The hell happend to my coding there? At least auliya’s name should have bolded, right?
Well, in any country that is likely to listen to a college protest, weapons of mass destruction are no longer proliferating. Currently, the threat of nuclear war stems mostly from “rogue” nations like Iraq getting the Bomb, or unstable governments like Pakistan using it to maintain control. I don’t, personally, have so much of a problem with it being held on the day they dropped The Big One on Hiroshima, but calling it “Hiroshima Day” makes it sound like they were innocent victims, rather than the brutal aggressors in the conflict. Calling it, I dunno, “No Nukes Day” would be less problematical for me.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that there is a lot of meat for debate on this topic. Certainly, total disarmament is not an indefensible position, but neither is the policy of mutual destruction. Halo ignores that, prefering to lash out like a child throwing a tantrum rather than address any of the issues raised by other posters.
Are college kids still head banging? That is so mid-eighties. Regardless, based on his performance in this thread, I don’t think Halo’s actions are a valid alternative.
How can you possibly debate what happened at Hiroshima without bringing the US into it, even if the OP neglected to?
You contradict yourself here. No one can see the future, so how could Truman have possibly known the Japanese would surrender without the use of the bomb? And no one attacked the OP on a personal level until he started it. To put it in proper terms for this debate, Halo decided to use his first strike capability. The other posters here merely responded in kind. Halo’s got no one but himself to blame for all the scorched earth in here.
Pretty fuckin’ proud. Good spelling and good grammar shows that you respect the people with whom you are communicating. If someone cannot meet these basic standards, and at the same time they try to cop an attitude that they are somehow intellectually superior, well, that deserves a heapin’ helpin’ of scorn and derision.
And you know for a fact that Halo is dyslexic how, exactly?
I plead not guilty, auliya. I didn’t attack Halo personally until he had his message board nervous breakdown, after which I felt justified in doing so. This being the Pit and all, I don’t think I was out of line.
Look back at my early posts, if you don’t believe me. Besides, Halo has singled me out for special scorn, so he’s giving at least as good as he got.
Our intolerance for spelling mistakes is matched, I see, by your tolerance of abysmal spelling. I certainly hope you’re not a teacher.
If Halo is indeed dyslexic, I’m very sorry. But it’s natural to draw conclusions about one’s thought processes from one’s writing. Spelling aside, Halo sounds like a bunch of slogans with no connecting logical thread.
Hey, Halo, quick question. Do you condemn Japanese militarism? I think some of us would go easier on you if you condemned warlike behavior on all sides.
Sparc -> dyslexic
Sparc -> knows how to move curser to MS Office application and click
Look here Halo’s friend auliya, reading the thread should indicate that as re knowledge of Hiroshima and Nagasaki you and your friend are swimming with sharks. If you act like a cod in the shark pool you’re likely to get bitten. If to boot it’s a pool with lots of tiger sharks in it and you tug a little sign behind you that says; 'I hate tiger sharks’…hey you’re asking for it in a big way.
Further, trust me when I say that the thread is rampant with anti-war sentiment. Informed, intelligent and articulated anti-war sentiment of a kind neither of the two of you seem to be bent towards.
Whatever.
Sparc
I would like to thank all those who have so kindly missed the point of this thread and made derogatory insinuations about myself.
I would like to offer special thanks to the following.
Mr Moto: for helping me stir it up in here, and being “sorry” for me
Sparky: for being a fool, and distracting readers from my intoxicated outbursts
Miller: for his reasoned and enlightened… something
Whack-a-Mole: for his wonderful rationalising of our need to go to war with one another, congratulations!
Elf6c: simply for giving my mates and me a good laugh.
Fenris: for being a fool AND giving my mates and me a good hard laugh.
Thank you one and all.
For the record I condemn the exploitation of human beings during wartime, during war there are no winners, only those who lose less then others. I am not trying to diminish other tragedies by saying Hiroshima is the only atrocity in history we can learn from. But I do see Hiroshima Day as a powerful symbol and event through which we can raise issues related to war and remind people of the dangers of nuclear proliferation. It saddens me that so many have fallen into the rut of making excuses and inventing rationalisations. There is in my opinion something virtuous and human in feeling sympathy for even your enemy’s dead, a something too easily dispelled by excuses and utilitarian rationalisations.
Posting drunk and hiding behind good intentions, and making gratuitous snipes at well argued and respected mebers won’t redeem you Halo13.
You’ve acted childishly and arrogantly. The whole debate has been about the evils of warfare and you have made simple minded and derogatory attacks on the US, on reason, on informed debate and indirectly through that on the main principle that founds this board as well as all the respectable members who have graced your petty rant with their presence.
Remembering and honoring the victims of Hiroshima and by extension all the men and women who suffered and died in war throughout the history of mankind is commendable. Opposing nuclear proliferation in the world is too obvious to even comment on. Doing that while not bothering to understand the underlying facts and events properly is counterproductive to that cause and indicative of the very nature that brought about the tragedies you try to protest, i.e. lack of respect for our fellow human beings, lack of understanding for the dynamics of human society and a willful ignorance towards cause and effect in human conflict.
Pacifism in your flavor might as well be handed out with a complimentary gun and a Molotov cocktail.
Now fuck off back into your campus cocoon of misguided idealism, and let me peacefully dedicate tomorrow to remembering and understanding what really happened and what we need to do to avoid it ever happening again.
Sparc
My $.02. I’ve lived in Japan 11 years, including a year in Nagasaki. This 8/6 and 8/9 will mark my 12th observations. I have been to the Nagasaki memorial and seen the Hiroshima memorial several times on Japanese TV. My biggest imprssion has been that Hiroshima does not acknowledge the culpability of the Japanese war effort, while Nagasaki does. In other words, Hiroshima presents the case of here we were living our lives and the damned Americans dropped an atom bomb on us for some unfathomable reason. Nagasaki presents the case that there was a war and very bad things happened because of it. Because of these differences, I have much more respect for Nagasaki than Hiroshima. Too many people remember only 8/6 and forget 8/9. 
That would not be tomorrow in my previous post. I got a little lost in the calendar for a moment there.
You’re welcome but I really can’t take credit. If your over-the-top condescending smugness hadn’t been such good source material, I’d have hardly been able to provide the satire which gave your friends such a good laugh. (But a hint: They’re laughing at you, not with you.
Love and kisses
Fenris
By the time this thread got to the end of page two, I had forgotten we are in the Pit. This thread provided a splendid learning opportunity and I am glad that I had the chance to read it. I certainly learned much that I didn’t know before and, as always, I learned how little I do know.
Thanks to all who posted useful information for helping to fight ignorance.
Sparc you are a fool, pure and simple. Who is it that you imagine respects you? Your tired points are neither “well argued” nor new to me. And your insights are particularly limited. You knowledge of events in questions may outstrip my own, however it is apparent your understanding of the underlying principles of the state mechanism, warfare, humanitarianism, human rights, capitalism and class struggle are typically lacking. I am not in the least bit surprised by your empty and conceited responses.
Perhaps you should “fuck off” as you so eloquently put it, and go back to whatever nest of over-educated primates you came from. You are like an ape that has been taught to drive, sure you might make it from A to B, but who, or what, are you going to hit on the way?
Um…most rational people on the SDMB?
**
** That’s like saying that Hiroshima made a kinda loud BANG sound.
< snicker >
A red-blanket baby spews rhetoric!
Da comerade! Up the revolution! The masses will arise and throw of the shackles of the oppressive capitalists! (I’m trying to work “landlords” into it, but don’t seem to have the knack)
< snicker > Really Halo. This was great. More just like that quoted section please.
And hey! Can you bang your shoe on the keyboard to puctuate your dialectic?
**
Actually, as much as I liked the “evil commie” speech, anyone who uses “over-educated” as an insult should get a kick in the ass. A hard one. Metaphorically, if not literally. Really. With that quote, you just lost any hope of respect on this board, IMO.
Fenris, who thinks that education is good.
Well, I respect Sparc, even though I think he’s wrong about his analysis of nationalism (which reminds me, I really should go back to that thread. There were some points I wanted to make).
Anyway, Halo, here’s my take on the matter. I think nuclear weapons, and war in general is pretty bad, and I think most people here agree. Most posters here did seem to feel that the use of nuclear weapons in this case was neccesary, or at least believed to be neccesary by Truman. You seem to disagree, and that’s fine, of course. I’ll also note that the second half of the first page, as well as the first third of the second was a pretty civil debate about the use of the bombs, in which Sparc seemed to contend that they weren’t neccesary, so he was actually agreeing with your basic point there.
Then, you came back, and started cursing people out, and turned the rant into “America is evil”. It’s your right to believe that, of course, and America has done some pretty bad things in her history, but it sort of deviates from the main point of your rant. Your posts in this thread since that point all seem to be insulting. I realize that you seem to have strong opinions, but having strong opinions, and even being right, doesn’t make ad homenim attacks and being unnecessarily rude appropriate. Being angry is not in itself a virtue, and it does not take the place of well reasoned arguments. I think your actions in this thread were inappropriate, frankly, and counterproductive.
You indicated that
, but, largely because of your intemperance, you prevented it from being so. There are anti-war and pacifist members of the board, and members on the left of every stripe, for that matter. You kept this thread from opening up anti-war and pacifist discussion, though, by turning it into a debate about you, so that anyone who would attempt a real discussion (as was happening on page 2 of the thread) would be shouted out by you insulting others or them insulting you back.
Thank you Fenris,
I am obviously honor bound to not dignify that kind of crap with a reply, I owe you one.
Humbly yours
Sparc
And the above thanks applies to Captain Amazing as well.
…and yes do come back to the nationalism thread, it’s been going places.
Thanks once again guys.
Can you actually explain how a single one of those terms applies to the discussion at hand, or are you trying to cover up your vast gulf of ignorance by throwing around buzzwords from your Intro to Poli-Sci syllabus? I’m guessing the later.
What? It is? Um . . . What? Does anyone have a magic decoder ring here?
HALO, as an outside observer, allow me to tell you that you’re not coming out of this covered with glory. You sound rather like a petulant child, frankly, and you will find that such an impression will never assist you in making a point or persuading an audience. Furthermore, your use of Big Concepts to prove your erudition is not as impressive as I venture to guess you imagine it is. To my knowledge, a fair percentage of the people conversing with you (if we may dignify your exchanges with that term) have far more education than you do.
Perhaps it’s time to head for the door and show us your maturity and cooly rational brilliance in another thread? Because you’ve made a hash of this one.
Pardon, but I just have to say this:
WAR PIG! WAR PIG! WAR PIG!
Sorry, had it on infinite repeat this weekend.
Wasn’t Sunday your day of whining, Halo? How did it go?
Woo Hoo! Finally cracking the “Petuant Children’s Most Cited Top Ten List.” I would like the thank the academy and . . . .
Anyway- you may continue your meltdown Halo.
:wally