http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1024-06.htm It's scary that someone even thought about that, I don't need to explain why. An interesting read about rogue states financing and supporting terrorism, indeed. Then GringoTex could talk about El Salvador. Then there's also Chile, Indonesia, Turkey, Chechnia etc. etc. All "wonderful" things ranging from direct support to looking somewhere else. Good terrorism, bad terrorism. Good massacres or genocides, bad massacres or genocides.
Terrorism is a totally meaningless word if the bombing of Hiroshima doesn't qualify as the greatest terrorist act in history. State terrorism indeed.
Because we all know the imperial Japanese didn't sneak attack the US or rape, murder & pillage the rest of Asia. We bombed them AND had the common courtesy to re-build that country into a world economic power. IMO they lucked out.
Terrorism is a means for creating a fearful reaction in the general target population when the perpetrator either cannot or chooses not to use more conventional military means of achieving their goals. Palestinians do not have the resources to defeat the Israeli military so they strike at civilian targets that have virtually no military value. The USA decided that a conventional invasion of Japan would be too costly for its resoures at hand. So it chose to nuke two cities full of civilians that had virtually no military value. The fact that the bombing also sent a message to the Soviets was gravy. Technically, both are instances of terrorism despite the fact that we've all been trained to think of "terrorism" in general and these two examples in particular in only certain specific ways. If you want an example of terrorism committed by the US government that more closely resembles the Palestinian situation, you could always just remember the "Contras" we created and backed in Nicaragua, among others.
So we must become the enemy to defeat him. Any action is excusable because the enemy is always just as bad or worse. That's the kind of thinking that can lead to things like My Lai. Happily, in the case of WW2, the Allies learned their lessons from the aftermath of WW1 and we earned our hour of greatness by treating our conquered enemies humanely. That's what I find so frustrating about our history, though. Sometimes, we rise to true greatness by things like the Marshall Plan or by Lincoln's willingness to welcome the defeated Confederate states back into the union without exacting vicious revenge. But then we always follow up that greatness with needless stupidity and/or evil like our various actions in Latin Amercia and like VietNam. Our leaders' desire for world empire is like this albatross around our neck that keeps us from being the truly, consistently great nation that we've demonstrated we could be.
Thought you weren't going to respond, you did on the other thread and now you jump over here...responding to something that goes back about four other threads which you know nothing about. Back to your five year old name calling too. What are you dressing up as tonight? Michael Moore?
Once again the liberals would rather send 7 million people to certain death in an invasion of japan instead of ending the war like we did.Stunning.
What? 7 million? You know that less than a million soldiers have died in all American military conflicts ever? You know that the total number of people that fought in WWII for the US was 16 million? http://www.va.gov/pressrel/amwars01.htm You know that an estimated 70,000 people died instantly when the bombs were dropped? That's 25% of total US combat fatalities from WWII. Did dropping the Bomb expedite the end of the war? Yes. Did it save American lives? Yes. Did it kill fewer people net than an invasion of the mainland? Maybe, but I'm not convinced. Was it state terrorism? Most definitely.
Well, on that Other Thread someone came up with a definition of terrorism that included "unlawful." The A-bombs were NOT unlawful. To me, the only valid criticism is that we dropped the Nagasaki bomb awfully quick. To those who want to call the mere use of the A-bomb as terrorism...what if we killed more people, but with conventional bombs. Would that be terrorism?
Some people believe in a Eye for an Eye. Japan did alot to deserve that bomb, especially for what their soldiers did to civilians in China and the Philippines.
I don't have a link, but I think I remember reading once that we actually killed more people carpet bombing Tokyo than with the Bomb in Hiroshima. Off Topic: I had a prof in an International Law class once tell us a story (have never confirmed it was true) of his friend who was captured in Japan. Beaten, saw his friends murdered, etc. by a Japanese soldier who was actually from Seattle. Anyway, after the war, the guy was driving down the street and saw this same guy who beat him and killed his friends just walking down the street. Seeing this he apparently tries running his former interrogator over with his car. After failing to do so, he gets out and with the help of bystanders beats the crap out of this guy. The former interrogator, according to our professor, was later tried for treason and hanged. Again, I never looked into this story, but ruudboy's post reminded me of it.
Is snoring considered a response? Judges? Amyway, I can address your B.S. in this thread even you're still too cowardly to answer my question in the other thread, Sally.
Do you mean the U.S. or the Palestinians? But seriously, I was pointing out the technical definition of terrorism, not excusing it. The points I was making, last seen flying a mile above your head, were: 1) that some moral judgements are not as facile as small-minded people would like them to be. 2) there is often a fine line legitimate military action and "terrorism", especially as "terrorism" is technically defined. 3) "terrorism", in the perjorative sense, is often in the eye of the beholder. Finally, your post is tres ironique, Manny "Those old ladies and kids in VietNam deserved to get killed because the VC did some bad things" Freshstunna.
Can anyone make a relevant distinction to fire bombing Tokyo or Dresden or Hamburg and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Can anyone discount the historical context of Japanese atrocities throughout east Asia and the 40,000+ that died just to take Okinawa? To drag WWII actions into a definitional debate over terrorism disrepects the dead on both sides.
Or tell it to this G.I. http://www.folkways.org/Roundup/Cole Hough/Papers/pict2.jpg We could play this game all day if you'd like. I got way more sh!t on the ruthlessness of the Japanese in WWII.
Cascarino, you're venturing into "two wrongs make a right" territory. If bad acts by the Japanese excuse Hiroshima, then do bad acts by the VC excuse beheading a baby in Vietnam? Yeah, it was a trick question.
But people pull certain acts from WWII out of thin air (like Hiroshima) and say "bad, bad, bad" without realizing that most in this country at the time did see it as a "good vs. evil", survival of the free world vs. subjugation by a foreign militaristic power type of war-to-end-all-wars. I don't think Truman was going to take a poll of the citizenry, wait for the unanimous "bomb the fvck out of Japan until they're reduced to single cell organisms" response from the public before he dropped the Big One on Japan.