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The moral differences between the holocaust and bombing Japan

 
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 06:59 pm
@JTT,
A REPEAT TO FIX THE POST

========================
@Setanta,

Setanta:
Quote:
Referring to someone's PhD means nothing. That would be an appeal to personal authority, and not an appeal to evidence. Someone who has no PhD but provides sources which can be checked is far more reliable than someone with a PhD whose authority rests on "because i say so."


But the folks here have pumped you up to a +12 for not even a "because i say so." All you have offered is "because the propaganda says so". And everyone is fighting over who can swallow it the fastest and the deepest.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 07:15 pm
@neologist,
Quote:
Because of what I believed to be the hidden agenda in RL's question.


I can't even begin to imagine, Neo, what "hidden agenda" RL might have had that could in any manner compare to the continued advancement of some of the grandest, most vicious lies of all time.

Why wouldn't you have just come right out and asked him what he was trying to elicit?

For a guy that doesn't make political statements, this sure was a doozy of a political statement. And again, you offered what seemed to be unqualified support for a bunch of vicious, 60 years and running lies. Lies that have helped the US masquerade its true position around the globe.
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 07:17 pm
Tokyo after the firebomb rai, March 9/10 45

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUNIdGmYDzg
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 07:42 pm
Quote:

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT,

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/American_Empire/Truman_Hiroshima_LFE.html

President Harry Truman and Hiroshima

excerpted from the book

Lying for Empire

How to Commit War Crimes With A Straight Face

by David Model

Common Courage Press, 2005, paper


...

p78
There are two ways to assess whether President Truman committed crimes against humanity.

The first is the Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Nuremberg trials which applies to this case. President Truman violated the following clauses in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal:

Article 6

b. War Crimes: namely violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include... murder, ill-treatment.., of civilian population... wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

c. Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination .... of civilian population...

The other way to evaluate President Truman's culpability is to apply international laws which were created after the end of WW II. He violated the following clauses in the Geneva Conventions:

1. Convention IV, Part 1, Article 3, clause 1,-protection of civilians;

2. Convention IV, Chapter III, article 52-protection of nonmilitary objects:

3. Protocol I, Chapter II, Article 51, clause 4-indiscriminate attacks.

President Truman lied to the American people about his motives for dropping the two atomic bombs. He also misled the public about the nature of the first target. In a radio speech on August 9, 1945, he gave assurances that "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base." (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States) The killing of over 100,000 civilians, the devastation of two cities, the deaths and diseases resulting from radiation poisoning, and the ominous precedent of using nuclear weapons are categorically crimes against humanity.
gungasnake
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:11 pm
@reasoning logic,
Quote:
Quote:
Th claim that 90,000 people died in the big firebomb raid over Tokyo is BS. They totally torched 17 square miles of the center of the place and the population density of the place was around 100,000 per square mile. Nobody would have known which way to run, there'd have been a 50% chance you'd be running INTO it no matter what you did. More likely is that we killed a million people in that one raid.



This is something that I was unaware of, can anyone confirm this to be true? Could the death toll have been been many times higher than reported?


The official figures are around 90,000, but this one follows from simple logic.

If the area we torched had been an eighth of a mile by 140 miles or had consisted of two-acre patches which added up to 17 square miles, then you might believe that people could have gotten out.

But the hell of it is that the 17 square miles we torched consisted of the main center of the city and population density stats say there were 1.7 million people there. Only people living on the very edge of the target area could have even made a reasonable guess as to which way to run. Many tried to save themselves by jumping into the river and were boiled alive like lobsters.

There were no official tallies because all public records were incinerated in the raid.
0 Replies
 
reasoning logic
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:11 pm
@JTT,
Quote:
I apologize for the length of these articles but for those who are truly interested in the truth, you can find the time to go through them. For the others, well, short or long articles, the truth will make no difference to you folks.


You were not kidding about the length of those articles Smile

That must have been the most reading I have done in quite some time.

I really do appreciate you sharing it with me. Without even fact checking it, it seems to make sense because it seemed to correlate with the times it was relating to. I would recommend it to anyone who is seeking truth and to those who would like to prove it wrong.

I will be honest and say that I have enjoyed many of the post that sentanta has shared even though he has behavioral issues he still seem to have a gift for appreciating history. But if he does truly appreciates it he will also appreciate what you have shared if he is sincere.
I hope that others can appreciate your research as much as I have and I will go back and read it again to retain it better.

This truly does show how sick we are.
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:40 pm
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
Setanta wrote:
I have repeatedly pointed out that the United States used the atomic bomb because the Japanese would not surrender, and they needed to end that war, they wanted to end the madness.

That's not a lawful excuse to resort to war crimes. It is also a lie, but lies comes easy to a people who have lived horrible lies for their entire existence.

No, his statement is entirely factual.

As for legality, we did what needed to be done.
oralloy
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:42 pm
@reasoning logic,
reasoning logic wrote:
What do you all think about some of our new weapons "depleted uranium"?

DU makes amazing "tank verses tank" shells.

Its use in the A-10's "anti-tank gatling gun" is a bit more iffy. Modern tanks seem able to resist a brief shower of 30MM shells.

Aside from kinetic anti-tank weapons, it doesn't see much use.
0 Replies
 
reasoning logic
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:43 pm
@oralloy,
Quote:
As for legality, we did what needed to be done.


You think it was for legality?
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:46 pm
@oralloy,
You are simply full of ****, Oralboy. If that's the best you can do, toddle off back to your third grade class.

I cannot comprehend a mind so numbed by a lifetime of lies. I cannot comprehend why individuals would allow themselves to have their minds so trashed by so many vicious lies.

As Professor Zinn said, why would a people that constantly trumpet their Declaration of Independence want to steal the same from so many others?

Quote:
As for legality, we did what needed to be done.


That simply proves that what the US did was war crimes. You haven't read any of that source material.
0 Replies
 
oralloy
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:49 pm
@reasoning logic,
reasoning logic wrote:
Could it be possible that I am the only one who thinks it is silly to suggest that true knowledge can only come from a book?

Me being trapped in Dialup Hell, I'm not about to check out any of these video links.

But it is possible for a video to be either truthful or dishonest, depending on the integrity of the person producing the video.

The fact remains: the A-bombs were dropped on military targets at the height of a brutal war.
0 Replies
 
oralloy
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:49 pm
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
What of the lies that you are perpetuating?

I have read all of his posts in this thread, and he has not perpetrated any lies.
gungasnake
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 08:56 pm
Anybody who's never seen one of these films of how a major B29 raid was assembled, needs to watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66K1im3tgNw
JTT
 
  1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 09:02 pm
@oralloy,
Quote:
I have read all of his posts in this thread, and he has not perpetrated any lies.


Excuse me. He repeated all of the US propaganda.

Quote:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/Machiavelli_ForPol.html

Machiavellian Realism
and U.S. Foreign Policy:
Means and Ends

by Howard Zinn, 1991

...

Robert Jungk, a German researcher who interviewed many of the scientists involved in the making of the bomb, tried to understand their lack of resistance to dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. "They felt them selves caught in a vast machinery and they certainly were inadequately informed as to the true political and strategic situation." But he does not excuse their inaction. "If at any time they had had the moral strength to protest on purely humane grounds against the dropping of the bomb, their attitude would no doubt have deeply impressed the president, the Cabinet and the generals."

Using the atomic bombs on populated cities was justified in moral terms by American political leaders. Henry Stimson, whose Interim Committee had the job of deciding whether or not to use the atomic bomb, said later it was done "to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies." This was based on the assumption that without atomic bombs, an invasion of Japan would be necessary, which would cost many American lives.

It was a morality limited by nationalism, perhaps even racism. The saving of American lives was considered far more important than the saving of Japanese lives. Numbers were wildly thrown into the air (for example, Secretary of State James Byrnes talked of "a million casualties" resulting from an invasion), but there was no attempt to seriously estimate American casualties and weigh that against the consequences for Japanese men and women, old people and babies. (The closest to such an attempt was a military estimate that an invasion of the southernmost island of Japan would cause 30,000 American dead and wounded.)

The evidence today is overwhelming that an invasion of Japan was not necessary to bring the war to an end. Japan was defeated, in disarray, and ready to surrender. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which interviewed 700 Japanese military and political officials after the war, came to this conclusion:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

After the war American scholar Robert Butow went through the papers of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the records of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East (which tried Japanese leaders as war criminals), and the interrogation files of the U.S. Army. He also interviewed many of the Japanese principals and came to this conclusion: "Had the Allies given the Prince (Prince Konoye, special emissary to Moscow, who was working on Russian intercession for peace) a week of grace in which to obtain his Government's support for the acceptance of the proposals, the war might have ended toward the latter part of July or the very beginning of the month of August, without the atomic bomb and without Soviet participation in the conflict."

On July 13, 1945, three days before the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, the United States intercepted Japanese Foreign Minister Togo's secret cable to Ambassador Sato in Moscow, asking that he get the Soviets to intercede and indicating that Japan was ready to end the war, so long as it was not unconditional surrender.

On August 2, the Japanese foreign office sent a message to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, "There are only a few days left in which to make arrangements to end the war.... As for the definite terms... it is our intention to make the Potsdam Three-Power Declaration [which called for unconditional surrender] the basis of the study regarding these terms."

Barton Bernstein, a Stanford historian who has studied the official documents closely, wrote:

This message, like earlier ones, was probably intercepted by American intelligence and decoded. It had no effect on American policy. There is not evidence that the message was sent to Truman and Byrnes [secretary of state], nor any evidence that they followed the intercepted messages during the Potsdam conference. They were unwilling to take risks in order to save Japanese lives.

In his detailed and eloquent history of the making of the bomb, Richard Rhodes says, "The bombs were authorized not because the Japanese refused to surrender but because they refused to surrender unconditionally. "

The one condition necessary for Japan to end the war was an agreement to maintain the sanctity of the Japanese emperor, who was a holy figure to the Japanese people. Former ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, based on his knowledge of Japanese culture, had been trying to persuade the U.S. government of the importance of allowing the emperor to remain in place.

Herbert Feis, who had unique access to State Department files and the records on the Manhattan Project, noted that in the end the United States did give the assurances the Japanese wanted on the emperor. He writes, "The curious mind lingers over the reasons why the American government waited so long before offering the Japanese those various assurances which it did extend later." Why was the United States in a rush to drop the bomb, if the reason of saving lives turns out to be empty, if the probability was that the Japanese would have surrendered even without an invasion? Historian Gar Alperovitz, after going through the papers of the American officials closest to Truman and most influential in the final decision, and especially the diaries of Henry Stimson, concludes that the atomic bombs were dropped to impress the Soviet Union, as a first act in establishing American power in the postwar world. He points out that the Soviet Union had promised to enter the war against Japan on August 8. The bomb was dropped on August 6.

The scientist Leo Szilard had met with Truman's main policy adviser in May 1945 and reported later: "Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war.... Mr. Byrnes' view was that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable."

The end of dropping the bomb seems, from the evidence, to have been not winning the war, which was already assured, not saving lives, for it was highly probably no American invasion would be necessary, but the aggrandizement of American national power at the moment and in the postwar period. For this end, the means were among the most awful yet devised by human beings-burning people alive, maiming them horribly and leaving them with radiation sickness, which would kill them slowly and with great pain.

I remember my junior-high-school social studies teacher telling the class that the difference between a democracy like the United States and the "totalitarian states" was the "they believe that the end justifies any means, and we do not." But this was before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To make a proper moral judgment, we would have to put into the balancing the testimony of the victims. Here are the words of three survivors, which would have to be multiplied by tens of thousands to give a fuller picture.

A thirty-five-year-old man: "A woman with her jaw missing and her tongue hanging out of her mouth was wandering around the area of Shinsho-machi in the heavy, black rain. She was heading toward the north crying for help."

A seventeen-year-old girl: "I walked past Hiroshima Station...and saw people with their bowels and brains coming out.... I saw an old lady carrying a suckling infant in her arms...I saw many children...with dead mothers...I just cannot put into words the horror I felt."

A fifth-grade girl: "Everybody in the shelter was crying out loud. Those voices...they aren't cries, they are moans that penetrate to the mar row of your bones and make your hair stand on end... I do not know how many times I called begging that they would cut off my burned arms and legs." In the summer of 1966, my wife and I were invited to an international gathering in Hiroshima to commemorate the dropping of the bomb and to dedicate ourselves to a world free of warfare. On the morn ing of August G, tens of thousands of people gathered in a park in Hiroshima and stood in total, almost unbearable, silence, awaiting the exact moment-8:1G A.M.-when on August 6, 1945, the bomb had been dropped. When the moment came, the silence was broken by a sudden roaring sound in the air, eerie and frightening until we realized it was the sound of the beating of wings of thousands of doves, which had been released at that moment to declare the aim of a peaceful world.

A few days later, some of us were invited to a house in Hiroshima that had been established as a center for victims of the bomb to spend time with one another and discuss common problems. We were asked to speak to the group. When my turn came, I stood up and felt I must get something off my conscience. I wanted to say that I had been an air force bombardier in Europe, that I had dropped bombs that killed and maimed people, and that until this moment I had not seen the human results of such bombs, and that I was ashamed of what I had done and wanted to help make sure things like that never happened again.

I never got the words out, because as I started to speak I looked out at the Japanese men and women sitting on the floor in front of me, without arms, or without legs, but all quietly waiting for me to speak. I choked on my words, could not say anything for a moment, fighting for control, finally managed to thank them for inviting me and sat down.

For the idea that any means-mass murder, the misuse of science, the corruption of professionalism-are acceptable to achieve the end of national power, the ultimate example of our time is Hiroshima. For us, as citizens, the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suggests that we reject Machiavelli, that we do not accept subservience, whether to princes or presidents, and that we examine for ourselves the ends of public policy to determine whose interests they really serve. We must examine the means used to achieve those ends to decide if they are compatible with equal justice for all human beings on earth.

reasoning logic
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 09:13 pm
@gungasnake,
Quote:
Anybody who's never seen one of these films of how a major B29 raid was assembled, needs to watch this:


That was pretty cool wasn't it?

What do you think about the old saying. He who lives by the sword will die by the sword? Do you think that it is true?

Do you think that the sword is such an awesome weapon that your enemy will not obtain one?
How about a bow and arrow? How about a gun? How about a tank? How about an airplane? How about an atom bomb? Does logic tell you that this pattern will continue?

Do you actually believe that we can prevent our enemies from obtaining the same weapons that we posses and using them on us? If not do you think it may be time for us to work together for world peace? Idea Or should we wait until a few nukes are detonated here in the US?
oralloy
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 09:21 pm
@JTT,
JTT wrote:
oralloy wrote:
Both the firebombing and the A-bombs were aimed at military targets.
With Nagasaki and the firebombing, the purpose was to destroy Japan's war industry.
Hiroshima was a strike directly at Japanese soldiers.

More Oralboy lies.

As always, you'd be a lot more pleasant without the name-calling.

And nope. As always, everything I said is true.

Hiroshima was Japan's largest military town, and was Japan's primary military port for deploying soldiers overseas. Its military districts were packed with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers (giving it the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any Japanese city). Also, Hiroshima Castle held the military headquarters in charge of repelling any invasion in the southern half of Japan (which at the moment of the bombing was still where we were planning to come ashore when we invaded).


The primary target of the second A-bomb was Kokura Arsenal, a massive (4100' x 2000') arms-production complex that was supplying the Japanese military with all sorts of weapons. The secondary target was Niigata (another big military port, sort of a lesser version of Hiroshima). The tertiary target was the Mitsubishi Shipyards, a massive warship construction facility near Nagasaki.

Due to technical and weather difficulties, the bomb ended up being dropped on Urakami, an industrial zone north of Nagasaki. There it destroyed both the Mitsubishi Steel Works and the Mitsubishi Torpedo Works.

Before Japan attacked us, Pearl Harbor had been regarded as immune to air-dropped torpedoes because the water was so shallow that the torpedoes would hit the ocean floor and embed themselves in the mud. This was the only harbor in the world (outside Japan) that had such a natural defense against air-dropped torpedoes. In order to attack us, Japan had to find a way to modify their torpedoes so that they would defeat these unique defenses. The aforementioned Mitsubishi Torpedo Works was the place that did those modifications.

(The damage to the torpedo factory was quite satisfactory. Mr. Green)



JTT wrote:
These were racist strikes made by the US to make a political statement to the Russians.

Nonsense. We attacked Japan because we were at war with them and we wanted them to surrender.

The racism accusation is preposterous. They attacked us. We were merely defending ourselves.


JTT wrote:
I read that ground zero was centered on, if I remember correctly, the Shiina Hospital.

The aimpoint was a bridge over a river. That doesn't mean the point of the bomb was to attack a bridge or a river.

The Hiroshima bomb killed 20,000 Japanese soldiers, a satisfactory number. It also leveled Hiroshima Castle, destroying the aforementioned military headquarters.
oralloy
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 09:43 pm
@neologist,
neologist wrote:
Perhaps we should just check with the scorekeeper.
The total population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the bombing was 450,000 +/-
Approximately 200,000 were killed directly, but lets assume somehow the total death toll to be more than the total population, or 500,000, truly a devastating attack.

By contrast, the holocaust had approximately 6,000,000 victims. So, based on only the two events cited in the OP, the score:

Evil Nazi Holocaust 6,000,000
Evil USAAF A-Bomb 500,000

At worst, a 12 to 1 margin

To God, the death of even a single human is an abomination. He, also, is keeping score.

200,000 is the total death toll for both A-bombs combined, including indirect effects.

And the Holocaust intentionally murdered nearly 12 million people.

That gives a 60 to 1 margin.


And the A-bomb deaths were collateral damage from wartime strikes against military targets. That is quite different from intentionally massacring civilians for the sake of massacring civilians.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 09:46 pm
@oralloy,
More Oralboy lies. More Oralboy foot stomping. More Oralboy regurgitation of the propaganda he's been fed. More Oralboy ignoring the source material and repeating the propaganda he's swallowed.
0 Replies
 
oralloy
 
  -1  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 09:54 pm
@reasoning logic,
reasoning logic wrote:
Finn dAbuzz wrote:
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 meet your definition of warfare then it is not a war? What do you call it peace?

The word that humanity uses to describe such things is: "Genocide".
0 Replies
 
gungasnake
 
  0  
Reply Fri 9 Aug, 2013 10:00 pm
@oralloy,
Quote:
Hiroshima was Japan's largest military town, and was Japan's primary military port for deploying soldiers overseas.


In 1940, true. By mid 45, Japan had no further capability to deploy troops or anything else overseas, its navy and merchant marine were in ruins.
0 Replies
 
 

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