Efrem, let’s say for a moment that we understand that the homicide bombers are “angry, hopeless, proud, and stupid” to use your description. (But not evil :rolleyes: ). Let’s also say that we understand that the homicide bombers want to kill Jews, as many as possible, or even every last one in Israel. Ok. Now we understand those two things. What do you suggest we do next?
Well, if you start off with an incorrect assumption, no one is going to get very far.
It is certainly true that some members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad (and their suicide recruits) want all the Israelis dead. However, the blanket assumption that all of them want all the Israelis dead (with the implication that all of their supporters or, possibly, all of the Palestinians) want the same thing is simply an assumption without foundation.
A great many of the suicide bombers (and a larger number of their families and friends) simply want the Israeli government to stop putting arbitrary roadblocks in the way of the recognition of an independent Palestine.
For the first eight years following the Oslo talks, the Israelis continued to build settlements in the Occupied Territory. Throughout the entire process, each Israeli government has made statements to the effect that the Palestinians could have a country “some day” but that “now” was not the time to talk about it.
It is entirely possible that a good faith effort on the part of the Israelis to actually deal with the creation of the Palestinian state would remove the support of all but a small group of the most rabid haters for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. (Barak came the closest to such an effort, but even his proposals refused to address several issues that the Palestinians considered crucial.)
Mischaracterizing a whole range of Palestinian beliefs and goals as a simple blood lust effectively prevents anyone from actually dealing with the situation.
To Sparc & esp. to Coldfire:
What’s bullshit is y’all’s refusal to recognize that the atomic bombings in Japan weren’t to instill fear in the civilian populace.
Just so you know: I think that any atomic bomb is a bad thing. There is a degree of badness though but apparently you’re not willing to accept such a thing. The long-drawn-out attack on Japan which was still being planned in case the Imperial Army didn’t surrender would’ve been, by most reputable accounts, a very bad thing indeed.
I’m sorry, Monty . . . but you are honestly saying that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intended solely to destroy military targets?
I mean, if you are (mind you, I said if), then I think you have some pretty large blinders on.
er, “bombs,” of course.
**
You have got to be kidding. It’s not just some members of Hamas and Jihad that want to eliminate Israel, it’s a fucking majority of Palestinians who want to do so. By “eliminating Israel”, I’m not guessing they mean “buy em a one way ticket to New Jersey” so fuck people who think like that. 68% approve of homicide bombings against Israeli civilians, for heaven’s sake.
**
First of all, how do you know what the homicide bombers want? Secondly, who cares what they want? I’d say, and without going out on a limb, that fully 100% of homicide bombers want to kill Jews.
**
Blah, Blah, Blah. A group of people are trying to kill Jews (remember what a fun-fest it was the last time?), and all you can do is hand-wring about settlements and Oslo.
C’mon, Monty, you can do better than that. I’m fully aware that the atomic bombings were not meant to instill fear among civilians. They were meant to instill fear among the Japanse powers that be - and they used civilian lives to accomplish this.
I never once stated that the purpose was to scare civilians, I merely suggested that sacrificing tens of thousands of innocent lives is quite a price to pay to make a military adversary back down. I’m sure Sparc’s retort will be similar.
Maybe, maybe not - we just don’t know.
But for reference: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor cost 68 civilian lives, and 2,335 military lives (source).
Now, on to the atomic bombings.
Check out this webpage. A few quotes:
Now, I’m sure a number of those 340,000 people were non-civilians. But the pattern is clear: Pearl Harbor was a rather efficient attack on military targets (rather unprovoked, granted). 68 civilian lives, while a tragedy, do NOT compare to 340,000 lives.
Yes, the bombs ended the war, and a full-on conventional war with the Japanese would have cost a lot of lives, too. But chances are (barring Dresden style carpet bombings and the like) that:[ul][li]The majority of those lives would have been military, and:No way in HELL would the number have been anywhere near 340,000.[/ul]So, yes, I agree there’s such a thing as a “degree of badness”. I just happen to disagree with you when it comes to what would have been the worst outcome.[/li]
Also, I’d like to thank Collounsbury and tomndebb for their eloquent and rational responses regarding the Jewish/Palestinian matter. I could not have expressed it better, even if I had used 2,000 posts to try.
andros: NO! I did not say, nor even imply, that. Don’t read into my posts what’s not there, please.
Coldfire: Actually, some reputable estimates put the potential number of lives lost at quite a higher number than you do. Anyway, the wholesale slaughter that the “Japanese powers that be” were willing to cause (by forcing everyone into the fighting, demonizatio of the Allied forces, etc.) is certainly pretty bad.
But since that didn’t happen, and the atomic bombings did, feel free to go ahead and bitch about how evil the Allied forces, and especially the United States, were back then. Such a position is a discredit to your usually otherwise elegant and eloquent arguments on this site.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Anyone who has read my posts on this message board knows that I’ll be the last to discredit the Allied forces.
But I’ll call a spade a fucking spade if it’s the last thing I’ll do.
Now, stop twisting my words and produce those damn “reputable estimates” already.
Whiner.
You bet your sweet ass it will be.
Lay off Monty. If you read a good number of posts I’ve made around here regarding the opposing side of the war in question, you should be able to infer that I rather lean towards the Allied side in my support and that labeling the allies as evil would be the last thing I intended as well. But what you’re implicitly stating regarding the bombs is simply ridiculous.
I agree with every response you got from Coldfire including the clarification of intent being to intimidate the Japanese powers to be and that the method was what it was, a huge number of civilian casualties. I’ll be a little less diplomatic and claim that the people’s moral were also a direct target, which Truman’s very own administration will be kind enough to verify for me:
This from the very government that took the actual decision. Can there be any doubt towards their intent and awareness of the method they deployed? Was this evil? Was it even required as a means to end the war? Well that’s more difficult to answer as we shall see.
With the “degree of badness” argument you’re moving into an area were we could have an informed debate, rather than dealing with the asinine retorts you’ve given to fairly innocuous statement by Coldfire and myself that you overstate and misread as being Allied bashing.
It’s an interesting debate and one that still rages you know. After the Potsdam Conference after which the terms for surrender were rejected by the Japanese it was felt that something had to be done, but what? A-bomb, carpet bombing or invasion? It even divided the administration with Eisenhower pro invasion and pretty much everyone else pro the bomb or carpet-bombing. After the fact some serious soul searching was done regards the correctness of the rather harsh measure taken.
Now, the debate still rages on how correct this assumption was and what the war from August to November or December would have cost in lives on both sides. If you like we can have that debate.
All in all I’ll sum up my viewpoint. The Axis needed to be crushed. The way the war evolved these became acceptable means of confrontation on both sides. At the end of the war things might have gotten out of hand a tad bit as regards the wanton destruction. The shock of the winners at what the war cost in civilian lives on both sides led to much soul searching and eventually to many new and better rules and conventions of war. Was it bad? Sure it was bad. Was it justified? Overall; yes, in the details; who knows?
Sparc
Well, gee, you guys…I don’t ever recall calling any of the Allied countries’ governments terrorists. So, think about that for a second and you might understand a tad why I made the retorts, which btw were not asinine, that I did. War is not pretty and I certainly don’t excuse the bad acts of any governments during a war.
Coldfire: Check the threads discussing the atomic bombings on this site.
So, not only do you wrongfully accuse me of calling the Allied forces evil, you also refuse to provide your supposed evidence to the contrary. I have to go find it myself.
I think I’m done with you, Monty. I suggest you send a recent picture of yourself to Merriam-Webster. They can use it for their definition of the word “weasel” in the next edition.
Not to get in themiddle here, but I thought part of the rationale for Nagasaki was an object lesson to Stalin on potential consequences if he caused trouble.
eh?
Well neither do I. As I recall it I was the one quoting DSeid and agreeing that by the rather astute definition of ‘terrorism’ he posited; some of the acts of the Allied powers during WWII were acts of terror against the opponent’s civilian population or if you like to have it formulated in another perfectly equal sentence in the English language: ‘acts of terrorism’.
A point you opposed and claimed to be nonsense as the A-bombs were directed at military targets primarily and any civilian targets were collateral damage.
Then we argued that, and I gave you cites that prove that the bombs were indeed mainly intended to instill fear and break the morale of the population in Japan. To boot I gave you cites not from the Japanese perspective, nor from some distant analyst, but I quoted the reports made by the same guys that actually dropped the bombs in question!
Is my keyboard turning out Cyrillic text and Swahili at your end? 'Cause it looks pretty much like Roman characters and in English on my side. (albeit somewhat convoluted and imperfect as would be the plight of a dyslexic bilingual)
Here’s an idea: maybe you should just give up now Monty, you have been proven wrong!
Sparc
Good grief, Coldie. Get a grip. I didn’t accuse you of calling any of the Allies terrorists. Read this freaking thread. JJ called the US terrorists.
And you take the asinine path of calling me a weasel?!
To recap and perchance to apologize to two particular posters:
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JJ called the US terrorists because of two particular acts during a war fifty-odd years ago.
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I pointed out that those two acts were not terrorist acts but rather acts of war conducted during a war.
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Coldfire pointed out that it’s semantics.
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I disagreed.
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Someone pointed out that the attack on Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military target.
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I neglected to point out that nobody had declared war against the US at the time the attack happened, and thus, that’s what’s known as an unprovoked act of war.
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I also neglected to point out that the Japanese military government (and btw, I really do consider Hirohito to have been a war criminal and he should’ve gotten a hastened trip to the afterlife or at least an imprisoned remainder of his life here) essentially brainwashed the general population as to what to expect in the event of an Allied attack on the Japanese home islands.
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Coldfire wanted postings of the higher estimates of how many people would’ve died.
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I directed him to read this site. My reasoning, maybe flawed, was that there’ve been more than a few threads discussing this and I really didn’t want to rehash that.
& Finally ('bout time, I hear someone saying):
- I don’t think either Coldfire or Sparc is stupid, illogical, or anything else that could be considered detrimental. I do think Coldfire’s last posting was hitting the bottom, but that’s just my take on that. I’d appreciate some folks remembering that I spent 20 years in the US military and I guess I tend to take it personally when said military is accused of being a terrorist organization.
Monty, I absolutely did not call the US terrorists. Read my post:
Don’t put words in my mouth to fit the mental image you appear to have of me and my opinions.
I await your apology.
Not quite. This is a misconception that probably stems from a completely crackpot idea by the military genius General Douglas McArthur (later responsible for the whole Korea disaster and forcefully removed from command). McArthur actually seriously suggested to deploy the bomb on Berlin, right in front of the Soviet forces to a) stop their advance and b) ‘show ‘em who the boss was’. Together with Patton’s idea to carry on the US/Commonwealth offensive into Moscow it probably qualifies as one of the most moronic ideas on ‘our side’ during the war. Especially since there was much hope for USSR’s support against Japan as soon as the European theatre had been rolled up.
Thankfully saner minds prevailed on both issues and even if madness had been left to rule, the bomb wasn’t ready in time to do that.
If there was (and there most probably was) some intent to demonstrate power towards the Soviets, the first bomb should have been enough, and I am fairly certain that Truman and the boys saw it that way as well. Ask anyone you know who was around, the world was in deep, deep shock as soon as the news of the bomb came through. I am sure that even Stalin was pretty awestruck already after the first.
Sparc
In fairness to Monty, I should mention that I also said this:
If you choose to interpret that as calling the US terrorists, all well and good, but I also would mention Dresden in the same terms, something that was carried out largely by British forces. Do I think the US or British governments are “terrorists”? No. Do I think they have engaged in acts of terror? Yes.
You’re not getting it, jjimm.
That’s why. Those who commit crimes are criminals and those who commit acts of terror are terrorists. Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but I don’t think I am.