William MacDonald wrote:First off, thanks for posting (and thanks to others who posted in support). Where I come from silence equals consent, and seeing people spouting pro-civilian bombing rationale with pretty much only myself in opposition is pretty depressing, especially considering that civilian bombing wasn't limited to WW2 and is an ongoing part of U.S. military strategy. The silence has been pretty deafening. Thanks for speaking out and making it clear that I'm not a lone voice.
Okay, point taken, but couldn't they just have killed a couple of million kittens with their bare hands and sent the video to Russia with a little note saying, "If we can do this to defenseless kitties imagine what we'll do to you!"... because seriously the a-bomb wasn't that intimidating at the time. It killed less people than a single fire bombing attack on Tokyo. What probably impressed Stalin most was when he heard that the U.S. was crazy enough to risk destroying the whole world just to try out their new toy, he probably said, "Wow, and I thought I was crazy!".
The a-bomb had absolutely no effect on the USSR's decision to not got to war with the U.S. and Europe at that stage. The a-bomb's use was not justifiable in any way.
P.S. I'm not in favour of cruelty to kittens.
No worries, and no argument from me on the unjustifiable-ness of nuking civilian population centers either. I was only making a point about the practical effects of the act, not the morality thereof. I try and steer clear of moral judgements, either they get too tricky too easily or you get simple-yet-stupid positions that just don't work in the real world, present or historical. I know enough to just eat my cake while I can and not worry about having it too.
The point I'd make as one rational adult to another, is that taken
in aggregate there was a definite tactical benefit there. And I have to agree, Russia - especially Russia - wasn't going to be attacking anyone immediately after WW2 any more than any other major player was. It's the years to come that counted as far as The Show went.
rufustfirefly wrote:And mr two cents...you summarised the opposing argument thusly:
`Sure, It Was Horrible, But We Won And They Would Have Kept On Fighting To The Last Man, Woman, And Child, So In A Way We Actually Saved Countless Lives. We're Still the Good Guys, Guys.
When you think about it, such an outlook is actually pretty freaking ridiculous `
Well this sumarisation is freaking ridiculous.The argument is this:the U.S decision to drop the A-bombs on Japan is not shameful as it was thought at the time it was necessary to stop the war and save lives ( given Japans dogged resistance at Okinawa and their commitment to fighting on using any means neccessary -kamikaze pilots etc) and there is evidence to suggest that this was so.
Look ,I totally agree that the bombing of japan was cruel and most of the people killed were innocents, all im saying is that it was a cruel necessity and pales before the totally unneccesasary japanese slaughter of innocents in Nanking and Manilla.Peaceniks never get this simple fact: sometimes war IS the answer , violence CAN solve problems. Just ask the Jews in concentration camps liberated by the Allies at the end of WW2 or bosnians saved by U.S bombing of Serbian forces in the Balkans.
Well, Mr Way-to-Prove-My-Point, no it's not. A concise and accurate summation of a ridiculous position is not ridiculous because of the summation, it's ridiculous because of the initial ridiculous position, namely applying 'I'll get you Gadget' thinking to professional wartime leaders and justifying unnecessary mass murder on PR grounds. Similarly, we're not talking Jews in concentration camps here, we're talking dropping A-bombs on major population centers. To use the Jewish analogy you're evidently keen on, it's like nuking the West Bank to stop Hamas rocket attacks.
trout501 wrote:Holy crap. Way too many holier-than-thou armchair tacticians in this thread trying too hard to take a crap on America in some sort of vain attempt to prove their vaasssstt superiority complex from having lived in a country that was never involved in international conflicts (do you want a lollipop?), so I'll just pop in to answer the OP's question and then pop out.
Yes, Program 4 makes me uncomfortable, but I'm not offended by it. If you've been in Japan this long and you haven't learned to hold this kind of thing at arms' length, then odds are you get offended easily here. Japanese people have a right to talk about their past, no matter the subject, and if they do so in an incredibly sappy way, that's their choice (if you haven't noticed, Japanese people can be very, very sappy when they want to). I'm just here to go along for the ride, and why should I feel guilt, or Japanese people blame me, for something I had no part in? :/
What really gets on my nerves, though, is the improper use of the future conditional in this passage.
If bombs hit the zoo, dangerous animals will get away and harm the people of Tokyo.
At this point, I'm close to giving up on trying to convince my JTEs that the many mistakes in this textbook are indeed mistakes (and shouldn't be taught as-is!!), and that in itself is really disheartening. It's so obvious that they did not have a native speaker edit this textbook (or if they did, they were ignored most of the time), that that in itself is offensive.
I like this post so much.
Pretty much, though sadly I for one can't claim to such a clean national moral slate...hence why I didn't try. Oz and individual Australians have done a whole bunch of morally dubious things prior to, during, and post-WW2, and I'm not gonna try to deny them or excuse them based on someone else doing even worse things. Neither am I going to accept responsibility for them; as you say "...why should I feel guilt, or Japanese people blame me, for something I had no part in? :/" Assuming you're American yourself you're no more responsible for the nuking of Hiroshima/Nagasaki than I am for the all-but-genocide of the the Tasmanian Aborigines, or that the civilian populations of Japan were for the actions of their army during WW2.
word wrote:In Japan, if a politician were to say, "You know, we should apologize to Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery during WWII," it would be a huge scandal and s/he would probably be forced to resign the following day. To me, that's an important and very unfortunate difference.
Good point.
trout501 wrote:It's not too hard to imagine some poor native speaker in a room full of a dozen Japanese people, arguing his/her points, knowing he/she is right, enumerating all the mistakes, saying how the passage should be written in a calm and clear manner, but ultimately having to compromise on them. ("Oh, but we want to review the future tense here, so we're going to print it like this with 'will.' I don't think they would understand 'would.'" "But in Japanese we say 'uta o utau,' so students will understand 'sing a song' more easily." "But look at this really old magazine article. See how they capitalized the word 'internet' for no reason? We should do the same in our textbooks."). I swear this year's edition is much worse than last year's.
Even better point.
rufustfirefly wrote:Did you not read this?...
Speaking of not reading,
did you not read this?No worries if not,
here's something else for you not to read.rufustfirefly wrote:What really got my goat and made me take you on was your superior attitude in posts like this:
Okay, so some people may think I'm being unfair on the U.S. by poking this sensitive issue, and to a certain extent I will admit that I am, however I do have a purpose. What I'm trying to illustrate is that for a LOT of people on these forums the U.S.'s actions during WW2 still trigger a strong defensive reaction. The OP's original question was whether something was offensive, and his main thrust seemed to be that he wanted a more balanced story told where Japan took responsibility for its own part in the conflict. I deliberately poked a lot of people here to get a reaction, and to illustrate that expecting this is unreasonable. The people on these forums are at minimum university educated and a lot of you took instant offense at any suggestion that blah blah blahh
Yes it is possible to be university educated and disagree with you
You're university educated? Hey wow! That and $5 will get you a cup of coffee! I say that as someone trained in university education btw - having a degree doesn't mean squat.
Again, way to prove my point, dude. Bonus points for the strategic placement of the 'blah blah blahh' btw.
rufustfirefly wrote:P.S You are still a peacenik.
And you're a warmonger.We can all keep playing this bickering-over-the-Internet game if you really want - heck knows any excuse will do to keep me from productively studying Japanese - but trying to defend the indefensible via
moral equivalence isn't a great way of making compelling arguments, hey.
