The moral differences between the holocaust and bombing Japan

@miguelito21,

miguelito21 wrote:

The dispute is over the WHY : to save American and Japanese lives - as the official version purports? or other non-military considerations, namely diplomatic ones?

Or both, to varying degrees.

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@Ticomaya,

Quote:

Cyclops and I had a discussion years ago in a thread about the relative morality on killing. Cyclops held the view -- as perhaps all left-thinking pacifists do -- that every killing was morally equivalent. I posited that there was a distinction to be made between a robber who shoots an innocent victim, and a police officer who shoots a robber to prevent him from killing an innocent victim. Cyclops equated the two killings; I do not.

The analogy isn't perfect. The Japanese people did not start WW-II for one thing. I mean, sure, if you had all the Japanese dickheads who did start the Pacific war on one island and wanted to nuke the one island, be my guest...

But as things actually developed, there was a problem with proportions and with the idea of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind (which our founders spoke of) which should have kicked in after two or three of the big fire-bomb raids, and as I've noted earlier, there is good reason to believe that we killed a million or more people in the one fire raid over Tokyo on March 9/10. Even given the rape of Nan-Ching and Pearl Harbor, there was still a problem of proportions there.

If somebody had thought about it a bit harder, it should have been possible to get the same terms we got after the third or fourth of those fire-bomb raids.

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@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

Quote:
I still do not see all humans of equal value.

I wonder if Hitler may have shared this same logic. Do you think it was a logic worth holding if he did share this same logic as you?

You are not the professor of this thread. Ask someone else questions.

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@reasoning logic,

reasoning logic wrote:

Quote:
Bombing the Japanese had "extenuating circumstances," the Holocaust did not, unless one believes that Hitler was cleaning up Europe for the good Aryans.

Let me guess, You think that America believed that they had "extenuating circumstances," but you do not think that Hitler believed he had an "extenuating circumstances," on his hands and was trying to clean up Europe?

You are misquoting me. And, by doing so, you are attempting to pursue a line of reasoning that has nothing to do with what I said.

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A different view point

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@Foofie,

Quote:

You are misquoting me. And, by doing so, you are attempting to pursue a line of reasoning that has nothing to do with what I said.

I copied and pasted what you said then I asked a question.

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@reasoning logic,

You sneered about axiology earlier in the thread, as though knowing a word is equivalent to understanding the principles it represents. But you cannot set a moral value unless you have a basis for a value judgment of two different solutions ot the same moral question. If you cannot offer a more moral solution to the problem of the intransigence of the Japanese government in 1945, then you cannot reasonably assign a moral value. Your phony-baloney moral question is insoluble because you can't or won't assign values to actions (or inactions). This is typical of what you spout off around here.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

The analogy isn't perfect.

No, of course not. Nor was it intended to be. I was trying to make a general point about relative morality.

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@reasoning logic,

I'll say it again, there is a problem with the official numbers, i.e. the 90,000 figure for the March 9/10 fire-bomb raid over Tokyo.

We burned down some 15 - 17 square miles of the center of the city and the population density was said to be around 100,000/square-mile. That's 1.7 million people. Again it would be one thing if that 16 sq-mi were in non-contiguous 2-acre plots or if it amounted to an area of 1/8 mile by 140 miles or something like that, most people would have been able to get out. As it was, only people living right on the edge of the target area would have even been able to guess which way to run. Everybody else would have had a 50/50 chance of running INTO it even if they tried to run. The only safe assumption is that we killed a million or more people.

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Can you just feel all the love and humanity here?

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So, in fact, you cannot make any authoritative statements about public opinion, other than admitting that a very small segment of commentators found the bombing unjustifiable. One swallow does not a summer make. For every action of every government there will always be critics. Your argument is not convincing.

As for your "Truman's own writings," that was exactly my point. Messer just says this, he doesn't allude any official correspondence, any memoranda, any private correspondence, nor any personal journal of Truman. He doesn't say "in his letter of August 15, 1945 to Secretary Stimson." Because i have a degree in history and i say so is not a basis for alleging historical fact.

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

The analogy isn't perfect. The Japanese people did not start WW-II for one thing.

The Japanese government did, and bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was legitimate military targeting of the resources of that government, which would not surrender.

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@Setanta,

I'm not faulting Truman. All I'm saying is that I believe somebody who put his mind to it could have talked them into surrendering after about three or four of those fire-bomb raids, with terms no worse than we eventually got.

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@gungasnake,

They endured sixty-six consecutive firebomb raids. I can't agree with your assessment.

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The problem with this thread is that while some posters will claim that bombing Japan was immoral, and that the Holocaust was immoral (also), the two are morally equivalent. However, there really are people on Earth today that believe that the Holocaust was not immoral, since it was correcting a situation that the Nazis referred to euphemistically as "The Jewish Problem." So, rather than argue that bombing Japan and the Holocaust were not moral equivalents, it might help to point out that there are people today that would argue that the Holocaust was moral, and bombing the Japanese moral; therefore, they were moral equivalents - both moral.

In the spirit of intellectual honesty, this thread should have some credence given to the fact that not everyone believes the Nazis were bad people. They were correcting supposedly a situation that festered for too long in Europe, or at least since the Enlightenment. Admitting this alternate opinion does exist would also make those pro-Palestinean threads more understandable, for those that think Israel is so obstinate in its position. That obstinacy, in my opinion, comes from the thinking that there are people today that believe that the Holocaust was quite moral.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

The analogy isn't perfect. The Japanese people did not start WW-II for one thing.

The Japanese government did, and bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was legitimate military targeting of the resources of that government, which would not surrender.

I did not know the Japanese government started WWII

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@Setanta,

Quote:

They endured sixty-six consecutive firebomb raids. I can't agree with your assessment.

Who ? The Ghost of the civilians that died?

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@reasoning logic,

There's a hell of a lot you don't know, and although ignorance is an easily curable condition, you show little inclination to do something about it. Japan invaded China on July 7, 1937. Not only is what happened in Europe not relevant to the situation in the Pacific, that was more than two years before Germany invaded Poland.

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@Foofie,

Quote:

However, there really are people on Earth today that believe that the Holocaust was not immoral, since it was correcting a situation that the Nazis referred to euphemistically as "The Jewish Problem."

This sounds similar to how some of the people in my country talk about firebombing and using a bombs on the civilians of Japan.

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@reasoning logic,

Not only are you an idiot, you seem to have this compulsion to demonstrate your idiocy.

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The moral differences between the holocaust and bombing Japan

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