That’s not the same thing at all. The child wouldn’t be dying by anyone else’s actions, and saving the child would not require you to set any toddlers on fire.
Well then neither country was a threat.
Nothing.
Yes.
Neville Chamberlain gave away land.
So what SHOULD we have done when Japan and Hitler declared war? Just sat around with our thumbs up our asses? You think they’d just say, “Oh, gee, they’re not going to fight, oh well, never mind.”
What should the Allies have done? Or China?
The longer the war went on, the more of those toddlers you’re so concerned about would have died. Whether they be from Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Russia, Italy, etc. Imperial Japan had to be stopped. For godsakes, did you even READ the links I posted?
(I’d pit Dio, but at this point, I don’t have the patience for it.)
What if the only way you could keep your land was setting babies on fire? Would one baby-on-fire be worth, say, ten square miles of land? If not, then would that mean you think land is more valuable than unburned babies? How monstrous.
Already answered. Nothing.
Informed Dopers should stop referencing the United States Strategic Bombing Survey as if it’s a non-biased stand alone reference. It’s not.
It was written by the Army Air Forces to support and justify the creation of a separate military department for the Air Force, (which was created in 1947) by touting the effects of strategic bombing.
Because the survey was a tool used by supporters of the Air Force to justify their existence, it’s not at all surprising that it states that strategic bombing won the war.
Not Britain’s land. He just let Germany and Czechoslovakia know that he was declining to aid Britain’s allies in Europe, and that, if Czechoslovakia wanted to avoid war, it would need to make the best deal it could.
Oddly enough other people’s land. Just like you are proposing the US should have done.
Now, talking about Germany, and the British area bombing policy in particular. As I asked before, and you didn’t answer, what alternative did Britain have?
To fight on the battlefield like men.
You have to remember that every institution has its own bias. The military leaders who were saying the atom bombings were unnecessary were saying this in the late forties when the American government was planning on scaling down the armed forces to virtually nothing because we could now rely on the atomic bomb for defense. The generals and admirals were making a case for maintaining the regular armed forces.
Why? The British government had no obligation to protect Germans. It did have an obligation to protect the British. Why send British soldiers off to die in battle when there was an alternative that would produce fewer British casualties?
What? You mean we should have surrendered in 1941?
And how/where was Britain going to do that?
And I’d like you to sit your preaching ass down with even one of the heroes of Bomber Command and tell them they were taking the cowards way out.
who said anything about sending them to Germany?
Bombing German and French docks was an essential part of invasion prevention. If you do that, civilians get killed. Including burned toddlers.
So don’t do it.
I guess it’s okay if it’s your toddlers burn. By not taking action to prevent it, at least your hands will be clean.
Personally I’d rather a few innocent German babies got burned than my country invaded, occupied, and my grandparents certainly incarcerated, and likely executed for their political affiliations. I guess that makes me a bastard.
Where was Britain going to fight Germany “on the battlefield like men” to use your quaint, sexist expression?
Okay, we got it. Hitler was trying to build a bomb, therefore Hitler had to be stopped. The Japanese weren’t trying to build a bomb, therefore the U.S. had no business getting involved in a war between Japan, China, Korea, Indochina, etc.
Except, Japan was trying to build a bomb, and may even had gotten farther along than the Germans ever did.
There’s no moral relativism in saying Hitler had to be stopped, but not Japan?
Given that Japan and Germany were allies, is it reasonable to assume that the U.S., Britain and Soviets believed they might be sharing information on weapons research? Given that not unreasonable assumption at the time, and the benefit of hindsight in knowing that Japan actually did have an active nuclear weapons program, would you concede that Japan had to be stopped?
And, my second question. Since you disapprove of any action that would kill civilians, and since the Chamberlain-Daladier negotiations at Munich had been proven to be spectacularly unsuccessful, what do you propose as an appropriate course of action after September 1, 1939?
That’s The Great and Powerful Dio you’re addressing. He’d pretend they didn’t exist.