The moral differences between the holocaust and bombing Japan

@Finn dAbuzz,

Not at all Finn, you decided to bring up something that was completely irrelevant. Let's leave Palestine out of this from now on.

Quote:

The purpose, it seems to me, of attempting to draw military equivalency between Nazi genocide and dropping atom bombs on Japan duringWWII is two fold: taking America down a peg and reducing the Holocaust to grim necessity of war.

I think you're seeing purpose where there is none. This thread was started by Reasoning Logic, someone who gets all of his information from youtube and then tries to get everyone else to watch it. Remember David Icke, the self-proclaimed son of God who predicted Cuba would do an Atlantis in 1999 and tells us that the Queen is a shape-shifting lizard?

He's someone RL believes we should all take seriously. RL's concept of living up to his avatar's name is to submerge himself in bullshit like that on a daily basis. He's been told to read a book for once, any book, but no, everything has to be boiled down into some thirty second factoid on youtube, or he's not going there.

He's not trying to be cool, he hasn't got a ******* clue.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

i brought up with JLN the issue of what should have been done if the bombs were not used.

Setanta wrote:
(EDIT: By the way, i take it you would have been content to see millions of allied casualties in an invasion of Japan, and to think that the atrocities in China and Korea continued while we begged and pleaded with the militarists to be sensible and surrender. You haven't given any reasonable thought to your position. Can't you see how much worse it would have been for Japanese civilians to have endured an invasion by millions of American and Soviet troops? You're just prating about the atomic boogie man and giving no reasonable thought to the overall situation.)

All you and JLN are involved in is decrying the atomic boogeyman. Neither of you has provided a realistic solution of the problem of Japan refusing to surrender. It sure is easy to sit back and condemn at the distance of seventy years, when you aren't obliged to come up with a solution.

You are trying to force me to see the OP in the way you want me to see it. I'm being asked if there is a moral difference between the holocaust and the bombing of Japan... I put forward the view that at the end of the war the holocaust ended but deaths from radiation poisoning killed civilians who were part of post war Japan in a time of peace... that's it... there is no more to read into my position than that.

I am not going to speculate how it 'might' of gone if history did not happen... to me that seems pointless... but we should learn from history... especially this historical event.

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

Setanta thinks like me? I assure you that neither of us agrees with you or would in any way mistake this for a compliment. I agree with him in crying bogus about the attempt to compare the two events featured in this thread. Every now and again we agree. It happens. If he can't acknowledge it, I can.

If the point of the comparison is to simply highlight man's inhumanity to man, you should not have introduced morals, or chosen two different events. I can't read your mind but I don't believe you chose these two events without considerations of politics.

The two events aren't even comparable in terms of slaughter. Hiroshima and Nagasaki accounted for apprx 250 thousand deaths, including those which followed the bombings due to injury and radiation. Six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis. That is a staggering (or, at least, it should be ) number and especially so when it is realized they were murdered in an assembly line fashion, not through the violence of warfare.

Killing a quarter of a million people in two military attacks is horrendous, but in numbers alone it can't compare with The Final Solution.

It also can't compare with the exterminations ordered by Stalin and Mao.

On a moral level the comparison is bogus and on a purely quantitative basis it is as well.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

I think you may be right.

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@igm,

Of course you're not going to speculate. You ignore that people who were victims of the firebombings continued to die after the war war over, and you are taking a snotty, self-righteous moral position on the feeble basis that people died of radiation sickness after the war ended. You ignore that the war ended precisely because the bombs were used.

But if you're going to get on your moral high horse, while refusing to address what ought to have been done, what the moral course would have been, you're just spreading bullshit. If you can't pose a plausible solution to the problem of Japan's refusal to surrender, a solution which would not have involved as many or more deaths, than your "moral " position is bogus. It's bulls*t, and that's typical of you.

If you claim the use of the bombs was immoral, but you can't propose another solution to the intractability of the Japanese high command, which you can allege was more "moral," you're just involved in a meaningless, self-contratulatory, egotistical exercise.

2 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

The two events aren't even comparable in terms of slaughter. Hiroshima and Nagasaki accounted for apprx 250 thousand deaths, including those which followed the bombings due to injury and radiation. Six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis. That is a staggering (or, at least, it should be ) number and especially so when it is realized they were murdered in an assembly line fashion, not through the violence of warfare.

Let me guess, If the Nazi's enemies and warfare do not meat your definition of warfare then it is not a war? What do you call it peace?

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@Setanta,

Quote:

If you claim the use of the bombs was immoral, but you can't propose another solution to the intractability of the Japanese high command, which you can allege was more "moral," you're just involved in a meaningless, self-contratulatory, egotistical exercise.

Let me guess you think you have a masters degree in moral philosophy?

Hint "read a book on axiology.

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

DAVID wrote:

IF Truman had intentionally neglected to use our nuclear weapons
during the war, to be nice to the Japs, then he 'd have committed treason
by giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

reasoning logic wrote:

Lets reword this logic

IF Lynndie England had intentionally neglected to use our torture techniques
during the war, to be nice to the Iraqis, then she'd have committed treason
by giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

I think I am starting to understand this logic

There is a distinction in principle
between combat and interrogating prisoners, whose surrenders we have accepted.

David

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

Always the irrelevant dipshit. Igm is the one taking the self-righteous moral stance. Address your irrelevancies to him.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

There is a distinction in principle
between combat and interrogating prisoners, whose surrenders we have accepted.

Oh so we have rules and guide lines that you think we should follow? What do you think about our enemies rules and guidelines?

1 Reply

@Setanta,

What are you saying "you find no value in morality?

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

No, i'm not saying that. This is, however, typical of your idiocy. You will just ask one idiotic question after another, erect one straw man after the other, because you really are clueless and have nothing else going for you.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Quote:

No, i'm not saying that. This is, however, typical of your idiocy. You will just ask one idiotic question after another, erect one straw man after the other, because you really are clueless and having nothing else going for you.

It couldn't be because I rarely ever see you in a thread that was intended to be about moral philosophy other than this one?

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

Could it be that you are clueless? Yes, certainly i'd endorse that explanation.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You ignore that people who were victims of the firebombings continued to die after the war war over, and you are taking a snotty, self-righteous moral position on the feeble basis that people died of radiation sickness after the war ended.

My point is that those injured in firebombings were casualties of war. Those who were born after the war ended in Japan and died of radiation poisoning were casualties in peacetime.

Setanta wrote:

You ignore that the war ended precisely because the bombs were used.

I don't ignore it I just refuse to speculate but your speculation is just that speculation... history is history... what would the Japanese have done given a different scenario... I don't know... would it definitely have been worse... who knows?

Again, the war ended the holocaust but it didn't end the death of civilians in Japan born after the war ended... peacetime casualties.

The holocaust is morally indefensible. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan are indefensible if there was an alternative... the question is was there? You say no and give reasons for that... you may be correct and you may not be incorrect... I'm just pointing out that the result seems on the face of it to be inhumane... without me offering any alternative... and I never said I would... and I don't need to... I'll leave that to you.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Yes, certainly i'd endorse that explanation.

You'd endorse any ad hominem attack against me so what is your point silly

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

. . . You'd endorse any ad hominem attack against me so what is your point silly

But, RL, you forget you are such a juicy target.

Laughing

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@neologist,

Quote:

But, RL, you forget you are such a juicy target.

Are you suggesting that I'm ripe for the taking?

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

I wrote:
But, RL, you forget you are such a juicy target.
Are you suggesting that I'm ripe for the taking?

Thanks, RL,
Now I have to clean my desk.
And my nose hurts.

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@igm,

How many people do you allege died of radiation poisoning, having been born after the war ended? What evidence do you have for that? Are you really saying that people gave birth to babies after the war ended, and then moved into the radiation zone?

Are you saying that someone who died of injuries sustained in the fire bombings, but after the war had ended were not casualties of war?

You are sinking below your already low standards of rhetorical perromance.

Once again, if you are going to allege that it was immoral to have used the atomic bombs to end the war, but cannot propose a "moral" way to have ended the war, and particularly one which did not mean a greater number of deaths, you're just pissing into the intellectual wind.

You wrote:

The atomic bombs dropped on Japan are indefensible if there was an alternative . . .

It is particularly poignant to see this from you, since you are proposing no alternative. If you cannot propose an alternative, you've got no business getting on your moral high horse. You really suck at debate.

I haven't said that there was no alternative. I am saying that there was no alternative which would not have cost far, far more lives than were lost at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

There are only two things going on here with you. You are evoking the atomic boogeyman, as though dying from the bomb or the effects of the bomb were worse than any other way to die. In addition, you are playing the self righteous moralist, even though you cannot propose what would have been the moral way to have acted.

2 Replies

The moral differences between the holocaust and bombing Japan

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