
Interim Committee makes formal decision decides not to warn the civilian populations of the targeted cities.

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/hiroshima-nagasaki/decision-drop-bomb-chronology.htm

Quote:

7/25/45 Diary Entry (of Harry Truman) :
"The weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new [Kyoto or Tokyo].
"He [Stimson] and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement [known as the Potsdam Proclamation] asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance…

8/9/45 Letter (from Harry Truman) to Senator Richard Russell: [In response to Sen. Russell's wish that Japan be hit with more atomic and conventional bombing:]
"I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can't bring myself to believe that, because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in the same manner.
"For myself, I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the 'pigheadedness' of the leaders of a nation and, for your information, I am not going to do it until it is absolutely necessary...

http://www.doug-long.com/hst.htm

Just a note - Nagasaki was bombed on 9th August 1945 - the date of the above letter.

To the above discussion.

Once again,

The semantics of "legitimate targets" in armed conflict constitutes conscious-easing palliatives to individuals enmeshed in forces beyond psychological analysis or control. Joseph Heller got it right with Catch 22; his episode of the padre being ordered to pray for "a tight bomb pattern" being particularly pertinent to threads like this which touch on religious fundamentalism. Where goeth "nationalism""there also goeth religion" in an unholy alliance.

The semantics of "legitimate targets" in armed conflict constitutes conscious-easing palliatives...

to individuals enmeshed in forces beyond psychological analysis or control

Not sure we need to add religion, especially.


We humans don't need much to deny each other humanity.

Quote:

Not sure we need to add religion, especially.


We humans don't need much to deny each other humanity.

this is a point i'm very fond of making when people treat religion like a poison.

What I meant by that is applying psychological explantions to social forces is a "category mistake" in the Gilbert Ryle sense. "History is bunk" comes to mind also in this respect.

Interesting that the "official" definition of terrorism stresses the UNLAWFUL use of force. As such, "shock and awe" and Nagasaki are legitimate because they are actions by states, not individuals. But we do not consider Pearl Harbour a legitimate act of WAR; we always seem to describe it as a cowardly act at least bordering on terrorism.
States and corporations can do what informal groups and individuals cannot.
It's all semantic rationalization, i.e., bullshit.

Nice post Dlowan.

And I stand corrected, there is at least one definition that removes Hiroshima/Nagasaki for being defined as terrorism :wink:

Terrorism is an act that is premeditated; perpetrated by a subnational or clandestine agent; politically motivated, potentially including religious, philosophical, or culturally symbolic motivations; violent; and perpetrated against a noncombatant target.

Terrorism is illegal violence or threatened violence directed against human or nonhuman objects, provided that it: (1) was undertaken or ordered with a view to altering or maintaining at least one putative norm in at least one particular territorial unit or population: (2) had secretive, furtive, and/or clandestine features that were expected by the participants to conceal their personal identity and/or their future location; (3) was not undertaken or ordered to further the permanent defense of some area; (4) was not conventional warfare and because of their concealed personal identity, concealment of their future location, their threats, and/or their spatial mobility, the participants perceived themselves as less vulnerable to conventional military action; and (5) was perceived by the participants as contributing to the normative goal previously described (supra) by inculcating fear of violence in persons (perhaps an indefinite category of them) other than the immediate target of the actual or threatened violence and/or by publicizing some cause.

Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.

Interersting, the way I read everything, it seems completely obvious to me that civilians were targeted, along with military sites - otherwise the stated objectives could not be met.

However, you are of course entitled to your own interpretation

So..if Hussein HAD had nukes, and had dropped an A bomb on the pentagon, the fact that he happened to wipe out a few million civilians would not have caused you to call it terror, because it was a military target, one assumes?

Quote:

When Curtiss LeMay arrived and took command in January 1945, he ordered a switch from high altitude high explosive precision daylight attacks to night area bombing with a mixture of incendiaries and antipersonnel weapons. This prevented the firefighters from putting out the fires, which spread wildly.
From March 1945 through the end of the war, many Japanese cities were subjected to area bombing with incendiaries. Tokyo, Osaka, and many other cities were burned out by firestorms that reached over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. The bombings may have killed as many as 500,000 people.

http://worldwar2database.com/html/japanbom.htm

The only reason I include this, is because it is obvious that civilians were the target in these raids, for they were carpet/fire bombed, with a mix of bombs specifically designed to prevent firemen from putting out fires.

Quote:

May 31
The Interim Committee agrees that "the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses."

dlowan wrote:

So..if Hussein HAD had nukes, and had dropped an A bomb on the pentagon, the fact that he happened to wipe out a few million civilians would not have caused you to call it terror, because it was a military target, one assumes?

Correct. Nuking the pentagon is actually one of my favorite examples to demonstrate why nuking Japan wasn't terrorism, although I tend to use a hypothetical nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cold War in my examples.

I made such a point at the bottom of page 10 of this thread.

Of course, nuking the Pentagon would justify us annihilating whoever did it. But I wouldn't say that the target was anything other than the Pentagon.

While President Truman had hoped for a purely military target, some advisers believed that bombing an urban area might break the fighting will of the Japanese people.
………………
A. Since the atomic bomb was expected to produce its greatest amount of damage by primary blast effect, and next greatest by fires, the targets should contain a large percentage of closely-built frame buildings and other construction that would be most susceptible to damage by blast and fire.
B. The maximum blast effect of the bomb was calculated to extend over an area of approximately 1 mile in radius; therefore the selected targets should contain a densely built-up area of at least this size
………………
Among its primary concerns was showing off the bomb's power to the maximum effect and making the greatest impression possible on the Japanese with the goal of shocking Japan into surrender.
…………….
May 31
The Interim Committee agrees that "the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses."

June 1
Interim Committee makes formal decision decides not to warn the civilian populations of the targeted cities.

"For myself, I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the 'pigheadedness' of the leaders of a nation and, for your information, I am not going to do it until it is absolutely necessary...

The bombs would certainly seem to get included in this definition...however, those saying their dropping was not terrorism will say that the attack was lawful.

Given the lack of international law at the time, that may well be so. Not that internatiinal law has any teeth.

What does God care what we call him? It is our problem," Muskens told Dutch television.

So Muskens presumes to know what God cares about...and doesnt care about. In reality what Muskens cares about and doesnt care about.