Actually it didn't happen i accidentaly time travled back there and saw it was actually all a big acident . But serisously i agree with silver, If you killed someone fifty years ago and lived those regret debatable but mudering tens of thousands just irredeemable.
War is the crime. it's just that the winners get to pick who get's punished. If the Germans had won WW2 there would have been war trials for the fire-bombing of Dresden etc, or the Japanese would have been trying those who bombed Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Our leaders expect our soldiers to follow orders without question, and yet will punish the enemy for following theirs. Not saying what went on wasn't inhuman and doesn't deserve punishment but war crimes aren't just committed by the losers.
A cliche... best coined by Churchill: From medieval sieges through to the bombing of Dresden and Coventry, and not forgetting the V2 rockets, there was never the same concern over collateral damage as there has been (increasingly) over the last 50 years. Bomber Harris would be wondering what the fuss is about in Afghanistan: "A wedding got bombed? So what? Don't you know there is a war on??" The days of two lines of soldiers slugging it out seem tactically immature and incredibly expensive. We did introduce trenches, but then proceeded to march the troops over the top and *walk* them towards machine gun emplacements. Now that's considered bad form, and we've advanced... and soon we'll be at the point where drones and robots fight for us. Nevertheless, back in the day, these tactics were commonplace and accepted. There might be retribution for Dresden, but Germans of that day would never have considered it a war crime - it was just what both sides did to bully the other into submission. The people tried at Nurenburg were not the grunts following orders. The guys who pulled the levers releasing the Zyclon B pellets were never charged. Nor were the guys operating the MG-42 out of the back of a truck in numerous forests in Western + Eastern Europe. It was the decision makers, and the architects - and the lower-ranked individuals who followed their orders with a few extra embellishments - the guards who unilaterally decided to rob, rape and murder simply because they could get away with it. I think you are confusing the horrors of war (yes, we know war = bad) with real war crimes... Like the genocide of the Jews, the Gypsies and the disabled in Nazi Germany. Like the inhuman large-scale, systematic rape and murder of civilians and POWs alike by the Japanese. Like the deilberate, large-scale re-education murder of educated people and intellectuals in Cambodia, Vietnam and N. Korea. Like the state-sanctioned rape and murder of minority Tutsis by the Hutu establishment in Rwanda.
This is true. And war, is a crime against humanity. Absolutely it is. Do not forget about the Russians, what they did to German women and children when advancing into Germany, they were on a killing and raping spree. German women continued to be raped well into the 50's, in eastern Germany.
Agreed war is bad and should be avoided much as possible and should be kept in fiction at most but there is a difference between war and pure genocide against defenseless groups of millions of people.
Hiroshima & Nagasaki while in modern eyes are war crimes saved millions of japanese and american lives. Not that this makes it right necessarily or that I subscribe to the kill one innocent person if it saves a thousand is ok philosophy.
Do you count all wars are a crime against humanity? What about a war solely of defence eg Finns vs Russia 1940, or gulf war one to free a people invaded? The Russians commit a crime but do he Finns by defending? Does the coalition by declaring war against Iraq commit a crime against humanity?
Some things its not black and white, say example the atomic bombing in nagaski and Hiroshima were terrible but the consquences for not could of been far worse (IIRC they would of used it delibertary used them on a tactial scale during the invasion of japan). This could of led to even worse consequences during the korean war and onward due to no knolwedge of the effects of a Nuclear assault on Human population.
I agree thats why I was questioning the stance that war itself is a crime, I think sometimes not going to war would be the crime not the other way around. France and britains appeasement of hitler for example. If they had threaterned war before hitler was ready and been willing to go through with it millions of people would have lived. I know you cant see the future but sometimes war and a swift quick one is the lesser of two evils.
Someone has not been paying attention in history class. Apart from the fact that Hitler Germany could have been prevented without a single shot being fired (the WWI Allies just had to be more gracious victors), there is no reasonable defense for deploying two nukes on non-military targets. Vaporizing a chunk of Japan's naval force would have made as compelling an argument for peace. But the US wanted to see how this new toy would work on actual people. We have heard the same argument over and again since Korea, and it has always ended badly. War is a failure of foreign policy. Most conflict can be avoided --and comfortably is, regardless of how many people get slaughtered by some random third world dictator. It is only when there is something worth taking that the moral rhetoric comes out.
I couldn't agree more. I was just reading Churchill's "The Gathering Storm," (I was inspired by the recent discussion with Eddie Dane in another thread) and it was interesting to see how long poor foreign policy was allowed to go on despite numerous objections in the face of obvious evidence of Germany re-arming. I was surprised to see how many times Churchill mentioned that the coming war could have prevented at various points along the nearly 2 decades between WW1 and WW2, even before Hitler's rise to power. The entire idea that WW2 ended because the US nuked Japan is a matter of some debate. By many accounts, Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway, and dropping the nukes was just an over-the-top way for America to beat its chest. As has been said in other threads: Science tells us how, morality tells us whether or not we should.
I agree. We can't do nothing only because they are old or because its happened a long time ago, Its like spit on those victims. Even if you are and old bag, you did it and you have to pay. Dame Justice is blind
On the Armenian Genocide, I don't think the Turks have admitted it was a genocide yet, which makes them unready to join the civilised world yet (I hope there are some Turks to be offended by this). To add to what has already been said (which is all well said), the wise words of Noam Chomsky (and I say them not for effect - I entirely agree with them) "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged. "
"As has been said in other threads: Science tells us how, morality tells us whether or not we should. " Btw, found this comment interesting supermonkey, just because I'm awating the arrival of Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape
From the emergent chaos that is my rambling brain. Although I'm sure that Terry Pratchett, Ian Steward and Jack Cohen feature in there somewhere.