Chinese Censors Accidentally Block Shanghai Index

New submitter Vulcan195 writes "Now this is amusing in so many ways ... Today (June 4, 1989 ... i.e. 6/4/89) is the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Naturally, the Chinese Censors were working overtime to block anything that made remote or oblique references to that event. Well, sometime during the day the Shanghai Composite Index dropped by 64.89 points; You can guess what happened next."

Comments

at least it wasn't a search-and-replace

[Trepidity]

Much like the fate that befell Olympic runner Tyson Homosexual, the Shanghai Stock Exchange could've found itself falling Harmonious Society points today.

Re:at least it wasn't a search-and-replace

[identity0]

At least he wasn't made to be Nookd for a bonfire.

Re:at least it wasn't a search-and-replace

[Anonymous Coward]

However, as it was unknown to me and had become clear as of late, I have always been bootynude right from the very beginning!

My true power has always been apparent!

Re:at least it wasn't a search-and-replace

[sixsixtysix]

He would if he failed to Cupertino.

Not like the USA

[cryfreedomlove]

Every discussion of Chinese censorship inevitably leads to posts about how the USA should get off it's high horse because it is just as bad. It is true that the USA has committed atrocities. Kent State, Jim Crow killings, Dresden, etc. The difference however, is that the USA reflects on its past in a much more transparent way than China does today. Come on China, it has been 23 years. Let's discuss this in an open way. You won't be able to hide it forever, especially because most Americans saw a lot of Tiananmen on TV.

Re:Not like the USA

[couchslug]

Dresden was a legitimate military target. All infrastructure was a legitimate military target and all workers were in effect war workers so they were military targets.

WWII was a serious war, a Total War, not some UN police action designed to fail. It was literally an existential war which made thorough destruction of all Nazi capabilities a duty.

Germany initiated WWII and the population of Germany worked long and hard to prepare for and sustain that war to the bitter end.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Being transparent about one's past is certainly a good thing, but it's a pretty small consolation when atrocities keep going on.

The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians - I have no doubt that in several decades, the USA will officially give REAL recognition to these victims (instead of blanket statements such as "we remember the victims of this war" which doesn't clearly spell out "CIVILIANS"). However, this won't make up for the fact that the war should have ended years earlier than it did (and in fact should have never been started).

I'd go as far as to say being transparent when you don't learn from your mistakes is pointless.

So sure, it's better than China. But not by much. The homeless man with two pennies is twice as rich as the one with only one penny - they still both have the same standards of living.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Infrastructure and industry was a legitimate target, housing and historical buildings certainly not.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that the USA, and most of the Western world, now fully pays for China to remain the bunch of fascist bastards that they've been for decades.

If you pay for X, you are responsible for X.

Re:Not like the USA

[girlintraining]

The difference however, is that the USA reflects on its past in a much more transparent way than China does today.

Transparency must be why, after Vietnam, we stopped broadcasting live coverage of the war and made sure every embedded journalist turns in his/her footage to be edited for "homeland security" reasons prior to being sent in for publication.
Transparency is why we have our own Star Chamber now, where suspected terrorists are tried, convicted, and sentenced, in secret trials where they cannot see the evidence presented against them, nor offer testimony in their defense.
Transparency is why at the bottom of most google search results, is the phrase "In response to a complaint we received under the 'US Digital Millenium Copyright Act' we have removed n results."
And transparency is most certainly why the founder of Wikileaks found his assets frozen because of a request by Homeland Security to PayPal through extrajudicial means, and then we discovered a secret unit within Homeland Security who's sole purpose is to discredit citizens who express "politically undesireable" viewpoints.

We don't "reflect on our past" any more transparently than China does -- we just have a higher threshold before the government decides to assassinate someone they disagree with. A threshold, I might add, that's been on a downward trend for some time.

Re:Not like the USA

[CrimsonAvenger]

It is true that the USA has committed atrocities. Kent State, Jim Crow killings

It should be noted that "Jim Crow killings" weren't official government policy, they were the result of individual actions.

Unlike the Kent State thing, which was "official policy" at least to the extent that the Guard was ordered there, armed.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on China, it has been 23 years. Let's discuss this in an open way. You won't be able to hide it forever, especially because most Americans saw a lot of Tiananmen on TV.

The USA is barely ~400 years old. China is 4000 years old. Scale accordingly.

I think it is in the culture of China to move slowly and oppress/order citizens in a very hierarchical manner, because that's how large kingdoms survive for many centuries.

Re:Not like the USA

[Trepidity]

I'm not sure what percentage of people actually reflect on their past, and certainly it's not that prominent in the mainstream media. I think considerable amount of reflection does happen, though, and it isn't actively suppressed. There are a lot of critical books on the Reagan presidency that you can buy from Amazon or other major bookstores. There are books attacking the Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada, the suppression of the Black Panthers, etc. You cannot buy similarly critical books in China, which seems like a key difference: it's not just that Chinese don't want to read books attacking the invasion of Tibet or the Tiananmen Square massacres, but that these books simply cannot be purchased in China even if you're one of the minority of people who does want to read about it.

In fact, not only are such critical books published in the United States, but I have taken taxpayer-funded university courses that assign them as required reading! Angela Davis is a tenured university professor at a state-run university. None of that kind of thing happens in China.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

One can argue whether Dresden was or was not a legitimate military target, but even if it was, it doesn't automatically make targeting it justifiable. An ammo stash on the roof of a hospital is also a legitimate military target, but if the enemy is already crippled to the point where he is unable to use that stash to any meaningful effect, targeting it just because you can - with all the ensuing civilian casualties - is morally wrong.

For reference, by the time of Dresden firebombing, Soviet troops were already at Oder, within 50 miles from Berlin, for over a week. In fact, Soviets could have likely ended the war right there and then if they kept marching on; they just decided to play it safe.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Historical buildings owned by people with lots of wealth, and whom had no problems sharing that wealth with the Nazi war machine.

Valid target. Sorry.

Re:Not like the USA

[Charliemopps]

What the fuck are you talking about? It's insane what people think war is today. War is horrible, awful, terrible. All assets of a country you are at war at are legitimate targets. Babies, puppies, little old ladies. Anything that would stop the German people from trying to rule the world was a legitimate target. Imagine if the Nazis had won the war... Whole races of people could have been wiped off the face of the earth. Imagine if we had taken another 6 months to a year to defeat them and they had come up with their own atomic weapon and dropped it on London...

The very idea that there are "rules of war" is just stupid. War crimes are what the winners of a war charge the leadership of the losers so they can execute them in some semi-legal way.

The rules of engagement that the US military exercises are a token effort made by our leadership because our military is so ridiculously over equipped and the enemy is usually so completely out-classed that it costs us relatively little to avoid some of the more publicly distasteful practices. I promise you, if we ever got into a war with an enemy that was even remotely evenly matched to our military our rules of engagement would be out the window in a heartbeat. Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face? Of course you would. Now shut the fuck up.

Re:Not like the USA

[X0563511]

Here's a dose of perspective:

"Fuck the US, and fuck the US government."

Hey look, not only am I still alive and unharmed, I still have all my rights!

Try that in China, and see what happens.

Re:Not like the USA

[Elldallan]

Soooo, the attacks on the Pentagon and WTC were also legitimate targets? After all All Qaeda considers itself to be at "total war" with the United States(as well as a lot of other people/nations).
Because from a military point of view there is absolutely no real difference(except that the firebombings was obviously on a much larger scale), The Pentagon is the headquarters of the US military(so arguably a legitimate military target under any circumstances) and the World Trade Center had considerable importance for the economical infrastructure.
They carried the same purpose, to demoralize the nation by striking terror in the population, nothing else because if you want to bomb factories or other infrastructure there are much more effective ways to accomplish that.

Re:Not like the USA

[lorenlal]

I completely disagree dude. There are rules to war.

1) Win. Do this in whatever way is necessary to preserve as much of your side as possible.
2) The winners decide how it gets written in history. They're in charge. They are the feel good side, and they dictate how the losers pay for what they did.
3) War criminals are the ones who lost. They got what they asked for. This is the true leadership risk of waging war. If you're the Generalissimo, and you lose, it's your head both figuratively and literally. The soldiers who survive may be tried, but the leaders will most certainly be.
3a) If you welcome the winners with open arms, you're more likely to be in good shape even if you're on the losing side... Assuming the tide doesn't turn and you end up a traitor.
3b) If you fight to the bitter end and lose... It's the bitter end.

Rules of engagement are an attempt to preserve the non-fighting population who will presumably welcome the victors with open arms. I believe it's more of an attempt to maximize follow-up stabilization attempts.

Yes, this is an over-simplification. Please understand that tongue is firmly planted in cheek, even if there's a bit of truthiness in there.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's insane what people think war is today."

Yeah, somehow people think war is legitimate.

Re:Not like the USA

[JoshuaZ]

You are possibly assuming there a degree of targeting accuracy which they didn't have. Also, many historical building had military import (such as historic railway stations used for moving supplies). Keep in mind in World War II, the accuracy of bombing was so poor that they sometimes bombed the wrong city. If you had a factory or the like in the middle of an area, that wasn't going to help. The more serious problem with Dresden was that arguably they really were targeting civilians. There is some complexity involved though- it isn't clear that the laws of war had yet reached a consensus at that point. See http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jpcl.htm for some relevant points. There's a decent argument also that the presence of factories and the presence of military units stationed in and around Dresden made it a legitimate target. George Marshall made an inquiry that came to that conclusion, but the fact that the US military thought an inquiry was necessary does reflect strongly on the questionable nature of the decision. The argument that the bombing was not justified has been most strongly argued by Alexander McKee who is a historian who has written a fair bit on this subject. Overall, I'd say that McKee's analysis is a strong but not convincing case (although this is also going off my memory of the last time I looked into this subject in detail which was around 5 or 6 years ago).

Re:Not like the USA

[Darinbob]

And yet you are able to make these complaints out in the open and not be arrested for it or lose your job over it or have your family lose their jobs or privileges.

Re:Not like the USA

[Elldallan]

Another reason that the US military "limits" itself with rules of war is that their leadership recognizes that the US has to keep existing in the political climate after a war. If the US military just went about steamrolling across Afghanistan/Iraq with no concern for civilians there would be huge political repercussions with possible sanctions as a result, not exactly what the US economy needs at the moment.
Another obvious complication with a "real" war is that it would with 100% certainty trigger WWIII and the obliteration of mankind as the countries capable of fighting on similar terms is pretty much limited to Europe, Russia, China, India, Japan and maybe few others and any actions against any one of those nations would trigger a chain reaction that would eventually pull every major industrialized nation into the war.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a dose of perspective:

"Fuck the US, and fuck the US government."

Hey look, not only am I still alive and unharmed, I still have all my rights! ...so says "X0563511", "email not shown publicly", with a broken website.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

like those Jews in the forced labor camps? They were aiding the Nazi war machine, we should have bombed them too?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Historical buildings owned by people with lots of wealth, and whom [sic] had no problems sharing that wealth with the Nazi war machine.

Problem was they hit the historical buildings owned by people with lots of wealth who had very grave misgivings about the Nazi war machine just as hard.

Valid target.

Yes pre-Nueremberg it was. By today's standards it would be judged a war crime.

Sorry.

You are not.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Civilians in the hospital aren't the enemy, though.

Note that I didn't say that it's always wrong to strike military targets when there is a chance (or even a certainty) of collateral damage. There are certainly circumstances where that is the best available choice, and there are certainly more such circumstances in an all-out war such as WW2. This is something that has to be judged on a case by case basis. But when you disregard any thoughts about the morality of your actions, just because the victims belong to some abstract class titled "enemy" (even when in reality they are just scared kids), that's unequivocally evil.

If it makes me one of "them", whoever that is, then I'm in a good company.

Re:Not like the USA

[turkeyfeathers]

OK, I'm in China and I just said "Fuck the US, and fuck the US government"... and I'm still alive and unharmed. Maybe I should try saying it in Mandarin next time?

Re:Not like the USA

[H0p313ss]

You just hit the nail on the head.

The U.S. could do a lot better, most nations could, but trying to compare civil rights in the U.S. and China is just apples and oranges. (And I'm a Canadian socialist who thinks of America as a country of right-wingnut gun-toting redneck rebels.)

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh your one of them,
    your friend slaps someone else then quickly turns around, you yell at them to look out because the other guy is about to hit them. Other guy kills you because you jumped into the fight.

  Dresden was only marginally a military target, we bombed it for a very simple reason: to crush German morale. Yes, the terrorists have won, for they are us.

Re:Not like the USA

[Cederic]

Yes, but what's the purpose of war? It's not to kill the enemy, it's not to disable their infrastructure, it's not to reduce their ammunition supplies.

Clausewitz suggested the purpose is the imposition of your will on another. Killing civilians in this day and age reduces your chances of successfully imposing your will, so it's counter-productive, for all the damage you may cause to the enemy.

Think bigger picture.

Re:Not like the USA

[Capsaicin]

...so says "X0563511", "email not shown publicly", with a broken website.

That's funny. The website was working fine before he made that post.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo, the attacks on the Pentagon and WTC were also legitimate targets? After all All Qaeda considers itself to be at "total war" with the United States(as well as a lot of other people/nations).

There are a couple ways to look at it. The Pentagon was a valid military target in a declared war with the United States. The passengers on the planes and the civilians in the twin towers were not. They obviously thought those were all valid targets. Even so, there are those who think that if they believe they're fighting a Total War against the United States, then we should treat them accordingly and play by the exact same rules. If we had done that from the outset, the war with them would have been over in a matter of days.

Re:Not like the USA

[Dave Emami]

The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians - I have no doubt that in several decades, the USA will officially give REAL recognition to these victims (instead of blanket statements such as "we remember the victims of this war" which doesn't clearly spell out "CIVILIANS"). However, this won't make up for the fact that the war should have ended years earlier than it did (and in fact should have never been started).

Except that the vast majority of those civilians were killed by people who had lost their power trying to get it back. Blaming the US for that is equivalent to blaming Abraham Lincoln for the KKK -- after all, if the slaves had never been freed, there wouldn't have been any reason for the southern whites to put them back in their place by terrorizing and killing them, right? And in both cases, those who had been overthrown (the Baathists or the slave owners) would have been killing their former subjects to try to reassert the old order, whether the overthrow had been at the hands of the formerly-oppressed, or from an outside force -- in fact, the body count would probably have been much higher in the Iraq case, because there is no way any home-grown anti-Baathist force could have overthrown Saddam as quickly as the US-led coalition did. If (as you assert) the fact that those who were overthrown killed a lot of people trying to get back into power dictates that they never should have been overthrown in the first place, then by your reasoning it would have been immoral for anyone to overthrow him.

Now, you can assert that the US handled things badly afterward, and on many points I'll agree with you. You can say that the whole thing wasn't worth it to the US given the price paid -- that's more or less the paleoconservative position. But if you do something good (if you think overthrowing Saddam wasn't in and of itself good, I don't have the time of day for you), the only blood on your hands is from those killed while doing it, not the blood spilled by those trying to roll it back. And if you doubt that US forces went out of their way to spill as little blood as possible, compare 2003 Baghdad with 1995 Grozny.

(Note: not attempting to condemn the Russians by that last item. I don't know enough about the Chechen wars to comment on what level of force was justified. It just makes a good recent example for comparison).

Re:Not like the USA

[Darkness404]

Germany initiated WWII because The Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI was a failure. Violence breeds violence. Wars lead to more wars. Every war leads eventually to another war, only peaceful change puts an end to conflict.

Re:Not like the USA

[ganjadude]

Many people hide things in civilian zones for the very reasons that they know that in general, we wont attack said zones.

Think about it, if you know that the countryt attacking you says some zone is off limits, where are you going to stash your most valuable intel/people/ammo etc?

Re:Not like the USA

[ganjadude]

And what If I am hiding my nuke (it is known to be there, not just thought to be there for this hypothetical) in the hospital knowing you wont attack said hospital? is it ok to attack it than?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The Natzi's opend that pandora's box first by bombing London. If the enemy is doing it to your people, then they can't complain about the same reponse.

Re:Not like the USA

[Dr Max]

Your government has a lot of control over the media (or the media owns the government) so you don't censor events as much as you flood opposition stories and cover-up the small details with courts and procedure. Occupy wall street was just as dramatic as Tiananmen square just instead of tanks they had police run around beating people up and pepper spraying them, and instead of disappearing protestors, they are locked up as criminals all under the watchful eyes of the news teams. Even now i know i hear 100 reasons why the protestors in America were evil and deserved everything they get, but the ones in china were heros. If i have the choice between censorship or lies and manipulation I’ll take censorship any day.

Re:Not like the USA

[mrbester]

"The more serious problem with Dresden was that arguably they really were targeting civilians."

Same as Coventry. Difference being Churchill knew about the attack thanks to intercepted messages but had to let it happen so the Germans didn't know we had cracked their codes. That incentive for revenge, plus the fact that Dresden was pretty much the only large city not yet hit made it a pretty tempting target.

Re:Not like the USA

[Dr Max]

i tired it and i just got beat up by 5 red necks saying don't like it then GET OUT.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

All assets of a country you are at war at are legitimate targets. Babies, puppies, little old ladies.

And yet both sides on the Western Front in Europe managed to abide more-or-less by the Geneva convention. They fed and sheltered captured enemy troops, when it would have been more efficient to simply shoot them. In that sense, it wasn't a total war: they still followed rules to mitigate the worst effects of war on the human condition.

That's why we can claim the moral high ground when someone flies an aircraft into a building filled with thousands of civilians. And why we'll lose it, if we ever do the same thing.

Re:Not like the USA

[JoshuaZ]

Whether someone can "complain" about something doesn't have much to do with whether it is moral. Just because another government is targeting your civilian population doesn't magically make it moral to target their civilians, especially when many of them aren't even in favor of the government in question.

Re:Not like the USA

[couchslug]

"In fact, Soviets could have likely ended the war right there and then if they kept marching on; they just decided to play it safe."

Since the Soviets had lost about TEN MILLION troops and the Germans were fighting desperately to buy time for refugees to evacuate, it wasn't just "playing it safe".

Your priorities are revealing in that your only concern is for Germans.

Germany had killed tens of millions of people. It's not sane to expect the countries they attacked to quibble over collateral damage. The whole premise of "war" is that "enemy" lives are worth less than "own side" lives and that it's absurd to sacrifice yours to save theirs.

Re:Not like the USA

[couchslug]

"Soooo, the attacks on the Pentagon and WTC were also legitimate targets? "

Yes. Fighting is fighting.

The way to register your objection to an enemy isn't to squall about morals. It is to kill him.

War is for deciding such questions, because force trumps everything else.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Try that in China, and see what happens.

Okay, here goes:

"Fuck the US, and fuck the US government."

Hey, it looks like I'm fine!

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Yes.

Re:Not like the USA

[Velex]

That's the beauty of it, good doctor. You can fight over censorship. You can't fight a mass of undereducated, brainwashed, misinformed, superstitious voters. After all, things must be the way they are because the public wants them that way. After all, it's what they voted for, and it's not like we haven't censored contrary opinions, so what you hear on the news must be genuinely fair and balanced.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

In China, it's more than just their necks that are red.

And it's more than just their necks that they beat you with.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Since the Soviets had lost about TEN MILLION troops and the Germans were fighting desperately to buy time for refugees to evacuate, it wasn't just "playing it safe".

Soviets lost ten million troops in the first two years of the war. By February '45, the tables were decidedly turned. Heck, in the Vistula-Oder offensive, Germans had lost 150k people taken prisoner (and an uncertain amount, but certainly more, dead), for the Soviet 40k KIA + MIA.

Your priorities are revealing in that your only concern is for Germans.

I don't know what strawman you have built up as my priorities; it's especially puzzling to me since my off-tangent remark about the offensive you somehow took for the main point of my argument, and saw some priorities in it? There were certainly none implied.

Anyway, myself being Russian, and one of my grandfathers having fought in that war, I am most certainly biased - but not in the way you seem to imply. If you are trying to be offensive, you have certainly succeeded.

Germany had killed tens of millions of people. It's not sane to expect the countries they attacked to quibble over collateral damage. The whole premise of "war" is that "enemy" lives are worth less than "own side" lives and that it's absurd to sacrifice yours to save theirs.

Is it okay to sacrifice a thousand of "theirs" to save one of "yours"? Ten thousand? A million? At which point do you say it's enough?

Most certainly, the most efficient way to deal with Germany once and for all in 1945 would have been to massacre them completely - firebombings, artillery, whatever. No people, no problem, right? Why leave anyone alive if you know that any living German may be a Werwolf member who'll shoot you in the back as soon as you turn away?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that often does not get mentioned in these discussions of world war ii is what the allies demanded as conditions for peace. The plan was to put all the german men in forced labor camps, destroy all institutions of higher learning, and redistribute the land to the neighboring countries. These were the British demands for peace made public in an editorial in the times of London 2 days after the declaration of war. The allied plan got eventually formalized as the morgenthau plan, with a demand for unconditional surrender (as in give up your weapons and no guarantees are made).

No matter whether things seemed to go in favour or against the allies, they never retreated from these demands until 2 years after the end of the war.

If you put as conditions for peace terms that are not beneficial for either the leaders or the people of a country, and every choice that they have favors continuing to fight, you have taken the responsibility from their hands into yours.

Re:Not like the USA

[Darkness404]

The problem with "Occupy Wall-Street" was there is no ideological unity and some of the protesters simply were idiotic (same thing with the "Tea Party" movement, but at least that had ideological unity) you get some sane signs protesting the bailout and then you simply get some absolute moronic signs like the one saying "a job is a right". I'm sure the Tiananmen Square protesters were much the same way, but looking at it from a foreign perspective it is much easier to generalize.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the war was at an end. Europe was being overrune fast and Dresden wasn't a legitimate target because there was nothing worthwhile there in terms of factory or war effort. On top of that, the actual bombing run was to maximize suffering. Long burning phosphorous bombs making the entire town square into an oven.

Bomber Harris was a war criminal. Once you see the pile of bodies in photographs, read stories about them finding hundreds of bodies in single Luftschutz bunkers YEARS after the war ended multiple times (in the 1940s and early 50s), there is no denying it. Despite the suspiciously continually death count which reeks of political correctness of today's Germans (the original count was rougly 100-250k, now they explain it away down to 25k talking about Dresden's official population census and just ignore the flood of refugees from the east that were there at the time).

Acknowledging Dresden as an atrocity takes nothing away from German crimes like the Holocaust. Yet people like you treat it as such because to you history has to be a Comic book bad guy vs good guy lens.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Do certainly think this way. Before the UN London was the world capital and the largest empire in world history had just failed. Imagine a concerted bombing of ny or dc and then you might get close. It's called "total" war for a reason

Re:Not like the USA

[Darkness404]

American interference in world affairs has -always- ended up bad for America and even worse for the rest of the world. Look at the Iran Iraq war where the US and UK allied themselves with Saddam's Iraq and supplied arms to them! The US (and other Western nations) prop up dictators and then later have to take them down in a perpetual war.

Re:Not like the USA

[catmistake]

Come on China, it has been 23 years

One wonders just how long these ridiculous fossils from the Revolution are going to live. As generations grow older and are replaced by younger generations, you'd think that tolerance would increase and these childish attempts to control an individual's thought would pass away along with the intolerant. When this finally does happen, when the Chinese citizens are finally as free as those in the Western world... we're really going to see something. Speaking as an ugly american, Chinese individuals that make it to the West are almost always tremendously impressive, cognitively.

Re:Not like the USA

[Gizzmonic]

overthrowing Saddam wasn't in and of itself good

That's what, propaganda goal #3? #4? First it was 'training/harboring terrorists,' then 'weapons of mass destruction', then 'bringing democracy to the Middle East...' All nonsense used to justify an elective adventure that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and liquidated the educated class of an entire country.

Sure, getting rid of Hussein was a good thing, but guess what? In the real world, you can't eliminate Hussein in a vacuum. You have to consider the possibility that one tin-pot dictator is not worth razing a country, killing hundreds of thousands of innocents including nearly all of the educated class, plus thousands of your own soldiers, and spending billions of dollars that could have helped immensely with the current financial crisis.

'US forces went out of their way to spill as little blood as possible?' No, the Bush administration rashly created the situation that led to the deaths of the Iraqis (most Democrats spinelessly went along with it). The Bush administration was full of Polyannas who thought that Iraq would be like the liberation of Paris. Rumsfeld created his own intelligence department because he didn't like the facts, then smugly dismissed any criticism with statements like "You don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you have" which is extremely disingenuous considering the elective nature of the war.

The most powerful people in the country had no plans beyond "overthrow Saddam" and little or no conception of history or politics in Iraq. They seemed to have no idea at all that there would be a civil war, or any strategies on how to fight it. That's tragic negligence.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

I dare you remove the quotation marks.

Re:Not like the USA

[bigstrat2003]

You are welcome to conduct war like a savage if you want. The rest of us will conduct war in as civilized a fashion as possible. War is already bad enough, there's no reason to make it worse.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Dresden was a number of things and in particular it was a crucial node of the road system at that point. Leveling it was a good call.

"ended the war right there and then if they kept marching on; they just decided to play it safe."

To repeat, the practical point in war is to make the /other/ son of a bitch die for his country.

"safe" ... look up the goddamn casualties of that period. You're just being an asshole now. That wasn't some fucking tv show.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

How else was the US going to get a reason to go into afganistan and iraq. otherwise we would be out of oil bush had to blow up the wtc.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

oh i thought it was cause the germans were evil and america was all roses and puppy dogs that's why we had to kill all those pows after the war.

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face?

Can you explain how shooting a baby in the face will keep anyone from shooting yours? For that matter, how is shooting puppies or little old ladies going to help you win? It won't. If anything it just inspires the enemy. Which gets us to why "rules of war" exist: wars are extremely stressful situations, which cause people fighting in them to do unnecessary or even counterproductive cruelties. Rules of war and rules of engagement exist to try to prevent the more outrageous of these.

Now shut the fuck up.

Do you have some kind of personal stake here? Because you seem to be getting pretty emotional about the topic.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Unlike you, I actually gave some casualty figures for context.

So, if you're so knowledgeable about the military role of Dresden and casualties of the period, pray tell: how many Allied casualties were spared by its firebombing?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

america has killed a lot more civilans in supposedly military operations than what happened on 911.

Re:Not like the USA

[Attila Dimedici]

There is only one person who has ever claimed that Churchill knew that Coventry was the target of the raid you are referencing. The more credible claim by other sources is that Churchill knew that an attack was coming but believed that the target was London.

Re:Not like the USA

[fredprado]

It is just because in US you don't need to kill the dissidents. It is easier just to discredit them, especially when you have big media on your side.

Re:Not like the USA

[exa]

Well, if the Nazis had won, the world would still have a fascist global superpower, but one with much sharper uniforms.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

try that in a USA airport

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Dresden was an open city.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea man, I feel you there. That business in the forties turned out terribly. They ought to have just withdrawn after Pearl. Let the Japanese have Asia, Germany gets Europe, and they could (keep) the Western hemisphere. Selfish bastards.

Re:Not like the USA

[liquidsin]

thank you. you can't just go around trying to impose your own morals on every nation. at least with syria, the people of that country made the decision to oust their dictator. they were ready. it was the popular decision. when you try to force democracy on a nation, you risk the population not being ready to accept it. and without the support of the population, you end up in a protracted war with "insurgents". i'm pretty sure if someone decided canada was oppressing me and started dropping bombs to make my life better i'd probably try to kill the bastards too. is it better to let a dictator kill 1,000 of his own subjects a year or to start a war that kills 10,000 of those people a year? sounds like a tough decision; one that needs to be made by those people.

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

and then you simply get some absolute moronic signs like the one saying "a job is a right".

Is this moronic? Our current society is certainly built around the expectation that everyone has a job. People who don't are resented and denied anything beyond bare substinence income (and sometimes even that). When lack of a job makes you a barely tolerated human cochroach it's hardly surprising that some might start wondering if having one should be a formally recognized right.

Re:Not like the USA

[phantomfive]

Exactly. The crucial thing with freedom of speech is that you MUST be able to criticize your government, so you can discuss changing things. If the majority of your society doesn't feel that child porn, or blasphemy against Mohammad, or denying the holocaust, that is something you can work with. You can express your ideas, and try to convince people that things should change. Lots of things have changed in the US that way.

But as soon as you limit criticism of the government, then the only way to change things becomes revolution. That is not a way to build a stable, healthy society. You must be able to criticize government openly, and advocate for change, otherwise you have a dictatorship by those who control the censorship.

Re:Not like the USA

[phantomfive]

You need new friends, don't put up with that kind of thing.

Re:Not like the USA

[TheLink]

There are rules to war. There were plenty of rules that were mostly followed by both sides in WW2.

If you break the rules, more of them may fight you to the death than surrender. For example there is no point surrendering if you are breaking the rules and killing prisoners that surrender. Then even if you eventually win, it would cost you a lot more.

You want to wage a war where the enemy is more likely to surrender than fight you to the bitter end.

Re:Not like the USA

[Stickerboy]

Yes, but what's the purpose of war? It's not to kill the enemy, it's not to disable their infrastructure, it's not to reduce their ammunition supplies.

Clausewitz suggested the purpose is the imposition of your will on another. Killing civilians in this day and age reduces your chances of successfully imposing your will, so it's counter-productive, for all the damage you may cause to the enemy.

Think bigger picture.

Really? The Taliban must be losing in a landslide then in Afghanistan. The Taliban make it their modus operandi to kill, intimidate, and/or make an example of any civilians that dare cooperate with the international forces in Afghanistan, be it UN, US or NATO allies. How's that war going, again?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Afair, protesting against the US and GWB in particular, has had people being put on the "no fly list" etc.

Sure it is better, than being locked up beneath a military hospital and have your organs harvested while still alive. But it is still on the wrong path, but just not as far gone as some others.

Re:Not like the USA

[Dave Emami]

All nonsense used to justify an elective adventure that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and liquidated the educated class of an entire country.

An "adventure" or a "situation" did not do anything. Certain people killed certain other people. The US is morally responsible for those innocents shot or bombed by its forces. It is not responsible when a former Baathist sets off a bomb in a marketplace. He -- and whatever organization he answers to, if any -- is responsible. He is not a toddler or monkey or a robot responding unthinkingly to stimuli or programming. He is a moral actor. The idea that the US is responsible for his actions, the way someone would be if they stampeded a herd of cattle, is of the same spirit as what a Victorian colonial might say with a shrug: "Well, what do you expect, chap? They're just wogs, after all."

Sure, getting rid of Hussein was a good thing, but guess what? In the real world, you can't eliminate Hussein in a vacuum. You have to consider the possibility that one tin-pot dictator is not worth razing a country, killing hundreds of thousands of innocents including nearly all of the educated class

Aside from your continuing to lump together who did what, I pointed out that the Baathists would have been trying to get back into power regardless of who took that power away. If getting rid of Saddam was (in your estimation) not worth the post-overthrow cost, then by your logic it would have been immoral for the Iraqis themselves to do it, assuming they had the power to. And as I also pointed out, the number of people killed in the overthrow itself was far lower than it would have been otherwise (for a rough comparison, scaling what happened in Lebanon to account for population differences, gives 1.1 million at the low end). So, again by your standards, an indigenous overthrow would be even more wrong.

plus thousands of your own soldiers, and spending billions of dollars that could have helped immensely with the current financial crisis.

As I noted, that's a valid objection, but a different one than the issue I was responding to.

Re:Not like the USA

[TubeSteak]

2) The winners decide how it gets written in history. They're in charge. They are the feel good side, and they dictate how the losers pay for what they did.

This used to be true when video cameras were uncommon and media distribution channels were limited and controlled by the government during times of war.

Today, every civilian has a digital video camera and access to the youtube/facebook/twitter/blogoversesphere.
Today, the soldiers document their own war crimes.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

All assets of a country you are at war at are legitimate targets. Babies, puppies, little old ladies. Anything that would stop the German people from trying to rule the world was a legitimate target.

Terrorists can make the same justification against the United States.

Re:Not like the USA

[Stickerboy]

and then you simply get some absolute moronic signs like the one saying "a job is a right".

Is this moronic? Our current society is certainly built around the expectation that everyone has a job. People who don't are resented and denied anything beyond bare substinence income (and sometimes even that). When lack of a job makes you a barely tolerated human cochroach it's hardly surprising that some might start wondering if having one should be a formally recognized right.

Yes it is moronic. The difference is the right to seek a job using your own hard work and qualifications versus "a job is a right". Just because someone else has made poor life decisions, creating an underdeveloped basket case whose only function in life is to drool over the latest bread and circus churned out by the media entertainment complexes, does not mean they are entitled to anything other than bare subsistence provisions. I'm sorry if they're resentful, but tough fucking luck. It's never too late to start making some smarter choices in life.

Re:Not like the USA

[mysidia]

Infrastructure and industry was a legitimate target, housing and historical buildings certainly not.

I guess you would say the White House and burning of Washington DC by the British wasn't a legitimate target in the War of 1812? Your assertion's just incorrect.

In a war between nations, anything that provides any value or comfort to your opponent or their citizens is a legitimate target in war, whether that value is direct military asset, or indirect civil/political asset. Historical buildings, social/gathering places, monuments, etc can be suitable targets in their own right if the destruction/loss of those places or things will demoralize the enemy's citizens and thereby reduce their support for the war, or fighting effectiveness.

What kind of building doesn't make a target legit or not. Any building is potentially a legit target, regardless of its military importance. Who owns the building, where the building is, who is in the building, or what happens in the building can make it an attractive target.

Re:Not like the USA

[mysidia]

targeting it just because you can - with all the ensuing civilian casualties - is morally wrong.

No... What's immoral in this case is putting your ammo cache on the top of a hospital, and thereby putting civilians at direct risk, at risk of enemy action, and at risk of a mishap with the explosives. The opponent doesn't have any control of the country putting their civillians at risk with irresponsible placement of military assets.

In war you have to use your manpower efficiently, which means concetrating on targets that are useful to destroy, and among those, those that are "easiest" or less likely to hurt/reduce your own force in the effort to destroy targets; Risk/Reward

If the opponent has not surrendered, then they are still fighting, so you are still at war, and still need to make efforts to undermine their military forces' ability to engage.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Dresden was a legitimate military target....

I think you need to read some history books. Dresden was a nothing town with no military significance and it was firebombed in retaliation for the bombing of London. Thousands died and believe me when I say Germans remember this today. Its time to drop the Allies' propaganda - after all its been almost 70 years.

Re:Not like the USA

[ThatsMyNick]

Or inside an airplane.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

but if the enemy is already crippled to the point where he is unable to use that stash to any meaningful effect

the problem is, how can you be sure about this? When it comes to "making errors that cost lives", and the choice is between costing the lives of your own people vs. "their people", whose do you sacrifice?

Re:Not like the USA

[aintnostranger]

If all that killing and intimidation doesnt get people to obey them or them to control territory (impose their will) then yes, they are losing.

Re:Not like the USA

[aintnostranger]

The whole premise of "war" is that "enemy" lives are worth less than "own side" lives and that it's absurd to sacrifice yours to save theirs.

And you are putting the enemy soldiers and the civilians of their nation together in the "the enemy" category. That, to many (including me) is inmoral.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i've heard of many people going straight from living on the street to high paying wall street jobs.

Re:Not like the USA

[drinkypoo]

Civilians in the hospital aren't the enemy, though.

If the enemy puts their military units in the hospital, then the hospital has become an enemy military asset.

War is hell. I'm tired of having to focus on what to do when we're in them.

Re:Not like the USA

[gullevek]

As the previous poster said it was a total war, a real full war where everything and everyone suffered.

Was the destruction of Dresden a bad thing? Yes, a lot of cultural heritage got destroyed. Was it necessary? That could be called into question nowadays, but back then? It was about winning the war and stop the Nazis from marching. It is often way too easy to see those things through rose tinted glasses after such a long time.

Re:Not like the USA

[drinkypoo]

Just because someone else has made poor life decisions, creating an underdeveloped basket case whose only function in life is to drool over the latest bread and circus churned out by the media entertainment complexes, does not mean they are entitled to anything other than bare subsistence provisions

So just to be clear, you'd rather give away food than employ people? How about housing? It's illegal to be homeless in America.

Re:Not like the USA

[DriedClexler]

What are you talking about? It's perfectly legal in China to announce "Fuck the US, and fuck the US government."

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a countries duty to police their politicians. If they are unable to hold them in check, they must suffer the consequences of the actions that those politicians take. It's a rough reality, but it is true.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Drama much?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, US is kinda screwing it up by doing the same kind of things over there.

Re:Not like the USA

[jeti]

When Dresden was bombed in 1945, the war was pretty much over. Largely destroying the city was hardly relevant to winning the war against Germany. It's more than plausible that the air raid was mostly a demonstration aimed at Stalin, who was provided with a nice photo book of the results.

Re:Not like the USA

[khallow]

Transparency is why we know of the above abuses.

Re:Not like the USA

[TapeCutter]

No matter how you spin it, the fire bombing of Dresden and subsequent incineration of 250K civilians was an atrocity that should not have happened, nearly every historian agrees it made no military sense. Face facts, it was an immoral and spiteful target by anyone's standards, you just need to grow up and accept that we can be (and often are) every bit as 'evil' as our percieved enemies, (and I offer the fact that you consider Dressden a 'valid target' as proof of that last claim).

Re:Not like the USA

[Genda]

China doesn't give a feathery fsck what American's saw... it only cares what future Chinese see. He who controls history controls the future...

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then, I suppose that OBL and every 'terrorist' that ever targets US civilians is justified then, right?

Re:Not like the USA

[hairyfish]

Another obvious complication with a "real" war is that it would with 100% certainty trigger WWIII and the obliteration of mankind

I actually think a WW2 style war is impossible today. As you say the US couldn't just steam roll Afghanistan or Iraq even if they wanted to. Too many mobile phones and internet users would stop it before it got anywhere. On the other side, "bad guys" like Hitler or Pol Pot couldn't exist because as soon as anyone tried anything worse than what Saddam did they'd end up dead. Yeah sure we have the Kim Jong whoevers and the Mugabes running around but they are hardly a threat to western civilisation to the same level. If I had time I reckon I could make a case that the internet has made major global conflict (WW2 or 1980's WW3 style) obsolete....

Re:Not like the USA

[steelfood]

The rules of war are put in place not for the enemy, but exist for us. War is an inhumane thing. It is antithetical to our very nature.

Rules of engagement make it easier for us, the everyday people, to stomach. This both applies to the civilian population, and the grunts on the ground. If the acts committed during war becomes too atrocious for people to stomach, public sentiment turns against it, soldiers begin defecting. Vietnam was the perfect example of a conflict nobody except the sociopaths in charge wanted to continue.

Of course, this really only applies for those who are aggressors. The U.S. has not been in an existential war for at least 150 years. Every war since the Civil War has been fought on foreign soil, or in the open waters. Every threat has been to safety and security, but never to existence. Therefore, since there is nothing really at stake anyway, the U.S. can set rules.

In fact, had the Civil War been purely north vs. south, winner-take-all, all bets would've been off. As it were, the conflict was actually over the right to secede, making it a war over an ideology as opposed to territory or extermination. Even so, the atrocities committed during that war make Vietnam pale in comparison (though Vietnam was a special kind of hell for different reasons).

Re:Not like the USA

[TapeCutter]

Keep in mind in World War II, the accuracy of bombing was so poor that they sometimes bombed the wrong city.

Dressden was systematically fire bombed, they diliberately created a huge fire in the center of the city with incendery bombs. It was so large it created it own weather with hurricane strength winds on the outskirts of the city sucking fuel, oxygen, and people into the central furnace. In terms of indescriminate carnage it had the same effect as an atomic bomb, but over a 2 day period.

Apologists for this atrocity will continue to point to the few factories and soldiers in what was essentially a university city where the population were largely opposed to Hitler. Large scale atrocities were commited by boths sides during WW2 that's just basic history, the 'stanford prison experiment' gives us a glimpse as to why we have been repeating that kind of history for thousands of years.

Re:Not like the USA

[TapeCutter]

revenge - Explains Dressden in a nut shell, but it doesn't excuse it.

Re:Not like the USA

[reve_etrange]

Apparently including most of the people here.

Re:Not like the USA

[guanxi]

So sure, it's better than China. But not by much.

Not by much?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_revolution

Re:Not like the USA

[LordLimecat]

The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians - I have no doubt that in several decades, the USA will officially give REAL recognition to these victims

If you read carefully, basically all of those figures will acknowledge that the VAST majority of those casualties were NOT caused by us.

Re:Not like the USA

[LordLimecat]

Youre right, we should have left the pacific be in WW2. Im sure everything would have turned out lovely.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel got nukes so they would attack iran faster than you could blink

Re:Not like the USA

[BancBoy]

The Natzi's opend that pandora's box first by bombing London. If the enemy is doing it to your people, then they can't complain about the same reponse.

Not to be a Grammar & Spelling Godwin...

Re:Not like the USA

[LordLimecat]

that some might start wondering if having one should be a formally recognized right.

What about a right to food? You willing to pony up to feed me? I dont feel like working.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Japanese American internment? Not really that reflected, is it?

Re:Not like the USA

[Weatherlawyer]

How is this insightful? The USAAF took pains to NOT bomb civilians. That is why they only flew in daylight -at great cost.

Killing civilians has always been a crime. It's just that if your name is Mr President or Bomber Harris, you get away with it.

Under Roosevelt, the WW2 mission to destroy infrastructure conformed to the Geneva convention. It was only with the ability to bomb Japan and the demise of Roosevelt that things American went to hell and stayed there. I suppose a case could be made for the USA remaining allied to a country that committed war crimes implicated it in war crimes. But not to the same degree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Timeline_for_all_the_raids

Re:Not like the USA

[NewtonsLaw]

Yep, you're still alive and unharmed -- and now you're on the Homeland Security and CIA watchlist.

Ah, the land of the free! :-)

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

So it is a pity then that they did not kill all of them or? From this perspective it is a pity Germans did not hold long enough because then (mostly senseless) destruction could have been completed....

Come to think of it why not to finish now what had not been completed back then?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said!

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Actually you miss the elephant in the room. The US is so vastly powerful they could steam roll any country (at the moment) provided: a) they thought it was worth doing (Afghanistan and Iraq did not mobilize all US forces available - so no, these are not in the same category as a WWII Total War); b) a substantial fraction of the US population was prepared to make sacrifices to win, and c) the US Government thought the benefit of fighting was enough to pay for it.

Iraq was won with a small fraction of available US forces and zero conscription (it just wasn't needed), and Afghanistan actually has mostly been won apart from drug-money and Pakistan (ISI and Haqqani) backed remnants of a insurgency. It is fairly clear that the US achieved their aims (kill Osama, destroy afghan terrorist camps, install friendly government) and doesn't feel the need to do much more (doesn't need to turn Afghanistan into a modern European-style civilized country, since the Afghans themselves are not really into this). So yeah, the US doesn't feel the need to commit in a total way to these fights - but it easily could have if it had *really* wanted to (Internet or no Internet). The truth is the US/Pentagon doesn't really care anymore, but don't make the mistake as thinking it is the same as not having the capability if they actually did get fighting mad.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Bullshit! Israel has had both nukes and conventional forces that could have attacked the Iranian programme for the last decade. They have chosen not to - instead giving time for diplomatic means until it is nearly too late. What the Israelis have been pointing out is that the Iranian nuclear weapon programme (for which more and more evidence getting uncovered as time goes on) is not an Israeli problem, it is in fact a threat to the whole World (which the rest of the World actually agrees with, finally). The Israelis have been making a lot of noise not because they want to start a war - it is because the US and Europeans are too damn apathetic to do anything about Iran apart from hand wringing. The Israelis don't want war, but they don't want Iran to be able to threaten them (and the Middle East, and Europe) with nukes either.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

No. World War II in Europe has one of the clearest reasons for starting of any war. Your statement is false as it asserts that the cause and continuation of the war was the responsibility of the Allies due to their stated conditions for victory. Clearly if Hitler had not started the war then such conditions would be moot. Stop portraying the Allies as the responsible party (FFS, Chamberlain grabbed his ankles to try maintain peace), the responsibility for starting the war lies *solely* with the Axis powers. Again the aggressor (the Axis) is being portrayed as the victim by Anonymous Cowards (no wonder they remain AC - who would want to claim responsibility for such muddle-headed crap).

Re:Not like the USA

[gl4ss]

if taliban was in control they wouldn't need to kill anymore? the problem is for taliban that they're not in control nor never actually were, so their power was a fleeting thing on the best of their days.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Hmm. The Pearl Harbour attack was fought on US soil, when the US was trying to stay out of direct conflict in the war, was it not?. The 9/11 attacks were on US soil, when the US was not at war with anyone in the Middle East/South West Asia, was it not? You are conveniently (disingenuously?) forgetting that many wars that the US is involved in are either because: a) someone made attacks on US soil; b) someone attacked US citizens (eg. Iran hostage crisis); c) someone threatened US allies or critical interests (First Gulf War; Cold War; Korea; Vietnam); d) the UN required forces to act (to stop the Bosnian ethnic cleansing; Somalian chaos).

The US can be involved in wars that are not a direct threat to its existence. In fact, the US tried to maintain the Monroe Doctrine for a long time (which is basically your position) but found out that even if the US avoided trouble it did not mean trouble would not come to the US. Therefore the US decided to be pro-active and head off trouble (the entire Cold War was containment of Soviet aggression: hence Korea, Cuban Crisis, Vietnam, defending Germany); then stop Saddam in Kuwait (preventing Saddam to control the flow of oil, which would have been very damaging to US interests and more importantly, its *citizens* and their expected way of life).

By totally missing these key facts then a rational point-of-view looks like your post. If you put the actual facts back in then your post does not stand up to rational scrutiny.

nb. Vietnam was a war necessary for containment of Soviet aggression (required as a result of the "Domino Theory"). The war had little to do with Vietnam itself, it was just an arena where Soviet and Chinese backed forces were opposed by US forces trying to stem communist expansion (where the expansion was violent because it was undesired by the Southern Vietnamese). Why do so many people struggle to understand this basic fact when they write about the Vietnam War? they other thing they don't get is that the US left with the South intact and communist expansion halted (and Vietcong destroyed) -it was not until three years later (basically a different war) where the North Vietnamese Army invaded the South in a conventional war (not a guerilla war - since the Vietcong had been destroyed half a decade earlier). The US had actually achieved its most of its strategic aims at the time (which were to do with Soviet expansion, not caring about Vietnam itself).

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

If someone targets your civilians then they can hardly complain if you target theirs. The debate of whether it is moral or not should center on the first attack on civilians, not on second (since by the earlier attack the aspects of morality have already been waived).

That said, there is one country that still preserves human life even when its citizens have been deliberately targeted. That country is Israel. Islamic Radicals routinely rocket Israeli cities with the express purpose of killing civilians (as there are no military bases in the targeted cities). The Palestinian militants also place their rocket launching facilities amongst their own civilian residential areas, trying to get propaganda coups from any Israeli retaliation. These are both war crimes. So what do the Israelis do? they telephone the inhabitants of the residential block telling them to get out as the building will be bombed. Now you may think that is a shit thing to do, but what else can you do. The Israelis always get a slandered by Slashdotters (especially the particularly ignorant ones, who listen to hearsay and don't actually know the *facts* of what goes on) but in fact that these days the Israelis are one of the most ethical armies in the World (going so far as to honestly investigate and prosecute their own soldiers for breaking their military legal code even when fighting an enemy that is both duplicitous and deliberately engages in war crimes).

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

All assets of a country you are at war at are legitimate targets. Babies, puppies, little old ladies. Anything that would stop the German people from trying to rule the world was a legitimate target.

You do realise that this is exactly the same argument that Osama bin Laden used to justify attacks on the World Trade Center and other civilian targets?

The very idea that there are "rules of war" is just stupid.

So it is stupid that soldiers are not allowed to round up civilians and murder them? You do realise that you are arguing in support of Nazi-era policies that the civilised world finds abhorrent?

Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face?

What a strange world you live in, where these are the only two possible outcomes... In actual fact, shooting someone's baby will make them more likely to attack you, not less. You do realise that by advocating the murder of families you are arguing in favour of Nazi-style collective punishment?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? How did that work in Irak and Afghanistan?

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Since you have used the words "total war", and have a nice German quote there I think I'll supply another for you (which you probably already know, but is for the benefit of other Slashdotters):

Ich frage euch: Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn nötig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt erst vorstellen können?
I ask you: Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even yet imagine?

This is a fragment of a speech made by chief Nazi Propagandist Josef Goebbels, and is known as the Sportspalast Speech of 1943. In it he was talking about a total war in the East (against the Soviet Union) but it is clear that Nazi Germany was about to make the transition to "Total War". Given this transition (and earlier indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure in the West, such as the "London Blitz", but also later the V1 and V2 attacks) then why are people re-litigating the decision of the Allies to win such a Total War against Nazi Germany by systematically and thoroughly destroying any means of the Nazis to continue the war (destroying not only factories but the civilians that can be used to create and working in new factories) ?

Re:Not like the USA

[thoughtsatthemoment]

The No 1 rule of War is to end the war, including the desire to continue by either side. It is not to win the war. Big difference.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

This is not a feature only of US airports, try such and idiotic stunt it in *any* airport around the world. Anywhere in the world if you have a rant like that you will be in trouble - even in countries that don't like the US. So your dig at the US is: -1 Not Insightful.

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

One thing that often does not get mentioned in these discussions of world war ii is what the allies demanded as conditions for peace.

No. World War II in Europe has one of the clearest reasons for starting of any war.

The cause of the war has nothing to do with the conditions of surrender. It is entirely possible for both claims to be true: that both the start of the war was legitimate, and the conditions of surrender many years later were unacceptable.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Sometimes corporations (not usually the US government) do discredit dissidents. Mostly the dissidents work hard to discredit themselves - but they can't see that even though they may have valid points in some areas doesn't mean they always have valid (or reasonable) points all the time. Unfortunately most dissidents have egos that are so large that they fantasize that their government is out to get them. In fact, most reasonable people see them as full of shit (apart from one to two good points the dissidents may make from time to time).

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

It is a countries duty to police their politicians. If they are unable to hold them in check, they must suffer the consequences of the actions that those politicians take. It's a rough reality, but it is true.

That is exactly the same argument used by Osama bin Laden: bin Laden's 'Letter to America' justifies attacking civilians by stating that they are a complicit part in the American military actions abroad because they have chosen their government democratically, and pay taxes to fund their actions.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

You assume the current culture of China is 4000 years old. No, the Communist Party of China actively tried to suppress many ancient aspects of ancient China (Confucianism etc). Recently the CCP have woken up and started to re-use the old cultural icons for their own purposes. The real inheritors of the 4000 year old tradition is the Republic of China (kicked out of the mainland as enabled by Stalin and cronies) - but no one talks about ROC in Taiwan anymore since the PRC either bribes (small countries in the Pacfic and Carribean) or threatens (large countries with the closing of access to mainland China's markets) anyone who recognizes the Republic of China as the trues representatives of the Chinese people (the PRC Communists are so tetchy about this because their legitimacy comes solely through force, not through democratic representation as with the ROC).

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

Civilians of the enemy nation are indeed the enemy.... the very fact that they are still in the enemy country, paying taxes, is also supporting the war.

Which is exactly the same argument Osama bin Laden used to justify attacking American civilians. Be careful of the company you keep.

Re:Not like the USA

[gl4ss]

there's an old commie joke from ussr. "we're as free as the americans, we both can criticize the american government freely".

the difference with china and usa is that you can criticize gitmo openly as much as you want and still get visa to usa, at least if you're not arabic..

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Even the leaked videos from war crimes and outright murder of civilians and reporters from the US military in recent wars has done nothing. These incidents will soon be forgotten. The only thing that will remain will be the official "truth". People don't want to see criminal acts committed by "their troops". They'll hail to the flag and pretend everything is righteous as fuck.

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

Killing civilians in this day and age reduces your chances of successfully imposing your will, so it's counter-productive, for all the damage you may cause to the enemy.

Really? The Taliban must be losing in a landslide then in Afghanistan. The Taliban make it their modus operandi to kill

Straw man argument - he said it is counter-productive, not that they absolutely will fail. There are some other factors to take in to account in Afghanistan, such as the fact that the opposing side (NATO) has also killed thousands of innocent civilians.

Re:Not like the USA

[Ash-Fox]

Note, I am not the grand parent poster.

You do realise that this is exactly the same argument that Osama bin Laden used to justify attacks on the World Trade Center and other civilian targets?

So? Are you trying to say anything Osama Bin Laden ever said never had any sense or logic to it?

Re:Not like the USA

[Ash-Fox]

Note: I am not the grand parent poster.

Can you explain how shooting a baby in the face will keep anyone from shooting yours?

That baby won't grow up into an adult that can shoot my baby.

For that matter, how is shooting puppies or little old ladies going to help you win?

Reducing the population of the enemy may be helpful in limiting their productivity. Productivity can be effected by a variety, not withstanding emotional changes to others, lack of work force etc.

Re:Not like the USA

[Kergan]

move slowly and oppress/order citizens in a very hierarchical manner, because that's how large kingdoms survive for many centuries.

Citation?

I fail to see why a large kingdom or nation would necessarily need to be oppressive. The largest of all kingdoms, in history, was late 19th century England. It survived centuries. It arguably had to deal with the occasional mob at home or in its colonies. It did so in much the same as France or the US at the time. Crowd control techniques, back then, would consist in lining the army in front of it, and shooting at the crowd when it got too close -- much like they did in Jackson State or Tiananmen.

By the way, great valley civilizations (Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus, Gange, China) were indeed very centralized and less individualistic, but this likely had a lot to do with agriculture: small groups of farmers could deforest any area and grow crop throughout Europe, whereas large scale infrastructure was needed to take advantage of floods or monsoon in the great valleys. Large scale coordination and entrenched mutual assistance was needed to survive, in the latter case.

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

Kent State, Jim Crow killings, Dresden, etc. The difference however, is that the USA reflects on its past in a much more transparent way than China does today.

How many Americans reflect, or even know about, the Bonus Army protesters being brutally crushed by U.S. Army tanks in the streets of Washington D.C.?

I'm not even convinced that most Americans still remember the examples you gave (Kent State, Jim Crow killings, Dresden)... perhaps a certain amount of cultural forgetfulness is human, and only the mechanisms of this are different.

Re:Not like the USA

[Ginger Unicorn]

What was the rationale behind targetting it?

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

There would be no conditions for surrender if the war had not started. It is that simple. If you start a war you cannot complain about the terms the other side will accept surrender on - to do so is ridiculous (as in, don't start the fscking war). Both claims would be true if they were independent, but they are not. If the war was not started by the Axis then the second claim cannot be true or false, it simply doesn't exist (think of it as a logical a NULL value).

As for the Allied terms prolonging the war, that is revisionist b.s. The Axis were never going to surrender as long as they thought they had a chance of winning, and they did think they would win until very near the end - they thought their "wonder weapon" programme would reverse the tide until a few months before the end; this belief meant that the Allies terms of surrender meant nothing to the Germans, and therefore did not result in prolonging the war. It was only devastation of German infrastructure and capacity (that is, civilian population) that brought the war to its conclusion. From this point of view Dresden had its desired effect, ending the war sooner rather than later. The terms of surrender also had the desired effect, no chance of Germany staging Round 3 in another twenty years. The Germans could have accepted the terms in 1944 but they chose not to (still believing they could win).

Re:Not like the USA

[evafan76]

The Allies were running out of military targets for bombing and were trying to force an end to the war.

Re:Not like the USA

[2fuf]

Read up on Kurt Vonnegut if you really want to understand history a little bit better. Remember, history is written by the winners.

Re:Not like the USA

[rvw]

No matter how you spin it, the fire bombing of Dresden and subsequent incineration of 250K civilians was an atrocity that should not have happened, nearly every historian agrees it made no military sense. Face facts, it was an immoral and spiteful target by anyone's standards, you just need to grow up and accept that we can be (and often are) every bit as 'evil' as our percieved enemies, (and I offer the fact that you consider Dressden a 'valid target' as proof of that last claim).

How do you look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki then? Those bombs ended the war over there, but harmed many innocent civilians.

Re:Not like the USA

[BeeRockxs]

The US couldn't steamroll any of the nuclear powers.

Re:Not like the USA

[Captain.Abrecan]

What is the jim crow stuff? I have never heard of that, and google search just gives me a bunch of youtube songs to listen to.

Re:Not like the USA

[Alex Belits]

What was the rationale behind targetting it?

Bloodthirst and ethnic hatred.

Re:Not like the USA

[Alex Belits]

Those bombs ended the war over there

No, they did not. By then, Japanese were already trying to find a way to surrender. Americans wanted to be the ones who dictated the condition for surrender, even though the conditions they imposed were exactly the same as ones Japanesed proposed to begin with. In other words, the whole thing was entirely to humiliate Japanese (and to threaten the rest of the world).

Re:Not like the USA

[Captain.Abrecan]

That is a really weird thing that occurred to me, is that people need to start voting. I don't even think the presidency matters much, right? She/he can only veto things, and that isn't that important I guess. We should be spending way more time and attention on who we elect to congress and senate. Every one of those seats needs to be covered as much as the presidential election. Every time I hear about some bullshit bill that messes our stuff up, I figure that it must have been proposed by someone who was in fact elected to the position. That is bullshit.

Re:Not like the USA

[golden age villain]

Total wars are first and foremost full of poor Joe Sixpacks sent to the front from each side for the love of God and country. Didn't ask to go but were not given any choice. Not worse or better on any side of the frontline. Your neighbor, your cousin, your colleagues, your barista... Anyway, it is comforting to realize via the slashdot crowd that modern and moderate views will prevent war crimes and atrocities from being committed again in the future.

Re:Not like the USA

[golden age villain]

Dresden was bombed in February 1945. Two months later the Russians would take Berlin ending the war on that front. The war was lost for Germany after the battle of Kursk in summer 1943. Everybody knew it. After Kursk they kept falling back and losing battles. So yes it would have been bad if Germany won the war but incinerating thousands of civilians mere weeks before the end of the conflict is simply unjustifiable. Yes, wars are cruel, usually led by the same morons on each side.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it okay to sacrifice a thousand of "theirs" to save one of "yours"? Ten thousand? A million? At which point do you say it's enough?

Yes. If we are at war it is perfectly acceptable and even preferred to kill all of your people down to the last child if that will save a single one of mine. That's why it's called war and not peace.

Re:Not like the USA

[Gr8Apes]

Those bombs ended the war over there

No, they did not. By then, Japanese were already trying to find a way to surrender. Americans wanted to be the ones who dictated the condition for surrender, even though the conditions they imposed were exactly the same as ones Japanesed proposed to begin with. In other words, the whole thing was entirely to humiliate Japanese (and to threaten the rest of the world).

Unconditional surrender. (I don't recall the Japanese agreeing to that until bomb #2) The terms the US imposed after that are irrelevant.

As the loser in war, you do not get to dictate your surrender terms. Perhaps earlier, when a loss wasn't evident or still a long way away, but not when the last wood door blocking the invaders from your home turf is about to crumble making all your defenses useless....

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called war and they are the enemy. Get over it.

Re:Not like the USA

[Elldallan]

Iraq was won with a small fraction of available US forces and zero conscription (it just wasn't needed), and Afghanistan actually has mostly been won apart from drug-money and Pakistan (ISI and Haqqani) backed remnants of a insurgency. It is fairly clear that the US achieved their aims (kill Osama, destroy afghan terrorist camps, install friendly government) and doesn't feel the need to do much more (doesn't need to turn Afghanistan into a modern European-style civilized country, since the Afghans themselves are not really into this). So yeah, the US doesn't feel the need to commit in a total way to these fights - but it easily could have if it had *really* wanted to (Internet or no Internet). The truth is the US/Pentagon doesn't really care anymore, but don't make the mistake as thinking it is the same as not having the capability if they actually did get fighting mad.

Yes and look where the costs of that limited war got you, it nearly bankrupted the government. The costs of committing to a war that would require conscription would increase those costs exponentially because not only do you have to pay for all the weapons and equipment you're deploying, you are also depriving the industry of necessary manpower(probably base industry manpower because the first to be drafted is usually males with little to no education).

Sure the internet could not in itself stop a total war but it would practically be suicide by media to commit to such a campaign because the internet would make certain that each and every atrocity committed would be on the first page of every newspaper around the world for the entire duration of the war and the public outcry, at least in western nations would most likely ensure severe sanctions against the United States, probably on par or surpassing those currently being leveraged against Iran.
That is not something a fragile economy burdened by the cost of conducting such a war.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese don't care if Americans know. Very, very, very few Chinese know about it and from that perspective the authorities and the argument for censorship have truly won.

Re:Not like the USA

[couchslug]

"otherwise we would be out of oil "

Sorry, dumbshit. The US doesn't depend on Iraqi oil and never did.

Iraq and Iran could cease to exist and the US would still have sufficient oil. Gas rationing is easy enough and has been done successfully in WWII.

The days of the OPEC embargo are long over and in an extreme emergency the US could not only command domestic reserves but could rapidly built coal gasification plants (just suspend environmental regs) as Germany did during WWII.

We are now, BTW, a net petroleum exporter and it took little time to become that, but don't let reality disturb your delicious conspiracy theories which, like religion/superstition, exalt the believer with Special Insight.

Re:Not like the USA

[SharpFang]

You do not get to dictate, but you may get to negotiate them. Unless the enemy goes full savage and starts mass-murdering your civilian population, to force you out of negotiations and into unconditional surrender.

Re:Not like the USA

[Gizzmonic]

The US ...is not responsible when a former Baathist sets off a bomb in a marketplace. He -- and whatever organization he answers to, if any -- is responsible. He is not a toddler or monkey or a robot responding unthinkingly to stimuli or programming. He is a moral actor.

The US is not responsible for creating a lawless failed state where settling old scores along tribal and religious lines is acceptable? Arguing about enabling the moral acts of a single person in this environment is getting waaaaay off track. It's like you're arguing about the actions of a single drunk driver in a country where drunk driving is legal and all of the bars are 30 miles away from neighborhoods.

And what's this garbage about Baathists? In Iraq, Baathism was the party of Saddam Hussein. It had no real leaders when he fell, and was hardly relevant at all in the civil war. The civil war was between Sunnis, Shiites and (to a lesser extent) Kurds and Turks. The civil war started when the US invaded Iraq and fired the Iraqi army, leaving a bunch of angry, broke men with weapons and military training with no source of income. The results are obvious.

The idea that the US is responsible for his actions...is of the same spirit as what a Victorian colonial might say with a shrug: "Well, what do you expect, chap? They're just wogs, after all."

How ironic! The Imperial British were masters of fomenting ethnic/religious strife in order to maintain their grip on power. Although I think the US's version was unintentional, it had the same result, albeit with a client state vs. direct colonial control.

If getting rid of Saddam was (in your estimation) not worth the post-overthrow cost, then by your logic it would have been immoral for the Iraqis themselves to do it, assuming they had the power to.

We're not talking about internal revolution here (much as you want to dig up bogus connections to the Civil War). We're talking about the most powerful country in the world overthrowing a neutered dictator who only had nominal control over part of his country under the pretext that he was a clear and immediate threat to them. Or have you forgotten?

And as I also pointed out, the number of people killed in the overthrow itself was far lower than it would have been otherwise (for a rough comparison, scaling what happened in Lebanon to account for population differences, gives 1.1 million at the low end). So, again by your standards, an indigenous overthrow would be even more wrong.

Are you really using Lebanon as the basis of your absurd counterfactual? The country that every other country in the area has used as its battlefield for the last 30+ years? Why not use Egypt, it has a much larger population, or Syria, or Narnia for all the relevance that it has?

Dear God, I'm sick of post-hoc rationalizations by neocons. Take that disingenuous garbage to foxnews.com. You can write coherent sentences so you're 2 steps ahead of most of their pundits.

Re:Not like the USA

[couchslug]

"Most certainly, the most efficient way to deal with Germany once and for all in 1945 would have been to massacre them completely - firebombings, artillery, whatever. No people, no problem, right?"

Not at all. The process of BREAKING THEIR WILL TO RESIST being complete, the process of converting and exploiting them for use in (BOTH) sides of the Cold War began almost immediately.

The Allies had the experience of WWI, when there were no great consequences for Germany outside the front. Germans didn't reform and were eager for another war. In WWII, the whole enemy population (the idea that a civilian is different from a soldier in Total War is a convenient fiction of the Nuremburg "victors self-justification ritual" trials) was beaten into submission.

The Nazi people (which Germans essentially were and let's not sugar-coat it) weren't "gently requested" to submit, but beaten and with their Reich in ruins they couldn't pretend they were "stabbed in the back" (Dolchstoss) as in WWI.

Both the Allies and Soviets promptly consolidated their gains, sifted Germany for useful tech (Operation Paperclip etc), and converted their hunks of the Third Reich into modern nations and military allies.

The Soviets, having captured more Nazis than the Allies, sent them off to Gulag to thin the herd before eventually returning the survivors as examples. That, better than liquidation (which would have been deserved since the German people attempted to literally exterminate the Soviet people!), served the expansion of the ComBloc.

"At which point do you say it's enough?"

Never before your ENEMY surrenders and begs mercy and agrees to do your will, or is dead. His choice. The enemy cannot have an option in EXISTENTIAL war other than surrender lest he rise to fight again.

Germany had ALREADY cost the Allies millions dead in WWI. The GERMAN PEOPLE promptly rearmed and gleefully tried it again. The second time, they paid for it and are now remarkably peaceful!

Re:Not like the USA

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

retribution for the indiscriminate bombing and rocket attacks on England

Re:Not like the USA

[Nyder]

Bullshit! Israel has had both nukes and conventional forces that could have attacked the Iranian programme for the last decade. They have chosen not to - instead giving time for diplomatic means until it is nearly too late. What the Israelis have been pointing out is that the Iranian nuclear weapon programme (for which more and more evidence getting uncovered as time goes on) is not an Israeli problem, it is in fact a threat to the whole World (which the rest of the World actually agrees with, finally). The Israelis have been making a lot of noise not because they want to start a war - it is because the US and Europeans are too damn apathetic to do anything about Iran apart from hand wringing. The Israelis don't want war, but they don't want Iran to be able to threaten them (and the Middle East, and Europe) with nukes either.

Israel is the problem with the middle east. They are the aggressors, and they have had nukes first.

They think they are the children of god, and thus being, have a "promised land" that they took originally from others. So yes, other Arab countries do NOT like them. They view them as a threat, because they took over parts of other countries and said, Fuck You, god told us to. And the USA said, Fuck ya, We love the Israels, so we back them.

Then you take the fact that America loves Oil. And being bullies, and thinking they they are in the right because they worship "God", and ya, you get them same Arabs who don't like Israel, not liking us any better. And honestly, I do NOT blame them.

America's policy used to be America's ours, rest of the world can do what it wants. And we should of stayed that way. Instead, we got it in our heads that we were better then everyone else and needed to fix the world.

And we see how that is going.

Re:Not like the USA

[dwpro]

I don't like to be an Iraq war apologist, because there are so many things that were done wrong. You also make several legitimate points. However, it is wrong to just write off someone who invaded neighboring countries, and raped, tortured, and oppressed his own citizens, and is estimated to have murdered 1 million people as just another "tin-pot dictator". He was an evil, evil man and many people don't know the scope of his transgressions. Read up.

Re:Not like the USA

[Elldallan]

I disagree, there were several serious attempts made on Hitlers life, but as long as the terms for surrender was such that the only option was to win by all means possible the dissension within Germany and particularly within the Wehrmacht would probably have been a lot worse, a lot of people did not like Hitler or his way of doing things but as long as there was no chance for Germany to surrender with any dignity left there was really no reason to try to replace Hitler and change direction.

Re:Not like the USA

[Nyder]

Would you shoot some strangers baby in the face if the alternative was that he would shoot your baby in the face?

Can you explain how shooting a baby in the face will keep anyone from shooting yours? For that matter, how is shooting puppies or little old ladies going to help you win? It won't. If anything it just inspires the enemy. Which gets us to why "rules of war" exist: wars are extremely stressful situations, which cause people fighting in them to do unnecessary or even counterproductive cruelties. Rules of war and rules of engagement exist to try to prevent the more outrageous of these.

Now shut the fuck up.

Do you have some kind of personal stake here? Because you seem to be getting pretty emotional about the topic.

Okay, just because I think outside the box a bit, I can answer these questions.

You'd shoot a baby in the face in war, because babies have been used to explode stuff on soldiers when they get close to check it.

Shooting the baby in the face will help keep yours alive because you won't be dead, and thus able to continue protecting the good guys and killing the bad guys.

Rules are made to be broken. Mainly during war time, when you don't have society and the police breathing down your shoulders, and you've been given a gun and taught how to kill people. Oddly enough, the stress of war causes some people to do things they might not normally do in normal society. Let's take Viet nam, if you were drafted, you were probably pissed because you didn't want to be there. On top of it, they give you a gun, and people are shooting at you. I know if I was put in that situation, I'd be going home and I'd go home any way possible. I'd kill to make sure i'm safe. I'd be angry and not care, and take it out on the viet cong. Is that cool? Oh fuck no. It would bring out the worse of me, and even worse, i'd probably still be a dick when I got home (to be spit on and called a baby killer, which i probably am).

Fuck, people can't even follow rules (laws) in normal society, and that is everyone. Then we got the saying, "All is fair in love and war", which I"m sure all of us have heard and said one time of another.

Now i'm not saying this is right, in fact, it's a horrible shame, but it's part of war. You send people over with guns to kill, you are going to get some people who enjoy killing a bit more then they should. And you'll get people who want to survive, no matter the cost.

I'm sure most people would rather go home and face a trial for misconduct then not going home at all. Not saying it's right, saying that I understand how it happens.

Re:Not like the USA

[CaptainLard]

Well shit, if you've seen or heard about those war crime videos and they are soon forgotten, then its your own damn fault.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The death toll was ~25k, not 250k, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Casualties

Re:Not like the USA

[Elldallan]

Same thing applies to the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, another example of US atrocities.
Japan had offered a conditional surrender even before this(they wanted to keep some of the territory gained in China, but that could probably have been solved by diplomacy later). So yet another example of completely pointless and inexcusable atrocities.

Re:Not like the USA

[Nyder]

And you are putting the enemy soldiers and the civilians of their nation together in the "the enemy" category. That, to many (including me) is inmoral.

That's why we call them terrorist now.

Re:Not like the USA

[Nyder]

Here's a dose of perspective:

"Fuck the US, and fuck the US government."

Hey look, not only am I still alive and unharmed, I still have all my rights!

Try that in China, and see what happens.

I'm pretty sure China says Fuck the US and fuck the US government all the time. Probably required by law to say that.

Re:Not like the USA

[Jodka]

from the parent post

No matter how you spin it, the fire bombing of Dresden and subsequent incineration of 250K civilians was an atrocity...

from wikipedia

..such, "grossly inflated" casualty figures have been promulgated over the years, many based on a figure of over 200,000 deaths quoted in a forged version of the casualty report, Tagesbefehl No. 47, that originated with Hitler's Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Re:Not like the USA

[kaatochacha]

We were that way. It got us WW2.

Re:Not like the USA

[tlhIngan]

American interference in world affairs has -always- ended up bad for America and even worse for the rest of the world. Look at the Iran Iraq war where the US and UK allied themselves with Saddam's Iraq and supplied arms to them! The US (and other Western nations) prop up dictators and then later have to take them down in a perpetual war.

Or got a bit earlier, where Saddam was installed by the US government becaues the Russians were invading...

Saddam's problem was he refused to be a puppet government of the US, thus he must be taken down.

Re:Not like the USA

[kaatochacha]

This is +3 insightful?

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull shit how many people in china? How many in prison? Now ask those same questions about America.
And it is easy to see who is the least free.

You people need to travel its like a breath of fresh air.

Re:Not like the USA

[X0563511]

I'm pretty sure I already was, for other reasons. Curiosity makes one look up some interesting subjects within a short time frame, and if that DIDN'T flag me, I'd be concerned.

Re:Not like the USA

[cdrguru]

I'd have to question if there were any rules being followed by Japan during WW II. What percentage of Allied prisoners made it back? 25%? Some did, but not very many. What would you call the invasion of China by Japan and how the civilian population was treated?

Rules? No, I don't think there were any rules in that part of WW II. There was no clear division between civilians and military as far as Japan was concerned and that is one of the primary objectives of the Geneva Conventions. They treated their civilians as military workers and they treated civilians in invaded lands as combatants.

And Japan was prepared to fight on until the last man on their islands. At least the military was, driving the civilians ahead of them into the Allied troops.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

The rules of war are put in place not for the enemy, but exist for us. War is an inhumane thing. It is antithetical to our very nature.

Nope. We have a peace mode and a war mode. See how easy it is to make your soldiers commit serious "war crimes". It is because war is in our nature, to some extent. Evolution explains this easily enough: when there is overcrowding, a resource war breaks out and the winner lives and prospers.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Given that Germany and Japan still stand, clearly your opinion is the minority in the world - thankfully so.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

If the enemy puts their military units in the hospital, then the hospital has become an enemy military asset.

*sigh* It seems like people are deliberately trying to misunderstand my point. If you do not derive any meaningful benefit from destroying the hospital, doing it just because it's a "military asset" is still wrong. Legal, but wrong.

War is hell. I'm tired of having to focus on what to do when we're in them.

The moment you stop focusing on it, war stops being hell and starts being a fun way to spend time blowing people up - at least so long as you have the upper hand. Do you want it to be that, especially as we move more and more to widespread use of drones and other means of killing people in such a way that you don't see the entrails smeared over the wall afterwards?

Re:Not like the USA

[Darkness404]

If you look at -why- Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and why they even wanted to build a huge empire was because the US (along with other nations) had already interfered with things such as the US stopping trade with Japan and the naval treaties which made sure that Japan would always have a smaller fleet of battleships when compared to their Western counterparts. WWII was basically caused because of the aftermath of WWI, the Cold War and their associated conflicts (Korea, Vietnam, etc.) were caused by the aftermath of WWII, the "war on terror" is simply the aftermath of the Cold War. War brings war. Violence brings violence.

Re:Not like the USA

[drinkypoo]

What I want is more focus on preventing the assholes who keep getting us into wars for profit from getting into power in the first place, so that instead of arguing about how and why we are killing people, we're not fucking killing people.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Not at all. The process of BREAKING THEIR WILL TO RESIST being complete

The completion of that process somehow coincided with the moment when the red flag was hoisted above Reichstag, and the instrument of surrender was signed. Did firebombing of Dresden help fasten it? I find it a dubious assertion.

The Allies had the experience of WWI, when there were no great consequences for Germany outside the front. Germans didn't reform and were eager for another war. I

You've got to be kidding me. The consequence of WW1 for Germany was considerable territorial concessions, and the need to pay very large amounts in reparation - which included not only the money, but forced labor of German civilians. It practically ruined the country economy.

The Nazi people (which Germans essentially were and let's not sugar-coat it) weren't "gently requested" to submit, but beaten and with their Reich in ruins they couldn't pretend they were "stabbed in the back" (Dolchstoss) as in WWI.

The Reich was soundly beaten in WW2 by beginning of 1945, as well. Everyone but Hitler himself and a bunch of SS fanatics knew that. All German generals knew it. All German soldiers and volkssturm members knew it. That's why civilians were running in droves to the western part of Germany in preparation for the end of war, so that they didn't have to meet the Soviet troops!

At that point, the primary goal was taking out the people in charge who stubbornly refused to surrender. Which is precisely why Soviets made that swift march towards Berlin. It was not about killing as many Germans as possible, it was rather about making it clear that there is no point to resist anymore even if you personally can, because it's all done and over. Nothing quite like an enemy flag on top of your seat of government to drive that point home.

The Soviets, having captured more Nazis than the Allies, sent them off to Gulag to thin the herd before eventually returning the survivors as examples. That, better than liquidation (which would have been deserved since the German people attempted to literally exterminate the Soviet people!), served the expansion of the ComBloc.

Soviets actually executed plenty of prominent Nazis. POWs and such (those not of SS, but of Wehrmaht) were not sent to gulags proper - they were rather sent to rebuild the cities that they have destroyed. This practice has started before the end of the war, as well; most Germans who surrendered in Stalingrad were treated similarly, forced to work to rebuild the city during and after the war. The point was not to "thin the herd", but to find the lacking manpower for a large-scale restoration project that USSR sorely needed at that point - which is why POWs were fed as well as local civilians (archive documents exist which outline the rationing), rather than starving and working them to death. Mortality rate of German POWs in the USSR was 14%, and that is averaged over all four years of war - obviously it was much higher during the fight for survival of the first two years, but lower in the last two after Soviets got the upper hand.

As well, the official government propaganda, by the end of the war, was making a very clear distinction between Germans and Nazis, precisely so that soldiers wouldn't go on a rampage when they enter Germany, or at least not to the extent of complete destruction and genocide. Yes, a lot of soldiers saw the murder of enemy civilians as their rightful vengeance for their own relatives and friends who were previously killed by German army in the war, and I won't blame them for it - but it was still wrong when it happened.

And, by the way, Soviet command also concurred, which is why there were a bunch of strict regulations in place against random executions of civilians, arson and rape - and they were brutally enforced on occasion to make a point. Case in point: when Soviet army first entered Silesia, there was a slew o

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

That's a good point. But you're still killing people today, so until that's over, there's no dodging the bullet on the question of whether it is moral or not.

Re:Not like the USA

[cpghost]

Different countries, different crimes. In the eyes of the US government, the most heinous crime is not criticism, it's uploading the latest Lady Gaga MP3 file to your friends. Try that while the Feds are watching, and come back later to report how it went.

Re:Not like the USA

[eth1]

The thing is, steam rolling is either impossible (they're a nuclear power), or wasteful and stupid.

Let's use Iraq as an example. We pretty much wanted to take out ONE guy and his cronies, but we demolished an entire country and spent gobs of money to do it. Get your evidence (important!), your op together, figure out where he is, declare war, and GO GET HIM. Actually going in and dragging him back to face a trial would be best (you did get evidence, right?), but a bomb through the window would work in a pinch. Then send in a diplomat and sue for peace and offer them a clean slate relations-wise. Obviously it wouldn't be quite that simple, but I'm fairly confident our armed forces could pull that off. Yes, there's a good chance he'd be replaced by someone similar, but you're not going to have to demonstrate that capability much more than once, because everyone will know that you'll come for them the second they make any sort of credible threat towards you. Plus, the civilians are a lot less likely to hate our guts afterwards.

Re:Not like the USA

[LoyalOpposition]

No, they did not.

Yes. They did.

By then, Japanese were already trying to find a way to surrender.

According to this article the Japanese always planned on getting a negotiated ending to the war. In a sense one might say that the Japanese were already trying to find a way to surrender[1] even as they were dropping torpedoes on Pearl Harbor.

Americans wanted to be the ones who dictated the condition for surrender,

Well, yeah. That's kind of the point to fighting a war--getting to dictate the terms. Japan wanted to dictate terms. America wanted to dictate terms. The Soviet Union wanted to dictate terms. Germany wanted to dictate terms. Great Britain wanted to dictate terms. France wanted to dictate terms. Morocco wanted to dictate terms. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Côte d'Ivoire wanted to dictate terms.

even though the conditions they imposed were exactly the same as ones Japanesed proposed to begin with.

That's not correct. Terms the Allies insisted upon that were unacceptable to Japan included the elimination "for all time [of] the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest, the occupation of "points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies", Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine, the Japanese military forces shall be completely disarmed, stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners, and the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The Japanese government rejected those demands as late as 27 July 1945.

In other words, the whole thing was entirely to humiliate Japanese (and to threaten the rest of the world).

That's not correct. While it's true that any country would find it humiliating to be forced to accept such terms, it's also true that merely having to surrender would be humiliating to a country who had never lost a war, which situation Japan found itself in prior to August 1945. All of the above terms and the simple fact of surrender, itself, had as their primary goal not to humiliate Japan, but rather to forestall the onset of World War III.

~Loyal

Contrary to popular belief, believing something does not make it so.

[1] For certain values of "surrender".

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

First world problems: we have them.

Re:Not like the USA

[hackingbear]

Actually, the Chinese government does acknowledge their own past mistakes -- examples, they officially decried Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. All victims of the Mao era were "rehabilitated". They even put the top responsible ones -- like the Gang of Four -- in prison. Those happened when a new generation of leaders need to get supports from the people.

While we are allowed to discuss this country's past mistakes more openly, have anything else real being done? Anyone responsible been put in jail? Are the American Indians really compensated in their lost life and land? all they got is a "sorry".

Re:Not like the USA

[orgelspieler]

It has had little to no effect on the Assad regime in Syria. That crazy bastard can murder an entire village and blame it on "foreigners." Youtube be damned.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

One man's patriot is another man's terrorist.

Re:Not like the USA

[Darkness404]

We could easily have 100% employment if we abolished the minimum wage laws (of course this is something OWS is completely against!).

Lets say the minimum wage is $7.50 (plus any applicable fees/taxes/etc.) an hour. Anyone who made their employer more than $7.50 an hour would be hired if they wanted the job. Anyone who made less than $7.50 would not be hired. Lets face it, a lot of people aren't worth the $7.50 and so they have no job. This isn't to say they are worthless but rather the services they provide really only produce $4 or $5 per hour rather than $7.50 or more to justify hiring them. Why should I as a business owner have to take a loss simply to provide someone with a "job"? It would make much more sense and would provide for full employment if we would simply abolish the minimum wage laws and reduce or eliminate any employment taxes. Because the wants of humanity are limitless, the possibilities for employment are limitless, it is only because of artificial controls that we have unemployment.

Re:Not like the USA

[JoshuaZ]

The majority of Germans didn't vote for Hitler. Moreover, well before Dresden, people were in a situation where if they protested at all, even to just distribute leaflets, they would be executed. You are essentially giving innocent people a choice of two ways to die.

Re:Not like the USA

[strikethree]

In a battle for life and death, absolutely ANYTHING is fair game. In a normal fist fight between you and I, kicking you in the balls or gouging your eyes out is generally considered "against the rules". If you are trying to kill me, those are legitimate tactics. Nazi Germany was intentionally eradicating (killing/murdering) the entirety of the Jewish people. Worse yet, the Jews were only the first target for annihilation. All non-Aryan people would eventually be annihilated by the Nazis if they won. I am sorry but THAT is a life and death situation.

The firebombing of Dresden appears to have been a waste of military strength but until it is proven that it was done just to kill random people for the sake of killing them, I will not pass any moral judgements on it and neither should you.

As you might not be able to deduce from the previous paragraph, I mostly agree with you: Killing "the enemy" for no apparent reason is not a good thing. I suspect there was a reason (terrorism!). If the terrorism of German Citizens through the firebombing of Dresden (during an all out war!) helped the German population to acclimatise to a new political reality after the war was over, then so be it. Germany did NOT start a third world-wide war afterwards. Does the killing of hundreds of thousands justify saving tens/hundreds of millions through aversion of war? Dunno. I am satisfied with the results.

(CAPTCHA is proving. How is it that the CAPTCHAs are so frequently bizarrely related to the comment?)

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

The firebombing of Dresden appears to have been a waste of military strength but until it is proven that it was done just to kill random people for the sake of killing them, I will not pass any moral judgements on it and neither should you.

The way I see it, it is the other way around - until it is proven (or, at least, can reasonably be believed) that it was done for military gain, we can and should pass moral judgement on it.

Note that I'm not necessarily claiming that firebombing of Dresden was wrong. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't; I don't claim to know all the details enough to make a definite conclusion (though I'm definitely tilting towards "wrong"). What's important is that the question is asked in the first place. The moment you start justifying mass murder on the simple premise of "those people are the enemy", you're inviting fascism and genocide. The hallmark of fighting for the right side is that you fully understand the consequences of your choices - including those that may kill innocent people - and recognize them as a lesser evil, rather than implicitly accepting them as good because it's you who are doing it to "them".

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

That baby won't grow up into an adult that can shoot my baby.

Which of these is more likely to result in grudges that span decades:

A) Shooting babies.

B) Not shooting babies.

You can use history as a cheat sheet, for example compare how Germany was treated after each World War and what the outcome was.

Besides, if you shoot a baby, anyone who cares about it wants you dead. You shoot those people, anyone who cares about them wants you dead. And so forth. You can't win that game; you can only dig yourself ever deeper and make more and more enemies.

Reducing the population of the enemy may be helpful in limiting their productivity. Productivity can be effected by a variety, not withstanding emotional changes to others, lack of work force etc.

True, but to significantly affecting productivity through population reduction requires genocide. Apart from the moral angle, committing genocide certainly increases the chances that your enemies - either this particular one or others - will respond in kind. In the era of weapons of mass destruction at the hands of any serious enemy, it might not be such a good tactical decision.

But of course a real war includes the moral angle, since it includes human beings. Willingness to commit intentional genocide isn't something that exists in a vacuum. It requires either a dysfunctional culture or a dysfunctional individual. Dysfunctional cultures are inefficient and likely to lose to more functional ones in the long run (which is why we're having this discussion in the first place), while dysfunctional individuals make poor leaders and soldiers.

Yet another way to view this is through evolution: conscience is an evolved trait, which means that it confers a survival advantage. Systems of morality held by various factions are also subject to evolution, as these factions clash and conflict; they didn't just come out of nowhere. Therefore, claiming that gross violations of the moral system held today are more likely to bring victory in a general case is an extraordinary claim, and thus requires extraordinary evidence; saying that a baby that you spare today might kill your children twenty years from now is a ridiculous excuse and certainly doesn't prove anything.

Re:Not like the USA

[strikethree]

The war in Iraq killed over a hundred thousand civilians

I am not arguing over the culpability of the United States of America in the deaths of those people, but I would like to point out that the vast majority of civilian deaths were Sunnis and Shias killing each other. An incredibly small percentage of that 100,000+ were directly killed by American military forces.

Since America was the invading force and in theory at least, were supposed to be providing security for the country once Saddam's government had fallen, you can seemingly legitimately blame ALL deaths on America, but as I said in my initial statement, the point is about immediate cause of death, not the conditions which spawned those causes.

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

Yes it is moronic. The difference is the right to seek a job using your own hard work and qualifications versus "a job is a right". Just because someone else has made poor life decisions, creating an underdeveloped basket case whose only function in life is to drool over the latest bread and circus churned out by the media entertainment complexes, does not mean they are entitled to anything other than bare subsistence provisions. I'm sorry if they're resentful, but tough fucking luck. It's never too late to start making some smarter choices in life.

If you are forced to play a game of musical chairs where the loser - the one left without a chair - is forced to live in miserable poverty, does that mean that he deserved it? Of course not. Perhaps he lost because he was an "underdeveloped basket case". Perhaps he lost because he was simply unlucky. It doesn't matter. What matters is that someone was bound to lose, no matter what. It's the game itself that is wrong, and should be changed; teaching a participant elite scampering skills might help that particular participant, but it doesn't stop someone from losing; it doesn't help the misery, it just shifts it around.

Re:Not like the USA

[strikethree]

The most powerful people in the country had no plans beyond "overthrow Saddam" and little or no conception of history or politics in Iraq. They seemed to have no idea at all that there would be a civil war, or any strategies on how to fight it. That's tragic negligence.

No. It is CRIMINAL negligence. I support being VERY lenient towards those in power because it is so easy to fog reality and create perceptions that did not exist at the time of the act... however, there was clear incompetence and visceral human emotion which prompted and executed the overthrow of Saddam's government. It was so clearly bad that it should be examined by an unbiased (rofl, good luck) judge in a sober court of law. Never gonna happen... but meh. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should all have to explain/defend their actions to America (not Iraq!).

The military commanders should NOT have to explain anything. They did not do anything clearly illegal, and in fact, actually did their job extremely well under the circumstances.

Re:Not like the USA

[strikethree]

Actually, you might not have all of your rights still, you just do not know it yet. Harm may also be awaiting you. Try applying for a job that requires a security clearance. Try crossing the border and then come back. Try applying for a job at any business that has an owner that is "ra ra ra, nothing America does is wrong". Before doing all of those things, make sure someone can correlate your real name with your screen name. Yeah... saying it semi-anonymously in an online forum is a LOT different than saying it when people can mark you directly for what you say.

Still, you are further along here than you might be in China so it is not a total loss. ;)

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

What about a right to food? You willing to pony up to feed me? I dont feel like working.

No, but I certainly support guaranteeing you the ability to exchange your labour for money once you get hungry enough to reconsider. So I guess you could say that I'd be willing to pony up to feed you in exchange for you doing something useful in return, if you can't find any such people - sometimes called "employers" - in the open market.

Re:Not like the USA

[Ash-Fox]

You can use history as a cheat sheet, for example compare how Germany was treated after each World War and what the outcome was.

There are too many variables to simplify that to an explanation such as this using the history of Germany in the World Wars.

True, but to significantly affecting productivity through population reduction requires genocide.

Indeed.

Apart from the moral angle, committing genocide certainly increases the chances that your enemies - either this particular one or others - will respond in kind. In the era of weapons of mass destruction at the hands of any serious enemy, it might not be such a good tactical decision.

You've introduced more variables to the situation. of course with added variables such as these the tactics may need to change for the situation, I wasn't advocating this is the end all solution for war -- or everyone would do it, to win a war.

It requires either a dysfunctional culture or a dysfunctional individual.

You know... When the norm of a culture is to behave a certain way, that's not dysfunction, that's the norm for that culture. What you're saying could be equivalent to calling the Japanese 'dysfunctional' because of how their norms in combat and tactics differed from the US during the second World War.

saying that a baby that you spare today might kill your children twenty years from now is a ridiculous excuse and certainly doesn't prove anything.

Another point of view could be that you wiped out the enemy and it's spawn, so that enemy is unable to kill you in the future, that does prove something - Your enemy is gone.

Of course, I'm not condoning genocide, but I can see how it can have a valid tactic and in my point of view -- Ignoring this as a tactic also meas that you cannot plan adequately against such a threat.

Re:Not like the USA

[strikethree]

Weird. Slashdot is broken. I have the chance to mod your comment up (or down, but it deserves up) right now despite commenting in the article...

I generally agree with your statement:

The moment you start justifying mass murder on the simple premise of "those people are the enemy", you're inviting fascism and genocide.

We need to be careful in both directions. Putting a military strategic decision made during combat to a civilian judgement after the war is won/lost is a very hard decision to make. Monday morning quarterbacking can be enlightening but it can be full of shit too. That is why I said unless the intent was provably murder rather than a bad decision, we should not pass judgement on it. But feel free to prove it was murderous. If you do, I will judge right alongside of you. :)

Re:Not like the USA

[strikethree]

Weird. I can still mod your post even after directly replying to it, but I can not mod my own. I wonder if something changed purposefully or if it is a bug... anyways, I will conform to the spirit of the rules and not mod in this discussion at all. Cheers. :)

Re:Not like the USA

[TheLink]

Which is why I don't have much sympathy for them whenever they whine about being nuked twice.

Fight like that, don't be surprised if you get nuked.

Re:Not like the USA

[mpe]

America's policy used to be America's ours, rest of the world can do what it wants. And we should of stayed that way.

That dosn't appear to have been actual US foreign policy for a long time. At least as far back as the Spanish-American war.

Re:Not like the USA

[TheLink]

FWIW Japan signed but did not ratify the Geneva Convention.

Re:Not like the USA

[Alex Belits]

That's not correct. Terms the Allies insisted upon that were unacceptable to Japan included the elimination "for all time [of] the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest,

If that was really a condition, Japan would be left without a government (not to mention Emperor).

the occupation of "points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies", Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine, the Japanese military forces shall be completely disarmed, stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners, and the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The Japanese government rejected those demands as late as 27 July 1945.

As implemented, it was close enough, and none of it would be a problem if negotiations actually happened. For Americans the only unacceptable condition was the idea of negotiations themselves, and it was supposedly worth of destroying two cities and killing countless civilians (on top of more civilians killed in a war itself -- what is disgusting but at least served some understandable purpose).

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was wrong of the German Wehrmacht to bomb English civilians, it was just as wrong of the Allied forces to bomb German civilians. Retribution just turns you into the same kind your enemy is.

Re:Not like the USA

[mpe]

The Pearl Harbour attack was fought on US soil, when the US was trying to stay out of direct conflict in the war, was it not?

Depends if a country the US had previously invaded and occupied qualifies as "US soil".

The 9/11 attacks were on US soil, when the US was not at war with anyone in the Middle East/South West Asia, was it not?

How many of those allegedly involved were from either Afghanistan or Iraq? Then there's the first "9/11" in 1973.

forgetting that many wars that the US is involved in are either because: a) someone made attacks on US soil; b) someone attacked US citizens (eg. Iran hostage crisis)

Nothing to do with "Operation Ajax" then...

Re:Not like the USA

[Gr8Apes]

You do not get to dictate, but you may get to negotiate them. Unless the enemy goes full savage and starts mass-murdering your civilian population, to force you out of negotiations and into unconditional surrender.

You may not like it, but the Japanese themselves set the precedent for "mass-murder" and going "full savage". I also recall them giving no quarter more than once. Perhaps learning a little about the war, the atrocities committed, and some of the cultural pressures that drove those attrocities might be enlightening. Or you can continue to make baseless claims about the evil Americans. After all, they were the ones that did a sneak attack killing over 2400, sinking or damaging at least 18 warships and destroying over 180 aircraft, or basically decimating an entire theater's fleet. They were also those evil callous folks that mistreated POWs, tortured and arbitrarily executed them while force marching them through Bataan. And that only starts the list of eye-pokings. Full savage was already in full swing on one side before the war started.

Re:Not like the USA

[stdarg]

Terrorists do make the same justification against the United States.

It's really just the difference between war and peacekeeping I'd say. We're lucky today that we can be so arrogant to call the operation in Afghanistan "war".

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Cudos for opening eyes on that war.

Signed one who sent sms to all my contacts on the night before the attack to try prevent the war, together with most of my real friends.

Re:Not like the USA

[stdarg]

It's a hard argument to refute. After all it's pretty much the foundation of our country -- a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Imagine if some country had a democratic referendum to support terrorists against the US. They started funding terrorist groups, providing safe harbor, etc. At what point would you say they share in responsibility for terrorist attacks? We convict people here in the US for materially supporting terrorists even if they never wanted nor planned to take up arms themselves.

I totally understand Osama and why he hates us and why many Muslims are sympathetic to him around the world. And I'm thankful that we're stronger than them.

Re:Not like the USA

[mbullock]

Having actually read several books about the Dresden bombing, I have to agree- we are talking about an event that can be argued was atrocious and possibly a war crime. It was not unknown that the city was swollen with civilian refugees. The actual death toll is not even know because so many people in the city were refugees and not residents. The city itself was not a military target. The targets of military interest were outside the city proper. The British, who played a key roll in the whole bombing, had a major ax to grind with Germany. Dresden was in many ways payback for the horrible and likewise atrocious bombing campaigns Germany carried out against London and other cities. Anyone who thinks the Dresden bombing was a "normal" act of war against a military target has simply not looked at the relevant historical sources. Sure one can argue that there aren't "normal" acts of war, but there are certainly some generally accepted principles on the matter. The extensive bombing campaigns we waged against the Japanese are also not talked about much- the atomic bombs get all the attention. While the atomic bombs were unquestionable devastating, it is arguable that the combined effect of our other bombing campaigns were even more so. Before the first atomic bomb dropped, we'd already destroyed 30% - 70% of most of the major Japanese cities. There is great commentary regarding this in a documentary called "The Fog of War". In the documentary, Robert McNamara relates conversations he had with General Curtis Lemay who was in charge of the air force resources that carried out the Japanese bombings. Lemay expressed to McNamara that it was his believe we better win the war or they'd be considered war criminals for what they were doing. So in the end, yeah, war is pretty terrible stuff and people do terrible things to one another. This doesn't mean that afterward, we can't reflect on what constitutes an act of war versus an atrocity, and whether there is a distinction between the two. Personally, I tend to believe that it is possible to draw distinctions between acts of war and atrocities that rise to the level of war crimes.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

The Iraqi civilians didn't like the American presence but the Shia tolerated them as a necessary evil to get rid of Saddam and Baath. They didn't like when the US soldiers did mindless things - which will happen when you give 18 year old kids with few prospects Hummers, small arms and a license to be bad-ass (as explained to me by an Iraqi Kurd as we flew in to Beirut). One exception to this was Moqtada Al Sadr, the Iranian-backed cleric that had his troublesome 'Mahdi Army' until it was crushed first by the US and then later by the Iraqi Army. So the majority of Iraqis didn't express antipathy for the US (despite the media trying to sensationalising the US occupation as continually losing until *gasp* it suddenly won [basically they ignored the progress on the ground trying to sell press until the reality became too obvious for them to deny]).

A minority of Iraqis, the Sunnis, did hate the Coalition for invading. It turns out that they hate the Shia more and that is where the real trouble was - a sectarian war where the US was caught in the middle.

The US may be filled with many butt-ignorant ignoramuses where half of them can't place their country on the map - but the Pentagon and US Army is filled with smart dudes who actually do know what they are doing. Fighting a ground war in Iraq was pure genius. It meant that all the jihadis were drawn to fight on someone else's soil, where their ideology was shown to be discredited (result: most people in the Middle East now dislike suicide bombers where previously they were admired, especially if they attacked Americans). Plus, the US also got to control Iraqi Oil, which will matter in the next half century (even if the US obtains energy independence they still prevent Russian from energy dominance and have a good lever over China) which was very smart.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

I disagree. The Wehrmacht was ruled by Prussians, and they would not surrender on a whim. There was dissent within the armed forces but it was dealt with ruthlessly because that is how the German government did business. Nothing to do with the Allied terms of surrender.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

As usual, it is not really black and white - it's not like British officers really were mass murderers with an evil glint in the eye - but I find the discussion of the bombing during the war (when, presumably, civilian population was also not particularly willing to cut any slack to the enemy, especially after being bombed themselves earlier) pretty interesting. Apparently, the word "terror bombings" was thrown around by Allied press even then. And when the person in charge of the decision to bomb states that "I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier", that raises a brow.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

> They think they are the children of god, and thus being, have a "promised land" that they took originally from others. Some Israelis think this, not all of them. Israeli Government policy used to be influenced by such people, who believed in a "Greater Israel" but this has been discarded (one of the reasons that Israel *unilaterally* removed itself from Gaza - since they actually want to have a *democratic* state and holding Gaza was incompatible with this).

Actually the current Israelis mostly bought swamp land from the inhabitants of the region (who we now call Jordanians) - note also that most of the "Palestinians" are immigrants from other countries (lots from Egypt) that go back fewer generations than the non-Arab Israelis (ignoring the Arab Israelis here). Then the UN gave land to the Israelis. The neighbouring Arab countries promptly invaded (which means the historical facts are that the Israelis were *not the aggressors*) and the Israelis obtained more land as a result of their War of Independence. The aggressors these days are the militants who fire rockets into Israel, prompting armed response.

Sounds like your grasp on history is pretty tenuous. Which is why I feel the need to point out how wrong you are, in case other readers mistake your historically inaccurate viewpoint as having any semblance to reality. Please check your facts.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

the parent asked what the rationale was, and one was given. where in that was it stated that the rationale or the action itself was moral, reasonable, or defensible?

Re:Not like the USA

[tylutin]

Quite right, America would be in a world of hurt if we even tried to steamroll the surrender monkey French. With their brand new Triomphant class missile carrying nuclear subs, each carrying 16 supersonic 3 stage missiles, each missile carries six to ten independently targetable TN 75 thermonuclear warheads. Trying to steamroll France wont be like taking a country like North Korea, these missiles actually work.

"On 27 January 2010, at 9h25, a missile was launched underwater by the Terrible, from Audierne Bay. The missile reached its target 2000 kilometres off South Carolina; the 4500 kilometre flight took less than 20 minutes."

More importantly, those subs are estimated to be 1000 times quieter than the American Trident (Ohio class) subs.

How do you take a country that possesses those kinds of toys.

Short answer, you can't. Can you imagine if even ONE of those missiles hit their target in NY or Washington? That would hurt.

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Factually incorrect. Please let me explain.

The Iraqi and Afghan wars did not bankrupt the US government - far from it. As a percentage of GDP these wars are *vastly* cheaper than any of the previous wars the US fought (although more in absoluter terms due to inflation, those wars are much cheaper due to the massive increase in US GDP since say, the Vietnam War era).

The "bankrupting" of the government is due to a loss of confidence in the ability of America to repay her debts. This is due to the financial sector getting the government to deregulate its activities and do all sorts of shady things. This resulted in a bubble of speculation which looked like an economic "boom" to those not paying attention. When the boom finally bust and all the dodginess was exposed there was a loss of confidence in the US. This is what is causing the current financial woes of the US. Even worse, the financial sector is trying to convince the US government to remove even more protections. Expect another "boom" to follow - which is just as illusory as the last speculative bubble.

The Iraqi and Afghan wars may have been wasteful, but they certainly were not bankrupting.

Re:Not like the USA

[someSnarkyBastard]

Short version: Jim Crow was all about keeping newly freed slaves from getting uppity and putting on airs of being equal to their white counterparts and mainly consisted of discriminatory laws or social customs ("separate but equal") and threats/demonstrations of violence (lynch mobs)

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

You win best when you achieve your goals without having to fight at all.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read several times that Dresden was basically bombed to keep it out of the hands of the Soviets. Germany had essentially already been defeated, Dresden was cut off, Berlin was sieged. No one was really sure if the fall of Germany would lead to the end of the war or if the Allies would just start fighting each other. The US/Brits bombed it pretty much because it was a fairly undamaged city that was already known to pass into Soviet sphere of influence. Why give the Soviets such a nice present in what might aid them in the next war?

Re:Not like the USA

[ultranova]

You've introduced more variables to the situation. of course with added variables such as these the tactics may need to change for the situation, I wasn't advocating this is the end all solution for war -- or everyone would do it, to win a war.

I haven't introduced any variables, I have simply acknowledged existing variables. If your theoretical model didn't already include these variables, and they significantly affect the outcome, then your model is simply wrong - because these variables exist in reality.

You know... When the norm of a culture is to behave a certain way, that's not dysfunction, that's the norm for that culture. What you're saying could be equivalent to calling the Japanese 'dysfunctional' because of how their norms in combat and tactics differed from the US during the second World War.

Japanese lost. So, compared to the United States, they were dysfunctional. They got themselves to the point where they had to choose between fighting a clearly superior foe or ceasing their empire-building, and chose the former because they just couldn't give up their dreams of glory after all they'd paid for them.

That's a very good demonstration of my point, actually.

Another point of view could be that you wiped out the enemy and it's spawn, so that enemy is unable to kill you in the future, that does prove something - Your enemy is gone.

As I said in another post, you can't possibly wipe out all of the connections your enemy has (because that's every living thing on the planet), and any and all attempts will simply make more and more enemies.

Of course, I'm not condoning genocide, but I can see how it can have a valid tactic and in my point of view -- Ignoring this as a tactic also meas that you cannot plan adequately against such a threat.

Of course you aren't condoning genocide, you're just saying that it's a good tactic. And you're wrong, it's an idiotic tactic that will almost certainly backfire spectacularly.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

Dresden was bombed in February 1945. Two months later the Russians would take Berlin ending the war on that front.

Big bombing. War ends. But the big bombing didn't help the war end. Are you going to next argue that nukes used on Japan had no effect on the war? After all, Japan surrendered shortly after, so the war was over when they were dropped.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

Japan had offered a conditional surrender even before this(they wanted to keep some of the territory gained in China, but that could probably have been solved by diplomacy later).

What caused WWII? I'll give you a hint, even with Hitler, if WWI hadn't happened, WWII wouldn't have. If China was forced to give up explicitly Chinese land because the US and UK told them to because Japan wanted more resources, what do you think would have happened? I'll give you a hint. WWIII. The people at the time were acutely aware that WWI (treaty of Versailles) caused WWII and were willing to kill some bad guys to make sure a repeat of that didn't happen.

Re:Not like the USA

[fredprado]

That certainly happens. A lot of radical movements like Green Peace have done far more to hinder their causes than the other way around, for example. But those are two things that are not self-excluding. In-fighting and lack of focus because of ego and other misguided ideas certainly play a hand in making otherwise valid movements inane, but that has been so since the dawn of mankind. On the other hand what did change from then to now is the vast increase of power the governments have for propaganda and mass manipulation.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

Dresden was a military target. Most of the civilians there worked for the War Machine, in some capacity. Dresden, being the top-10 German city that was largely untouched in the war, was the center of all military production at that time. Wiping that city off the map could have shaved months off the war.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

How many deserved it? All it takes for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing. How many complained when they came for the socialists or gays? Not enough to stop it? Who's fault is that?

I believe in the founding fathers. We get the government we deserve. I don't see how someone could, in good conscience, live in the US. The US is one of the worst countries ever (not just in being "bad" but in ability and desire to spread that "bad"). I moved out of the US when I was able. If Mitt wins, I'd move to the moon, if I were able. The real problem with the US is that we get the government we deserve.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

The "conservatives" don't like it because it's a high cost with no kickbacks. The liberals don't like it because it's still killing and Israel should bomb them with roses. It's one of the few things everyone can agree on, other than what the fix is.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

Did firebombing of Dresden help fasten it? I find it a dubious assertion.

At the time of the firebombing, Dresden was still actively making instruments of war. I can't see how bombing the *only* functioning center of manufacture had no effect at all at the ability for the Germans to resist (and they were still actively resisting).

You might as well argue that the bombing of the non-military targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did nothing to hasten the surrender of the Japanese. The Germans could have surrendered, sparing Dresden. They chose not to. They chose to fight as long as the were able, and that ability was reduced by the bombing of Dresden. If it were so inevitable as you say, why was there no surrender?

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

*sigh* It seems like people are deliberately trying to misunderstand my point.

Yes, because you aren't flexing your point. Is it wrong? Yes, but it's less wrong than the other option, so it's relativistically slightly right, but undesirable. Can something be wrong and right at the same time? Yes. To take it away from war, use the example of the man stealing bread to feed his family. Is it wrong to steal or wrong to let your family starve? Your inflexibility is demanding that someone pick one and only one to be wrong. Both are wrong, and one will be more wrong than the other. People don't like being forced to choose. It's not morally wrong to blow up a hospital that's a military asset. Why? Because it's more wrong to militarize the hospital in an attempt to shield military assets.

It's the moral equivalent of tying children to tanks headed to the battlefield. Who's more wrong, the guy with 20 kids strapped to his tank shooting at people, or the guys in the other tank shooting back?

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

But you're still killing people today,

Another reason people are deliberately misunderstanding your point is that you are wrong. I'm not killing anyone. In fact, the US elected its last president (in part) to end these wars. But, as politicians are wont to do, he lied. Your personalization of whatever actions you are complaining about is irrelevant and a distraction from your other points (I say it that way because you go back and forth between WWII and today for whatver fits your desires at that moment, without regard to consistency).

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

The Germans could have surrendered, sparing Dresden. They chose not to. They chose to fight as long as the were able, and that ability was reduced by the bombing of Dresden. If it were so inevitable as you say, why was there no surrender?

The Germans that made the decision to not surrender were not in Dresden. Hitler personally believed until the very last moment that, through some magical act of sheer Aryan willpower, Germany would prevail, and gave orders accordingly. His generals were willing to surrender long before that - enough so to try to kill him at some point to force that - but they, also, had to contend with Gestapo and SS. Hitler always had his very own pet army for just this reason: that the regular one wouldn't be the sole force and couldn't be easily turned on him.

On the other hand, as soon as the German leadership in Berlin stood down, their armies and their "Festungs" also did on short order - heck, many of them did it before that. I don't see much fighting spirit in that.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

By "you" I mean "Americans". After all, if the person whom I replied to made statements such as "Germans waged war", I don't see why I shouldn't be similarly blunt.

If you're an American citizen, then you're certainly partly responsible for killing people. That holds true for any franchised citizen of any democratic country that wages war. You (again, you Americans, not necessarily you personally) voted for a president who promised to pull your troops out of Iraq - which he kinda sorta did - but he never promised anything of a kind with respect to Afghanistan, and we've yet to see how it fares with Iran, towards which he always demonstrated a hawkish policy, even before being elected.

As a side note, I'm not necessarily saying that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unjustified, either. That killing happens there is an objective fact, though - that's what wars tend to be about. I actually happen think that Afghanistan with US intervention today is better off than Afghanistan without it, though I kinda wish you spent less time screwing around there playing "let's build a mock democracy in a feudal society", and focusing more on the real threats - but that would mean going into Pakistan (they call it AfPak for a reason), and, yes, more deaths, too, including innocents. But it would have a definite meaningful and worthy goal in the end - curbing extreme fundamentalist Islam and preventing the re-establishment of the Caliphate on that fundament. Right now, though, I'm not so sure that what happens there serves anyone in the long term. Taliban is as strong as ever, and the moment you leave they come back - and a lot of angry people will join them...

I'm not going back and forth between WW2 and today, either. My purely hypothetical example with a hospital was used solely for illustration and is not tied to any particular time frame - you can place it in WW2 as well, if you so desire. Apparently, though, some people, for whatever reason, decided that it was a hint towards some current conflict (wonder why that would be?). The discussion only went towards here and now when the person to whom I replied mentioned "wars ... we're in".

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

You killed that old lady's sons and she was told you rapped her daughters (who are missing) wheather it was true or not. The rest of her family was wipped out, the family that helped take care of her. She lost everything; why should she be not out to get you?

Total war or fully restrained. The middle ground breeds generations of hate.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

And how about an American citizen who has never voted for a winning candidate,despite voting in every election since 1992, Who has also moved out of the US and has not renounced citizenship to be able to visit family without fear of arrest (if the IRS decides that you renounce to avoid taxes, they can choose to not recognize the change in tax status and arrest you for tax evasion, so it's safer, if one will ever visit or transit through the US, to not renounce)?

Apparently, though, some people, for whatever reason, decided that it was a hint towards some current conflict (wonder why that would be?).

Because such tactics are currently being used in the middle east. It's not a hypothetical, it's reality, which makes it more concrete than you apparently intended.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

And how about an American citizen who has never voted for a winning candidate,despite voting in every election since 1992, Who has also moved out of the US and has not renounced citizenship to be able to visit family without fear of arrest (if the IRS decides that you renounce to avoid taxes, they can choose to not recognize the change in tax status and arrest you for tax evasion, so it's safer, if one will ever visit or transit through the US, to not renounce)?

That's a hard one. I'm kinda in a similar boat myself, since I do not intend to renounce the citizenship of my original country after acquiring the Canadian one, purely as a matter of convenience (getting a visa there is a mess) - at least, so long as my direct relatives remain there.

Because such tactics are currently being used in the middle east. It's not a hypothetical, it's reality, which makes it more concrete than you apparently intended.

I know that such tactics are used there, and I even know of some similar cases, but it does not invalidate the scenario itself, and the moral questions it touches upon.

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

But it does invalidate it, as it becomes a pro/anti Israel question, which is a whole 'nuther can of worms. I like the one I used elsewhere. If two sides are at war, and one side kidnaps children and straps them to their tanks, is it wrong to shoot back at them, knowing that every tank kill will kill 20 innocent children?

As that has never come up, and likely never would, it's a better scenario because it can't be analogized to a current conflict of controversial status.

Re:Not like the USA

[shutdown -p now]

But it does invalidate it, as it becomes a pro/anti Israel question, which is a whole 'nuther can of worms.

That's okay, we can open that one for extra flavor - I'm generally pro-Israel. ~

Anyway, my test case was subtler than that. To remind:

An ammo stash on the roof of a hospital is also a legitimate military target, but if the enemy is already crippled to the point where he is unable to use that stash to any meaningful effect, targeting it just because you can - with all the ensuing civilian casualties - is morally wrong.

Simply put, aside from the target being legal, there must also be some meaningful objective achieved by attacking it, and the value of that objective must be proportional to the collateral damage, within reasonable boundaries (and I understand that we enter a territory of utter subjectivity at this point). That's why Dresden, for example, is arguable in the first place - because it did have munition factories and such, so there can certainly be a reasonable argument for the attack being morally justified. My doubt is primarily with respect to how much effect it really had on the course of the war, given where it already was at that point. Were it carried out in, say, 1944, I would definitely consider it justified.

Re:Not like the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Balls! Its very famous that we new the raid on Coventry was happening but we could not let the Germans know we had broken enigma code so had to let the attack vi ahead it was the breaking of enigma by the brits that won the second WW.

Re:Not like the USA

[Ash-Fox]

I haven't introduced any variables, I have simply acknowledged existing variables. If your theoretical model didn't already include these variables, and they significantly affect the outcome, then your model is simply wrong - because these variables exist in reality.

They exist depending on the circumstances. Some countries have nukes, others don't. Some have treaties with powerful nations, others don't. They're all variables.

They got themselves to the point where they had to choose between fighting a clearly superior foe or ceasing their empire-building, and chose the former because they just couldn't give up their dreams of glory after all they'd paid for them.

Actually they chose the latter, the Japanese surrendered once it became clear that the US was a superior foe. The US was taking major damage from the Japanese prior to the event and the US was feeling it badly.

Re:Not like the USA

[chrb]

The cause of the war has nothing to do with the conditions of surrender. It is entirely possible for both claims to be true: that both the start of the war was legitimate, and the conditions of surrender many years later were unacceptable.

There would be no conditions for surrender if the war had not started. It is that simple.

Analogy time: I make a cheese sandwich. I offer to sell it to you for the price of $1 million. You refuse, because those terms of sale are unacceptable to you. Now, it is true that I couldn't have offered to sell you the cheese sandwich if I had never made it in the first place. However, this has nothing to do with the terms of sale. I could have offered to sell it for $1, or some other terms that would have been acceptable. The creation of the cheese sandwich and the terms of sale are independent, even though one must causally predate the other. It is possible for both to be true at the same time: that my creation of the cheese sandwich was legitimate, and that the sale price of $1 million was unacceptable to you.

Re:Not like the USA

[LoyalOpposition]

If that was really a condition, Japan would be left without a government (not to mention Emperor).

It almost certainly included that Field Marshal Sugiyama Hajime and Admiral Nagano Osami could not serve in the government. It almost certainly did not include Emperor Hirohito. Nor did it include the elimination of government.

As implemented, it was close enough,

Are you saying that Allied occupation of Japanese cities is close to not having any such occupation? That no government should concern itself with the occupation of its cities by an enemy army? Please explain yourself, because I'm not understanding what you've said.

and none of it would be a problem if negotiations actually happened.

You mean the negotiations that Japan refused to attend? On 27 Jul 1945 Prime Minister Suzuki stated, "I consider the Joint Proclamation a rehash of the Declaration at the Cairo Conference. As for the Government, it does not attach any important value to it at all. The only thing to do is just kill it with silence (mokusatsu). We will do nothing but press on to the bitter end to bring about a successful completion of the war."

it was supposedly worth of destroying two cities and killing countless civilians (on top of more civilians killed in a war itself -- what is disgusting but at least served some understandable purpose).

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also had an understandable purpose--that of shortening the war and saving Allied lives. The only debatable issue is whether it also, on net, saved Japanese lives. For example, [i]n keeping with the custom of a new government declaring its purposes, following the May meetings the Army staff produced a document, the government of Japan decided that "The Fundamental Policy to Be Followed Henceforth in the Conduct of the War,"...that the Japanese people would fight to extinction rather than surrender. This policy was adopted by the Big Six on June 6. At this point, the battle of Okinawa was still ongoing, but the battle of Iwo Jima was two months concluded.

~Loyal

Re:Not like the USA

[SplashMyBandit]

Wrong analogy. It would be more like something like this: you force us to eat a meal together, but I say we can only stop once you've eaten your brussel sprouts. You can't complain that you won't stop eating because of my conditions - you shouldn't have forced us to eat!

Re:Not like the USA

[Alex Belits]

You may not like it, but the Japanese themselves set the precedent for "mass-murder" and going "full savage".

And it's still wrong to follow such examples if you call yourself civilized, however my point is, those acts were performed by Americans over ABSOLUTELY NOTHING other than dick-waving.

Re:Not like the USA

[Alex Belits]

Are you saying that Allied occupation of Japanese cities is close to not having any such occupation?

Japanese did not oppose the idea of occupation if their surrender was accepted. And this is exactly what happened, except it was supposedly all-important that it had to be American who has to propose it.

Re:Not like the USA

[Gr8Apes]

You may not like it, but the Japanese themselves set the precedent for "mass-murder" and going "full savage".

And it's still wrong to follow such examples if you call yourself civilized, however my point is, those acts were performed by Americans over ABSOLUTELY NOTHING other than dick-waving.

Perhaps if you read the rest of the post and enlightened yourself, you'd see why what was done was done. It was to break the spirit of the Japanese, to remove any semblance of saving face, to destroy possibilities of repeated attempts to further their empire. But, just keep waving.

Re:Not like the USA

[Alex Belits]

It was to break the spirit of the Japanese, to remove any semblance of saving face

In other words, dick-waving.

to destroy possibilities of repeated attempts to further their empire.

That's speculation based on nothing but racist hatred toward Japanese people -- nothing of the kind happened with Germany even though Germany was a much more dangerous enemy, had much more dangerous ideology, and was much more successful empire-builder. What was the whole point to begin with -- killing innocent civilians of "savage race" to make themselves feel better.

Re:Not like the USA

[SharpFang]

Yeah, yeah, I'm getting your point: The Americans didn't do worse than the Japaneese. They just matched them up in terms of cruelty and savagery.

Good that you didn't start death camps for them Japs. After all, Hitler was doing this, so it would fully justify your side to do the same thing.

Re:Not like the USA

[Dave Emami]

Sorry for the delay in replying, been busy. Now then...

The US ...is not responsible when a former Baathist sets off a bomb in a marketplace. He -- and whatever organization he answers to, if any -- is responsible. He is not a toddler or monkey or a robot responding unthinkingly to stimuli or programming. He is a moral actor.

The US is not responsible for creating a lawless failed state where settling old scores along tribal and religious lines is acceptable? Arguing about enabling the moral acts of a single person in this environment is getting waaaaay off track. It's like you're arguing about the actions of a single drunk driver in a country where drunk driving is legal and all of the bars are 30 miles away from neighborhoods.

On the contrary, arguing about the actions of a single person is the only way to get to the underlying morals of the matter. Any act of any kind, good or bad, boils down to individuals. Their actions are not dictated by their "environment", like birds flying south for the winter.

And what's this garbage about Baathists? In Iraq, Baathism was the party of Saddam Hussein. It had no real leaders when he fell, and was hardly relevant at all in the civil war. The civil war was between Sunnis, Shiites and (to a lesser extent) Kurds and Turks. The civil war started when the US invaded Iraq and fired the Iraqi army, leaving a bunch of angry, broke men with weapons and military training with no source of income. The results are obvious.

The same moral calculus applies to the Sunnis, Shiites, and other groups. Once more, you're talking about those men as if they're children, animals, or inanimate objects. If we were talking about me starting a boulder rolling down a cliff, or starting a stampede of buffalo, the fault for any resulting death or damage would be mine -- the boulder and the buffalo are acting on physics and instinct, in response to what I did. They are not capable of moral judgement. The acts you are trying to place at the US's doorstop were carried out by people capable of moral judgement and responsible for their own acts.

The idea that the US is responsible for his actions...is of the same spirit as what a Victorian colonial might say with a shrug: "Well, what do you expect, chap? They're just wogs, after all."

How ironic! The Imperial British were masters of fomenting ethnic/religious strife in order to maintain their grip on power. Although I think the US's version was unintentional, it had the same result, albeit with a client state vs. direct colonial control.

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that you're displaying the same "they don't know any better" attitude, though you probably don't explicitly hold it. If an Iraqi blows up a marketplace, the only way the US can be responsible for his act is if he isn't responsible, and the only way he can not be responsible is for him to be somehow less capable of moral judgement than we are.

If getting rid of Saddam was (in your estimation) not worth the post-overthrow cost, then by your logic it would have been immoral for the Iraqis themselves to do it, assuming they had the power to.

We're not talking about internal revolution here (much as you want to dig up bogus connections to the Civil War). We're talking about the most powerful country in the world overthrowing a neutered dictator who only had nominal control over part of his country under the pretext that he was a clear and immediate threat to them. Or have you forgotten?

My reference to the Civil War has nothing to do with whether or not the source of Saddam's overthrow was internal or external, since that makes no difference as far as I'm concerned. If overthrowing him was in and of itself right (which you agreed it was), then it doesn't matter who did it. The Lincoln/KKK pattern applies just fine: if Party A does something good

Re:Not like the USA

[AK Marc]

No, because AQ isn't able to be at war with the US. War is between two nations. AQ isn't a nation. Bob declares war on green backpacks isn't a war. Despite all the conditioning for fake wars deliberately pushed by the US government (mostly Republicans, from what I can tell, starting the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, but who knows, maybe I'm just not remembering when Democratic presidents declared War on Poverty or War on Racism or whatever). War on Some Idea you don't like doesn't work. It can't be won. And when Some Idea declares war on you, again, it isn't a war, even if the idea declaring war on you is AQ.

Today?

[kwiqsilver]

I thought today was June 4, 2012. If it's 1989 still, I should probably get out of this office and head to high school.

Re:Today?

[sarysa]

You do that. No one'll call the cops or anything, honest..

Is that the correct date format?

[line-bundle]

Does China use the MM/DD/YY system? For some reason I thought this was exclusive to the US only.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[hcmtnbiker]

China doesn't need to use it for it to be blocked by their filters, they would be designed to block foreign sites as well.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

China uses YY//MM/DD, and in Chinese they usually explicitly write the character for year, month, and day after each part respectively.

Something like 2012Y, 06M, 05D

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[X0563511]

the YY[YY]MMDD form is actually much more sensible. It numerically sorts in chronological order. MMDDYY[YY] is just dumb.

You know, kind of like how metric is superior to any other system.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go: big endian vs. little endian :(

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

MMDDYY[YY] is just dumb.

Today is June 4th, 2012.

June (06) 4th (04), 2012 (2012)

06/04/2012

How is that dumb?

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

China copies almost everything from the US. Their roads, etc. All based on US designs.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Cederic]

Because the 4th June 2012 is better expressed as 20120604.

Middle-endian date formats are fucking obtuse.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[mirix]

Today is the fourth of June, 2012. (4th day of the 6th month of the 2012th year).

By your logic, quarter to twelve should be written 45:11.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[king neckbeard]

Except the metric system has a decimal base, and all the disadvantages it entails (5 is pretty much a useless divisor). The consistency is quite advantageous, but there are much better bases, at least if you don't limit yourself to our particular numeral system.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[jrumney]

45:11 would be just as logical as 11:45, it just seems strange because it is unfamiliar. A better approximation of the US date format applied to time would be to include the seconds as 45:00:11.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something to be said for both big-endian dates (YYYY-MM-DD) and little-endian dates (DD-MM-YYYY). Big-endian dates sort automatically into chronological order. Little-endian dates deliver the most pertinent information (least likely to be obvious from context) first, so you don't have to read the whole date if you already know the year. The same applies to big-endian times (HH:MM) and little-endian times (MM:HH).

Middle-endian dates like MM-DD-YYYY are still meritless and perverse, though.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Dr Max]

You mean the slightly raised to the middle bitumen with white lines on it. but how did they fiqure out how the US did it to begin with?

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is "4th June"?

You mean "June 4th".

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because it's 11 hours and 45 minutes. The big unit comes first, then the small.

11:45

Just like it's 6 months (June) and 4 days (4th). The big unit comes first, then the small.

06/04

The year changes so rarely that it's in a category of its own, and is normally left off.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

China copies almost everything from the US. Their roads, etc. All based on US designs.

yes, they must have stolen the designs for asphalt when they were railroad building slaves.

and remind the US to stop using compasses, gunpowder and paper.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[billyswong]

In Chinese it is more like 2012Y 6M 4D in both speaking and formal writing (no comma!). For speaking, the day 4th when by itself is usually called the "4 no." to distinguish from "4 days" and "the 4th day (of other thing else)". If month and day are mentioned together, it is also not uncommon to further shorten it to 6M4, especially when it's in (Chinese) lunar calendar. Meanwhile, for modern memorial date, like the event this time, it is often shortened (again!) and codified to 6 4, or 8 9 6 4.

Now you know why 64.89 triggered the censor alarm.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[drinkypoo]

There are only two logical systems, day-month-year and year-month-day. Everything else is a lot of nonsense. You want to know what day it is. But the year is what is important. (You might want to know the DoW, but that's about presentation, not recording.)

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[satuon]

Speaking of numeral systems, at the time when fish came out of the water there were several competing species of amphibians, some with 5 fingers, some with 4 fingers, even some with 8 fingers. Eventually, the 5-fingered species 'won' the competition and it became the ancestor of all terrestrial vertebrates. That's why all of them, from frogs to lizards to humans have 5 digits. Makes you wonder what would have happened if the 4 fingered species had won. With 4 fingers we would have developed the octal numeral system. It would have been pretty convenient, a computer byte would then be the natural base of our numeral system.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Patch86]

Fun fact- in countries like the UK where "DD/MM/YY" is the normal format, we say "4th of June", not "June 4th".

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you folks have no "Fourth of July" then. Well, that's good to know.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he means "Fourth of June".

I'm honestly beginning to think that people defending that format are mentally challenged.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[gl4ss]

no, by his logic it would be 11:45.

you know, because by his logic you can sort things and every sub part is read left to right.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the metric system has a decimal base, and all the disadvantages it entails (5 is pretty much a useless divisor). The consistency is quite advantageous, but there are much better bases, at least if you don't limit yourself to our particular numeral system.

Oh, that's why Americans have 100 cents to a dollar, 1,760 yards to a mile, three feet to a yard, 12 inches to a foot, 32 32nds of an inch to an inch, two cups to a pint etc.

You don't want to be biased against any particular numeral system.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Nyder]

Does China use the MM/DD/YY system? For some reason I thought this was exclusive to the US only.

It should be YYYY/MM/DD.

that is the only logical way to do it, world wide. Yes, it is a pet peeve of mine.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Raenex]

Middle-endian dates like MM-DD-YYYY are still meritless and perverse, though.

They correspond to spoken English. People say "June 4th", not "4th June", and this probably comes from the common practice in English to switch words around: "house of dog" becomes "dog house", and similarly "4th of June" becomes "June 4th".

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Anonymous Coward]

They correspond to spoken English.

No, they correspond to spoken Dumbarseyankish.

People say "June 4th", not "4th June"

In English, people say "4th of June".

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Raenex]

No, they correspond to spoken Dumbarseyankish.

Is that so, Mr. Snooty Anonymous Coward? Have some Charles Dickens:

"May 12, 1827. Joseph Smiggers, Esq., P.V.P.M.P.C. [Perpetual
Vice-President--Member Pickwick Club], presiding. The following
resolutions unanimously agreed to:"

In English, people say "4th of June".

I speak English, and I don't say that.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[xaxa]

Middle-endian dates like MM-DD-YYYY are still meritless and perverse, though.

They correspond to spoken English. People say "June 4th", not "4th June"

They correspond to spoken American.

Today is the 5th June, in Britain (often spoken as "5th of June"). In every other European language I've come across it's e.g. 5. Juni (German), 5e Juin (French).

It sounds (or looks) a bit odd when I hear an American muddled-order date. It's pretty common, so it's less odd than saying "I'm 6 inches 5 feet tall", but you get the idea.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Raenex]

It's probably spoken that way to match the text. See the Charles Dickens example in my reply to your Anonymous Coward sibling. At some point not too long ago your "proper" British English language had the month first.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[Agent0013]

I just avoid the uncertainty with the date order by using the military format; 04 Jun 2012.

Re:Is that the correct date format?

[xaxa]

At some point not too long ago your "proper" British English language had the month first.

I don't know if/when that was, and it wasn't necessarily all "proper" British English -- perhaps just in some contexts. Legal documents say things like "on this 5th day of June in the 2012th year of our Lord". Here's one from 1806: http://www.pdavis.nl/Legis_06.htm and one from 1679: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_2s2.html

Using US Date Order?

[Roger W Moore]

Seems strange that they would block 64.89 instead of 46.89 or 89.64 - must be all that US software they are using...

Re:Using US Date Order?

[Nidi62]

They probably blocked all iterations of the date. I mean, it'd be rather pointless to block one way and not the other.

Re:Using US Date Order?

[Anonymous Coward]

instead of 46.89 or 89.64

How do you know that those wouldn't have been blocked as well?

Re:Using US Date Order?

[Goaway]

The article is just very, very confused.

What they tried to block was people going "lol this number looks sort of like the Tiananmen date if you squint your eyes and tilt your head". Nothing automatic about it, just a knee-jerk reaction to people making fun.

See, Algos are good for something

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on. S and P 1337. We know you can do it.

Simple answer

[arcite]

The reverse engineers copied the errors. ;)

no accident

[je ne sais quoi]

It was no accident, the Shanghai index fell 64.89 points and people starting blogging that since 6/4/89 was the date of Tiananmen massacre, the stock index coincided with the date, which is a particularly infamous one. The censors then blocked those people for discussing the massacre, which is verboten. The NYT has a more in depth article. Now, the fact that the stock market fell by that exact amount by closing (see here) might be an accident, but the censors were doing exactly their job, censoring people discussing the massacre. As the NYT points out, other stock markets have been hacked and this may have be the case here as well, or some other intentional act. The Chinese government is investigating and you may rest assured that we will likely never know what they find since that would draw attention to why they were investigating in the first place.

Re:no accident

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really that big a coincidence. If we assume for simplicity that the stock market rises and falls between numbers less than 100 points, there are only 10,000 different combinations of numbers that can occur (presumably this would have been a story if the market had gone down or up by 64.89). 10000/365 days - this will occur on average every 27 years. On this occasion it took 23 years for it to happen.

Apologies for the lazy mathematical assumptions made above.

My main point is that 64.89 by mere coincidence is WAY more likely than an intentional act, considering the timescale.

Re:no accident

[sydneyfong]

This is actually the 23rd anniversary of the event. The numbers don't get much attention if outside of late May-early June. A few days ago, a shanghai index closed at 2,389.64, which could be interpreted as 23 (anniversary) of June 4, 1989... It still could be co-incidence, but the chances get lower to what I personally think is a really small chance this happened purely by coincidence.

It's quite widely speculated here that some trader somehow managed to manipulate the market to arrive at this figure.... It does sound crazy, but I think it's not that far away from claiming all these coincidences are pure coincidence...

"You can guess what happened next"

[Anonymous Coward]

People were suicided?

Re:"You can guess what happened next"

[dohzer]

Seriously though, what happened?
I must be a really bad guesser or something.

Love It!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to love the law of unintended consequences (Murphy Lives)!

Counterespionage

[Sloppy]

Does 6489 this 6489 mean 6489 I have 6489 discovered 6489 a way to 6489 keep my 6489 industrial 6489 data 6489 from being 6489 stolen 6489 by Chinese 6489 spies?

Re:Counterespionage

[VendettaMF]

Speaking from China, unproxied, I think I can safely answer that with "Nope".

Re:Counterespionage

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto. I don't think it's crazy that /. goes unblocked, but reddit isn't blocked. That's crazy to me.

Re:Counterespionage

[shentino]

If the espionage is state sponsored, whoever is doing the censorship (and is presumably exempt from it) is probably in league with them

Re:Counterespionage

[Anonymous Coward]

Applying your logic, your parent poster, VendettaMF, must be working in the corporate espionage business.

"You can guess what happened next."

[CaptnCrud]

Why did this make me think of the big lebowski: Sherry in 'Logjammin': [on video] You must be here to fix the cable. Maude Lebowski: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here. The Dude: He fixes the cable? Maude Lebowski: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey

Re:"You can guess what happened next."

[X0563511]

... are you insane? You should consider that a real possibility.

It's 1989 today!

[Anonymous Coward]

My god, I've gone back in time while I was sleeping!! There are so many things that I need to warn the world about: 9/11, George Bush Jr's presidency, the years of meddling in the Middle East, and, most importantly of all, I must kill George Lucas to prevent the prequels.

Wish me luck /. (even though you don't exist yet to read this message).

In unrelated news

[danbuter]

In unrelated news, Censor Wang Long Dong was executed this afternoon for crimes against the government.

Re:In unrelated news

[emt377]

He locked himself in a cell in a basement somewhere in Shanghai and accidentally beat himself to death with a baseball bat. Tragic, but shit happens...

One fine day ...

[Taco Cowboy]

... the CPP gonna accidentally China !

except of course Werner Von Braun

[decora]

and oh, i dont know, several thousand other high ranking nazis who got off scott free and had high positions in the post war society, because of the realpolitik of the cold war. but hey. whats a few thousand dead civvies, when the masters of the universe are deciding important questions of morality?

that seems a little harsh.

[decora]

its just a movie .. .right?

Easily-have-been an "side effect" of the censors.

[IBitOBear]

IF the firewall kicked in and "walled off" the stock exchange the instant that the magic number showed up, then the exhange may have been "stopped" at the magi number -because- of the censorship.

Indeed, anything with a "rolling number" that was influenced by user action could have been "memorialized" by the censorship itself.

Imagine if every web site in China had a "daily visitor counter" then they all would have been shut off at 6489 visitors. Several might have incremented one-to-X times more than that as the filter took hold, sure. But there is the effect is lagged.

Now if every page sent from the stock exchange included the index value, the number of discrete actions necessary to get the composite 64.89 to 64.90 was likely dwarfed by the average size of each transaction.

The problem with all net filters is unintended consequence.

This reeks of unintended consequence of that sort if you really think about it as a wide-area phenomonia.

On this spot on June 4, 1989...

[Arancaytar]

NOTHING HAPPENED.

China is ..

[SvenLee]

China is not like our USA.

You think that's bad? I was born october 31, 1989

[Anonymous Coward]

What do I need to do? Climb back to the womb?

As they said in The Hunt for the Red October ...

[mdmkolbe]

"War is the continuation of Politics by other means" -- Carl von Clausewitz

Nagasaki

[Anonymous Coward]

The a-bombing of Nagasaki is perhaps the single most atrocious act of World War 2. While an argument can be made that Hiroshima was necessary to teach the Japanese about the futility of resistance, couldn't the Americans simply have sent a warning to the Imperial government that the US had more Fat Bombs to drop? Instead the US had to drop a second atomic bomb on a city that had little miliitary significance. Just witnessing the destruction would have been enough to convince the Emperor that unconditional surrender was the only option.

Re:Nagasaki

[Interfacer]

The bombings happened on different days. The Japanese had several days to surrender, which they didn't.

From wikipedia:
Together with the United Kingdom and the Republic of China, the United States called for a surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945, threatening Japan with "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese government ignored this ultimatum, and two nuclear weapons developed by the Manhattan Project were deployed. Little Boy was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, followed by the Fat Man over Nagasaki on 9 August

The Japanese government still did not react to the Potsdam Declaration. Emperor Hirohito, the government, and the war council were considering four conditions for surrender --snip--
The Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had informed Tokyo of the Soviet Union's unilateral abrogation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 5 April. The senior leadership of the Japanese Army began preparations to impose martial law on the nation, with the support of Minister of War Korechika Anami, in order to stop anyone attempting to make peace . --snip--

This doesn't read like they were ready to surrender.

On this spot on June 4, 2012...

[Anonymous Coward]

NOTHING HAPPENED.

I happened to be within walking distance yesterday, was out getting dinner, and decided to stop by The Spot. It was totally blocked off by security. Completely empty except for some security guys at the exits from pedestrian underpasses. Got some nice pictures from across the street.

Please fight "civilized"

[Anonymous Coward]

And if I go to war against you I will stand with my boot heel on your neck while I rape your women and kill your children in the end. Victory goes to those willing to do what it takes to win.

Re:Please fight "civilized"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of the term Pyrrhic victory? Yes you would win but your actions would result in condemnation from the whole International community with sanctions and isolation as the result, you would have lost FAR more than you gained.

Re:Please fight "civilized"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes; the only way to win a total brutal war is to make sure there is no international community left, just a "Gross-Germania". See for instance the Ost Plan which aimed to turn Eastern Europe into German fiefs where all non-Germans would be enslaved or exterminated.

Total destruction of a city is NEVER legitimate

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what more or less Dresden (and other city) bombardement was : indiscriminate destruction of military and civilian. A targeted bombardement is one thing, carpet bombing housing is another. This is by the way another reason for example the bombing of horishima and nagazaki is still seen as controversial and its legitimacy disputed : it was the indiscreminate destruction of military, civilian *en masse*. Sure a lot of US folk defend that by saying the japanese surrendered quicker, but this does not change the fact that you intentionally burned and killed civilian en masse.

Osgeld

[Anonymous Coward]

I nominate you for "worst sub 2 million UID poster" .

Seriously, just go kill youself !

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it okay to sacrifice a thousand of "theirs" to save one of "yours"? Ten thousand? A million? At which point do you say it's enough?

...your very own Stalin said it most succinctly: "When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics."

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[shutdown -p now]

My very own Stalin also said, "Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain", when commenting on the need to explain to soldiers the difference between Nazis and Germans. And he said that in '41, with the enemy 20km away from Moscow.

Winners and losers

[cdrguru]

An important lesson in warfare was learned in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles was that you do not crush your defeated enemy completely - unless you are prepared to make them extinct. Sure, win at all costs but then make sure there is an operating country left.

10 years after WW I Germany was a wreck and this led directly to the rise of Hitler and WW II.

10 years after WW II both Germany and Japan had strong economies and a great deal of rebuilding had been done. Neither Germany nor Japan was "crushed" from their defeat and in many ways Japan's society improved a great deal. The average man on the street probably came out better because of how Japan was managed post-war than if the war had never happened. All traces of feudalism were wiped out of the country whereas before many had persisted.

I'd say the other approach that works was Carthage which we have not seen the likes of since - burn everything to the ground, salt the fields so nothing grows there and kill everyone - men, women, children, dogs, everyone. If you aren't prepared to go that far, it is necessary to leave a functioning country after defeat.

This is one problem with Iraq and Afganistan. Iraq was a functioning country but it was crushed almost completely. Afganistan post-Taliban could probably be said not to have been a functioning country even before being invaded. In both cases failure to leave a functioning country will almost certainly result in more wars.

Riddle me this!

[pongo000]

When I type google.cn in my browser, I'm redirected to google.com.hk. If I then enter 6/4/89, the very first hit is this: Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The last time I checked, HK was a enclave of the Chinese government. So where, exactly, is the censorship?

Re:Riddle me this!

[Gavagai80]

People in Hong Kong hold protests as well and openly advocate democracy. Hong Kong is not like the rest of China, it's a special administrative region with rules all its own. China itself likes to talk about Hong Kong as an example of "one country, two systems".

Also the scale

[INowRegretThesePosts]

People who compare the PRC to the USA also forget the scale of the respective crimes.
the PRC killed some 60,000,000 people. The USA does not come nearly close to that.

Those who say "the USA is just as bad" are merely diverting attention from
and covering up egregious crimes against humanity.

Does not compare

[INowRegretThesePosts]

every bit as 'evil' as our percieved enemies

The USA has committed grave errors (such as the two atom bombings), yes,
but saying it is as evil as the PRC, North Korea or the Soviet Union is
a huge stretch. The PRC alone killed some 60,000,000 people; the USA
does not come nearly close to that.

Protest America's errors, yes, but don't misrepresent the situation - doing
that provides cover for genocidal regimes claiming to be not that bad.

Thank you

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Thank you for a dose of common sense.

The ends do not justify the means.

War is awful, yes, but it becomes much worse if people start murdering babies and old ladies.

And yes, committing atrocities results in more evil, such as inspiring the enemy.

Does not compare

[INowRegretThesePosts]

The PRC killed some 60,000,000 people.
The USA does not come nearly close to that.

The USA committed atrocities, yes. They must be protested, yes.
But saying the USA is almost as bad as the PRC misrepresents reality
and provides cover for genocidal regimes.

How would you feel if someone killed your your daughter and the media
defended him by saying "well the killer may be bad, but we are all like
him. Didn't we pick fights in school?"