What makes My Lai wrong and Hiroshima right?

[Deleted]

Because whether you disagree or not that dropping the atomic bomb was moral, the end result kinda turned out good. Japan now really likes the US and has a good relationship with us.

If the end justifies the means, you can justifie everything. What is 6 million murdered Jews to a thousand year utopian reich......

[Hooked]

If the end justifies the means, you can justifie everything. What is 6 million murdered Jews to a thousand year utopian reich......

Even worse the bolsheviks killed like 65 million christian russians. I believe the bolsheviks were jewish but I cant be sure, can you research that?. Wow and snap, russia is right next to germany. I bet the germans were nervous, especially if they were christians.

[Deleted]

One thing is that Mai Lai was a massacre, plain and simple, it wasn't something that was planned that way, more rampaging troops and poor discipline along with pent up stress etc. That's a war crime. Its as bad as when the Germans butchered the population of a French village in WW2 for supporting the Resistance.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually saved lives and quite possibly Japan and Japanese culture, as horrific as that sounds. If we'd not have nuked them, and instead gone ahead with Olympic/Downfall then you'd have another 8 - 12 months of heavy firebombing combined with a total sea blockade with mines, subs and repeated air sweeps from Carrier launched planes.

Prior to the nuking of the two cities the Japanese were BARELY getting along with minimal rationing, and their supply situation was close to collapse. A tighter blockade (and it would have gotten tighter, the USAF was mining coastal waters and reaping a fearsome toll of small craft) would have seen this supply chain collapse entirely and then you're throwing the country into a famine.

Also the Japanese were still killing anywhere between 30 - 75000 people a MONTH in their occupied territories (mainly to take food etc so they could survive) with a 'conservative' estimate being somewhere around 40k people dying in Japanese occupied territory every month and this WOULD go up if Japan fell into the grip of a famine. So lets go with that to start with an have say 9 months of Japan in famine with the 'conservative' estimate of 40k people dying outside of Japan a month.

Add to this a ramped up firebombing of Japan and constant air attacks from carrier planes.

Now comes Olympic/Downfall the invasion of Japan. The Japanese were not dumb and had figured out where the Allied forces would land (mainly because there's very few suitable zones) and were in the process of massively fortifying the area.

They were also training up a militia and they would have at best been armed with bolt action rifles, or bamboo spears, and their main anti-tank 'weapon' was strapping satchel charges to themselves, and hoping that when they ran at a tank they were not A. cut in half by machine gun fire, and B, when it ran them over, the charge detonated. And they were planning something on the order of 2 million or so of these reservists who would have been thrown at the US/Allied forces when they landed. So you're looking at something far far worse than anything the US had encountered in the Pacific island assaults thus far.

Yes the Japanese were massing aircraft but I doubt these would have been that effective mainly due to piss poor pilot training and massive air sweeps in the build up to the invasion attacking airbases. But the US was still planning to take a simply unheard of level of casualties (well not Eastern front level but unheard of for them).

The Japanese General staff even had ideas of releasing bio weapons. Not on the US troops, but their own people to both slow down the US forces trying to help them (if they did at all) or help spread the infections to them. This includes Small pox and Bubonic plague. They also were looking at using gas on the beaches. But then again so was the US IF the Japanese did first.

You're looking at hundreds of thousands of allied casualties (dead and wounded) and MILLIONS of dead Japanese. Not to mention the ongoing deaths in their conquered territories.

And then you've the risk of a Soviet invasion of the North, which would result in Japan becoming another Korea/Vietnam situation. I think 'ol Bombs Away LeMay's prophecy of 'Japanese only being a language spoken in hell' would be true. The US forces could have used the nukes against other cities (and they planned to and were producing more nukes to drop for the Olympic invasion).

So the white hot flash and annihilation of two cities and tens of thousands of people actually, perversly saved the lives of Millions, and probably the culture of Japan.

Japan wanted to end the war prior to Hiroshima so u are just making up excuses to defend nuking civilians.

[Macaquerie]

You have to choose, either it is fair game to be as brutal as possible against your opponents innocent civilians to break the the country's will to fight or its not. Japan did tried it in China and fail, US succeeded in Japan.

If US recognizes that Hiroshima was right, it legitimate the horror Japan did in China. Hence the movement to appologise for Hiroshima.

There's a difference between making a cold and calculated decision to achieve a desired military outcome, and just being heartless evil bastards for the hell of it. Japan and Germany knew that their barbaric actions were only going to strengthen the resolve of their enemies and prolong the war, not end it quicker, but they were so inundated with racist propaganda that they simply couldn't help themselves. Neither China, the USSR, nor any of the other countries they occupied really had a government that was beloved by their people, if the Axis forces had even just pretended to act with a shred of humanity they could have easily won the locals over.

You could argue that American attitudes toward the Japanese were quite racist as well, but at the end of the day that never interfered with the military's decision making. The goal of dropping the bomb was to provide a show of strength that would bring the war to a decisive end, not to unnecessarily inflict more suffering on innocent civilians just so we could gleefully watch them squirm, as the Japanese had done to their victims. And sure, maybe the Japanese were willing to sue for peace before the bomb was dropped, but at that point in the war we had the moral imperative to demand unconditional surrender and would arguably have been complicit in major crimes against humanity if we had actually negotiated a peace deal with that regime.

[Themius]

I am a Croat of german heritage- I wish the war never started, but since it did, I would rather side with Germany and Japan. The victory of allied states brought more trouble to my family than the Axis victory would have. Its realy a rational approach.

What the fuck am I reading here?

[Xires]

Reading through old blog posts, I found one by economist Bryan Caplan which poses the question of why the general public considers the My Lai massacre a terrible war crime while Hiroshima is considered either an unfortunate but necessary action or a even a heroic one.

Here's the blog post.

These are his analyses of common moral comparisons between the events. TLDR warning.



What are your thoughts Has he missed something that makes Hiroshima a moral killing of civilians while My Lai an immoral one?

I'll tell you why right now.
Ma Lai was wrong because it was a village filled with civilians and even the women and children were targets. That isn't how the US military is supposed to be and 99.9999% of the time it is not.
Hiroshima ended World War 2 and made it to where the allies didn't have to invade mainland Japan. The Japanese were teaching their civilians to run at Allied troops in human waves as they all planned to fight to the death. Over a million allied troops (or more) would of been killed taking Japan itself and millions more Japanese would of died fighting for their Emperor.
Those atom bombs saved WAY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more lives then they took and prevented the Japanese from practically fading into the history books.
Code of the Bushido- look it up.

- - - Updated - - -

Japan wanted to end the war prior to Hiroshima so u are just making up excuses to defend nuking civilians.

Wrong wrong wrong. They wanted a conditional end to it as in their Empire would still be intact and able to move on rather then fading into the history books. Even after the first nuke they STILL refused to surrender unconditionally and 3 days later they were hit with another atom bomb. Even THEN the Japanese military did NOT want to surrender. You need to understand the code of the Bushido and the Japanese if you want to make any comments on it but until then you are just an uninformed liberal who bases everything off of feelings rather then facts. Sit on it....

Unconditional surrender and after the atrocities that the Japanese inflicted upon EVERYBODY the fact that liberal scum like you would come out and act like they were a nation of victims...well....you must be a BLM advocate too.

[Deleted]

There's a difference between making a cold and calculated decision to achieve a desired military outcome, and just being heartless evil bastards for the hell of it.

So what you say is "the end justifies the means" ?

[baskev]

Pff this is a hard question.

My thoughts:
- Vietnam was more a civil war/war between commu vs kappa. And japan was a world war.

1. Soldiers vs hiding VC. Do not think it matters if they had more or less soldiers there, all targets have civilians. So there would have always been many non combat ens dying. But Hiroshima was a military target because of all the extra stuff there.

2. Because the vc may have been bad. But the Japanese ( back then) even out did the nazi's sometimes. But you can never blame all the people for everything. But it still sadly weighs into this. And japanse where a whole people. Vietnam was pretty broken up back then ( pro commies, anti commies, and in the middle).

3. Ratio's/numbers should never EVER be counted to make something a war crime. The reason why the crime happend, how it happend and who got hit by it counts more. Lets put it this way, 10 gunless soldiers being shot (still a warcrime) is less a warcrime, then 2 girls being gangraped if you ask me.

4. It is war. Even the best weapons will eventually hit civilians.

5. Who started it should never count towards warcrimes. Again its about the what, who, how,why etc a crime was committed.

6. Orders vs no Orders. A crime is a crime. If i get a order to murder a civilian i can refuse.

7. You could say???? It did. Its been well documented that the Japanese where so shocked by both bombings ( Nagasaki) that they where bombed into pacifists ( not 100% but close enough).


I think this blogpost was short sided, subjectively written. Both where war crimes. But both will go down history for different reasons. Main one, my lai did not end a war. The 2 A bombs did.
But it does not make it a less war crime. But bombing does take less personal. And think that counts more towards non war crime.
But still a war crime all depends on:
* why it happened
* how it happened
* Who was the target

And killing civilians on purpose is always a war crime. shooting a tank and it explodes and the shrapnel kills a by stander is not. Its a terrible loss of life, unnecessary. But all killing/war is.

[Macaquerie]

So what you say is "the end justifies the means" ?

It may not be any more justified, but to equate Hiroshima with Japanese war crimes is irresponsible. While it has come up plenty of times in this thread and probably just about every discussion about Japan's role in WW2, it bears repeating again - you cannot conflate the cutesy, harmless image of modern Japan with the country that we fought against in WW2, the only reason they became a land of anime and weird porn is because we beat all the hostility and aggression out of them during the war and the occupation that followed. To apologize for Hiroshima now is also to tacitly admit that the complete cultural transformation that we engineered in the post-war period was a mistake, and that the Japanese would be fully justified in returning to their bloodthirsty, warmongering past.

[baskev]

Mass murder of non-combatants is always immoral.

The Americans are brainwashed about Hiroshima and Nagasaki the same way people get brainwashed about atrocities in dictatorships. Nothing more to say.

hahahahahahahahaha

Nope. I am not from america. But i can honestly say no one thinks that ( in their right mind ).

[breadisfunny]

Rofl what the fuck do you think the axis are? A football team? xD

are you saying team unit 731 sucks bub? because i will fight you right here right now mate. they have the #1 mutant football team out there.

[Deleted]

It may not be any more justified, but to equate Hiroshima with Japanese war crimes is irresponsible.

We make the difference between a murderer and mass murderer, but murder is still wrong.

To apologize for Hiroshima now is also to tacitly admit that the complete cultural transformation that we engineered in the post-war period was a mistake, and that the Japanese would be fully justified in returning to their bloodthirsty, warmongering past.

My point is that you did use killing of civilians one a large scale to break the Japanes will to continue, either such tactics fair game in war or it is not. Choose. If you say it was fair game, then you cant complain what horror Japan did in China.

[Deleted]

I think most people outside of the US knows that the Hiroshima / Nagasaki bombing wasn't right.

[Macaquerie]

My point is that you did use killing of civilians one a large scale to break the Japanes will to continue, either such tactics fair game in war or it is not. Choose. If you say it was fair game, then you cant complain what horror Japan did in China.

First off, you hardly hear much vocal complaining about Japanese war crimes coming out of the US, few people even know much about it and because the Chinese are supposed to be our enemies these days while the Japanese are our friends, there's little incentive to publicize the events. Secondly, the Japanese did not terrorize civilians to try and break their spirit or anything like that, they already knew that the Chinese government would never surrender as long as the USA still stood as a looming threat to Japanese imperialism, which is why they attacked Pearl Harbor. All those killings were done basically because the soldiers enjoyed being sadistic assholes for the hell of it. It's pretty safe to say that if the Japanese had gotten their hands on the bomb during the war, they would've used it at the first opportunity and we wouldn't be having any debates about whether it was justified or not.

[Cradix]

I think most people outside of the US knows that the Hiroshima / Nagasaki bombing wasn't right.

Only those who believe in historical revisionism believe that.

[Pull My Finger]

I am a Croat of german heritage- I wish the war never started, but since it did, I would rather side with Germany and Japan. The victory of allied states brought more trouble to my family than the Axis victory would have.

Which can only mean that your family were supporters of a fascist group of terrorists and murderers and consequently got what was coming to them in WW2. Which, at any rate, lies over 70 years in the past and you proclaiming to be "somewhat of an Axis supporter" just speaks volumes of your level of maturity and intelligence.

[luckydevours]

Never argue with Americans about Hiroshima and Nagasaki! Many of them cannot accept the fact that their country may have done something horrible seventy years ago.

That is also mostly the reason why i am much more proud to be half German than half American, because most Germans accept that the Nazis did horrible things, but they know this doesn't make them a bad person just because they happen to be born in the same country. Americans seem to be much less unwound about their national history.

[Deleted]

Secondly, the Japanese did not terrorize civilians to try and break their spirit or anything like that, they already knew that the Chinese government would never surrender as long as the USA still stood as a looming threat to Japanese imperialism, which is why they attacked Pearl Harbor.

So what you say is, it would be ok for the Japanese to terrorize the Chinese civilians if they did it sufficiently brutal so the Chinese government surrende?

Yes I am provocative, but I am trying to make a point.

[shrunken]

Context, chiefly.

[Macaquerie]

So what you say is, it would be ok for the Japanese to terrorize the Chinese civilians if they did it sufficiently brutal so the Chinese government surrende?

Yes I am provocative, but I am trying to make a point.

They could try, but those kinds of tactics have never worked anywhere they've been tried and will never work, since they only serve to galvanize local resistance to occupation rather than beating them into submission. The fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually did achieve their objective is evidence enough that they were entirely different from what the Japanese were doing - the intent was NOT to terrorize civilians but to demonstrate to the military and government of Japan that theirs was a lost cause.