The moral differences between the holocaust and bombing Japan

Be specific in describing what you think I am delusional about and then we can talk about it.

Just because someone has a PhD in history does this mean they should stop studying?

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." Of course, it's moot, because i am not going to waste an hour of my life on a video that RL recommends, and largely because it is RL who recommends it.

I was thinking about getting a different history lesson from reading this book, What do you think?
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

I will not claim that this book is inaccurate but if he were to write about an event that most people will not fact check "what reason would we have to believe him?

The Lies of Joseph Ellis
Published: August 21, 2001


By suspending Joseph J. Ellis without pay for a year, administrators at Mount Holyoke College have acted fairly and appropriately, though they must have done so with regret. Mr. Ellis, a history professor and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author this year of ''Founding Brothers,'' admitted to lying in the classroom about his past over the last decade after an article about those lies was published in The Boston Globe in June. When the Globe article was published, Joanne V. Creighton, president of Mount Holyoke, rashly criticized the newspaper's motives. She has apologized for that statement, which must have been uttered in a moment of disbelief.

The scale of this penalty -- which amounts, after all, to an unwanted, unpaid sabbatical with continued office and library privileges -- reflects the judgment that many people, including many scholars, have reached. There is something sadly self-defeating about Mr. Ellis's classroom claims, some of which were repeated in published interviews. He has said that he parachuted into Vietnam with the 101st Airborne, served on Gen. William Westmoreland's staff and protested the war at home simultaneously. In fact, his tour of duty was spent in a classroom at West Point, quietly teaching history.

Then why do you keep bringing up "formal education" if it means nothing?

At times? Don't sell yourself short, buckaroo.

In the spirit of my own remarks, i recommend two books by Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept and Miracle at Midway. Prange, in addition to being a highly respected academic historian, was staff historian to Douglas MacArthur in Japan from 1945 to 1951. At that time he interviewed many of the surviving Japanese officers, as well as enlisted men and civilians. His books are well and copiously annotated.

For those unfamiliar with the major events of the Second World War in the Pacific, i have compiled this list of Wikipedia entries, after having assured myself that they, too, are well annotated:

Battle of the Coral Sea--A tactical victory for the Japanese, the U. S. Navy succeeded in turning back a Japanese invasion force, making it an American strategic victory.

Battle of Midway--Both a tactical and strategic victory for the United States. Prange entitles his book Miracle at Midway, and the United States Navy got very, very lucky. O'George doesn't like it when i say that, but even the page on Midway at the United States Navy Historical Center clearly states that the Navy was very lucky in that battle. That battle broke the back of Japanese naval air power.

The campaign in the Solomon Islands--This bitterly fought and costly campaign (costly for both sides) defined the furthest extent of Japanese conquest. This campaign assured that Australia would not be invaded. The Battle of the Coral Sea had stopped the Japanese attempt to invade Australia before the Guadalcanal campaign began.

The naval battles in "the Slot"--The Solomon Islands run in a double row from southeast to northwest; the waters between the islands were dubbed "the Slot" by American sailors. Note that even though American losses were initially higher, the eventual over-all losses for the Imperial Navy were hight. When one adds to that that the United States was building ships much, much faster than they were being lost, this battle was the beginning of the end for the Imperial Navy.

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea--American and Australian forces had stopped the Japanese advance in New Guinea, and saved Port Moresby, then gone on the offensive to cross the mountains to the north coast and Buna and Gona. The entire campaign is worthy of study, however, this event, the Battle of the Bismark Sea, saw the United States Army Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force using new tactics, largely developed by the Australians, to use medium and heavy bombers to attack shipping. This was the most lopsided victory of the war. The Japanese had built up Rabaul on New Britain after the loss of Guadalcanal, and intended to use it to hold onto New Guinea. The ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, had broken the pattern of Imperial Navy codes even before the war, and American and Australian code breakers had put together the picture of a Japanese plan to land 7000 troops on New Guinea, with more to follow when (if, actually) that was successful. The USAAF and RAAF lost six planes and 13 men. The Japanese lost every one of their troop ships, five of their escort ships, 20 aircraft and about 3000 soldiers and sailors. This battle began the march toward the Philippines.



I will continue this in a subsequent post.

You really are a dimwit. It means nothing if one doesn't use what one learns formally, such as annotating one's work and providing references. You, with your youtube mentality, apparently couldn't absorb the distinction.

What the (German) Jews had done wrong was to think that the Nazis were not going to achieve their goals in Germany, and did not leave while they were able to leave. There was no way that Jews could be part of the Third Reich, or part of the new world order. They could not embrace the Nazi emphasis on the glorious Aryan past of Teutonic Heroes. So, the Jews were just in the way, so to speak. Not having any qualms to murder innocents, the Holocaust was really a predictable outcome.

If you are not aware, there are even some in the U.S. that still look upon Jews (American-Jews) as having too much "influence" for their small numbers, nation wide. There are people that think that they would have a much more equitable society, if Jews, with their emphasis on education and achievement, would just disappear. However, since the nation runs on capitalism, there are only some people that know, or are willing, to avail themselves of the capitalistic system. Some Jews can be included in that group. But, there are large swaths of society that would like Jews to be disenfranchised, since it is so much more appealing to many to only have "winners" in society that are Gentiles. It is just part of the mindset that is comfortable to make Jews, and a few other minorities, the "perennial outsiders" in society, so others can hopefully get more crumbs for themselves, so to speak.

But, if I was a Gentile New Yorker, that did not have any education beyond high school, I could see myself resenting the success that American-Jews have, and find all sorts of rationalizations to think of themselves as not equal to any Gentile worth his or her Christmas stocking. It is just human nature to many times resent those that appear to be better-off than oneself, in some way, big or small. Oddly, the other choice in human nature is to "admire" those that appear to have some traits that one does not have. However, Gentiles have had a two-thousand year learning curve to think of Jews as inferiors, due to Catholic theology, so few will allow themselves to "admire" a Jew. It is easier to think that they should just be disenfranchised, in my opinion.

You really are silly at times setanta, Do you actually think that it is possible to not use what someone has learned? Sure sometimes one might not apply it but it does eventually get applied sooner or later if it is relevant to a situation in life.

Thanks for the Wikipedia links they also helped me to hear a first hand experience of someone who was there.

This thread has provided the opportunity for some exceptionally good thinking and scholarship. I am consistently impressed, like Farmerman is here, with the historiographic energy and talent of Setanta (If he hasn't already done so, he could have easily acquired a Ph.D. in history). My problen, however, is that despite his overwhelming marshalling of "facts" (which, of course, are always subject to interpretation) my personal--and subjectively overwhelming--moral conclusion is that the two atrocities referred to in this thread (the Holocaust and Japanese massacres) remain equally--because they are absolutely-- "Evil."* And I acknowledge that one can always make a case (not valid in everyone's mind) that some evils are "necessary."
There is, in my judgement, no possible valid justification for the slaughter of Jews and other "minorities" by the monster nazis. But I can't accept the conclusion that the United States had no possible alternative but to bomb innocent civilians for the sins of facists. Could we not have stopped at least with the first bombing, or bombed the surrounding uninhabited areas of Nakasaki and Hiroshima to show what we were able to do. Was there sufficient effort to coerce the intractables into surrender, or were our pro-bombing advocates pleased to have had the existence of intractable fanatics as an excuse not to have had to concern themselves with the killing of innocents? (I hope for the sake of their "souls" that they did lose sleep because of such concerns)

*I'm confident that Setanta and others will conclude that their interpretive inferences from historical "facts" are more "valid" than mine. I make my case with the explicit acknowledgement of its essentially subjective nature. I do not really believe in absolutes like Good and Evil: I see them as purely cultural constructions (but that's alright by me since there are no objective-absolute standards by which to condemn them). Our discussion in this thread has to do ultimately with values (more like constructed paintingss of the beauty rather than the photographic picturing of the world).

This is sad but true, many people do see things this way. Our nature does seem to be this way to a large degree. I think it mainly has to do with seeing others as different than you.

I see some people as different than me culturally speaking but I think we all should be treated the same way you would want your mother to be treated.
That is if you do love your mother.

In my opinion your answer or reply is by far the most intellectual reply that I have received to my question.
I sure hope that all of us can learn something from your impressive scholarship.

You're the silly one, and you badly lack reading comprehension skills. I said that having a PhD means nothing is the only authority for one's remarks are "because i said so." Having a PhD only means that someone has done the work, and shown their work to a dissertation committee, who check the work, and who put the candidate through an oral examination. It does not mean that one's word becomes holy writ. Whether or not one has a PhD, one still has to provide one's evidence, give one's references, one has to show one's work. That didn't sink in with you, both because your reading comprehension sucks, and because you think of all of this as some game of one upmanship.

I've been insulting you from the very beginning of this thread. I didn't have to descend to that level, because i started out there. That's because the question of this thread, the very existence of this thread, is deeply offensive. You are an ignorant shithook, and you deserve zero respect.

No but it does mean that they have what you seem to think is the holy grail, "a formal education"



Either you do not follow me much or you are being foolish because I'm all about evidence. Which one are you?



Really" you are kidding me write? Let me guess you thought you had to tell me because you were not sure if it was obvious?



I hurt the poor baby's feelings?

The conventional bombing of Japan killed upwards of a million civilians, far more than the two atomic bomb attacks. The United States Army Air Force firebombed 66 Japanese cities, not including Tokyo, which was firebombed more than once. And yet you, and a whole pack of bleeding hearts, want to elevate the atomic attacks to some mystical level of evil incarnate, a demon from the heart of the atom. Were the people killed in the conventional bombing any less dead than those killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Did the survivors of the firebomb attacks suffer any less agony than the survivors of the atomic attacks? As i've already pointed out, those responsible were the fascist militarists who ran Japan, and who wouldn't f*cking surrender.

What truly appalls me, though, is that i hear nothing from you about the millions and millions of Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Maylays and all the people whom we would today call Indonesians who were the victims of Japanese militarism. Yet you want to raise your horror over the atomic attacks to level of religious condemnation. What about the Korean "comfort girls," the women who were torn from their homes and dragged along behind Japanese armies in sexual slavery to service the troops? I've heard nothing from you about them.

The Japanese committed atrocities from 1895 onward, when they went to war with China and invaded and annexed Formosa (Taiwan). They continued in 1904-05 with the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan seized the coasts of Manchuria. They continued in 1910 when Japan invaded an annexed Korea. They continued in 1931 when Japan invaded and annexed Manchuria. They continued and escalated in 1937 with the Second Sino-Japanese War. Read the link Izzy provided about the rape of Nanking, just one incident from that war. The atrocities were still going on as the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Their navy had been destroyed. Their air forces had been destroyed. Almost all of the territory they had seized had been take back at a horrible cost to Americans, Australians, Dutchmen, Brits, Indians--and the local populations. Their armies were either on the run or in hiding. Yet they would not f*cking surernder.

But apparently, you don't care about those millions of victims, including Japanese civilians. Apparently you don't consider Japan's career over fifty years of attacking, slaughtering and enslaving their neighbors sufficient justification to take any means to end their madness.

You haven't though this one through, and playing stupid philosophical games about the meaning of the word "fact" doesn't hide that glaring fault on your part.

(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 fgiving no reasonable thought to the overall situation.)

Snotty remarks about a "holy grail" doesn't alter the valid criticisms i've made of you. You're ignorant, and the very avatar of invincible ignorance. You think this is all some word game. You're scum.

Setanta is correct here I have some awesome footage of us fire bombing many communities, That's correct not military targets as one might think but they are the targets the military chose to bomb.

Setanta has asked something of you and I would think it would be cool if you or others would check into it.



I am not claiming that setanta is wrong in understanding of this historical event but I think it would be cool if we were able to discover with more certainty which is more accurate than the other.

Here is a very short video that gives references to it's claims.

This is all a game to you, isn't it? This is not real to you, it's just another youtube video. You truly are scum.