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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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think positive wrote: | When the flyers dropped the day before, why didn't Japan surrender then? |
Well, if you've read the article, the answer could be that the military leadership didn't care all that much and were willing to fight to the death no matter how many bombs were dropped – it was only the prospect of conflict on two fronts that forced their hand. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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And yet you hold the US solely responsible for the deaths?
If you attacked me with a knife, and then I pull a gun on you and say drop the knife or I'll kill all the people around you that you are responsible for, what would you do? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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If I were a crazy psycho, I'd keep trying to stab you, and if you carried out your threat (say, by shooting my family), you'd have murdered a whole bunch of innocent people. You'd be getting life in jail and rightly so. Do you agree? _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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True.id just shoot you!
Bit hard to aim a bomb that accurately though, anyhow, I've said my piece _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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They aimed it accurately, TP. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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I meant to pick off the military! _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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God almighty, talk about a dog with a bone.
David, here's another thought. The bombings of Japan indirectly saved countless millions of other lives because, once everyone had seen what they could do, no one was game to do it again.
So the whole cold war became a dick measuring contest with the ever present threat of a nuclear attack between the USA and USSR, but neither side was willing to actually push the button as the consequences were clear.
It also means that any rogue nation now knows that they can only push so far, because the big powers have the ability to turn them into silhouette art. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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^ That's actually a far weaker argument. Martin Bryant likely had the same effect on a smaller scale on gun violence in Australia; what effect does that have on the ethics of his decision to walk into a cafe and start shooting random people? Are we defend atrocities on the grounds that they sometimes make it harder for people to do something twice as bad in the future?
And again, this gets back to my criticism of looking at things as binary: sure Hiroshima/Nagasaki may have been a key factor in preventing the major Cold War powers from performing some applied science on each other's civilian populations. But there were many other things that could have prevented that hypothetical scenario too that didn't necessarily involve killing hundreds of thousands, like, say, diplomacy or a mutual nuclear disarmament policy. So, no, I don't accept that as anything more than (at best) one of history's grim paradoxes.
think positive wrote: | I meant to pick off the military! |
Yeah, but the point is that they weren't trying to do that. This wasn't some kind of 'collateral damage'; they were aiming it directly at a civilian population and were either trying to kill as many civilians as possible or were apathetic about how many died. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Dunno why I'm wasting my breath, but so what if they aimed at civilian population? So did the Germans during the blitz on London, so did Brits when they bombed Berlin.
They only had two bombs. What suitable military target was there in Japan that would have had sufficient impact to bring about surrender?
The decision was made at the time, by people living at that time, living through all the combined elements applicable to that time including a prolonged war, the culture etc who had access to all the information used to make that decision.
Trying to persistently reverse engineer a justification for why it shouldn't happened from 70 years in the future with the benefit of almost none of those things, simply because you don't agree with it is not going to convince anyone who didn't already agree. I'd personally also consider it's not healthy.
Let the rock roll back Sisyphus, it ain't happening. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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You're starting to sound like P4S (except he's being sarcastic) – "they only had two bombs, what were they supposed to do with them?"
I'm sorry you find this so annoying; personally, I'm happy to argue the case on the ethics of the American civil war or the Crusades until the cows come home. History is important because it teaches us about ourselves and gives us an insight into the future. You're not going to be able to convince me otherwise, so you may well be wasting your breath. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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David wrote: | You're starting to sound like P4S (except he's being sarcastic) – "they only had two bombs, what were they supposed to do with them?"
I'm sorry you find this so annoying; personally, I'm happy to argue the case on the ethics of the American civil war or the Crusades until the cows come home. History is important because it teaches us about ourselves and gives us an insight into the future. You're not going to be able to convince me otherwise, so you may well be wasting your breath. |
Haha, so tell me, what should I look out for in Washington DC and on the freedom trail in Boston? _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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What happened to it? |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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think positive wrote: | David wrote: | You're starting to sound like P4S (except he's being sarcastic) – "they only had two bombs, what were they supposed to do with them?"
I'm sorry you find this so annoying; personally, I'm happy to argue the case on the ethics of the American civil war or the Crusades until the cows come home. History is important because it teaches us about ourselves and gives us an insight into the future. You're not going to be able to convince me otherwise, so you may well be wasting your breath. |
Haha, so tell me, what should I look out for in Washington DC and on the freedom trail in Boston? |
Donald Trump supporters! They're everywhere, I've heard. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Location: somewhere
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David wrote: | think positive wrote: | David wrote: | You're starting to sound like P4S (except he's being sarcastic) – "they only had two bombs, what were they supposed to do with them?"
I'm sorry you find this so annoying; personally, I'm happy to argue the case on the ethics of the American civil war or the Crusades until the cows come home. History is important because it teaches us about ourselves and gives us an insight into the future. You're not going to be able to convince me otherwise, so you may well be wasting your breath. |
Haha, so tell me, what should I look out for in Washington DC and on the freedom trail in Boston? |
Donald Trump supporters! They're everywhere, I've heard. |
Well we start in the good Ol south of Atlanta Georgia! Then Through the Carolina"s, so I should get some great Walmart pics! _________________ You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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David wrote: | You're starting to sound like P4S (except he's being sarcastic) – "they only had two bombs, what were they supposed to do with them?"
I'm sorry you find this so annoying; personally, I'm happy to argue the case on the ethics of the American civil war or the Crusades until the cows come home. History is important because it teaches us about ourselves and gives us an insight into the future. You're not going to be able to convince me otherwise, so you may well be wasting your breath. |
I'm not going to bother trying to convince you of anything. You fixate on a subject to a degree I find alarming, and once you do your mind is closed to anything but pushing your own point.
Absolutely you learn from history, the past can be a great teacher, but trying to view decisions made and actions taken in the past through the lens of the future isn't learning from the past.
I can view decisions I made in the past objectively because I was there, I made them and I know what influencing factors were at play. That can inform my decision making in the future but doesn't mean that if I could go back in time without the benefit of future knowledge I'd make different ones back then. All the decisions I've made, even the dumb ones (actually particularly those) go toward making me who I am today.
Trying to critique decisions made by others from 70 years in the future without the benefit of having walked in their shoes and with zero real understanding of what they were thinking is at best an exercise in academic wanking and at worst utter subjective garbage unless you look at objective facts. Then you have a predictor,
You want to learn from the past? Try to understand the reasons people did what they did without judgement. Then you might get a far greater insight. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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