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Um... ok. How about, it's not a war crime because the entire concept of a "war crime" is totally subjective and usually just something that we can accuse the other side of doing.
When there's so much uncontroversial killing of civilians during wars, even contemporary ones (see drone strikes, which hardly anyone seems to give a shit about), it's an exercise in convenient double standards to pick out two historical events on account of their scale and place in the public consciousness.
How was that?
Jezza wrote:
David wrote:It sometimes seems like people understand the gravity of killing a single person but toss off the deaths of a couple of hundred thousand in a foreign country as if they were delousing a dog.
Ever heard the old saying David that the "death of one person is a tragedy; the death of one million is a statistic"?
In any context where deaths occur on a large scale this quote rings true for mine even though it was quoted by a psychopathic dictator in Joseph Stalin and I think the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are no different in this context with the way everyone perceives those events 70 years ago.
I have, and I think it does apply to some of the responses to these tragic events. Maybe the scale is simply too large for casual observers to feel anything in the way of empathy (beyond a vague sense of how terrible it all is).
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
I've been missing Tannin's contributions on here. If this (excellent) piece that completely destroys his argument on Hiroshima doesn't rouse him, nothing will.
Can you explain why you so glibly dismiss the conclusions reached by that article? Do you deny that the Japanese were concerned about Soviet invasion and that this may have been a factor in their surrender, or have you automatically assumed that anything which contradicts the dominant narrative must be false?
"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
It happened if can't be changed, if the Japanese had not bombed pearl harbour (plenty of civilians died ther too David), if they had not been so cruel, if they had not been so greedy, it would not of happened. What r u trying to prove? And why? Sorry but your anti USA stance shades it for me. I read most of it. No I can't discount it, but neither can it be proved, everyone is dead, let it go. It helps no one.
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either!
Trying to analyse the ethics and morals of an event that happened 70 years ago through the lens of the present is an exercise in naval gazing futility IMHO.
You can look at all sorts of facts from the time but no matter how hard you try you can't strip away your personal biases informed and developed from living in a totally different culture in a different millennium.
(When I use the word "you" above it's as a general collective term, not aimed at any individual)
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down.
What's the point of designing and building such beautiful weapons if you're not going to use them on people? It's like having a star CHF and never playing him.
David wrote:I've been missing Tannin's contributions on here. If this (excellent) piece that completely destroys his argument on Hiroshima doesn't rouse him, nothing will.
Look, the Americans had to use what was available to them at the time. The real weapons of subordination (McHale's Navy, I Dream of Jeannie and F Troop) were still under development and, as things turned out, wouldn't have been ready for at least 15 years.
