3 ms·
"Now" is doing a metric ton of heavy lifting in that headline.
by blitzar 4mo ago
"Now" is doing a metric ton of heavy lifting in that headline.
- newsclues 4mo agoRemember when America firebombed civilians during World War Two?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoWasn’t regret for and fear of the scale of that damage partly why we supported the Geneva Convention?
- acqq 4mo agoEver heard about Laos? "Between December of 1964 and March of 1973, the US launched more than 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during Operation Barrel Roll. This number is equivalent to dropping a full plane cargo load every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. Laos is thus the most heavily bombed country in the world." "The legacy of this once secret war continues today. More than 80,000,000 undetonated bombs are strewn across the country threatening the lives of its people." https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/laos-the-most-heavily-bombed-country-on-earth.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/laos-the-most-heavily-bo... "Since the end of the operation in 1973, over 20,000 people have died or been injured by these remaining bombs. At any moment, a farmer may strike one while plowing or a child may find one while playing. (...) Estimates suggest that as many as 100 civilians fall victim every year"
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoI’m not remotely claiming we didn’t do war crimes afterwards. Just that the firebombing, if I recall correctly, was explicitly cited as a reason why we needed rules going forward.
- blitzar 4mo agoUnfortunately that knowledge seems to have been lost with the passage of time.
- blitzar 4mo ago[flagged]
- voidUpdate 4mo agoThey did both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
- dgares 4mo agoThat was afterwards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Firebombing_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Firebombing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
- wongarsu 4mo agoNo, the fire bombing of Japan did far more damage than the nuclear bombs. What made early nuclear bombs scary is that instead of needing hundreds of bombers you now only needed one for the same amount of damage
- pjc50 4mo agoThat was, sadly, very much an "everybody does this" thing, from Guernica to Chongqing to Coventry. But yes, there are two possible lessons from those horrors: - never again must this happen to anyone: the construction of international peace frameworks, the ICC, and human rights law - what is currently happening, which is very different
- jst1fthsdys 4mo agoQuick question, who were the aggressors in that war? What had they done previously that might have warranted it?
- hawkice 4mo agoThe aggressors not being the targets of the firebombing is central to the concerns here. They weren't military targets (largely).
- jst1fthsdys 4mo agoIt was total war though, and they were the aggressors who had slaughtered millions of civilians previously. The Germans and Japanese got what they deserved. Iran and their people are not the aggressors here. They do not deserve it.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Tadpole9181 4mo agoMy brother in Christ, why do you think the Geneva conventions were made!?
- boothby 4mo agoThere are degrees to these things. A nation's leader repeatedly and explicitly declaring intent to commit genocide is makes that "lift" an extremely light one.