Owning Mahowny

Quote: Nareed

The thing is too many people bring up Nazis and/or Hitler as comparisons to things that fall waaaaay short.

Did the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld bother you, or did you see it as parodying the overuse of Nazi comparisons?

Quote: Wizard

Did the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld bother you, or did you see it as parodying the overuse of Nazi comparisons?

Comedy has rules of its own that do not apply to political or personal arguments. One such rule is exaggeration for effect.

Thus Jerry ditching his girlfriend in favor of soup, and even disowning his friends for the same reason, are funny because they're exaggerations. In aprticular when he tries to excuse hsi actions by saying "These are the kinds of things that happen in a Nazi regime," or words to that effect. And lest you forget, Kramer served as the reproach for the nickname, several times defending the soup guy when he was insulted.

That's quite different from calling Bush or Obama "Hitler."

Quote: Evenbob

So good and evil have qualifyers? It's OK to murder a
soldier on the battlefield, but not an innocent bystander?
Face it, good and evil don't exist outside of where we
stand in a situation. All you're doing is playing the good/evil
game in reverse. You only want to see one side of the
coin, you refuse to see the duality that is life. That
everything is balanced, black and white, good and evil,
yin and yang. When we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima,
were the GI's hanging there heads at the evil act we had
done? Nope. In fact, we liked it so much we dropped another
one. The Japanese were appalled at how evil we were,
while US citizens were dancing in the streets because we won.

Every action has qualifiers. Some qualifiers actually give rise to a completely different situation. For example lets take three instances where a human life is lost: When a soldier is killed on a battlefield we do not call it murder, it is the tragic cost of war. An innocent bystander who is killed by accident is also not murder. These things are very different than the deliberate killing of an innocent life, which is murder, and is always evil. Other qualifiers lessen the culpability of the ones who commit the act, such as your example of the cannibals who were starving. What qualifiers cannot do is change a certain action from good to evil or evil to good. Cannibalism is still bad, the actions sadly understood.

You dropped the big bomb in bringing up the topic of Hiroshima. This is obviously very complicated and your treatment of it so cavalier and so close to Memorial Day is insulting. We did not "like it so much that we dropped another one". How could anyone like the horrifying deaths of thousands of people, including innocent civilians? Can you imagine the discussions that went on in deciding to drop those bombs? Do you think it was a fun or easy decision? I think they knew dropping the bomb was evil but they justified it and qualified it in a way to lessen their culpability. The soldiers and people were dancing in the streets because the war was over, show them a picture of Hiroshima and they would hang their heads.

Quote: FrGamble

I think they knew dropping the bomb was evil but they justified it and qualified it in a way to lessen their culpability.

Remember Japan still occupied China and taking even small islands from the Imperial Army cost heavily in casualties. Remember, too, Japanese soldiers rarely surrendered, and amny carried on fighting after the army had been defeated in a particular island. An invasion of the Home Islands would have cost more in terms of lives lost, both Japanese military and civilian, and American military, than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An extended blockade would ahve starved millions to death and done little for those still under Japanese ocupation.

That said, the reason for dropping a second bomb was to demonstrate the first one wasn't a fluke or a very rare weapon. No one produces just one item of a major weapon, but this was too different from anything that had existed before. perhaps this type of bomb was so hard to make the Americans only had the one. But if they dropped a second one, the existence of a thrid, fourth, fifth, etc must be assumed, along witht he fact that the US Army Air Corps could drop one anywhere in japan it wished.

The choice of targets is open for debate. Perhaps a palce with fewer people, ro even a demonstration ni an uninhabitted island should ahev been tried first (they were considered). But most alternatives to dropping the bomb were worse.

Remember, too, the mindset of the time. The world had been at war for six years, in a war that surpassed the bloodiness and brutality of all other recent wars, including the Great War, combined. remember, too, atrocities were common by both sides. The Holocaust, the Japanese biological weapons experiments on civilians, their enslavement of large swaths of China, the Philippines and other places, the Blitz, the firebombing of dresden and Tokyo, and pretty much everythign that happened between Germany and the USSR on and off the battlefield (few prisoners taken by either side made it through the war alive)

If you can stomach detaield descriptions of such things, I recommend reading "Inferno" by Max Hastings. Even though I knew much of what there was to know about WWII, this book drove home just how terribel it really was (I would never go through that book ever again).

And Germans everywhere should thank Mussolini for being so incompetent in Greece that it likely hastened the fall fo Germany by a few years. Otherwise the first atomic bombs would have fallen on Hamburg, Frankfurt or elsewhere in German soil.

Quote: FrGamble

The soldiers and people were dancing in the streets because the war was over, show them a picture of Hiroshima and they would hang their heads.

Good grief, you are so far off the mark. My dad
was in WWII, in the Navy, in the Pacific for 5
years. When his ship got the news about Hiroshima
they jumped for joy. He always said in all the
decades I knew him that the Japanese had it
coming. They started the war, they were warned
about the bomb, they did nothing about it. I never
met another WWII vet that felt otherwise. The bomb
was evil for it's victims, and salvation for the victors.

There's always two sides, nothing by itself is evil or
good.

The Hitler I refer to is the one represented in Springtime For Hitler in the original The Producers movie.

Quote: Evenbob

When we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, were the GI's hanging there heads at the evil act we had done? Nope. In fact, we liked it so much we dropped another one. The Japanese were appalled at how evil we were, while US citizens were dancing in the streets because we won.

Quote: FrGamble

You dropped the big bomb in bringing up the topic of Hiroshima. This is obviously very complicated and your treatment of it so cavalier and so close to Memorial Day is insulting. We did not "like it so much that we dropped another one". How could anyone like the horrifying deaths of thousands of people, including innocent civilians? Can you imagine the discussions that went on in deciding to drop those bombs? Do you think it was a fun or easy decision? I think they knew dropping the bomb was evil but they justified it and qualified it in a way to lessen their culpability. The soldiers and people were dancing in the streets because the war was over, show them a picture of Hiroshima and they would hang their heads.

Evenbob was unnecessarily cavalier, but I don't think there was any hand wringing at the time the decision was made. Trinity, the first bomb test, was on 16 July, 1945 which was only a few weeks after the conclusion of the Battle of Okinawa (1 April – 22 June 1945). The Battle of Okinawa was such a blood bath, that the allies would have dropped a dozen bombs if that is what it took for Japan to surrender and avoid a maritime invasion of the primary islands.

Most citizens didn't even think about the horrors of the atomic bomb until John Hersey's article was published the following year.

Quote: Pacomartin

Evenbob was unnecessarily cavalier,.

Not really. My dad was stationed in Hawaii when
Pearl was attacked. He lost friends there, and during
the war. He was in the Pacific the whole time. He joined
in 1936 and got out in '45.

He really had no use for the Japanese when I was a kid.
He refused to buy anything Made in Japan. He and every
serviceman I ever talked to who was in the Pacific had
the same attitude, there were no regrets about the bomb.
They were damned sick of the war and would've wiped out
the island of Japan if they could have.

So someone's hatred for the Japanese forged over many years or brutal war and watching their friends die makes the atomic bomb a good thing, or even the wiping out of a whole nation? While one can easily understand the strong emotions your dad and many, if not all, of the WWII veterans had that does not change the fact that wiping a nation off the map, even one who supposedly "deserved it", is a morally good thing to do. Again think of the action itself outside of its emotional and historical cocoon and ask if it is a good thing? Do the same thing with rape, murder, etc. The circumstances do not change the fundamental nature of the act as being morally good or evil.

Quote: FrGamble

So someone's hatred for the Japanese forged over many years or brutal war and watching their friends die makes the atomic bomb a good thing, .

Yes indeed, from their viewpoint. The Japanese took a
different attitude. The universe itself had no opinion,
how could it. Opinions are the work of man.