Morally Acceptable?

With reference to the question in the OP, is this morally acceptable?

  • Total voters
    0
#176
#176
I definitely see the connection and understand Floats' position. The indiscriminate decimation of life in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, et cetera, pojects an all-pervasive ends justifies the means morality. It is one thing to inflict pain, suffering, and death upon persons who deserve it: that is, in moral terms, just deserts; it is another thing to take aim at citizens and bystanders, who are not deserving of such reprisals, in a effort to break the national will and force a conclusion to th war at hand.

Total war is Clausewitzian; it has been shown effective; however, it is inherently evil and that evil must be recognized. Some can argue it is a necesary evil; yet, it should never be viewed as moral.
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#177
#177
Volst53 said:
You see the world as black and white. The world is seldom in those shades, but we love to try to force our views and understand of the world into them. At times the wolves has to protect the flock.
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I don't see the world as black and white. You may misrepresent me, or maybe I misrepresent me, but for clarification:

World. Not black and white, quite immoral.

Morals. Black and white.
 
#178
#178
Volst53 said:
How is it immoral when the bombing of Nagasaki is what broke their will to fight?

It isn't like Hiroshima ended the war and we still dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki for shats and giggles.
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Because you are targeting civilians. Civilians should always be off limits. International law says they are. If the US wasn't the baddest kid on the block some of our leaders could have been tried for war crimes.

What would we think if our enemy said, "if you don't surrender we are going to release a biological weapon that will kill hundreds of thousands of civilians so that we can preserve the lives of our soldiers?" Do you think we'd agree that they had moral grounds?
 
#179
#179
nbakerld said:
Because you are targeting civilians. Civilians should always be off limits. International law says they are. If the US wasn't the baddest kid on the block some of our leaders could have been tried for war crimes.

What would we think if our enemy said, "if you don't surrender we are going to release a biological weapon that will kill hundreds of thousands of civilians so that we can preserve the lives of our soldiers?" Do you think we'd agree that they had moral grounds?
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Tried for war crimes? No.
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#180
#180
fl0at said:
Hiroshima was the first of its kind. Precedent had not been set.

After Hiroshima, after we knew the immediate consequences, and before we gave the Japanese adequate time to council on surrender, we dropped on Nagasaki.

And ever since... we've had all these policies, issues and problems with nuclear weapons.

Which could lead one to believe that, yea... maybe not a great idea to actually use them.
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The first one's free from moral evaluation?

You aren't suggesting that we didn't have a very good idea of what would happen with Hiroshima are you? Clearly we knew from test explosions that 1000s and 1000s would die. We intended to kill a bunch of civilians in Hiroshima.
 
#182
#182
fl0at said:
I don't see the world as black and white. You may misrepresent me, or maybe I misrepresent me, but for clarification:

World. Not black and white, quite immoral.

Morals. Black and white.
Click to expand...

Here's where we fundamentally disagree. There are several schools of thought on morals. I adopt a utilitarian view that examines trade offs in determining whether and act is moral. You appear to adopt a moral absolutism.
 
#183
#183
volinbham said:
The first one's free from moral evaluation?

You aren't suggesting that we didn't have a very good idea of what would happen with Hiroshima are you? Clearly we knew from test explosions that 1000s and 1000s would die. We intended to kill a bunch of civilians in Hiroshima.
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Intent was not to kill civilians.

And no, we did not have a very good idea to what would happen to Hiroshima.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have allowed all those Sailors to get radiation sickness post Pacific drops later.
 
#184
#184
fl0at said:
Intent was not to kill civilians.

And no, we did not have a very good idea to what would happen to Hiroshima.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have allowed all those Sailors to get radiation sickness post Pacific drops later.
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Huh? I think you mean the purpose was not to kill civilians. If they didn't intend to kill civilians why did they target them?
 
#185
#185
volinbham said:
Here's where we fundamentally disagree. There are several schools of thought on morals. I adopt a utilitarian view that examines trade offs in determining whether and act is moral. You appear to adopt a moral absolutism.
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Yea, that is the source of disagreement. But I'm an idealist, which means, by implication, I'm also quite naive.

I just consider right, and its opposite, wrong. Moral, and its opposite amoral.

However, even the yin and the yang had islands between.

Really want to make me ponder, although I think I have a rationalization for it. :)

Legality, and thus morality, of violating a sovereign country in the process of tracking and killing OBL.
 
#187
#187
nbakerld said:
Huh? I think you mean the purpose was not to kill civilians. If they didn't intend to kill civilians why did they target them?
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They did not target them. Hiroshima was a military and industrial hot seat.

Nagasaki, different story. Already explained point of view there.
 
#188
#188
fl0at said:
Intent was not to kill civilians.

And no, we did not have a very good idea to what would happen to Hiroshima.

Otherwise, we wouldn't have allowed all those Sailors to get radiation sickness post Pacific drops later.
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What was the intent of Hiroshima?

You believe we had no clear expectations about what dropping an A bomb on a population center would do?

Forget radiation sickness. We knew the blast alone would kill 1000s.
 
#189
#189
therealUT said:
I definitely see the connection and understand Floats' position. The indiscriminate decimation of life in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, et cetera, pojects an all-pervasive ends justifies the means morality. It is one thing to inflict pain, suffering, and death upon persons who deserve it: that is, in moral terms, just deserts; it is another thing to take aim at citizens and bystanders, who are not deserving of such reprisals, in a effort to break the national will and force a conclusion to th war at hand.

Total war is Clausewitzian; it has been shown effective; however, it is inherently evil and that evil must be recognized. Some can argue it is a necesary evil; yet, it should never be viewed as moral.
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Click to expand...



This is my view. I don't love what we done with any of the Atom bombs, but I also can see how we made that choice.

Either way a number of citizens are going to be killed. As soon as we stepped foot on Japan there wouldn't have been any citizens. They would have fought to the death for the emperor and their home land.

The choice as we deemed "less evil" was picked, and it worked. Was it the best choice? We will never know since, we didn't have to invade Japan.
 
#190
#190
fl0at said:
They did not target them. Hiroshima was a military and industrial hot seat.

Nagasaki, different story. Already explained point of view there.
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If you knew they were there you are targeting them for all intents and purposes regardless of semantics.

This sounds like the greatest loophole of all time!
 
#191
#191
volinbham said:
What was the intent of Hiroshima?

You believe we had no clear expectations about what dropping an A bomb on a population center would do?

Forget radiation sickness. We knew the blast alone would kill 1000s.
Click to expand...

To clean out command of Japan's southern half?
 
#192
#192
fl0at said:
Yea, that is the source of disagreement. But I'm an idealist, which means, by implication, I'm also quite naive.

I just consider right, and its opposite, wrong. Moral, and its opposite amoral.

However, even the yin and the yang had islands between.

Really want to make me ponder, although I think I have a rationalization for it. :)

Legality, and thus morality, of violating a sovereign country in the process of tracking and killing OBL.
Click to expand...

That takes us back to the OP (nice work!). Tracking and killing OBL in a sovereign country = okay but WB KSM = not okay. I can't wrap my head around that from a moral absolutism perspective. I suppose I could from a utilitarian perspective but I see both a morally justifiable so what do I know.
 
#194
#194
fl0at said:
To clean out command of Japan's southern half?
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This really sounds like loophole justification - I know I'm going to kill 1000s of innocents to get at a military victory and that's okay.

Why? Because the world is pro-bombing :)
 
#196
#196
volinbham said:
That takes us back to the OP (nice work!). Tracking and killing OBL in a sovereign country = okay but WB KSM = not okay. I can't wrap my head around that from a moral absolutism perspective. I suppose I could from a utilitarian perspective but I see both a morally justifiable so what do I know.
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Well, I was trying to come up with a defense of it this morning, but all I could come up with would that it would be the equivalent of me being mugged, but not pressing charges, and then stating that the dude mugging me did so morally.

I could rationalize our law and morality for the violation (given war powers), and against WB (sans legal standing because SCOTUS did not grant writ)... but I couldn't solve the issue in international law.
 
#197
#197
volinbham said:
This really sounds like loophole justification - I know I'm going to kill 1000s of innocents to get at a military victory and that's okay.

Why? Because the world is pro-bombing :)
Click to expand...


Actually, after that... I think the world became rather anti that type of bombing.

Like I said, unprecedented. It would be as odd to you and I, today, as using some high tech anal probe to extract information, and then calling it EIT after the fact.
 
#198
#198
therealUT said:
You might want to actually read the text of the First Geneva Convention.
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So you are arguing that civilians weren't protected by international law? It was generally agreed upon that civilians were not to be murdered, which is why they didn't include a provision about that. Weird that they would have a provision protecting civilians that help wounded soldiers, but not civilians in general.

Art. 5. Inhabitants of the country who bring help to the wounded shall be respected and shall remain free. Generals of the belligerent Powers shall make it their duty to notify the inhabitants of the appeal made to their humanity, and of the neutrality which humane conduct will confer.
The presence of any wounded combatant receiving shelter and care in a house shall ensure its protection. An inhabitant who has given shelter to the wounded shall be exempted from billeting and from a portion of such war contributions as may be levied.
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#199
#199
fl0at said:
Actually, after that... I think the world became rather anti that type of bombing.

Like I said, unprecedented. It would be as odd to you and I, today, as using some high tech anal probe to extract information, and then calling it EIT after the fact.
Click to expand...

I'd rather not think about an anal probe.

I question the unprecedented because we knew what bombs do, we knew this was a super, duper bomb and we tested the bomb and witnessed what kind of destructive power it had.

We knew without a doubt we were going to kill a bunch of innocents and determined it to be okay because the consequences justified the actions.
 
#200
#200
nbakerld said:
So you are arguing that civilians weren't protected by international law? It was generally agreed upon that civilians were not to be murdered, which is why they didn't include a provision about that. Weird that they would have a provision protecting civilians that help wounded soldiers, but not civilians in general.
Click to expand...

Generally agreed upon? Really? The Union troops of the US had just won victory through Grant and Sherman's total war strategy; a few years later, the total war strategy was put to use in the Franco-Prussian War.

If you want to discuss military matters, at least inform yourself appropriately.
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