Thread: Discussion and Debate Community Thread

  1. #5281

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    Basically, you guys are arguing that its OK to slaughter civilians in mass to avoid the possibility that more civilians could die?
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  2. #5282

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    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Basically, you guys are arguing that its OK to slaughter civilians in mass to avoid the possibility that more civilians could die?
    No. I stated that atomic weaponry was more devastating than conventional strategic bombing (a fact recognized by the Japanese gov't) and that its use was intended to, and achieved the objective of, expediting the peace process such that US's planned invasion of the Japanese mainland became unnecessary. The rationale behind the use of the a-bomb had nothing to do with causing civilian casualties to prevent civilian causalities, even if one can speculate that more Japanese civilians would have perished had the militarists been able to fight their "sacrificial homeland battle".



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    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Basically, you guys are arguing that its OK to slaughter civilians in mass to avoid the possibility that more civilians could die?
    The war was quite beyond the point of nice moral reflection by 1945, more than a few Rubicons had been crossed by this point. There was already a massive firebombing campaign that was incinerating the wooden suburbs of Japan and that killed many more than the two nukes. The Home Islands were under submarine blockade which meant certain famine, and some Japanese garrisons across the Pacific were reduced to cannibalism. The European theatre had seen humanist norms discarded with mass bombing raids against civilian targets, genocide, scorched earth and mass rape shockingly apparent. Post war reconstruction involved more ethic cleansing and genocide as now defined by the UN.

    Cookie's position is the US used nukes to intimidate the Soviets and prevent them from seizing more of Asia. The "received" position that Cookie is cogently arguing against is "the US used nukes to save Japan from a savage ground invasion/spare 600,000 US casualties". It may be that those latter results may be inadvertent by products of the use of the bomb but I lack familiarity with the sources so I can't even begin to frame the argument.

    I try to imagine myself in Truman's shoes. He comes to power after being shut out by FDR. He is told "we have a Bomb". The war is winding down and the "arrangement " (never an alliance AFAIK) with the USSR no longer serves any purpose: the scramble for the detritus of Germany and Japan has already begun. The US has been incredibly generous with their sworn foe. I think Truman felt he needed to make a statement. Probably I am flawed enough to order the death by fire of tens of thousands of civilians in those circumstances.

    I take the discussion personally as I have family who were in Hiroshima when the bomb went off, as well as family who served in the Australian forces and attended the execution of Japanese war criminals. I had a friend who was in Changi, where "White Australians" were treated with the same fierce racist contempt we showed to our Aboriginal peoples: I deplore that murderous prejudice in anyone.

    There's a lot of inherited circumstance in the moral dimension here too: after WWI Japan argued the League of Nations should enshrine racial equality in its articles: Australia among other lead the opposition to this and won the day. The USA and Japan were elbowing each other over expansion in the pacific, with the US generally bulldozing Japan when they could be bothered. After the war there's the rewriting of the constitution, Unit 731, Korea...mate it makes the relations of the Hellenic Republic and Turkiyye look more or less straightforward.
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    The problem with this Win and Loss calculation is that the Bomb still killed people long after the war because of the radiation.

    What make the drop unjustified in my opinion.
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  5. #5285

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    I doubt any of you would use the same arguments if it was the Russians dropping a bomb on Berlin on 1942.
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  6. #5286

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cope View Post
    This is inaccurate. The Japanese war council and the emperor did acknowledge the material difference between atomic weapons and conventional strategic bombing. The destructive power of the a-bomb was a key factor in hastening their decision to accept peace on terms acceptable to the US.
    Yet in "rescript to Soldiers and Sailors" Hirohito specified that the reason for surrender was the Soviet invasion. In fact, Japan already entered the negotiations for surrender, and the final terms were conditional, as Emperor system got preserved as per their earlier demands.
    Point is that Vanoi's claim about bombings is incorrect, since American never got unconditional surrender of Japan and the key factor behind surrender was Soviets joining the war, while atomic bombings were not a necessity, but an unnecessary "experiment" that was a war crime in reality.

  7. #5287

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    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    Yet in "rescript to Soldiers and Sailors" Hirohito specified that the reason for surrender was the Soviet invasion. In fact, Japan already entered the negotiations for surrender, and the final terms were conditional, as Emperor system got preserved as per their earlier demands.
    Point is that Vanoi's claim about bombings is incorrect, since American never got unconditional surrender of Japan and the key factor behind surrender was Soviets joining the war, while atomic bombings were not a necessity, but an unnecessary "experiment" that was a war crime in reality.
    I assume you're referring to the Imperial Rescript on Surrender, delivered by Hirohito on August 15th 1945. It reads as follows:

    Despite the best that has been done by every one -- the gallant fighting of military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people, the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects; or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers.

    Imperial Rescript on Surrender, August 15th 1945.
    With regard to Japan allegedly having "entered negotiations for surrender", I can only imagine that you are remarking upon the Japanese attempt to convince the Soviet Union to mediate an agreement between themselves and the Allies. The Russians rejected the approach (which expected more than the mere retention of the Emperor) and subsequently declared war upon Japan instead.

    Japan’s one authorized diplomatic initiative required two things: 1) concessions that would enlist the Soviets as mediators; and 2) Japanese terms to end the war. Sato relentlessly exposed the fact that Japan never completed either of these two fundamental steps.

    When Togo presented a pledge not to retain Japan’s conquests as “concessions” to secure Soviet mediation, Sato’s scathing reply was “How much effect do you expect our statements regarding the non-annexation and non-possession of territories which we have already lost or are about to lose will have on the Soviet authorities?” He added that mere “abstract statements” on concessions, which he slammed as "“pretty little phrases devoid of all connection with reality,” [which] would have no impact on “extremely realistic” Soviet authorities.

    And he then inserted the knife thrust: “If the Japanese empire is really faced with the necessity of terminating the war, we must first of all make up our minds to terminate the war.” Sato thus charged that Japan’s leaders still lacked a real intent to end the war.

    Togo’s reply acknowledged that Tokyo knew securing Soviet services for a proposal to send Prince Fumimaro Konoe, a former prime minister, to Moscow for talks would be difficult. Togo affirmed that Japan would not accept anything like unconditional surrender. Konoe represented the will of the emperor and he would have “positive intentions” to “negotiate details” to set up “a cooperative relationship between Japan and Russia.” Again, Togo only offered more of the “pretty little phrases” Sato had condemned.

    Sato then went for the jugular. He insisted that the crucial proof that Japan seriously sought an end to the war would be a statement of Japan’s peace terms. Togo could not provide terms because even within the tiny inner circle who authorized the Soviet initiative, there was never serious discussion, much less agreement, on actual Japanese terms to end the war. This was clear both from Togo’s inability to present such terms to Sato and confirmed in post-war interviews with key officials who admitted they never agreed on concessions to obtain Soviet mediation, much less peace terms.

    "Pretty Little Phrases": Japanese Diplomacy in 1945, National World War II Museum, Aug 2020.
    Last edited by Cope; October 20, 2020 at 02:19 PM. Reason: Extra information added.



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    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    I doubt any of you would use the same arguments if it was the Russians dropping a bomb on Berlin on 1942.
    Interesting question. It would have shortened the war, and civilian targets were already fair game at this point...

    What about you, if you had a chance to stop the Holocaust in 1942, would you use a nuke to do it? Or spice it up, if you ruled a nuclear-capable Turkiyye, and an Hellenic Hitler was genociding Western Anatolia, would you have nuked Athens? Or an occupied Constantinople?

    I suspect Japan not being "white" made dropping the bomb easier for some people to accept, so while dropping it was not in my view an act of racism, perhaps the contemplation the PR results may have included the response of racists.
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  9. #5289

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    Doesn’t seem very hypothetical. Considering Berlin alone, civilian casualties from allied bombing are estimated at 50,000 or so between 1940-45, Dresden another 25,000, according to Wiki.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civili...ategic_bombing
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    Quote Originally Posted by Heathen Hammer View Post
    Yet in "rescript to Soldiers and Sailors" Hirohito specified that the reason for surrender was the Soviet invasion. In fact, Japan already entered the negotiations for surrender, and the final terms were conditional, as Emperor system got preserved as per their earlier demands.
    Point is that Vanoi's claim about bombings is incorrect, since American never got unconditional surrender of Japan and the key factor behind surrender was Soviets joining the war, while atomic bombings were not a necessity, but an unnecessary "experiment" that was a war crime in reality.
    Your interlocutor is somewhat manipulative and not in good faith.
    >Quoting "Why America Dropped the Bomb, Donald Kagan, 1995" strongly implied either a book or a paywalled scientific article (he even said directly to me in discord that it was a "peer reviewed article"). It is neither. Since you already had the site open, why did you not provide the link to it?
    >Donald Kagan, like his children, is a politically very active person agitating for regime change wars. He has skin in the game. That Alperovitz would get such a response from the hawks was not surprising.
    >For the most part his rebuttal of Alperovitz was a value judgement, including the passage quoted by cope. There is again, no reason whatsoever to take Kagan's claims on good faith.
    >Secondary and tertiary sources usually get beaten by primary sources. I smacked out pretty much all the most important people in the US military, and civilians who were involved in the project, and their view on the project.

    If someone after this wants to refute my argument, a good place to start is to tell me why and how Nimitz, Eisenhower, Leahy, etc. were wrong. It's not being done, for obvious reasons.

    >Conversely, the last thing in the world I'd ever take on a first basis, would be a politicians speech. The Jewel Voice Broadcast, which btw. doesn't even mention the word surrender, did not have the task of explaining the process of decision making at the chrysanthemum throne. It had the task of getting people to chill down, and also not admit that the military had already been beaten, so indirectly threatening them with a Wunderwaffe was convenient.

    >The Supreme Council of Japan didn't meet on August 6th after Hiroshima to discuss surrender, it did so on August 9th. It didn't meet on that day because of Nagasaki - Nagasaki happened when the meeting was already long ongoing.
    If Hiroshima had scared them into submission, they would not have waited 74 hours. Instead their meeting happened at the earliest time possible after the Soviet invasion commenced.

    >Finally, again: The Japanese had suffered from 66 conventional large scale bombing runs in addition to the two nuclear ones. The damage from the nukes wasn't worse. From the Japanese perspective, there was not much of a game changer. The US had had, and used the ability to level entire cities long before Hiroshima. Neither Donald Kagan, nor anyone in this thread so far, has provided any compelling argument or even evidence as to why these nukes should have had that effect, never mind presented any counterargument to the many arguments and primary sources presented by me.
    Last edited by Cookiegod; October 21, 2020 at 02:25 AM.

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  11. #5291

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Interesting question. It would have shortened the war, and civilian targets were already fair game at this point...
    What about you, if you had a chance to stop the Holocaust in 1942, would you use a nuke to do it? Or spice it up, if you ruled a nuclear-capable Turkiyye, and an Hellenic Hitler was genociding Western Anatolia, would you have nuked Athens? Or an occupied Constantinople?
    I suspect Japan not being "white" made dropping the bomb easier for some people to accept, so while dropping it was not in my view an act of racism, perhaps the contemplation the PR results may have included the response of racists.
    Would I nuke Athens when Greeks started invading Anatolia in anticipation of their use of scorched Earth policy of burning towns and massacring their population? I wouldn't. If the idea was to scare them off with my destructive capabilities I would have dropped it on a Greek navy contingent on sea away, but preferentially visible from a major Greek town, instead of dropping it on a population center where I'd be knowingly killing children that could not even understand the concept of nationalism.

    Did the Americans know the destructive capabilities of an atomic bomb? They did. Did they have a chance to drop it away but visible from a major Japanese city? Of course. Sure, they dropped the bombs to force surrender of the Japanese but that doesn't really makes it right. It was basically killing of family members to force a person of interest to surrender. We don't do it for known killers. Nobody really would try to remotely justify it if we did. Yet, when USA does something like that to a foreigner suddenly people who champion for human rights around the globe start to say "but" ...
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    Spoiler for Cookie#1
    Quote Originally Posted by Cookiegod View Post
    Your interlocutor is somewhat manipulative and not in good faith.
    >Quoting "Why America Dropped the Bomb, Donald Kagan, 1995" strongly implied either a book or a paywalled scientific article (he even said directly to me in discord that it was a "peer reviewed article"). It is neither. Since you already had the site open, why did you not provide the link to it?
    >Donald Kagan, like his children, is a politically very active person agitating for regime change wars. He has skin in the game. That Alperovitz would get such a response from the hawks was not surprising.
    >For the most part his rebuttal of Alperovitz was a value judgement, including the passage quoted by cope. There is again, no reason whatsoever to take Kagan's claims on good faith.
    >Secondary and tertiary sources usually get beaten by primary sources. I smacked out pretty much all the most important people in the US military, and civilians who were involved in the project, and their view on the project.


    (1) Hitertho, I have cited three authors, Kagan, Bernstein and Sadao. All of them are scholars. All of them disagree with your views (despite your insinuation that no credible academic would do so). Kagan's extensive credentials are available on Yale's website, here.

    (2) I concede that I mistakenly characterized Kagan's article as peer-reviewed off-site; that mistake bears no relevance to the veracity of Kagain's analysis (which you have yet to challenge beyond gainsaying and appealing to his alleged partisanship). The reason I did not provide a link is because I had downloaded the article as a PDF.

    (3) All views on whether the use of atomic weaponry was appropriate, including Alperovitz's (whose views are challenged by modern revisionists), are inherently value judgements.

    (4) Secondary sources are predicated on, and include references to, primary material. That is evidenced by the sources I have presented here.

    Spoiler for Cookie#2
    If someone after this wants to refute my argument, a good place to start is to tell me why and how Nimitz, Eisenhower, Leahy, etc. were wrong. It's not being done, for obvious reasons.


    On the basis that speculation and moral judgements cannot be disproven, Nimitz, Eisenhower and Leahy weren't "wrong". Notwithstanding, the following points need to be taken into consideration:

    (1) No one has speculated that Japan wouldn't have been defeated sans atomic weaponry. It has instead been argued that there is significant evidence indicating that use of the a-bomb shortened the war and overcame the need for the US to invade Japan.

    (2) It is is not surprising that conventional military leaders like Eisenhower, Leahy and Nimitz were deeply sceptical of the a-bomb, given the extent to which it revolutionized human conflict (and therefore challenged the military orthodoxy). Even so, and to the best of my knowledge, all three men were advocates of the bombing campaigns and constrictive blockades which, by your own admission, caused more civilian suffering than the atomic attacks.

    (3) The comments of these men do not indicate that Japan agreed to the Potsdam terms solely because of the Soviet intervention (which is your main thesis). Nor do they prove that alignment with orthodox position is anti-intellectual or ahistorical. They serve only to represent the view that the use of atomic weaponry was not necessary to end the war (a point which, as mentioned above, is largely undisputed).

    Spoiler for Cookie#3
    >Conversely, the last thing in the world I'd ever take on a first basis, would be a politicians speech. The Jewel Voice Broadcast, which btw. doesn't even mention the word surrender, did not have the task of explaining the process of decision making at the chrysanthemum throne. It had the task of getting people to chill down, and also not admit that the military had already been beaten, so indirectly threatening them with a Wunderwaffe was convenient.


    My interlocutor appeared to claim that the Imperial Rescript on Surrender specifically mentioned the Soviet entry into the war as the reason for the surrender. I posted the transcript of the speech to show that this was false.

    Spoiler for Cookie#4
    >The Supreme Council of Japan didn't meet on August 6th after Hiroshima to discuss surrender, it did so on August 9th. It didn't meet on that day because of Nagasaki - Nagasaki happened when the meeting was already long ongoing.
    If Hiroshima had scared them into submission, they would not have waited 74 hours. Instead their meeting happened at the earliest time possible after the Soviet invasion commenced.


    The reasons for the delay were as follows:

    (1) Leading gov't figures were not immediately sure, either of the extent of the damage or whether atomic weapons had actually been used (Togo confirmed that atomic weaponry had been used through American broadcasts on the 7th and called a meeting of senior cabinet minsters the same day).

    (2) The militarists, in typically defiant fashion, sought to minimize the impact of the bomb and obstructed the meeting of the Principals out of a zealous and delusional opposition to surrender (which they knew was the purpose of summoning the council).

    Notwithstanding, even if the leadership did not meet until the 9th, the decision to convene the Supreme Council came on the 8th, a day before the Soviet declaration of war. This disproves the theory that the Principals were unmoved by the bombings and only hurriedly met after the Russian intervention.



    Spoiler for Cookie#5
    >Finally, again: The Japanese had suffered from 66 conventional large scale bombing runs in addition to the two nuclear ones. The damage from the nukes wasn't worse. From the Japanese perspective, there was not much of a game changer. The US had had, and used the ability to level entire cities long before Hiroshima. Neither Donald Kagan, nor anyone in this thread so far, has provided any compelling argument or even evidence as to why these nukes should have had that effect, never mind presented any counterargument to the many arguments and primary sources presented by me.


    No one has argued that the damage caused by the atomic bombings was more extensive than the entirety of the conventional allied bombing campaign. The obvious distinction between atomic weaponry and conventional weaponry (which the Japanese leadership recognized) was the magnitude of the destruction which the former could cause in a single strike. It rendered the hold-out strategy insisted upon by the military obsolete, and, as the sources show, clearly influenced the emperor in his decision to break the deadlock between the factions.

    Setting that aside, the point you make here is self-contradictory: on the one hand you want us to believe that the atomic bombings were so uniquely evil in their destructivity that they violated a criminal threshold; on the other you try to pass them off as being routine, as being so indistinct in their effect from conventional carpet bombing that the Japanese leadership was neither shocked nor moved by them.
    Last edited by Cope; October 21, 2020 at 11:19 AM. Reason: Additional points included.



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    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Would I nuke Athens when Greeks started invading Anatolia in anticipation of their use of scorched Earth policy of burning towns and massacring their population? I wouldn't. If the idea was to scare them off with my destructive capabilities I would have dropped it on a Greek navy contingent on sea away, but preferentially visible from a major Greek town, instead of dropping it on a population center where I'd be knowingly killing children that could not even understand the concept of nationalism.
    A commendable position. There is no reason to purposefully kill civilians, including women and children, for the actions of a small portion of the population that is taking part in an armed conflict. Be it by dropping a nuke on them, or by marching them into deserts where they suddenly disappear and later have their suffering denied by supposed champions of human rights.

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    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Would I nuke Athens when Greeks started invading Anatolia in anticipation of their use of scorched Earth policy of burning towns and massacring their population? I wouldn't. If the idea was to scare them off with my destructive capabilities I would have dropped it on a Greek navy contingent on sea away, but preferentially visible from a major Greek town, instead of dropping it on a population center where I'd be knowingly killing children that could not even understand the concept of nationalism.

    Did the Americans know the destructive capabilities of an atomic bomb? They did. Did they have a chance to drop it away but visible from a major Japanese city? Of course. Sure, they dropped the bombs to force surrender of the Japanese but that doesn't really makes it right. It was basically killing of family members to force a person of interest to surrender. We don't do it for known killers. Nobody really would try to remotely justify it if we did. Yet, when USA does something like that to a foreigner suddenly people who champion for human rights around the globe start to say "but" ...
    Well said. Its easy to get lost in the overwhelming horror of war and start lashing out, and to turn narratives into "well we were the good guys, so...".

    In Australia we've had some terrible war crime cases coming out of Afghanistan recently. Really good professional soldiers being sent again and again into war, some of them twelve tours (x 6 months each) thats longer than any other Australian overseas war. The last headline was one of the RAR boys killed himself after reporting his colleagues for murder, and a US Marine has lodged a complaint about Australians casually executing bound prisoners. We got to this place incrementally, no one sat down and made a decision to turn good soldiers into monsters.

    Likewise I don't think the US got to Hiroshima in one leap.

    Quote Originally Posted by nhytgbvfeco2 View Post
    A commendable position. There is no reason to purposefully kill civilians, including women and children, for the actions of a small portion of the population that is taking part in an armed conflict. Be it by dropping a nuke on them, or by marching them into deserts where they suddenly disappear and later have their suffering denied by supposed champions of human rights.
    No evidence PoVG ever did that mate. I applaud his sensible approach, I suspect I would fall into the trap of vindictive civilian atrocities like the Axis and WAllies did (and I suspect the Soviets did too). Bomber Harris was a war criminal in my view.

    Turkiyye gets stick for the actions of the wretched Young Turks that crashed the Ottoman state (a lot), so if he gets irritated by examples of other atrocities that get soft passes (eg Australia or the US) I can completely understand that. I mean the winners of WWII took a look at the Nazi massacre of Ukrainians, Jews, Roma and others and decided "what this continent needs is a really thorough ethnic cleansing, so that doesn't happen again" and cleared out over ten million ethnic Germans from Eastern and Central Europe (so Konigsberg could be Russian! How logical). An unspecified number died in this process, over half a million. Yay us.

    I mean you know exactly how he feels, Israel somehow gets blamed for Sykes Picot and stuff like that. Apparently the French Republic and the British Empire were being run by Golda Meier before she was born.
    Jatte lambastes Calico Rat

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    No evidence PoVG ever did that mate. I applaud his sensible approach, I suspect I would fall into the trap of vindictive civilian atrocities like the Axis and WAllies did (and I suspect the Soviets did too). Bomber Harris was a war criminal in my view.
    He does deny the Armenian, Pontic and Assyrian genocides as far as I'm aware, I'm sure he'd be happy to correct me if I'm wrong. As for evidence, he's called the genocide "the great myth", you can see that in the group linked in his signature.
    Turkiyye gets stick for the actions of the wretched Young Turks that crashed the Ottoman state (a lot), so if he gets irritated by examples of other atrocities that get soft passes (eg Australia or the US) I can completely understand that. I mean the winners of WWII took a look at the Nazi massacre of Ukrainians, Jews, Roma and others and decided "what this continent needs is a really thorough ethnic cleansing, so that doesn't happen again" and cleared out over ten million ethnic Germans from Eastern and Central Europe (so Konigsberg could be Russian! How logical). An unspecified number died in this process, over half a million. Yay us.
    I don't think that it's fair to blame the allies for what was done only by the Soviets (the cleansing of ethnic Germans). The only other member of the allies that attempted it, the Netherlands, was put under heavy pressure and was forced to cease with their plans, though IIRC a number of Germans was deported, but that was the one exception to my knowledge.
    I mean you know exactly how he feels, Israel somehow gets blamed for Sykes Picot and stuff like that. Apparently the French Republic and the British Empire were being run by Golda Meier before she was born.
    Why specifically Golda Meier?

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    Quote Originally Posted by nhytgbvfeco2 View Post
    He does deny the Armenian, Pontic and Assyrian genocides as far as I'm aware, I'm sure he'd be happy to correct me if I'm wrong. As for evidence, he's called the genocide "the great myth", you can see that in the group linked in his signature.

    I don't think that it's fair to blame the allies for what was done only by the Soviets (the cleansing of ethnic Germans). The only other member of the allies that attempted it, the Netherlands, was put under heavy pressure and was forced to cease with their plans, though IIRC a number of Germans was deported, but that was the one exception to my knowledge.

    Why specifically Golda Meier?
    Not coz she's a PMILF. What? Shut up. Don't kink shame me.

    I think she trolled the enemies of Israel hardest of all, being a woman opposed by sexist monarchies and republics..

    I was under the impression the cleansing of the Volksdeutsch had at least Churchills imprimatur, maybe even his fingerprints. My side definitely abetted the Soviets by repatriating loads of people eastbound for death too.

    I'd be sad if if a sensible poster claimed no Armenians died. Something wretched and horrible happened in 1915 in th dark days of the Fall of the House of Osman. The political games that get played with genocides are exhausting, but I can imagine a person tiring of repeated bludgeoning for events others get passes for. The UN definition of genocide includes more than just the two most infamous examples.

    I recall how the Shoah gets squabbled over, there was some New York critic who took that movie The Pianist to task for not being "an authentic Holocaust movie", bizarre given the identity of the author and the director. It's bad enough there's deniers, we don't need some non-European born after the fact intellectual staking ownership of past events for personal weaponisation.

    These things can come around in weird ways. The spiral of Australian racism toward a Japan and the reverse that occurred at say Changi are not a straight equation (Japan had a strong sense of self worth amounting to racial superiority long before WWI) but it's worth pondering the alternatives. There are wars that went unfought, ethnic cleansingscthat were avoided, by goodwill, foresight and pride-swallowing.

    I think of Ike doing a reverse Truman in Korea. Yes Korea is a smashed amputated state made to suffer for the purposes of Great Powers but the other path is a nuclear wasteland instead of a DMZ. You see Bush Jnr stinking up Iraq, Putin taking a crap on Ukraine, and a Bush Snr looks more and more brilliant.

    There are other timelines with far fewer Jewish or Turkish people, with no Ireland, no Poland. I am keenly aware we could have done better but it's worth noting we could have done worse too.

    Anyway it's midnight here which is why I wax philosophical.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    I'd be sad if if a sensible poster claimed no Armenians died.
    No one did.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Not coz she's a PMILF. What? Shut up. Don't kink shame me.

    I think she trolled the enemies of Israel hardest of all, being a woman opposed by sexist monarchies and republics..
    Yeah, but ultimately she is remembered for her failures leading up to and during the Yom Kippur war (1973)
    I was under the impression the cleansing of the Volksdeutsch had at least Churchills imprimatur, maybe even his fingerprints. My side definitely abetted the Soviets by repatriating loads of people eastbound for death too.
    Honestly I'm not sure of Churchills position, but the UK had no German minorities to deport from its territory.
    I'd be sad if if a sensible poster claimed no Armenians died. Something wretched and horrible happened in 1915 in th dark days of the Fall of the House of Osman. The political games that get played with genocides are exhausting, but I can imagine a person tiring of repeated bludgeoning for events others get passes for. The UN definition of genocide includes more than just the two most infamous examples.
    Armenian genocide deniers usually don't claim that deaths did not happen, but rather explain it as an ethnic cleansing gone wrong (as if that somehow makes it okay) and argue that the numbers are exaggerated.
    But as I mentioned, it wasn't just the Armenians, and it's truly a shame that other victims are forgotten.
    I recall how the Shoah gets squabbled over, there was some New York critic who took that movie The Pianist to task for not being "an authentic Holocaust movie", bizarre given the identity of the author and the director. It's bad enough there's deniers, we don't need some non-European born after the fact intellectual staking ownership of past events for personal weaponisation.

    These things can come around in weird ways. The spiral of Australian racism toward a Japan and the reverse that occurred at say Changi are not a straight equation (Japan had a strong sense of self worth amounting to racial superiority long before WWI) but it's worth pondering the alternatives. There are wars that went unfought, ethnic cleansingscthat were avoided, by goodwill, foresight and pride-swallowing.

    I think of Ike doing a reverse Truman in Korea. Yes Korea is a smashed amputated state made to suffer for the purposes of Great Powers but the other path is a nuclear wasteland instead of a DMZ. You see Bush Jnr stinking up Iraq, Putin taking a crap on Ukraine, and a Bush Snr looks more and more brilliant.

    There are other timelines with far fewer Jewish or Turkish people, with no Ireland, no Poland. I am keenly aware we could have done better but it's worth noting we could have done worse too.

    Anyway it's midnight here which is why I wax philosophical.
    I mean, yeah it could always be worse or better. We shot the sheriff, but hey, at least we didn't shoot the deputy.

  19. #5299
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    Default Re: Discussion and Debate Community Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by PointOfViewGun View Post
    Basically, you guys are arguing that its OK to slaughter civilians in mass to avoid the possibility that more civilians could die?
    Yes.

    Your civilian is a willing supporter of the war, a willing financial sponsor, a willing logistics worker when unarmed and a voluntary soldier when given any weapon. The line between soldiers and non-combatants in modern nations has no logical basis except to absolve people of their own mistakes and responsibilities.

    If you command someone to commit murder, you share their penalties. Why should civilians at war be different?
    Last edited by AqD; October 22, 2020 at 02:51 PM.

  20. #5300

    Default Re: Discussion and Debate Community Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by AqD View Post
    Yes.
    Your civilian is a willing supporter of the war, a willing financial sponsor, a willing logistics worker when unarmed and a voluntary soldier when given any weapon. The line between soldiers and non-combatants in modern nations has no logical basis except to absolve people of their own mistakes and responsibilities.
    If you command someone to commit murder, you share their penalties. Why should civilians at war be different?
    So, thousands of 5 year old kids that died were marching on the streets of Hiroshima chanting death to Americans?
    The Armenian Issue

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