2008-11-19, 05:20 | Link #41 | |||||||
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Location: Land of the rising sun
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Get your head out of the proverbial sand of denial and read your own link. The US enlisted men simply DIDN'T take Japanese POWs. Haven't you heard of the words "Take no Prisoners" that is exactly what most US servce men did on the battle field. Here is an excerpt from the link; Quote:
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Annexation of Korea was war booty first winning against Qing and later asserted by winning against the Russians. Japan also subrogated debts to foreign nations made by the Chosen Kingdom. Cultural genocide is again highly doubtful unless you are talking about shermanism by introducing science. Fact is majority of the Korean Populous wasn't even able to use their own invented hangul letters. Quote:
Victims will stretch(blur) the truth while suspects will hide it. There are things like perjury and I believe that in Korea, people's assets can still be confiscated when found guilt of collaborating with the Japanese so natually most people will not speak fondly. Quote:
In any case, Japan did not have anything against the ethnic Chinese in terms of racism nor did Japan had any lavish scheme to cleanse the ethnic Chinese. Just tried to subdue the resistance through ethnic choice.(Generalization and a bad choice I know but nevertheless those are the fact) Quote:
There is a fact very little known but if the Nanking massacre was true then Japan was more efficient in killing people then the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Quote:
So again if I am a right winger I wonder where does it place you in with your opinions? |
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2008-11-19, 06:32 | Link #42 | ||||||||||||
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Location: Germany
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but none of them coldbloodedly killed 200,000+ civilians in 3 days when it wasnt even necessary. Quote:
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thats not to say I'm apologizing for the Nazis. it was a horrendous regime, certainly the worst ever humanity produced. you literally get shivers reading KZ archives - where you see people classified, with pictures, according to who is going to be killed in what way. the US' contempt for the lives of the Japanese though was not far off. Quote:
Take a guess. 85%. http://www.gallup.com/poll/17677/Maj...apan-WWII.aspx Quote:
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...51C1A967958260 Quote:
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2008-11-19, 06:51 | Link #43 |
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look we get it...you don't like the US or its foreign policy, its quite apparent from your vehement viewpoint, But yet again....what is the point of this whole thread, just to bash it seems so far.
and No, the threat of nuclear war is minimal, it is mainly a detente if anything. @ lathrindor, just retreat, its impossible to argue with people who blindly argue against cold hard factism and evidence. One side is bringing a rational arguement with Base, the other is just conniving out of maliciousness and um mumitroll, your glorious country may not have killed 200XXX in 3 days, but rather 11.5 million CIVILIANS in 6 years, quite pleasant don't you say. Don't you ever try to compare systemic genocide with military acts of war...THEY ARE NOT one in the same. The military estimates would've been in the millions on both sides if the US actually established a beachhead and invaded japan on foot. Bomb =/=gas chambers, a political entity and country was the target with the atomic weapons, minority ethnic groups were the target of cleansing on the other hand. |
2008-11-19, 07:21 | Link #44 | |||||
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an instructive difference in attitudes between the Nazis and the USSR vs others is in the abovementioned POW treatment. some figures: German POWs taken by USSR: 3,300,000 POWS that died in captivity: 374,000 Soviet POWs taken by Germany: 5,200,000 POWS that died in captivity: 3,600,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern...II)#Casualties Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Day or take the "major" battles of the Pacific front: Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Iwo Jima US casualties: 6,821. Okinawa: 12,513. either barely qualifies as a minor regional conflict on the scale of the Eastern front. your "in the millions" is completely groundless. Last edited by Mumitroll; 2008-11-19 at 10:14. |
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2008-11-19, 08:36 | Link #46 | |
books-eater youkai
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Betweem wisdom and insanity
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If they start counting the ones killed by the conquistadors and the spanish inquisition or starting to count the killed from the Roman on the back of the Italian, that tread might become more insane. Anyway, it like someone said to me once: History is written with blood.
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2008-11-19, 08:53 | Link #47 |
NYAAAAHAAANNNNN~
Join Date: Nov 2007
Age: 35
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"A death of one is a tragedy, the death of a thousand is a statistic." Josef Stalin
It doesn't really matter who actually kill more people in war, most politicians who sought to end war through violent means would not even put the bodycount into thought. The most well known scenario is still the Eastern Front, most of the soldiers died "defending the motherland" with Stalin's words of "Not a step back!". Commissars execute those who retreat, and left with no choice, the soldiers will just blindly charge the machine gun head-on. I believe many historians consider those attrition tactics caused a pyrrhic victory, but for Stalin, his motherland is worth more than the lives of 1.35 million young men. I read somewhere that out of 45000 in a certain regiment, only 200 survived till the end of war. Nuclear power is dangerous as we know, Chernobyl has shown us that even for peaceful uses, it can be risky. And we also have Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever built, yielding 50 megatons of TNT, courtesy of Russia. Or you can fire from a portable emplacement like the M388 Davy Crockett. But using these weapons would result in a Mutually Assured Destruction, and have the whole human race wiped out. I don't think anyone is as crazy as Char Aznable to destroy the world so humans will migrate to space or something like that, do you? |
2008-11-19, 08:59 | Link #48 | |||
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the result of such ignorance is a grave one. such people are easily brainwashed since they dont have any historical footing to depend on for objective comparisons. a good example is the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. it was prepared with an extremely intense and short-term propaganda campaign (about 6 months) during which alleged Iraqi WMDs were puffed up to an almost hysterical level. and the US majority bought that crap, just like it bought tons of similar crap lots of times before. a poll immediately before the invasion showed an approximately 75% support for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...vasion_of_Iraq that sounds insane today - now that figure is almost reverted even in the US - but that is the result of a historically and geopolitically illiterate population being subjected to massive media propaganda. repeating "Saddam is a bad tyrant, he has WMDs and wants to attack the US" often enough was sufficient to make it believe that. a somewhat similar campaign has been going on recently about Iran - as that caricature above illustrated well. an even more recent case was the conflict in Georgia. similar illusions are very widespread in the US population on many other foreign policy issues. e.g. the abovementioned illusion that the US acts for the "general good" or "means well". it is to a major extent footed on a belief that, e.g., the US "won" WWII and defeated evil Nazis. and that is again only possible when people are illiterate as to the sizes of the respective theatres of war, people and arms involved, and the resulting casualties - since in reality, all US military action in Europe was a small fraction of what was required to defeat Nazi Germany, and done at a time when it had already been almost beaten. a similar thing goes for Vietnam. e.g. the fact that most of US violence and bombing there was actually directed against SOUTH Vietnam - and not the evil Commies in the North - is a revelation to almost all Americans. historical illiteracy is a really dangerous thing. Quote:
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2008-11-19, 13:45 | Link #49 | ||
Gregory House
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You mean that seeking higher moral ground because some countries were "less bad" than others is being historically conscious? What are you smoking?
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2008-11-19, 13:55 | Link #50 |
books-eater youkai
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Betweem wisdom and insanity
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Sorry to pass for one of those '' people whose culture is limited to the McDonalds era'',.
In fact I might not know history as much as you, but I don't limite myself to the 20th century history. One of the problem to try to compare ''acts'' than are distant in time is the moral value and mentality of the time. In antiquity the victor army than captured a city acted in a way than would be inbelivable to see now, even from the russian in chechenya might be not that bad ( for lack of a proper word).
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2008-11-19, 15:08 | Link #51 | ||||||||||||
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Get real. Quote:
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Look at it this way - the Korean Emperor refused to sign the treaty of annexation. You understand, presumably, the stature of the Japanese Emperor during World War II? If some country occupied the capital of Japan, forced the prime minister to sign a document annexing Japan to that country, and the Emperor of Japan refused to sign it, what does that tell you? That Japan voluntarily submitted to annexation? Occupying countries have always depended on provisional governments - created via threat of force - to puppeteer their colonies. Japan created provisional governments for Manchuria, China, Southeast Asia - you name it. Does that mean none of those places were occupied by Japan? That they were all "part" of Japan? Get real. Quote:
You really need to brush up on Korean history. Quote:
In that sense, the numbers for the war are quite reasonable, since they're not just "what the victims said" but also what was actually available from official documents on both sides. No historian worth his salt doesn't corroborate the evidence and cross-examine them to get rid of potential biases. That doesn't mean it's entirely accurate - due to the general chaos of war casualty numbers will always be an estimate - but it's about as good of a guess as you're going to get. Your view - that history should just be discounted because everybody is biased - on the other hand, is mere revisionism that brushes aside atrocities and war crimes for a "feel good" LIE. If historians thought as you did, then there would be no history, and people would just believe what they like to believe. Yet, that is precisely what led to the atrocities in the first place - because people lied and no one gave a damn about it. The Nuremberg trials was the first time many Germans even knew what their government was doing behind their backs. Just the same, the Tokyo trials should have been a similar wake-up call for the Japanese. Unfortunately, Japan is so caught up in its own narrative of victimhood that it continues to produce denial after denial, even to this day, as evidenced by your posts here. Quote:
You really lack knowledge about this phase of European history. I wouldn't press on without doing some serious research. Quote:
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That said, the numbers of 200,000-300,000 are not necessarily the numbers for the Rape of Nanjing (the specific incident in which the Japanese army, after taking the city, rampaged through it). Rather, they often refer to the number of people killed by the Japanese Army as it advanced through the areas surrounding Nanjing. The actual massacres within Nanjing's walls probably numbered in the 40-50,000, which was a significant proportion of the city's population. So, the massacre did occur, and hundreds of thousands of Chinese likely did die during Japan's Nanjing campaign - but the two events did not necessarily occur simultaneously. A well-sourced website discussing the issue (with many, many sources, including Western, Chinese, and Japanese) can be found here: http://www.nankingatrocities.net/index.htm Quote:
Yes, China wasn't in the best of conditions to withstand the Japanese invasion. That made the Japanese invasion all the more disgusting as it took advantage of a country that was already vulnerable. That so many people died as a result is no surprise - when you attack a country whose resources were strained to the breaking point, widespread suffering and chaos result. Quote:
It'd be one thing if the only evidence we had on Japan's conduct during World War II was from the US, or China, or the Soviets, but that's clearly not the case. Across the world, many nations suffered under Imperial Japan and all of them have produced damning evidence. It's not just China or Korea. It's the entire length of the Japanese Empire. Only early acquisitions like Taiwan were treated with any degree of decency and - *gasp* - historians don't consider Taiwan a Japanese atrocity. Could it be that they're not so biased, after all? Cross-examining the facts between different nations produced the truth - that of a morally bankrupt, brutal, militaristic regime that cared little about human lives. Do you really think that the Imperial Japanese government, which asked its own soldiers to always fight to the death instead of surrendering (something the Allies did not ask of their soldiers), and which executed up to a third of war prisoners it took, would care all that much about the lives of non-Japanese? That is logic-defying. Last edited by Lathdrinor; 2008-11-19 at 16:13. |
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2008-11-19, 15:52 | Link #52 | |||||||||
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Failing to make a distinction between the Jews, who Hitler targeted out of pure malice and hatred, and the Japanese, who were waging a war against the US that they started, is absurd. Quote:
If the Nazis had won, they would've exterminated the Jews. Did the US exterminate Japan? What genocides did the US carry out in Japan after the war? The US spared the Japanese Emperor, for crying out loud. Would Hitler have spared the Jews? The Nazis wrote policy documents detailing how they were going to slaughter the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Slavs after the war and enslave the other races. Quote:
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Is Japan not the world's second largest economy, today? Do you think the Japanese would've built, say, China into a superpower after they defeated it? I sincerely doubt it. Quote:
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2008-11-19, 17:39 | Link #53 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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the point is rather to compare what certain people (e.g. nation leaders/governments) did, their reasons for doing so, how it was received, how it compares to what other similar things have been done before, and what consequences can be drawn from that for the future. this can only be done in terms of specific events and specific conflicts - although it can also sometimes be extrapolated when a policy of a certain state is consistent for an extended period of time (like for example Nazi policy 1933-1945 or US policy post-WWII). i may use terms like "morally understandable" when it is appropriate, but thats pretty much only in extremely obvious cases. i.e. if state A attacks state B and kills millions of people there, it is morally understandable that state B retaliates with whatever means available to it. Quote:
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I dont know how well you're informed about the Russian approach in Chechnya - it was cruel alright - the problem there is rather that there probably was no other way to end it anytime soon. the Chechens are to a major extent a nation of people used to a warlord-style life, rather similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan. their primary means of existence is by war and looting. why do you think the Chechen wars started in the first place? it was because, after the collapse of the USSR, Chechens continuously attacked and pillaged the neighboring Dagestan villages. Quote:
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The US were again informed on July 28 at Potsdam, before the bomb was used, that Japan was prepared to surrender: Stalin:"I want to inform you that we, the Russian delegation, have received a new proposal from Japan... [Japan's note on mediation was then read out in English B.M.] ... Japan is offering to cooperate with us. We intend to reply to them in the same spirit as last time." Truman:"We do not object." Attlee:"We agree." (At Potsdam Conference, July 28 1945) so, as ive repeatedly said, dropping the bombs had next to nothing to do with defeating Japan and saving lives. the CENTRAL goal was to demonstrate Stalin who's boss in this theatre of war (and globally) and prevent another situation as in Europe, where he ended up controlling half of it because US/UK were too slow. this is VERY obvious if you study materials and think a little. and no those reasons dont make it any less cruel than the lack of such. Quote:
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to illustrate teh difference: Hitler position: "All Jews must die, they're unworthy lowly creatures." US position: "If 200,000 Japs have to die to show Stalin that we have the bomb, it's no problem, they're unworthy lowly creatures." Quote:
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although I do agree that, if we forget the anti-USSR reasons for it, the US course in both of those countries was pretty good post-war and was a substantial factor in them returning to prosperity. of course the situation is very different in many other countries which the US isnt interested in as an ally/outpost. Quote:
Last edited by Mumitroll; 2008-11-21 at 20:56. |
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2008-11-19, 18:11 | Link #54 |
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Mumitroll, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this issue. Our views towards the facts of World War II are not that different, and I think it comes down to a matter of interpretation. My view is that Truman and the Allied high-command did consider the various pros and cons of dropping the bombs on Japan, and came out on the side of the pros not merely out of malice, but out of concern for the geopolitical situation. Yes, I do agree that they were not looking to minimize Japanese casualties, necessarily, but I think they did believe that they would have to either conduct an invasion of Japan, bomb it to submission, or accept further Soviet expansion. Out of those choices, they chose the second one, because the first would've led to unacceptable losses, and the last would've led it to a victory for Communism.
So in that sense, yes, the Allies were quite brutal in this particular decision, and by today's standards, it was an atrocity. But overall, I think the Allies acted with greater moral restraint than their foes, and pursued a better ideology. Last edited by Lathdrinor; 2008-11-19 at 18:27. |
2008-11-19, 18:19 | Link #55 |
Le fou, c'est moi
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
Age: 34
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They don't tell that to ten years olds.
Moreover, what's your answer? My country is less bad because they killed less people? That's ten years olds' answers. And don't give me that morally understandable nonsense. Morally understandable is me shooting you back because you shot me first, so you shoot me back because I shot you, or may be you just want to live and the only reason you shot me back was to stop me from shooting you again, and by the time we're done there's ten million dead people and there's more than enough blame to go around. Oh wait, no: you killed one more person than me, you suck. Or may be: my daddy used to live in this crummy hellhole one day longer than your daddy did. This fight is your fault. Better yet: you're currently the most powerful person, so everything's your fault. These things happen, they're tragedies; there are blames, there are faults, and there are those who suffer -- even die, a lot. There are motivations to do things which has little to do with what kind of hell these things will create once they get to be done. Every single good anti-war novel in the last century is universal in expressing what it means to commit an atrocity: to the leaders, it's a political and sometimes ideological decision, be it dropping nuclear bombs on cities, shooting prisoners of war on the spot, ordering genocides, or launching bloodthirsty offensives. You do it for reasons, you do it for results, you do it for ideals you hold and others despise and then the historians will figure out how horrible you are when all things are said and done. To the common grunts, it's that numb feeling where you don't know shit and you can't change shit so you just do what you gotta do to make it through to another day, and by the time you're done you realized you just murdered an innocent or three and then you get to see the pretty numbers showing how your side in the war didn't kill nearly as much people as the other side so you probably did a good thing when you shot the poor French printer in Flanders or the Vietnamese mathematics student in some god-forsaken village somewhere. This high-handed debate attempting to implicate moral values to the historical facts and using them in current context mean less than the dead Vietnamese mathematics student who's probably not real and therefore not dead, or maybe he's real and alive, or real and very much dead, killed by war. What historians should do is debate what the hell happened and why, who did what and when, and may be on how to stop it from happening again; not trying to judge who's good and who's bad in the hellish things we see happen when force gets used to resolve conflicts, and then go up on a soapbox to blame everything on every living Germans because dead Germans used to oppress Jews for sport. So, for example, your contention that at least part of Truman's decision to drop the bombs on Japan is driven by geopolitical concerns is something interesting to argue about -- and I happen to agree, though not with your version that apparently place it as the one major reason why the bombs were dropped. But when you turn that from "the US did this" to "therefore the US sucks, go to hell hypocrite Americans," I call your bluff and I'm not taking the "ten-years old" comment down quietly. One it places blame on institutions rather than people, two it also places blame on people who didn't even get to live through it much less did it, and three it shows quite well where your prejudices are by placing these blames where they don't belong. The US is not guiltless, the US should probably be more willing to recognize World War 2 for a multi-faceted war it is and the extent of Allied atrocities that are forgotten in common awareness, the US can probably even benefit from a sincere apology or two for past conduct of the predecessors (or the mistakes of the living ones for, say, Iraq War) for the surviving recipients of the bad side of American foreign policy, but I don't buy into the "you* used nuclear weapon in 1945 therefore anti-nuclear sentiment in 2008 is hypocrisy and the USA remains the Evil Empire" argument. *which isn't even really "you," as few of us are alive back then. |
2008-11-19, 18:32 | Link #56 | |
Gregory House
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(PS: Note that I agree with your post in spirit, though).
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2008-11-19, 18:38 | Link #57 | |
Le fou, c'est moi
Join Date: Dec 2007
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But what I can say, I'm a commoner on the ground with no access to the halls of power where things get decided and things get done. |
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2008-11-19, 19:53 | Link #58 | |||||||||||||||
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i often see slightly more sophisticated versions of this retold on Western political forums. Quote:
...there is no single "answer". an answer can only be given to a specific question. Quote:
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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". Quote:
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. Quote:
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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. Quote:
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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? Quote:
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2008-11-19, 20:18 | Link #59 | |
books-eater youkai
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Betweem wisdom and insanity
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The biggests thing missing in that tale : WHY and The context. Without the knowledge of thoses 2 things, someone may still belive that tale, with that knowledge it more difficult. In my opinion using the word good and bad for the billigerent of WW2, is innappropriate ( but this may come from readding enough Nietzche's book)
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2008-11-19, 21:07 | Link #60 | |
Gregory House
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Those people all lived in different situations, under different contexts. Yes, you can compare them (you can compare anything you want, actually), but historically speaking, there's little point in doing so. It's not that it's impossible to compare them--it's that it helps very little (read: nothing) in understanding the context in which these people were born and raised--and why they acted the way they did. It's not about justifying them, it's about understanding them. History is about understanding these sorts of people and the different contexts in which they acted and by which they were influenced. Not about seeking to blame someone or making a "Top 10 Most Evil Bastards Ever" chart.
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