10 replies to this topic

[Ungodly]

The Holy Roman Cash Cult has a centuries long history of being involved in persecution. Whether persecuting Arabs in the Middle Ages, or Spaniards during The Inquisition, Native Americans who had the nerve to not be Catholic or any of dozens of other pograms for cash and power, yet all of the time whining incessantly about how they, the HRCC, are constant victims of persecution. I am, like, so sure.

Just now reading about the 66th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki Japan I was reminded of something we were taught by an HRCC sales representative (priest) in a Catholic high school about 47 years ago today. The claim was made with a straight face that the US government chose to nuke Nagasaki because it was the center of Catholic recruitment in the mostly Buddhist and Shinto nation of Japan.

I can still remember Father George (first name) saying that in religion class. I remember looking around the room wondering if any of my classmates also realized it was obviously ridiculous and noticing no such reaction.

On the surface of it one might conclude that an object can not be evil, only actions. But I make an exception when it comes to nuclear weapons. I am unable to imagine a probable decent use for them, and consider their mere existence to be a violation of common decency and respect for life.

I also do not believe that any anti-Catholic sentiment was involved in our second crime against humanity. I regret Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I reject the validity of nukes.

What do you think of mass murder for peace?

[Joe Bloe]

I can just imagine Father George's mind racing ahead as he tried to make the facts fit into his fantasy.

He probably knew there was a Catholic community in Nagasaki (him being a Catholic and all) and he was probably getting ready to make the story seem a bit closer to home by mentioning that Catholics (not heathens, but people just like us!) were also included among the victims. But then he thought why not go the last few yards? Why not say the Catholics were the intended targets and the Japanese were just collateral damage? "Well why not, indeed? They're just a bunch of kids and I'm a Catholic priest. They're my property, I can tell 'em what I want." And he did !

I'll bet he didn't mention that story in the staff room at recess time though.

Ungodly, on 09 August 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:

What do you think of mass murder for peace?

Short answer "No."

But what to do when somebody attacks with brutal force? Diplomacy won't work. Surrender is probably not a good idea, and pea-shooters against rifles will be ineffective.

I really can't answer your question.

[Storybook]

Ungodly, on 09 August 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:

Just now reading about the 66th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki Japan I was reminded of something we were taught by an HRCC sales representative (priest) in a Catholic high school about 47 years ago today. The claim was made with a straight face that the US government chose to nuke Nagasaki because it was the center of Catholic recruitment in the mostly Buddhist and Shinto nation of Japan.

Oh, for fuck sakes! What a load of shit.

[Ungodly]

Joe Bloe, on 09 August 2011 - 02:41 PM, said:

But what to do when somebody attacks with brutal force? Diplomacy won't work. Surrender is probably not a good idea, and pea-shooters against rifles will be ineffective.

I really can't answer your question.

Certainly self defense is a hardwired reaction in those species that have survived, and I would not suggest nobody should ever defend their person or their loved ones, but that is a far cry from wiping out 100,000 civilians in the blink of an eye because of the actions of their military.

If people in the death/kill industry want to kill other people who are also in the death/kill industry it seems unlikely in our present culture they can be persuaded to stop, But the death/kill industry can still make huge profits on war mongering without having to target civilian populations.

[Cousin Ricky]

Ungodly, on 09 August 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:

I also do not believe that any anti-Catholic sentiment was involved in our second crime against humanity. I regret Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I reject the validity of nukes.

At least our 4th:

• Genocide of the Native Americans
  
• Slavery
  
• Hiroshima
  
• Nagasaki

I'm unclear on the circumstances of our conventional bombing of Dresden and other German and Japanese cities, but that might be another.

Ungodly, on 09 August 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:

What do you think of mass murder for peace?

Like fucking for virginity, of course.

Joe Bloe, on 09 August 2011 - 02:41 PM, said:

Short answer "No."

But what to do when somebody attacks with brutal force? Diplomacy won't work. Surrender is probably not a good idea, and pea-shooters against rifles will be ineffective.

I really can't answer your question.

I agree to the need for defense, and I agree that Germany and Japan were unquestionably on the wrong side in WWII. But is the deliberate bombing of civilians a legitimate defense?

The justification normally given for our use of nuclear weapons was that it saved more lives than it took. In particular, the Japanese surrender forestalled an invasion that would have cost perhaps a half million Allied lives. I find this unconvincing for the following reasons:

• Why Nagasaki? Was the vaporization of one city not enough?
  
• Why Hiroshima? Why a non-military target? Of course, this can be asked of our non-nuclear bombings as well. It is not an easy question.
  
• Japan was on the brink of surrender early in 1945, but they stubbornly insisted on keeping their emperor. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender, even for a condition as trivial as keeping their emperor. Of course, we were not responsible for Japanese stubbornness, but we still had the moral responsibility to assess our response. Was 200,000 Japanese lives really worth our stubborn insistence on a concession that was meaningless to us? (FWIW, 200,000 Japanese lives meant nothing to most Americans at the time, because they were Japs and not fully human.) Was 500,000 American lives really worth our stubborn insistence on a concession that was meaningless to us?
  
• As you know, we let them keep their emperor. We killed 200,000 people over an issue that we gave to them anyway.

[Joe Bloe]

I'm not being flippant when I say that this is a "where do you draw the line" problem - and no matter where the line is drawn, both sides can mount a (relatively) reasonable argument for having the line moved a little bit further in one direction or another.

Of course it is completely wrong to kill innocent civilians, but even so, there are still problems:

During World War II in Australia, soldiers awaiting mobilization were billeted in private homes - and the homeowners had no say in the matter. A sergeant would march through the house, decide how many soldiers could be accommodated and that was the end of the matter.

There were about 2,000 permanent citizens in my hometown and just as many soldiers were billeted there. My grandmother told me the troops would march down the road and at each house the sergeant would check his list and send the appropriate number of soldiers into each house.

So here's the dilemma: Was my hometown a legitimate military target? The bomb that killed a couple of battalions of fully armed soldiers would also be the bomb that killed 2,000 non-combatant civilians (including my dear old granny and my mother).

As I said earlier, I don't have an answer.

[creevey82]

I'm new to this forum, so bear with me please

A question that has always plagued me; why hit a civilian target at all? The idea of the bombs (unless i'm sorely mistaken) was to curb the fanaticism of the Japanese at the time (who firmly believed that their emperor was a demi-god, and may well have fought to the last man). But why civilians? Surely if I had seen a MASSIVE f*ckoff white light and explosion say... 200 km's away, that would have done it for me... I could have inspected the wasteland that used to be my favourite national park, and decided "they can wipe us out, and our 'god' can't do a thing to stop it, that's it, i'm out".

If that seems a little naive I can only apologise, but had it been me with my finger on the map, I would have slept alot better knowing that i'd destroyed a small eco-system, and not 3 generations of... Nagasaki...ans(?) Nagasakii(?).

At any rate, I take it that Father George was suggesting that the Americans didn't want more Catholics in Japan? Seems kinda counter productive to their endgame there. Or did Father George completely lack any view of the world other than; 'they're all out to get us!"

Edited by creevey82, 10 January 2012 - 09:16 PM.

[Joe Bloe]

creevey82, on 10 January 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

A question that has always plagued me; why hit a civilian target at all? The idea of the bombs (unless i'm sorely mistaken) was to curb the fanaticism of the Japanese at the time (who firmly believed that their emperor was a demi-god, and may well have fought to the last man). But why civilians? Surely if I had seen a MASSIVE f*ckoff white light and explosion say... 200 km's away, that would have done it for me... I could have inspected the wasteland that used to be my favourite national park, and decided "they can wipe us out, and our 'god' can't do a thing to stop it, that's it, i'm out".

The American Government did consider dropping a "demonstration" bomb in a relatively unpopulated area. As far as I recall, they decided against it because:
(1) If it was a dud, the demonstration would serve no purpose
(2) They had only a few bombs at the time and felt they had to use them to maximum effect.

There is a paper on the subject here:
http://www.endusmili...d_decision.html

[creevey82]

Damned if there isn't some powerful and cringe-worthy material in that doco sir. It always boggles my mind that the fate of so many depended on, and in fact were destroyed by the decisions of so few.

I'm still trying to figure out how dropping a dud in a city as opposed to a forest would have been any different... a dud is a dud no? If you can elaborate on that point i'd be grateful.

Please excuse me if I sound like an atheist being preachy here, but it would seem to me that a christian's argument for the bombing, a-la GWB, would have been "'t'was the will of God, and not mine own" as opposed to a secular view, which, had it been myself in command, resulted in countless sleepless nights, and a deep-set questioning of my own morality... and still would have resulted in the public defense of "had to be done".

*Edit- after reading the article more thoroughly, it would seem that the Japanese command didn't deem Hiroshima as enough proof, it took Nagasaki to convince them... seriously though, Hiroshima WASN'T enough?! WTF is wrong with people?

Edited by creevey82, 11 January 2012 - 01:27 AM.

[Joe Bloe]

creevey82, on 11 January 2012 - 01:22 AM, said:

I'm still trying to figure out how dropping a dud in a city as opposed to a forest would have been any different... a dud is a dud no? If you can elaborate on that point i'd be grateful.

The idea was to inform the Japanese when and where the bomb would be dropped, so they could send observers to witness the event, and hopefully surrender when they realised just how powerful it was.

If the weapon had failed to detonate, however, the Japanese would have been able to collect the remains and figure out what sort of bomb it was. That wasn't too much of a problem for the Americans, because the Japanese did not have the technology to build their own bomb - but only a few days earlier, Russia had declared war on Japan and it was feared they might get hold of the remains of an undetonated bomb - and the Russians did have the technology to build one of their own.

Leo Slizard was the scientist who wanted a demonstration bomb dropped in an uninhabited area - this site has some information about him:

Quote

~~~LEO SZILARD
(The first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might be made - 1933)

For many scientists, one motivation for developing the atomic bomb was to make sure Germany, well known for its scientific capabilities, did not get it first. This was true for Szilard, a Manhattan Project scientist.

"In the spring of '45 it was clear that the war against Germany would soon end, and so I began to ask myself, 'What is the purpose of continuing the development of the bomb, and how would the bomb be used if the war with Japan has not ended by the time we have the first bombs?".

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 181.

After Germany surrendered, Szilard attempted to meet with President Truman. Instead, he was given an appointment with Truman's Sec. of State to be, James Byrnes. In that meeting of May 28, 1945, Szilard told Byrnes that the atomic bomb should not be used on Japan. Szilard recommended, instead, coming to an international agreement on the control of atomic weapons before shocking other nations by their use:

"I thought that it would be a mistake to disclose the existence of the bomb to the world before the government had made up its mind about how to handle the situation after the war. Using the bomb certainly would disclose that the bomb existed." According to Szilard, Byrnes was not interested in international control: "Byrnes... was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia." Szilard could see that he wasn't getting though to Byrnes; "I was concerned at this point that by demonstrating the bomb and using it in the war against Japan, we might start an atomic arms race between America and Russia which might end with the destruction of both countries.".

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 184.

Two days later, Szilard met with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist in the Manhattan Project. "I told Oppenheimer that I thought it would be a very serious mistake to use the bomb against the cities of Japan. Oppenheimer didn't share my view." "'Well, said Oppenheimer, 'don't you think that if we tell the Russians what we intend to do and then use the bomb in Japan, the Russians will understand it?'. 'They'll understand it only too well,' Szilard replied, no doubt with Byrnes's intentions in mind."

Szilard quoted in Spencer Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard, ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts, pg. 185; also William Lanouette, Genius In the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, pg. 266-267.

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm

[Cousin Ricky]

I think that in February of 1945, we should have told the Japanese, "OK, we concede you your emperor and accept your surrender." If they were bluffing, we'd have called it. If not, then the Pacific Theater war would have ended forthwith. Conceding their emperor would have meant nothing to us other than talking points, and talking points aren't worth that human toll. But I'm neither a warmonger nor a diplomat, so what do I know?

Read Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, chapter 16, "When Scientists Know Sin." He brings up the question of scientists' responsibility for the application of the technologies they develop. It seems that the development of nuclear weapons was driven, in part, by one scientist's insatiable lust for ever bigger booms, along with national paranoia and what appears to have been that scientist's personal faith conviction that nuclear weapons would solve all our problems. Paranoia won the day, as even Oppenheimer was deemed insufficiently hawkish, and his security clearance was revoked. Imagine the political climate in which the man in charge of developing the most destructive devices in human history was too peace-loving.