Bombing of Tokyo, Bombing of Tokyo

Excuse me, but saying that the holocaust, the city-busting and the nuclear bombs mark a development in human ethics, is shocking.
What on earth are you saying?

You probably want to say that the lack of ethics became more prominent during WWII for various justifications, not that the ethics changed. (?!?)

Curioso, theres no such thing as "new ethics". Killing/mass killing unarmed people has always been unethical/immoral, (at least since WWI, when mass slaughter was actually experienced and comprehended) and finding justifications for such actions is rather immoral too.
Whether they were ideological excuses (holocaust) or military ones (we really gotta bomb that city, yes its '45 but we might still lose the war...) they were unethical, and no... its not hindsight (a term some people use excessively), people knew they were doing immoral things but chose to believe the excuses and save themselves the conscience issues.

take care

you still havent clarified your position.
are you saying the Dresden bombing is not part of the immorality of WWII? but the german actions are? how moral is to differentiate between immoral actions?

p.s. maybe you should ask yourself why more civilians died in WWII than soldiers.



This post has been edited by Imperialist on March 30, 2005 11:32 am

...

Whether they were ideological excuses (holocaust) or military ones (we really gotta bomb that city, yes its '45 but we might still lose the war...)

Obviously, the development in ethics is not the Holocaust, but the reaction to it - as I said, it _marked_ a development - it wasn't the development itself.

The fact that we had to invent a new word, "genocide", to define it should show you it was perceived as something different.

The fact that we changed our laws should also, but I have already mentioned that and you failed to notice it.

If you think that you have summed up the Allied decision-makers attitude with the last sentence I quoted above, then there is not much point in discussing with you.

Placing the reasons for the Holocaust on the same level as the reasons for perfectly legitimate war-making is beyond comment.

Jesus, indeed, you differentiate between immoralities!!!

Our immorality was better, because we understand our decision-makers' thought process, their immorality is bad, bad immorality!

Curioso, I certainly dont want to debate with you anymore, if you fail to see, that if the Germans were to win the war, they would have presented (if at all) perfect justification for all their crimes, yet that doesnt change the fact that there were immoral crimes! How can you fail to see that?

And you still havent answered several of my questions from my previous posts... I dont expect you to.
You already seem to trump the Holocaust card, probably you expect me to say something out of place and bring on PC stuff...

p.s. by the way, the word "genocide" is old. Very old.
Yet if you want more recent examples, maybe you should remember the Armenian genocide during WWI.
But ofcourse, following your logic, a genocide is worse than other genocide... great world view!!!

This post has been edited by Imperialist on March 30, 2005 02:14 pm

How old is "very old"?
Well, nevermind that, and get a hold of this: the internet's abuzz with the notion that indeed the term "genocide" was coined in 1943 or 1944 by a Polish Jew, a lawyer by the name of Raphal Lemkin, in response to the unprecedented scale and scope of the jew-cleansing enterprise of the Germans in Europe.

Hope you find this bit of info useful in your quest for enlightenment.

Regards,

valachus

genocide = genos (greek) + caedere (latin)

Its meaning,

-- systematic killing of a racial or cultural group

is not new:

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/us-7-16-15-text.html

There is a special term for words that do not bring new meanings into use, but new forms for old meanings.

Having said that, I admit my use of "very old" might have been exaggerated.

p.s. wonder why he used "genos" and not "gentis". maybe to make a new term?


take care

This post has been edited by Imperialist on April 03, 2005 08:30 pm

Lets see some examples of how people actually find "reasonable" explanations for nuking whole cities today. I know to many it would sound preposterous, or absurd, but note how logical and "ethical" the justification of that action seems.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000023.php#comments


Later, the same guy, clarifies than the aforementioned stance is an "ethical" argument (!) :

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000020.php#comments



The link he mentions is to the first quote. Obviously he calls that theory of action an argument for how innocents SHOULD be treated in times of war.


I posted this only as an example of how justifications for the type of late 1945 city busting (nuclear and non-nuclear) actions are actually fueling a disastrous mentality.

Uh, man how come nobody slashed into this with a khukri ...

==>

the construction "not only A, but also B" is used in order to put the emphasis on B, and not on A

It's kind of weird to highlight one's own crap in such a way. But of course the common English language meaning is that A remains the primary factor and B a secondary one (emphasis notwhithstanding).

And so the English simply acknowledged that Dresden was to be a full blown terror operation. It was payback time for London. Spiegel nailed it in my link above when they detailed the nature of the loaded ordnance and the timing of it's delivery, all designed to summon a firestorm.

Allow me to put it back here :

The lessons learned led to the strategy followed by British Air Marshal Arthur Harris:

* First, large and highly explosive bombs were dropped to blow out windows, break open roofs and topple walls.

* Next, tens of thousands of small incendiaries and phosphorous bombs were scattered over the city, thus starting hundreds of small fires that caught quickly due to the drafts blowing through the openings created by the explosives.

* In following waves of attacks, British heavy bombers would drop more explosives and fragmentation bombs in an effort to prevent fire fighters from being able to extinguish the fires. The hope was also to destroy those water pipelines not annihilated by the first wave.

* The hundreds of fires would eventually join to form one raging inferno. A gigantic column of heat rising from the firestorm would create hurricane force winds and suck in oxygen surrounding the fire to feed the blaze. The heat was intense enough to melt asphalt. Thousands of people in air-raid shelters died from the heat, from carbon monoxide poisoning or from asphyxiation.

In Dresden on that fateful Tuesday in February, the strategy worked to perfection.

That, gentlemen, leaves doubts only in the mind of lunatics and apologists like Taylor.

This post has been edited by Chandernagore on May 09, 2005 09:56 am

Excellent Chandernagore-type post! Unfortunately, valachus retreated for some time so it will be very hard to find a true opponent...

wow. very PLASTIC description, Cahndernagore.

damn, you forgot the screaming children and the yelling women

Now attaching a sound file, that would be scary... Fire and explosion sound walls propagating in every direction, horrible agony screaming all over and one women madly crying "they're only after the rail track , they said it should be the rail tracks ..."

Maybe Curioso will jump back into the arena. And we'll start punching each other's nose again

indeed

i forgot about that guy

Welcome back man! What did you do, go on a field trip to Dresden?
Just to see for yourself?

Ah, well ... I thought it would be a good idea to get myself banned on some other forum, for a change. Here I could not longer align 3 consecutive sentences without flying out of the window

This post has been edited by Chandernagore on May 09, 2005 11:32 am

are you sure the heat is off?

Chander,you forgot the bombs that were programed to explode after a few hours,killing the rescue teams and people getting out of the shelters...