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Typo posted:Dude, it's not my fault if you'd rather aggressive-post and don't want to look at a map and actually think about the length of time it would take the Soviets to gear up logistics and kick the japanese out of the rest of China even if they wanted to, nor the amount of people that would have died in the process of them doing so, nor the amount of Chinese civilians which the japanese would have killed if they held eastern China for another 3-4 month. The Japanese were already losing in mainland China as well. They were cut off from the home islands by the blockade, supply routes into China had been cleared, and they had been falling back from Chinese advances all summer. The atomic bombings weren't necessary to win the war in China, the naval victories, the advancing Chinese armies, and the Soviet entry had assured that and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. There are much better arguments for the atomic bombings than this. Given the rapidity with which the IJA collapsed in Manchuria, your theory that they'd dig in and fight to the death in Guangzhou or Shanghai or somewhere and take so many civilians with them that it outweighs hundred thousand or so innocents that were massacred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not very strong.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:35
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Typo posted:And that's cool, what constitutes morally acceptable usage of force is indeed an ambiguous topic, even the most famous philosophers in history have struggled with it. Yeah, and I think that is why the atom bomb affects me so deeply. I honestly see using the atom bomb as literally changing the paradigm of modern warfare. Its not a question of casualties, damage, etc. Its literally about what the use of the bomb symbolically represented for humanity as a species. I guess its easier for me to stomach firebombings, even though they were far more devastating in the sum total, and such because they at least existed in an understandable paradigm. Dropping a nuke feels like opening Pandora's box and honestly I debate whether any power could be so malevolent as to make that action justifiable. Of course, that also means that I am essentially placing symbolism over actual human lives, which in itself is probably a hosed-up moral quandary.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:36
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The alternative to dropping the bombs was to starve them into submission, in which case we'd be sitting here arguing about the morality of the US starving a defeated country into submission.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:36
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VitalSigns posted:The Japanese were already losing in mainland China as well. They were cut off from the home islands by the blockade, supply routes into China had been cleared, and they had been falling back from Chinese advances all summer. The atomic bombings weren't necessary to win the war in China, the naval victories, the advancing Chinese armies, and the Soviet entry had assured that and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. There are much better arguments for the atomic bombings than this. Given the rapidity with which the IJA collapsed in Manchuria, your theory that they'd dig in and fight to the death and take so many civilians with them that it outweighs hundred thousand or so innocents that were massacred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just not credible. The Japanese also have shown a tendency to fight fanatically even in hopeless situations, and particular brutality in dealing with Chinese cviilians. I mean, they'll lose, but it's gonna take months for the Soviets to gear up the logistics for another major operation, and months more to get the Japanese in China to fold. Lots of Chinese civilians, Japanese troops and Soviet/Chinese troops are gonna die in the process. You basically have to pick from a set of bad choices, the atomic bombs were the least bad set of choices. quote:I'm not being aggressive to you. You're advancing a weak argument and I am calling it out for what it is. And you are 75% of the way to making the "Soviet invasion of Manchuria cause Japanese surrender" argument anyway so you might as well as just make it.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:38
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Fojar38 posted:The alternative to dropping the bombs was to starve them into submission, in which case we'd be sitting here arguing about the morality of the US starving a defeated country into submission. To be fair, its probably moral healthy for any world power to wrestle with the morality of their actions in war regardless.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:38
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Mel Mudkiper posted:To be fair, its probably moral healthy for any world power to wrestle with the morality of their actions in war regardless. Sure, but WWII was probably as clear cut morally as a war is ever going to get.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:40
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Fojar38 posted:The alternative to dropping the bombs was to starve them into submission, in which case we'd be sitting here arguing about the morality of the US starving a defeated country into submission. Blockades aren't a war crime and have plenty of precedent, so no we probably wouldn't.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:41
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah, and I think that is why the atom bomb affects me so deeply. I honestly see using the atom bomb as literally changing the paradigm of modern warfare. Its not a question of casualties, damage, etc. Its literally about what the use of the bomb symbolically represented for humanity as a species. I guess its easier for me to stomach firebombings, even though they were far more devastating in the sum total, and such because they at least existed in an understandable paradigm. Dropping a nuke feels like opening Pandora's box and honestly I debate whether any power could be so malevolent as to make that action justifiable. If it makes you feel better I honestly do think the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave weight to their use and is part of the reason why despite having thousands of nuclear warheads during the cold war nobody ever fired one in anger. I think it would have being much worse had the first Atomic bomb being used in a cold war conflict instead because their usage could have became the international norm.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:41
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VitalSigns posted:Blockades aren't a war crime and have plenty of precedent, so no we probably wouldn't. And would have killed far more people, and the US was pretty much already doing this in 1945
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Aug 7, 2015 03:42
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Fojar38 posted:Sure, but WWII was probably as clear cut morally as a war is ever going to get. I always found this idea a little dangerous though. We absolutely were the "better" side, I am just not sure if its fair to call us the "good" side. The world the Allies fought to create is morally superior to the world the Axis would have created, but I do not think that means we can immediately excuse ourselves as being righteous.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:43
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I always found this idea a little dangerous though. We absolutely were the "better" side, I am just not sure if its fair to call us the "good" side. The world the Allies fought to create is morally superior to the world the Axis would have created, but I do not think that means we can immediately excuse ourselves as being righteous. Lesser evil vs greater evil. I have no illusions about Stalin or the British Empire, or the 1940s US. But Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan were uniquely evil in modern history and is still considered so today. Typo fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 03:44
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VitalSigns posted:Blockades aren't a war crime and have plenty of precedent, so no we probably wouldn't. So the difference between a war crime and a non-war crime isn't the amount of suffering it causes but if it's a new tactic or not?
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Aug 7, 2015 03:44
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The US did not enter the war out of a strong moralistic conviction, and that moralizing revisitation of the war is mostly a product of the 60s and beyond New Left. We entered because Hitler was at war with our ally GB and France and we considered him a demagougic tinpot dictator like any other. We entered Japan beause they attacked us and also racism. Not because Hitler was one of the worst people to ever live or because the Japs were vivisecting people and giving out prizes for who could kill the most Chinese civilians. If anything I think the US actually cared more about Chinese civilians than about the Holocaust, the 1930s US had something of a china-boo thing going on, especially because the Chinese/Koreans were more receptive to American missionaries than the Japanese
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 03:46
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icantfindaname posted:The US did not enter the war out of a strong moralistic conviction, and that moralizing revisitation of the war is mostly a product of the 60s and beyond New Left. We entered because Hitler was at war with our ally GB and France and we considered him a demagougic tinpot dictator like any other. We entered Japan beause they attacked us and also racism. Not because Hitler was one of the worst people to ever live or because the Japs were vivisecting people and giving out prizes for who could kill the most Chinese civilians Hitler declared war on the US actually, even though he didn't have to
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Aug 7, 2015 03:47
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Typo posted:The Japanese also have shown a tendency to fight fanatically even in hopeless situations, and particular brutality in dealing with Chinese cviilians. The opposite just happened in Manchuria. The Japanese were demoralized by this point, it's not the same as Okinawa. Also there was a bunch of weird propaganda about how the Americans were devils that would torture and rape them all to death that was contributing to the fanatical resistance in the island hopping campaign, which didn't really apply in China against soldiers that they knew were ordinary humans and not bloodlusting demonic killers. Typo posted:I mean, they'll lose, but it's gonna take months for the Soviets to gear up the logistics for another major operation, and months more to get the Japanese in China to fold. Lots of Chinese civilians, Japanese troops and Soviet/Chinese troops are gonna die in the process. "Lots", How convincing. We also killed "lots" of civilians in the bombings. This is pretty much an impossible counterfactual to argue, there's no way to know exactly how long the defeat would have taken, exactly how many soldiers and civilians would die (although killing Japanese children to save the lives of Japanese soldiers doesn't sound like a benefit to me?), which is why this particular just isn't a very good argument to justify the hundred thousand or so deaths in the bombings (and the hundreds and hundreds of thousands in the firebombings that I also oppose). I don't really get why you're stuck on this point when there are much better justifications like the prospect of an invasion of the home islands. Typo posted:And you are 75% of the way to making the "Soviet invasion of Manchuria cause Japanese surrender" argument anyway so you might as well as just make it. No the question of whether the Japanese would have surrendered the home islands without a fight regardless of the bombings is entirely different to the question of how fast their inevitable defeat in China would come. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 03:47
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Right, but my point is, if you believe the total war can be justified based on the malevolence of your enemy, would you justify total war against ISIS? I like this. Assigning morality to war. Like there is actually any morality in war. Lets step back and get one fundamental fact right. Human beings will always wage war. And war, by its very nature is the destruction of another society. There is no morality in war. And for anyone to say x manner is a more humane way to wage war is hilariously ignorant. There is no humane manner to waging war. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Whether you wage total war or try to specific target bomb, you are going to kill people. The only debate you can have is between speed, casualty rate, recovery ability and the impact against the winning side. Stop trying to say this is more right than that because reasons. Oh how horrible.. Civilians were killed... Yes they were. And people were killed in Dresden, Berlin, London, Tokyo.... One bomb vs a night of bombing vs weeks/months makes no difference. People, civilians still die. Its part of war. Its the reality of war. If you want to pearl clutch or hand wring over it, then you had better do it over the entire concept of war. Not say "well this is bad, but this isn't". Its loving stupid. Should we have dropped Little Boy and Fat Man? Yes. It was the second best decision of the war. Right behind deciding to stick our foot up the Axis's rear end. Remember Japan picked the fight. We had stood down while the NAZIs ran through Europe like Sherman was running the show. We did nothing while Japan swiped up pacific real estate like it was a hot loving stock. They got greedy. They attacked us first. And we erased large swaths of Japanese cities to remind them that they hosed up. We killed enough people for them to back down and surrender. To stop taking over other nations. Thats the reality. Don't get indignant over the weapons used. What was done was immoral. Because war is immoral. But that doesn't mean its not necessary. Again. One bomb, one night of bombing, weeks/months... It doesn't matter. What matters is putting an end to war. Minimizing the time we have to suspend morality to defend ourselves against an attacking enemy is what matters.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:48
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Typo posted:If it makes you feel better I honestly do think the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave weight to their use and is part of the reason why despite having thousands of nuclear warheads during the cold war nobody ever fired one in anger. Yeah this is something I have thought about. I mean, ultimately, I would prefer that humanity as a species were able to say "We are smart enough to create weapons that can annihilate the world, and also smart enough to never use them" but that might be a little naive. What bothers me though is, if Hiroshima and Nagasaki were indeed so horrible that it rendered the use of nuclear weapons eternally unpalatable, why are we so reluctant to call it wrong? Why can't the US say, "We dropped the bomb because we thought it was the best thing to do, but we also recognize that we used a weapon so horrible that to date we are the only nation to ever actually use one in war." Why not just acknowledge that we were the ones that put malformed children and human patterns of ash burned onto walls into the public consciousness and that we have to carry the moral weight of it?
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Aug 7, 2015 03:48
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My grandfather was in WWII in the First Marine Corp (he was on Guadalcanal). Most of these veterans are dead now, so it's getting hard to ask them directly anymore. But before the bomb was dropped, the soldiers waiting to go back to actually participate in the invasion were being told that the expectation was a million causalities. How did the battle of Okinawa look (Grandpa missed that one fortunately)? Almost 150,000 Japanese civilians on the Cornerstone of Peace memorial. I've actually seen the bomb pit on Tinian and the suicide cliffs in Saipan We (societies) do indefensible things (like engage in war at all) to continue existing. Neither the indefensible things done (like the atom bomb or fire bombs) or the existential (or perceived existential) threats (how did the invasion of Okinawa look?) they are done in reaction to should be forgotten or minimized. One does not need to minimize the horror that invading Japan would have been to argue that the dropping the bomb was a horror. This particular event (dropping the bomb) doesn't fit nicely into our categories (like moral, immoral, good, evil, necessary, unnecessary) . I think it's preferable to approach it from the direction that the Okinawa memorial does. Remember those lost and pray for peace. And if you ever end up in the south pacific checking out these places, the grotto in Saipan is worth a stop. It's not war related, just damned beautiful. And if you go swimming in the reefs off Tinian, the jelly fish are loving brutal wear a wet suit.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:50
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icantfindaname posted:Red Army mass-rape mods name change me stat
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Aug 7, 2015 03:50
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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Fojar38 posted:So the difference between a war crime and a non-war crime isn't the amount of suffering it causes but if it's a new tactic or not? The purpose of the blockade isn't to kill anyone, unlike nuking a city. The blockade can be ended at any time during its commission by a surrender. Are you seriously trying to argue that the Union blockade of Confederate ports or the WWI blockade of Germany is no different than nuclear war.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:51
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Typo posted:Lesser evil vs greater evil. Oh absolutely. Its just there is a narrative difference between saying "We fought against something horrible" and "We fought for something good" If you say the first thing, your moral justification was the necessity of ending evil. It was dirty, it was horrible, but goddammit think about what would have happened if we didn't. If you say the second thing, you are suggesting your actions require no explicit moral justifications because you were the good guys and were therefore good. Its why I would rather the narrative be that we were the "better" side not the "good" side.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:51
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Genocide Tendency posted:I like this. What is with the sociopathic boner for might makes right that is stirred up in these sorts of discussions? Especially given that the bolded, for like the 20th time ITT, isn't actually necessarily true
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Aug 7, 2015 03:52
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VitalSigns posted:The opposite just happened in Manchuria. The Japanese were demoralized by this point, it's not the same as Okinawa. Also there was a bunch of weird propaganda about how the Americans were devils that would torture and rape them all to death that was contributing to the fanatical resistance in the island hopping campaign, which didn't really apply in China. quote:"Lots", How convincing. We also killed "lots" of civilians in the bombings. This is pretty much an impossible counterfactual to argue, there's no way to know exactly how long the defeat would have taken, exactly how many soldiers and civilians would die (although killing Japanese children to save the lives of Japanese soldiers doesn't sound like a benefit to me?), which is why this particular just isn't a very good argument to justify the hundred thousand or so deaths in the bombings (and the hundreds and hundreds of thousands in the firebombings that I also oppose). I don't really get why you're stuck on this point when there are much better justifications like the prospect of an invasion of the home islands. Happy now? Or is this too counterfactual for you? quote:No the question of whether the Japanese would have surrendered the home islands without a fight regardless of the bombings is entirely different to the question of how fast their inevitable defeat in China would come. It isn't if you don't think the Japanese army would have folded instantly in August 1945 in the rest of China and therefore would have folded when the overall Japanese surrender came. And they wouldn't have, the Soviets didn't have the logistics to invade the rest of it for another few months: at the very least.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:52
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VitalSigns posted:The purpose of the blockade isn't to kill anyone, unlike nuking a city. The blockade can be ended at any time during its commission by a surrender. What? Do you know what a blockade is? Its where you surround something to cut off all outside support. The intent is to break the supply routes. When people run out of food, drinkable water, basic needs they pressure the leadership to surrender. Thats a blockade. People die in these conditions. The threat of death due to lack of necessities is the entire intent to a blockade.
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Aug 7, 2015 03:55
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Genocide Tendency posted:Again. One bomb, one night of bombing, weeks/months... It doesn't matter. What matters is putting an end to war. Minimizing the time we have to suspend morality to defend ourselves against an attacking enemy is what matters. If the preferable result to war is to end it as quickly as possible why not simply go Carthage on any possible enemy?
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Aug 7, 2015 03:56
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icantfindaname posted:What is with the sociopathic boner for might makes right that is stirred up in these sorts of discussions? Especially given that the bolded, for like the 20th time ITT, isn't actually necessarily true Its not might makes right. Its protecting your land. Do you not even know the basics to what caused the US entry into WWII? They attacked us. When you are attacked, you have a choice, defend yourself, or surrender. Should we have surrendered ?
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Aug 7, 2015 03:57
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VitalSigns posted:The purpose of the blockade isn't to kill anyone, unlike nuking a city. The blockade can be ended at any time during its commission by a surrender. What exactly do you think the purpose of a blockade is?
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Aug 7, 2015 04:03
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Nuclear weapons are the only machines ever to create peace. Happy Hiroshima Day!
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Aug 7, 2015 04:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah this is something I have thought about. This is what occurs to me, that it's because we (as in humanity) have seen the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that we're able to better understand what nuclear bombs do. And this puts us in a bit of an odd position when it comes to symbolism vs. outcomes. Because even if I might say that if you really look at it the firebombings killed more people, and the continued blockade might have killed more people, the fact that you and many others believe a nuclear weapon to be symbolically worse than those things has undeniably helped humanity to avoid using nuclear weapons.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:29
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"Don't start nothin, won't be nothin." -Agent J, MIB
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Aug 7, 2015 04:34
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Are there any good reads on why it took the atomic bombs for surrender rather than all the previous things that happened? I ask this since a lot of people who consider dropping the bomb the wrong thing to do point out that Japan's situation was dire. If Japan's military was nowhere near as capable as the allies, numerous cities were burnt to ash, food shortages, etc before Hiroshima why didn't they surrender? I haven't been able to find much on why Japan didn't quit sooner from their perspective.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:37
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Budzilla posted:Are there any good reads on why it took the atomic bombs for surrender rather than all the previous things that happened? A bunch of people are going to tell you that it's because they were scared of the Soviets but that's not true; the Soviets didn't have any capacity to mount an invasion of the Japanese home islands and everyone knew it.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:41
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Budzilla posted:I ask this since a lot of people who consider dropping the bomb the wrong thing to do point out that Japan's situation was dire. If Japan's military was nowhere near as capable as the allies, numerous cities were burnt to ash, food shortages, etc before Hiroshima why didn't they surrender? I haven't been able to find much on why Japan didn't quit sooner from their perspective. The hardliners in the government were batshit insane about continuing the war to the death. Especially the Imperial Army, which unlike their Navy hadn't been defeated en masse yet, and in fact had made some major territorial gains in China as late as the middle of 1944. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 04:42
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Also, as I think came up earlier in the thread, the Japanese understanding was that the Emperor would not be able to keep his throne following the surrender, which would have been very symbolically damaging to the nation. That undoubtedly delayed their willingness to surrender.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:46
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Chantilly Say posted:Also, as I think came up earlier in the thread, the Japanese understanding was that the Emperor would not be able to keep his throne following the surrender, which would have been very symbolically damaging to the nation. That undoubtedly delayed their willingness to surrender. Even after Hirohito had decided to surrender, there were a not-inconsiderable number of Army officers who felt that they could "persuade" the Emperor to change his mind if they took over the Imperial Palace and had "discussions" with him. Essentially they were willing to make him a figurehead in order to keep fighting. The coup failed not because Army officers didn't want to continue the war, but that such an action against the Emperor was even more unconscionable than surrender.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:49
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Typo posted:That's because Manchuria is perfect tank country since it's one big plain. One blitzkreig campaign and it's over. The rest of China isn't Yeah but you're trying to argue that the IJA would fight to the last man regardless of the odds, this isn't true for the campaigns in China. The army was in a pretty terrible state by 1945 armed with outdated equipment from the 1930s and dependent on poorly-trained young conscripts because of critical manpower shortages after almost a decade of fighting. Typo posted:The Japanese killed something like 7-8 million Chinese civilians the war. And the war caused disruptions killing another 10 million or so civilians in China. The bombings don't go back in time and resurrect those people though? That's all the people killed in 8 years of war, but even if you distributed 7-8 million military-related deaths equally by month without regard to when the heaviest fighting was that's what 70-80,000 a month? (I don't think it's valid to expect the rate of deaths from displacements to continue at that rate because Japanese control would be shrinking now, not expanding). And that's assuming that the Japanese would still be killing people at the same rate even when they'd lost half their largest army and no longer had any air power to do things like kill 10,000 civilians in the bombing campaign at Chongqing. Typo posted:It isn't if you don't think the Japanese army would have folded instantly in August 1945 in the rest of China and therefore would have folded when the overall Japanese surrender came. The Chinese had already won major victories and had plans to recapture Guangzhou and Shanghai in August. There's a reason no one ever advances the argument that the bombings were done to save Chinese lives, not only because it's not convincing, but also because that reasoning was never considered by the people doing it, not even to justify it afterwards.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:52
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Fojar38 posted:What exactly do you think the purpose of a blockade is? To deprive the enemy of the means to carry on the war. People often die in a blockade (although they don't have to, if the enemy surrenders before starvation happens), but that's not the goal. Just to be clear, is it your position that there is no moral difference between a military blockade and nuclear war on civilian targets? Genocide Tendency posted:Assigning morality to war. Like there is actually any morality in war. I am going to disagree here I think massacring prisoners at Katyn, killing millions of Poles to make way for German colonization, Soviet armies raping their way through Germnay, and Nanking were actually immoral. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 04:57
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Fojar38 posted:A bunch of people are going to tell you that it's because they were scared of the Soviets but that's not true; the Soviets didn't have any capacity to mount an invasion of the Japanese home islands and everyone knew it. ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:The hardliners in the government were batshit insane about continuing the war to the death. Especially the Imperial Army, which unlike their Navy hadn't been defeated en masse yet, and in fact had made some major territorial gains in China as late as the middle of 1944. ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Essentially they were willing to make him a figurehead in order to keep fighting.
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Aug 7, 2015 05:01
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Typo posted:And would have killed far more people, and the US was pretty much already doing this in 1945 The firebombing was actually immoral, if that's what you mean. Although I will agree that purposely starving civilians is wrong. For example, the Entente blockade of Germany after the armistice no longer served any military purpose and was just a horrific crime to terrorize the people into accepting whatever would be dictated to them at Versailles. Or the Germans starving the Dutch in the winter of '44 to punish them for resistance.
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Aug 7, 2015 05:03
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VitalSigns posted:To deprive the enemy of the means to carry on the war. You can't fight a war with no civilians to support your military.
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Aug 7, 2015 05:04
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