Are there times when dropping WMD on cities with civilian populated buildings is justified

[krugminator]

Wealth = moral authority?

That's the back asswards BS i think you may be getting confused about.

Tell me, how many of our own civilians have been killed by another country, compared to how many our own army have killed?

I would hope the answer is many fewer US citizens than foreign aggressors. The sole job of government is to protect its citizens.

Wealth is morality. It is a symbol of people voluntarily cooperating. It is a sign of producing to make life better. Wealth is proportional to virtue. The overwhelming majority of the progress in the world over the last 300 years has come from the United States directly or indirectly.

 

[69360]

WW2 was total war, the entire output of the countries economy was for the military. It wasn't like the wars of today, you have to keep it in perspective. The Japanese had been fighting to the last man/woman/child on the pacific islands like Saipan etc. It was reasonable to think they would have defended the homeland the same. In this context, yes the bombs saved American lives. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath.

Oh and you nuke the cities in the zombie apocalypse to keep it from spreading.

 

[krugminator]

Nowhere near as insane as claiming the U.S. is moral.

Then least immoral. There are shades of grey in the world. Who would you rather have the most power in the world. The United States or any other country that is clamoring for power like Russia, China, Iran, etc.

 

[Contumacious]

America actually is the place where a majority of the world's wealth springs out of. Even with America's flaws and often misguided policies, the United States is the most moral superpower in the history of the world.

Saying the United States is on par with (or worse in your case) the evil of any Muslim Middle Eastern country or Communist country is the kind of backward BS is insane.

Exactly, why can't those inferior people understand that they have no right to retaliate:

"Let me explain to you the most fundamental principle of American foreign policy: Any country where the people have unpronounceable names can be bombed by the US with impunity. For you Rockwell readers who are a little slow on the uptake, "impunity" means they aren't allowed to bomb us back. "We called no tag-backs." It hardly qualifies as impunity when they blow up our biggest buildings, now does it? They aren't playing by the rules."

.

 

[Cabal]

I would hope the answer is many fewer US citizens than foreign aggressors. The sole job of government is to protect its citizens.

Wealth is morality. It is a symbol of people voluntarily cooperating. It is a sign of producing to make life better. Wealth is proportional to virtue. The overwhelming majority of the progress in the world over the last 300 years has come from the United States directly or indirectly.

Wealth has ZERO to do with morality.

Please just stop. Every single statement you've just made is so entirely asinine, and in gross disregard of reality it physically hurts to even read.

 

[JCDenton0451]

WW2 was total war, the entire output of the countries economy was for the military. It wasn't like the wars of today, you have to keep it in perspective. The Japanese had been fighting to the last man/woman/child on the pacific islands like Saipan etc. It was reasonable to think they would have defended the homeland the same. In this context, yes the bombs saved American lives. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath.

Oh and you nuke the cities in the zombie apocalypse to keep it from spreading.

The bombs saves Japanese lives too, ironically. In the Pacific war for every dead US soldier we killed 10 Japanese on average. The Japanese were extremely stubborn enemy. They just didn't know when to give up. Just imagine what the figthing in the densely populated areas would look like.

 

[JCDenton0451]

Then least immoral. There are shades of grey in the world. Who would you rather have the most power in the world. The United States or any other country that is clamoring for power like Russia, China, Iran, etc.

You're sounding like Rubio here.

 

[Pericles]

 

[Contumacious]

The bombs saves Japanese lives too, ironically. In the Pacific war for every dead US soldier we killed 10 Japanese on average. The Japanese were extremely stubborn enemy. They just didn't know when to give up. Just imagine what the figthing in the densely populated areas would look like.

Should AQ drop a "dirty" bomb in one of our major cities since we are an "stubborn enemy" who "do not know when to give up"?

.

 

[AuH20]

WW2 was total war, the entire output of the countries economy was for the military. It wasn't like the wars of today, you have to keep it in perspective. The Japanese had been fighting to the last man/woman/child on the pacific islands like Saipan etc. It was reasonable to think they would have defended the homeland the same. In this context, yes the bombs saved American lives. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath.

Oh and you nuke the cities in the zombie apocalypse to keep it from spreading.

At minimum you were looking at a half-million U.S. casualities to take the Japanese homeland. After the incalculable toll it took with the island hopping strategy, the U.S. was not going to let maniacal Japanese off easy by letting them keeping the Emperor and their governing structure intact.

 

[AuH20]

The bombs saves Japanese lives too, ironically. In the Pacific war for every dead US soldier we killed 10 Japanese on average. The Japanese were extremely stubborn enemy. They just didn't know when to give up. Just imagine what the figthing in the densely populated areas would look like.

Women and children wielding pitchforks and kitchen knives. It would have been horrific.

 

[osan]

This can be strongly argued in any of several directions.

I could argue that it is never right to murder innocent civilians.

I could argue that any civilian not fighting or abandoning the "enemy" with whom they are identified by the "other side" has given tacit approval and is therefore not innocent and is thereby subject to anything we throw at them.

I could argue the position of the pure pragmatist that says anything goes which brings us closer to victory.

I could argue that war should be so atrociously horrible that nobody wants to risk it any longer, therefore, we kill women and children in order to achieve the horror necessary to scare back everyone.

I could argue that nobody holds the right to kill another and therefore all war is wrong.

I could argue that all moral decency dictates we have rules of engagement so spare innocents and POWs.

I could argue any of perhaps hundreds of different positions; some subtle, others not so subtle.

The answer is that it depends. On what? On the fundamental premises from which one argues. Virtually any argument can be made and accepted if the right premise is accepted as true.

 

[JCDenton0451]

Should AQ drop a "dirty" bomb in one of our major cities since we are an "stubborn enemy" who "do not know when to give up"?

Well, it's not going to raise their chances of winning.

 

[AuH20]

This can be strongly argued in any of several directions.

I could argue that it is never right to murder innocent civilians.

I could argue that any civilian not fighting or abandoning the "enemy" with whom they are identified by the "other side" has given tacit approval and is therefore not innocent and is thereby subject to anything we throw at them.

I could argue the position of the pure pragmatist that says anything goes which brings us closer to victory.

I could argue that war should be so atrociously horrible that nobody wants to risk it any longer, therefore, we kill women and children in order to achieve the horror necessary to scare back everyone.

I could argue that nobody holds the right to kill another and therefore all war is wrong.

I could argue that all moral decency dictates we have rules of engagement so spare innocents and POWs.

I could argue any of perhaps hundreds of different positions; some subtle, others not so subtle.

The answer is that it depends. On what? On the fundamental premises from which one argues. Virtually any argument can be made and accepted if the right premise is accepted as true.

The conclusion of the Japanese conflict was so bizarre that you really can't weigh it under normal conditions. Remember that the Nazi leadership was looking to make open-ended deals with the Allies weeks before Berlin fell, while the Japanese were steadfast in their refusal.

 

[AuH20]

The Tokyo firebombings were arguably worse in terms of deaths, yet Hiroshima (a military hub) and Nagasaki get all the attention :

 

[Christian Liberty]

This can be strongly argued in any of several directions.

I could argue that it is never right to murder innocent civilians.

I could argue that any civilian not fighting or abandoning the "enemy" with whom they are identified by the "other side" has given tacit approval and is therefore not innocent and is thereby subject to anything we throw at them.

I could argue the position of the pure pragmatist that says anything goes which brings us closer to victory.

I could argue that war should be so atrociously horrible that nobody wants to risk it any longer, therefore, we kill women and children in order to achieve the horror necessary to scare back everyone.

I could argue that nobody holds the right to kill another and therefore all war is wrong.

I could argue that all moral decency dictates we have rules of engagement so spare innocents and POWs.

I could argue any of perhaps hundreds of different positions; some subtle, others not so subtle.

The answer is that it depends. On what? On the fundamental premises from which one argues. Virtually any argument can be made and accepted if the right premise is accepted as true.

And yet your argument to EVERYTHING ELSE is "Either you support freedom or you don't."

Don't get me wrong, for a statist this is a very tricky question. Heck, for a moderate libertarian, this is a tricky question. As a minarchist, I'm not sure that I wouldn't nuke an enemy if that was the only way to protect my country from invasion, although I can say that under my Presidency we'd never be in that position anyway: and that certainly wasn't the situation under which Japan was atom bombed. I do know, however, that even if I used nukes to protect my country from invasion, that would still be mass manslaughter at best.

For an an-cap, such as yourself, this should be a very easy question.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

dupe post. :/

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I'm sorry, but Japan attacked US and killed a number of Americans. Dropping those bombs ended the war immediately. If it saved American lives and it assuredly did, then so be it.

The Japanese bombed a military target in response to the American regime's aggression. There's absolutely no comparison. Even Pat Buchanan knows better than to make a claim like yours.

 

[robert68]

Not to forget the massive bombing campaigns in the months prior to the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs.

"The table below notes the effect of conventional bombing campaigns on Japanese cities:

...

The attack on these major cities caused as many as 500,000 Japanese deaths, while displacing as many as 5,000,000."

http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=217

And those were petro bombs that destroyed all those cities, but they shouldn't count as wmd's when the US uses them, especially against... you know... Asians.

http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html

 

[Teenager For Ron Paul]

In theory yes, although I would rarely support it in practice since there are so few circumstances where it is justified.