[thechat] West v. East (was: civilized vs. uncivilized)

[Erika Meyer]

Joe:

>Well Erika, working backward, how would you have conducted the Pacific
>part of the second world war? Minus any Invasion of Japan and minus the
>dropping of Japan?
>
>I would be interested. Not just being a smartass - what options were
>missed?

Sorry, but I'm not a WWII scholar and I don't know enough about what 
was going on in Japan at that time to give an educated answer to your 
question.

>  > My point: mass murder of innocents is unethical regardless of the
>>  circumstances.
>
>Question: is ethics about absolute good and bad, or about weighing the
>relative good and bad in given situations. An argument could be made
>that by avoiding a costly invasion of Japan (take a look at the losses
>of the ground forces while invading Germany, for example), that the
>A-Bombs were a difficult moral choice which is defensible.

Yes, you could argue that ethical behavior is relative.
I wouldn't, but you could. ;-)

(woah! that slope is slippery!)

>It's wrong to kill civilians. But is it wrong to allow more of your own
>soldiers to die if you know that by killing civilians you can spare many
>more of your own soldiers?

A soldier has on some level made the choice to carry a gun and kill 
or be killed.  A schoolgirl has not had the opportunity to make that 
choice.

BTW to me, human life does not come with an inherent value based on 
nationality.  It appears that many (most?) Americans think "American" 
lives are inherently more precious than "non-American" lives.

That would be why killing foreign civilians is "better" than putting 
American soldiers in harm's way I suppose.

>Oh yes, we have all new nightmares.
>
>My current one is that the nuclear plant at San Onofre (a mere 30 miles
>away or so) is vulnerable to attack - by plane or truck.

I'm not far from Hanford or Umatilla Chemical Depot.

(It's very Tao to take someone's power and turn it backwards on them.)

>The Japanese Empire was ruthless and cruel. An Australian friend of my
>Grandfather was on the Burma Road -- he visited here last Summer and was
>essentially saying that the Japanese were brutal. Summary executions,
>wounds untreated, men dying every day for lack of nutrition, treatment.
>Not to mention the Bataan Death March, atrocities, rape all over Asia.
>Making a point about the current situation by trivializing the events of
>the Second World War is, to me, offensive.
>
>Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your points, though.

I didn't say the Japanese were not horribly horribly cruel to their 
captives during WWII.  They were.

These are my stances:

1. war is extremely destructive, and we should work to stop it.
2. war is so destructive that it can turn normal humans into "monsters."
3. massive cruelty and/or atrocities are not specific to any one 
group or nationality.
4. an atrocity committed against your people does not justify an 
atrocity in return.
5. the war environment is conducive to atrocities.
6. (see #1)

Can war really be stopped?  I believe it can... or drastically 
reduced at least.  To a large extent, the decision to go to war is 
made by any and every soldier who is willing to pick up a gun.

Erika
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