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The worst part of all this thread is that those making all the noise against that use of the A bomb was ordered by a Democrat, Harry Truman. Now if he had been a Republican, I could understand it.
The new worst part of this thread is that someone is so encompassed in Democrat vs Republican that they think it matters which party ordered the killing of 100's of 1000's of individuals.
I ask again though, are you saying that sometimes it is ok to kill innocent individuals?
You constantly ask this question regarding if is it ok to kill innocent civilians...I have to ask if you are aware what is meant by a declared status of warfare between two states? Warfare makes killing legal and moral. Anyone engaged in work which supports the ability of the adversarial state to engage in warfare is the enemy. There are conventions which place limits and definitions regarding the conduct of warfare and some are adhered to and some are not. Sometimes it is the course of the war which changes how warfare is practiced(change from precision bombing to area bombing due to the inability to pinpoint targets) and sometimes it is actions by the enemy which then invite retribution.
To answer your question...it is ok to kill civilians. There really are no innocent civilians in warfare except infants, the severely disabled and the extremely aged. That is harsh but true.
There were some military establishments in those cities. It is kind of like the Vietnamese putting storage facilities for weapons or ammunition so close to civilian hospitals hoping they wouldn't be bombed. Sometimes that kind of reasoning has to result in killing of civilians and they knew it.
There are indeed difficult moral choices in war--even in a war you have to be involved in, which WW2 never was for the U.S. That being said, most people would argue that the existence of 'gray areas' does not mean there is no difference between killing 100 noncombatants to get one combatant, or killing one noncombatant to get 100 combatants.
Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki--to name the most obvious--fall into the former class.
You constantly ask this question regarding if is it ok to kill innocent civilians...I have to ask if you are aware what is meant by a declared status of warfare between two states? Warfare makes killing legal and moral. Anyone engaged in work which supports the ability of the adversarial state to engage in warfare is the enemy. There are conventions which place limits and definitions regarding the conduct of warfare and some are adhered to and some are not. Sometimes it is the course of the war which changes how warfare is practiced(changed from precision bombing to area bombing due to the inability to pinpoint targets) and sometimes it is actions by the enemy which then invite retribution.
To answer your question...it is ok to kill civilians. There really are no innocent civilians in warfare except infants, the severely disabled and the extremely aged. That is harsh but true.
Do you believe that infants, the severely disabled and the extremely aged were killed in the Japan bombings? Do you believe that the US was justified in killing these innocent individuals?
To answer your question...it is ok to kill civilians. There really are no innocent civilians in warfare except infants, the severely disabled and the extremely aged. That is harsh but true.
That is your opinion. It is not the state of international law as it now stands, or even as it stood in the 1940s.
BTW, if your definition is sound, 9/11 was obviously much more moral than the atomic bombings. (By my more stringent definition, 9/11 was equally immoral.)
Do you believe that infants, the severely disabled and the extremely aged were killed in the Japan bombings? Do you believe that the US was justified in killing these innocent individuals?
Please no smiley face if you are grown and mature person. I do not in any manner sense intelligence on your part as you are only asking questions and not detailing your position. You do not seem to grasp basic principles of warfare. Instead of a smiley face perhaps you can answer my question above as we have answered your very brief quips.
Again this was made clear to you by others. Innocents (as categorized above)do die in warfare if they encumber the ability to strike at the targets which advance the end of the war.
Please no smiley face if you are grown and mature person. I do not in any manner sense intelligence on your part as you are only asking questions and stating your position. You do not seem to grasp basic principles of warfare. Instead of a smiley face perhaps you can answer my question above as we have answered your very brief quips.
Again this was made clear to you by others. Innocents (as categorized above)do die in warfare if they encumber the ability to strike at the targets which advance the end of the war.
So, are you saying that it is, sometimes, ok to kill innocent individuals?
There are indeed difficult moral choices in war--even in a war you have to be involved in, which WW2 never was for the U.S. That being said, most people would argue that the existence of 'gray areas' does not mean there is no difference between killing 100 noncombatants to get one combatant, or killing one noncombatant to get 100 combatants.
Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki--to name the most obvious--fall into the former class.
Given the chance, don't you think that the Germans, and the Japanese would have done the same to the US? I'm betting they would have. Just sayin'.
That is your opinion. It is not the state of international law as it now stands, or even as it stood in the 1940s.
I am familar with international laws of warfare in that period and initially there were limits placed on the conduct of certain aspects of the war. But the difficulty of the struggle and the need to achieve victory voided peacetime conventions.
The new worst part of this thread is that someone is so encompassed in Democrat vs Republican that they think it matters which party ordered the killing of 100's of 1000's of individuals.
Amen to that. Had I been around prior to about 1960--maybe even 1968--I would've been a Republican.
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