No, we cannot do anything to stop Hitler from getting the Bomb - innocent civilians might get hurt by our actions.
Regards,
Shodan
No, just ignored them.
Then don’t stop Hitler from getting the bomb. I don’t give a shit.
You don’t give a shit whether we kill civilians to stop Hitler from getting a bomb, or you don’t give a shit whether Hitler kills civilians when he uses the bomb?
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
No, just ignored them.
[/QUOTE]
‘Mr. President, how is our policy of ignoring the Japanese working out so far?’
‘Well, Jim, it’s working out pretty good. We ignored them last month and they only sank 6 of our cargo ships, shot up a few of our island bases, and invaded New Zealand. But hell, I never left anything in New Zealand anyway, so who cares?’ lots of laughter
‘Seriously, though, while they have pretty much cut all our trade routes to the Pacific and continue to make incursions into our shipping lanes and periodically bomb the crap out of our remaining bases, things are looking up. We are rapidly running out of cargo ships, so we shouldn’t lose as many in the future. Likewise, we are running out of planes for them to shoot up, Naval vessels for them to sink and bases for them to bomb. It shouldn’t be to long before the Japanese simply have nothing of ours worth shooting at…well, until they get around to hitting the Panama Canal or blowing the crap out of our facilities along the West Coast, and that will probably be months or even years. When the do get around to that we’ll just continue our successful policy of just letting them do whatever they want and trying to stay out of their way. We wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, after all, and if we confront them, it’s always possible that pieces of our dying citizens might just cause them harm.’
‘On a sadder note, we have lost contact with the Australians last week. Hope it works out for them, and all, but we don’t want to get involved in their troubles. Besides, as I said, I never left nothing in Australia either, so no need to go back there!’ loud laughter
‘As to the rumors concerning Alaska, I just want to go on record that they are false, false FALSE! We have NOT contested any of the Japanese landings or incursions in the state. In fact, we’ve pulled our military out of harms way as quickly as they have come. We’ve even left them some cute little Rising Sun door mats, hand crafted by some of the natives out of real seal skin! Plus snow shoes and anything else they might want. Sometimes the Japanese catch up to us as we run away, but we try and hide as best we can.’
‘In conclusion, though it’s sad that many of our service personnel have died trying to run away or stay out of Japans way, though many of our merchant marines have died bravely, and though much of our trade in the Pacific has been completely halted, America WILL persevere. We are on the right track, on the right course, and eventually the Japanese WILL get tired of knocking us around and invading other countries, and they will come to their senses and we can all be friends again. For not, good night, and God Save The USA!’. Golf Clap
-XT
I’m only responsible for what I do.
Kunilou, while Japan did have a nuclear bomb project, it never even got to the stage of enriching uranium, let alone actually building or detonating a bomb. Snell’s story has been pretty thoroughly discredited. Ironically, the consensus in Japan was that even the US would not be able to build a nuclear bomb fast enough to use it in the war.
Bullshit. You are responsible for what you don’t do as well. If you stand by and watch someone starve while eating a big fat sandwich, then throw the leftovers away rather than helping the person, you are as guilty as if you put a gun to their head and shoot them.
Juts out of curiosity, how many of you would be willing to set your own child on fire to end a war. Would you be willing to bomb a target that had your own children in it if you knew it would end a war?
I wouldn’t, and I won’t do it it to anybody else’s kids either.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Juts out of curiosity, how many of you would be willing to set your own child on fire to end a war. Would you be willing to bomb a target that had your own children in it if you knew it would end a war?
I wouldn’t, and I won’t do it it to anybody else’s kids either.
[/QUOTE]
And you would be equally unwilling to bomb some other persons kids to prevent your own from being burned, right?
-XT
This is not analogous. This would involve activity on my part only, not anyone else’s, and would not require me to set any toddlers on fire.
And you would be equally unwilling to bomb some other persons kids to prevent your own from being burned, right?
[/quote]
Yes.
Are you gong to answer my question now?
You didn’t ask about toddlers. You said you were only responsible for your actions. I pointed out you were also responsible for your inactions.
Your moral code leads to results I find ridiculous. You’ll sit back and watch what happened to Nanking happen to Delhi, for example, and feel you have done nothing wrong. You find it moral to permit the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents to avoid having to kill a smaller number of innocents yourself. The price of your being able to sleep easily is the death and torture of vast numbers of others.
It’s morally bankrupt.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Yes.
[/QUOTE]
Then you have serious issues, is all I can say. You would let your kids burn rather than blow up some other persons kids.
Your stupid question? Sure, I’ll answer it:
Would I be willing to sacrifice my children to prevent millions from dying? I don’t really know, to be honest. I’d be willing to RISK my children (and myself and wife) to fight a war such as WWII. But since it would take magical powers (i.e. you light your kids on fire and the war magically ends), it’s one of those silly Faustian Choice thingies, so I’m not really sure. Since it’s just a stupid constructed question that really doesn’t relate to the subject at hand, and you are using it merely to wave your hands and try and further muddy the water, I don’t see the point in really agonizing over such a decision, since in reality no one has the power to make such a choice work. Well, unless you believe in God or the Devil, I guess…
-XT
If the alternative is that my child will continue to be used by the enemy as a human shield to stop anyone interfering as they continue to commit atrocities (like the Rape of Nanking)? Yes.
Well, to nit-pick - the US didn’t get into the war with Japan because of Nanking, and the US certainly didn’t get into the war to free Asia from Japan rule. The US didn’t get into the war with Germany to free the Jews. Those were unintended but obviously very fortunate consequences of the wars.
Otherwise we would have been warring with Britain over India, for example. Or with ourselves; the US colonization of the Phillipines was hardly US soldiers sitting around with their Filipino friends singing Kumbaya.
There were lots of factors behind the US entering the war. Trying to stop atrocities like Nanking or the Holocaust wasn’t one of them.
If I can stop those things without doing anything equally immoral myself, I’ll do it. I’m not going to add to the immorality, though.
Are youi going to asnwer my question about whether you’d be willing tos et your own child on fire to end a war?
[QUOTE=DragonAsh]
Well, to nit-pick - the US didn’t get into the war with Japan because of Nanking, and the US certainly didn’t get into the war to free Asia from Japan rule. The US didn’t get into the war with Germany to free the Jews. Those were unintended but obviously very fortunate consequences of the wars.
[/QUOTE]
Since, afaik anyway, no one is saying this, I’m unsure who’s nits you are picking.
-XT
Then you have serious issues, is all I can say. You would let your kids burn rather than blow up some other persons kids.
[/quote]
It’s called having a moral center.
You said you would answer the question and then you didn’t anwer it. I tried to make it simple for you by asking whether you’d be willing to bomb a target that you knew had your child in it, and if you think it’s contrived to say that dropping bombs will magically end a war, then how can you say that the bombings of Japan ended a war?
I’ll try to put it very simply, if you knew your own wife and children were right in the killzone for the bombing of Hiroshima (in an anrea where you knew they had zero chance of survival) would you still be willing to drop the bomb. You have no trouble pondring whether you’d do it to someone else’s wife and kids, so you should have no hesitation about doing it to your own, right?
To DragonAsh, who fancies himself a far greater scholar than he has any right to.
And? I don’t claim to compare Japan to every other country. Their suicide rate is also out of line with Zimbabwe. That says nothing, because raw material circumstances do not dictate suicide rates. Neither neccessarily does “high” culture.
Nor does any historical association have anything to do with it. You have implicitly accepted by refusing to even mildly contradict my data that national leaders definitely didn’t commit suicide on a different scale from the supposedly culturally-stigmatized suicide in Germany. If common people did, it would seem to be a response to their leaders’ indoctrination, and not to their (supposed) enemies. Since both suffered a rather total disconnect in the post-war years, I am not certain how some WW2 nonsense influences things today.
You have, in no way, shape, or form, actually read anything I’ve written, have you? I mean, you totally just skimmed it and them posted some vague and irrelevant response, didn’t you?