we say terrorists kill innocent people...

This whole dialogue has consisted of very little besides semantical gymnastics and moral posturing.

This whole dialogue has consisted of very little besides semantical gymnastics and moral posturing. The arguments all share the property of assuming an objective scale of 'right vs wrong' is in play .
Those of us that realize such things as 'right and wrong' are born of subjective perspective chuckle quietly to ourselves.

Hmm, so if I understand you correctly, oralloy, you claim:
Since the US. dropped the bomb with the indirect purpose of shocking the Japanese government in surrendering, and the direct target of the large millitary districts of Hiroshima. In neither of those purposes are the deaths of civilians factored, and so we must conclude that the deaths of said civilians were not relevant.

Since they were not relevant, there is no need to talk about them, or discuss them, or question them, or mourn them. They are just the numbers on a sheet of paper that were a factor for Japan to sign their surrender, and only in that effect are they of any importance. Is this correct?

Doktor S wrote:

This whole dialogue has consisted of very little besides semantical gymnastics and moral posturing. The arguments all share the property of assuming an objective scale of 'right vs wrong' is in play .
Those of us that realize such things as 'right and wrong' are born of subjective perspective chuckle quietly to ourselves.

I am thankful for the fact that there are people obviously smarter then me out there who are willing to stand at the sideline and laugh at the schmucks trying to discuss a topic they feel strongly about. Keep up the good work!

najmelliw wrote:

Doktor S wrote:

This whole dialogue has consisted of very little besides semantical gymnastics and moral posturing. The arguments all share the property of assuming an objective scale of 'right vs wrong' is in play .
Those of us that realize such things as 'right and wrong' are born of subjective perspective chuckle quietly to ourselves.

I am thankful for the fact that there are people obviously smarter then me out there who are willing to stand at the sideline and laugh at the schmucks trying to discuss a topic they feel strongly about. Keep up the good work!

Anytime toots

People kill people.People have always killed people. People always have reasons for killing people. Justifications and rationalizations as to which reasons are just and which are not do not make people any less dead.

Brandon9000 wrote:

Merry Andrew wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

Merry Andrew wrote:

But I would suggest that the Islamic militants are equally able to formulate arguments of why the destruction the World Trade Center was not only justified but, in the final analysis, a humane act.

For example?

Hell, I'm not going to argue the pros of this. I don't believe it's true. That's for the Islamists to argue. Conversely, I wouldn't expect a Japanese survivor of the attack on Hiroshima to convincingly argue our American position. I'm saying that such an argument probably could be made. And knocked down. Just as our arguments can be knocked down.

When the Palestinians to detonate a bomb in an Israeli marketplace, I'm sure they can rationalize it, but only a madman would put it into the same category as an army's attack on enemy troops.

Oh, I agree with you, Brandon. The two actions are not in the same category. But the point is that both can be rationalized by the perpetrator as excusable and even laudable.

As to Orallay's carping on the fact that Nagasaki was a major arms-production complex, so what? The fact remains that it was an industrial city, full of civilian workers, some of whom couldn't have given damn less about the ambitions of Hirohito or Tojo or any other warlord. The Islamists could just as glibly claim that the people killed in the WTC disaster were "colateral damage", that the target was the building, not the people. Essentially, that's what you're saying about Nagasaki, that we targetted the arms factories, not the people who worked there. Why isn't it cool for AlQaeda to claim the same?

I disagree with the decision to drop the atomic bomb on non-combatants. The US did this twice, immediately upon the invention of the bomb,

Doktor S wrote:

najmelliw wrote:

Doktor S wrote:

This whole dialogue has consisted of very little besides semantical gymnastics and moral posturing. The arguments all share the property of assuming an objective scale of 'right vs wrong' is in play .
Those of us that realize such things as 'right and wrong' are born of subjective perspective chuckle quietly to ourselves.

I am thankful for the fact that there are people obviously smarter then me out there who are willing to stand at the sideline and laugh at the schmucks trying to discuss a topic they feel strongly about. Keep up the good work!

Anytime toots

People kill people.People have always killed people. People always have reasons for killing people. Justifications and rationalizations as to which reasons are just and which are not do not make people any less dead.

An interesting sentiment coming from one who claims that all morality is subjective.

Why are you so worked up over killing if there's no more than just someone's opinion that it's wrong?

real life wrote:

Doktor S wrote:

najmelliw wrote:

Doktor S wrote:

This whole dialogue has consisted of very little besides semantical gymnastics and moral posturing. The arguments all share the property of assuming an objective scale of 'right vs wrong' is in play .
Those of us that realize such things as 'right and wrong' are born of subjective perspective chuckle quietly to ourselves.

I am thankful for the fact that there are people obviously smarter then me out there who are willing to stand at the sideline and laugh at the schmucks trying to discuss a topic they feel strongly about. Keep up the good work!

Anytime toots

People kill people.People have always killed people. People always have reasons for killing people. Justifications and rationalizations as to which reasons are just and which are not do not make people any less dead.

An interesting sentiment coming from one who claims that all morality is subjective.

Why are you so worked up over killing if there's no more than just someone's opinion that it's wrong?

It seems you are reading your own moral impetus into my words. I am certainly not 'worked up', or even the least bit concerned about the natural state of affairs in regards to these matters. I was simply offering a 3rd side perspective to a matter seemingly divided into two opposing camps.

If you deny that you do believe something, let's remind everyone of your belief that you are god.

Since it is so obvious that both you and the one you quote DO believe something..............at least it's obvious to everyone but you.

Likewise your denial of absolutes is self contradictory inasmuch as you are willing to proclaim that any who think there are absolutes are WRONG.

You have chosen the opposing view , the wrong view, in the question of whether moral right and wrong exist or not.

Brandon9000 wrote:

I disagree with the decision to drop the atomic bomb on non-combatants. The US did this twice, immediately upon the invention of the bomb,

Hiroshima held tens of thousands of combatants.

The Nagasaki bomb was aimed at war industries instead of actual combatants. But arms-production complexes are important targets too.

oralloy wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

I disagree with the decision to drop the atomic bomb on non-combatants. The US did this twice, immediately upon the invention of the bomb,

Hiroshima held tens of thousands of combatants.

The Nagasaki bomb was aimed at war industries instead of actual combatants. But arms-production complexes are important targets too.

Yes, but we bombed a whole city, homes and all. The fact that it contained a few valid targets doesn't excuse it. If we wanted to knock out just those targets, we should have knocked out just those targets and had a dozen civilian deaths, rather than hundreds of thousands.

Nagasaki was not a city that could easily be bombed using radar guidance, so there was no chance of hitting it with any of the large napalm raids.

And more to the point, the primary goal was not to knock out those targets.

The primary goal was to show Japan the power of the bombs. That required using the bomb on a large target.

If the US government knew that the bombs could destroy everything within miles of its main target, and it knew that innocent people resided there…and the target was to level such area, knowing that it would destroy everything in the path of the explosions, the mission was to destroy everything within the rage of the bombs…which included civilians.