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Originally Posted by Mumitroll
sure they do. a simplified version of history commonly told to Western ten-year-olds is something like: "Nazis were bad people in Germany and they started World War II. Then the US and UK came in and defeated them, as well as the bad Japanese emperor who was their ally."
i often see slightly more sophisticated versions of this retold on Western political forums.
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How the hell is
that what I said?
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42!
...there is no single "answer". an answer can only be given to a specific question
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Yet you continuously attempt to portray the USA as uniformly bad throughout this thread...
Look, I'm not even pro-American, I'm the type the patriots hate and think I think far too much and argue far too much; and yet I think you're rabidly out of sorts with your opinion of the USA. I really really hate it when I see the stereotype of the rabidly anti-American European acted out, because more often than not I'm more than prepared to agree with many Europeans on the utter foolishness -- criminal, even -- of certain US foreign policies.
...and then I'm forced to the defend the USA from this kind of, well, bigotry.
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did I say that somewhere?
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See my answer waaaay below.
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thats a logic that you should try to quit. most major historical conflicts have a clear aggressor, and you should understand who that was. WWI had one, WWII had one, WWIII will probably have one too. yes, there are various complicated conflicts (mostly civil war type) which do not really have a specific aggressor, but they are mostly regional - like Israel/Palestina, Balkans, Nagornyi Karabach, Kashmir, etc - and not a reason to relativize everything to death.
people who go "USSR was as evil as Nazi Germany and would have started WWII if the Germans wouldnt have" are about as ridiculously historically incompetent as people who go "Japan provoked the US into dropping nuclear bombs" or "Saddam's WMD were a danger to humanity".
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Okay, we were talking about the Pacific War, right? And I've read your posts above: you hinted at the USA forcing Japan's hand with the Oil Embargo among other sanction measures. That's an interesting argument, one that historians have made and I have listened. So now here's a question: who's the clear aggressor in WW2, Pacific theater?
If you answer Japan, then did you not, through your own argument of retaliation being morally understandable, gave the USA a
carte blanche to do whatever it takes to defeat Japan in the war, considering they were attacked first? The concept of the atomic bomb as a last-resort weapon did not exist at the leadership level of anybody at the time -- although scientists, being smarter than everybody else, especially politicians, thoroughly recognized it -- it was merely a military and political tool for the US leadership to use. Drastic, risky, and destructive, definitely, and the pesky pacifistic scientists gave their usual warnings; but it'd just cause roughly the same results as firebombing campaigns or vicious street-to-street urban fighting; better yet, same casualties for the Japan, may be more, but less for "us," and we'd gain a lot of geopolitical power.
That was their mindset, a superweapon, a war-winning tool, justified because the Japanese attacked first and attacked "unprovoked" (culture shock here too). Until it sank in, holy shit, this is not just a bomb, this is Death, the Destroyer of Worlds. We just changed everything. Are they to blame for causing it? Hell yes. Would it have been worse than a full-scale assault on a very densely populated island chain with the intention to fight to the death? Or starving them to death, longer, more painful even? Grave of the Fireflies, 10 million people style? I don't know. Do you know?
Does that question mean all that much? I don't think so. People died. People were killed. So it was all for politics. So it goes. Nobody's right here, but few of them are alive to take blame today, if not none whatsoever. All we can do is learn the lesson.
Unless you think my immigration to the United States imply me sharing the blame for the traumatic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
If you answer the USA, then you would be arguing that such diplomatic measures are considered valid
casus belli for a military response, essentially arguing that, say, the Germans were quite perfectly justified in pushing for the return of Danzig against "Western and Polish provocations*," which, of course, is full of it.
Now, there are cases like the German invasion of Poland mentioned above that the aggressor seems clear -- but never without arguments for the other side -- but your assertion displays a surprising level of confidence in the nature of human conflicts that I happen to strongly, very strongly, disagree.
*I'm not talking about the Propaganda Ministry's little blatant deception with "Polish attacks on German soil" either; the history of Polish-German relations dated back deep into history and was quite thoroughly ugly on both sides, although many are inclined to forgive the Polish because of their oppression by the German conquerors. Between WW1 and 2, even Weimar Germany was thoroughly hostile towards Poland, and vice versa -- the Corridor was the kind of issue that made nationalists rabid and moderates nationalist, and the treatment of minorities on both sides were atrocious. All sorts of nasty sanctions, all sorts of treaties, all sorts of justifications for armed response from either side. None of that means shit when people died for things they could not possibly care less.
Nazi Germany's crimes against the Polish people are without a doubt incredible and immense, and thoroughly tragic in scope; but the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Germans from their ancestral homes in modern Poland post WW2 was something not quite recognized by most. Though I suppose you would considering you're -- I assume -- German.
I, well, I don't have much to say. It happened, may be for the better, most likely not, may be for the worse; the key thing is to prevent such things from happening again, and these descendants of past enemies are doing a great job of reconciliation, necessary remorse and diplomatic overtures like formal apologies. Not finger-pointing and throwing around blame and negative epithets.
Oh, right, and I forgot to mention: nobody knows for sure who fired the first shot, or cut the first cut, in this long and sad history that has since turned for the better. Some ambitious Medieval Polish King? Henry the Lion? A fanatical Teutonic Knight? Friedrich-Stanislaw the Unlucky Peasant?
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this logic is something I dislike very much. THESE THINGS HAPPEN you say???
do you know WHY these things happen? because masses of clueless ignorant idiots ALLOW them to happen and support it! this picture repeats itself many times in history. yes there are cases where a tyrannic regime simply seizes power and kills everyone who opposes it - Bolsheviks/Stalin is one of the most prominent examples. you cant do much there as a single citizen except rebelling against it and (most likely) dying. but Hitler/Nazis or the US in Iraq - those were elected governments. it was in the power of the citizens to vote for someone else who wasnt running such a course - but they chose to support it. with the well-known results.
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How did you read my statement into this again?
What I'm expressing isn't apathy. Quite the opposite. I'm saying here: it's all bullshit, your blame, my blame, our country 'tis of thee. None of it matters. None of this nationalist crap, or anti-X nation crap:
people died, they were killed. That's the thing. What you want to do, after to figure out what was going on, is to try and stop it from happening again, not pointing the finger: look, the USA doesn't even know it did this. What a horrible country.
Guess what? It did. The USA isn't homogeneous, the USA is a place where when half the country's youth was drafted to Vietnam for no decent reason whatsoever, the other half were singing protest songs in San Francisco. And interestingly enough, probably more than half who came back from the Southeast Asian country became thoroughly disillusioned at war. So many American kids don't know head to toe in their history classes; how about Germany? Do German kids come out of their history classes aware of the intricacies of history? I'd bet on no. And no, the classes aren't celebrations of American greatness: if anything, I remember from a few years ago a very clear lesson from my AP US history class was that the European immigrants who came over fucked over the natives really, really bad. Over and over again. And they fucked over the black slaves really, really bad. Over and over again. And they attacked Mexico on flimsy pretexts, Spain on flimsy pretexts. And we were taught that. Nobody happens to pay attention to history class, that is all.
Are Americans the bullheaded big blondies who are too stupid to realize what's going on like they show on anime? Of course not.
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if, by this thread, i'm able to slightly influence even a single person away from their brainwashed Western position of "US means it well" etc, I'm fine with it. it's minimal effort for me, and I like such arguments as well - there's much more freedom of argumentation here than in precise mathematical arguments which i'm used to.
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Great, brainwashed Western position. Quite a way to portray the opposition.
As an OT: what academic field are you in? It's quite interesting you'd do a lot of precise mathematical arguments.
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if you were paying attention, thats what I was trying to do. I never tried to judge who's "good" and who's "bad". thats pointless. what I do is compare the respective actions and draw them into a historical context.
the key point is that the result of it all makes the US with its current policy look very, VERY bad. and it can be logically explained and founded in very much detail.
which is what I'm trying to make people understand.
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Again, why should nuclear weapon usage in 1945 makes light of anti-nuclear sentiment in 2008?
The USA is -not- a monolithic, static entity. People change, leaders change; there are much better reasons to argue that the US nuclear policy during the Bush years are hypocritical than Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reasons like, oh, the USA continues to fund nuclear expansion programs despite its diplomatic stance overseas. Now that's real crap, and guess what, if you said so, I'd agree.
But the WW2 blame game has to stop. It has nothing to do with this. And to answer your question below (the last one) right here: if this is not what you were trying to say, then what is your argument trying to achieve? That the decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan was complex, and it wasn't necessarily a heroic, pure decision? Nobody here I see disputes that, not me at least. Or is it to say that US conduct places it on the same level as Japan's in WW2? Lathdrinor gladly disputes that too. And as for me, it really depends on the point of the argument being made. I would not excuse the USA's actions as saintly in the war, but quite frankly, I would not use that to start arguing that it, in your own words, made the US's "current policy look very, very bad." I don't buy that.
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where'd you see me do that?
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How about including the statement I quoted just above, the one with the US policy? Or in the first page, with cold-bloodedness and cruelty?
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the "ten-year-old" comment is about the relativizing argument: "everyone was bad, stop comparing". to illustrate, a description of some people for 10-year-olds:
Hitler was a bad person, he killed many people.
Jack the Ripper was a bad person, he killed many people.
Napoleon was a bad person, he killed many people.
George Washington was a bad person, he killed many people.
does this mean they're all the same? or do we, after all, if we are serious adults, have to compare who they killed, how many they killed, and why?
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WanderingKnight said it, and I agree with him. Essentially: everyone did this and that, so let's use history to learn what that means; not using questionable premises to establish the morality or immorality of an act just to further your own agenda.
Premises like the number game.
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"should probably"? do you recognize that dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong and a war crime? the US doesnt, till today.
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It was a war crime back then? News to me. It was wrong? Against what alternatives? I don't see it as good either, war is bad, that's not hard to grasp. But in choices of kill them (nuclear), kill them (invasion), kill them (firebombing/air raids), or kill them (starvation), what's the difference?