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I don’t think there’s a particular moral concern and I’m not sure where that meme has arisen from. An atomic bomb is just a bigger bomb than other bombs. There’
by ericmay 1y ago
I don’t think there’s a particular moral concern and I’m not sure where that meme has arisen from. An atomic bomb is just a bigger bomb than other bombs. There’s nothing special about it besides it being exceptionally large in its destructive capability.
If you were firebombed or killed in a human meat wave in Stalingrad you are just as dead as someone killed with big bomb.
I think the moral argument about killing more and more Americans or Japanese during an invasion is a fun theoretical discussion, but in a war your people matter and the enemy’s don’t in cases like this where you have two clear nation states engaged in total war. Certainly the circumstances of the wars matter, but in the case of World War II I think it’s rather clear cut, and opinions to the contrary are generally revisionist history meant to continue to make America look like a bad guy in order to cause moral confusion and social division.
- yencabulator 1y agoThe difference is in targeting cities. Civilian targets. Let me remind you of the paragraph above: > Beyond that, there are moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons. I know people who think it would have been more moral to force a Japanese surrender via many Japanese and American soldiers to die during an invasion of Japan, than for the US to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. [...]
- ericmay 1y agoA civilian is just a soldier who hasn’t put on a uniform in this scenario, and a soldier is just a civilian who has put on a uniform. You’re making a meaningless distinction in this context. There isn’t some sort of magic status that changes here - the same Japanese civilians were working at shipyards and ordinance factories to build weapons to kill American soldiers - you think we shouldn’t bomb those factories because we would kill Japanese civilians building weapons to kill American soldiers and that’s ok because the Americans were wearing a costume and we call them “military personnel”? Nuts!
- yencabulator 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_...
- ericmay 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes?wprov=sfti...
- yencabulator 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#World...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ericmay 1y agoWhat does this have to do with Japanese war crimes and violations of the conventions you linked?
- yencabulator 1y agoIf I follow your logic, you believe that other countries should have nuked a couple of major US cities. I think that's.. not a great way to go.
- ericmay 1y agoThat’s a strawman
- 1y ago
- rstupek 1y agoWe killed almost as many civilians when we firebombed Tokyo. Is the use of the atomic bomb somehow different in your mind?
- yencabulator 1y agoI can think of three things off the top of my head, the scale enabled by them, the timeline of the deaths, and the residual effects.