The ethics of Hiroshima

[Tannin]

Damn it David, you didn't just split a perfectly good thread, you lost at least one good, well-written, on-topic post. Knock it off FFS!

[David]

Edit: fixed.

[Tannin]

^ Cheers.

[ronrat]

Wokko and others are forgetting a few other things or simply choose to ignore. Perhaps to back an argument they know is wrong.

In late battles such as Balikpapan in Borneo where 248 Australians were killed the allies stayed for years to help not only mop up rogue Japanese but to assist a local population in large numbers that were being starved by the Japanese and forced into slave labour. On top of that was the POWS and Asian labourers being starved to death in Thailand and Singapore etc. The majority of SE Asian area was under occupation.

S o we could have killed half of those, continued with such wonderful ideas as Korean (and undoubtedly other Asian nations) comfort women and the needless slaughter of allied and Japanese troops.

If you think the Japanese would feed (what little they did ) and look after the POWs and civilians after their own food ran out you are delusional and should give yourself an uppercut.

The USA made a decision to spare the Japanese palace and Tokyo to allow the Japanese some hope in peace.

I don't give a flying fig if some Jap housewife had her head blown off. Her son or husband could well have been torturing my late friend who was in Changi or shooting at my Mums Uncle in the Dutch East Indies at Balikpapan.

If the death of 100,000 Japanese war factory workers is worth more than whole countries being enslaved and starved then we have lost the plot.

That the Japanese didn't surrender after the first one is testament that they were dickwads and were lucky a more belligerent enemy got the capacity (say Russia) didn't drop 20 of them.

So go back to listening to Midnight Oil and have a bong or 2 and if you get to Thailand get out of Khao San Road and get to HellFire Pass and tell us those men who survived didn't need saving. And all the civilians in what is now Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Indochina.

[pietillidie]

^Look, I think you're right at some levels. Necessary evil is the best you could call it. From the Korean POV, it also ended Japanese occupation per se, not just sexual enslavement, so that's an even bigger positive outcome. But you do also get the sense that a less excessive demonstration would have done the trick. At the same time, war is a deranged, irrational environment, so it's hard to blame people.

The main lesson for me is to avoid war at all costs, which of course is much harder to do with very wealthy, authoritarian and racist nations, which more than often enough includes those we more easily identify with. This is one reason why I focus on authoritarianism and racism, and it's why we need to oppose them internally as a matter of consistency, and then help East Asia deal with them.

I have never said this explicitly before, but I full well know already Chinese nationalism, like any high-conformity nationalism, can turn very ugly. Put it together with authoritarianism, but offset that with economic incentives, and the situation is medium-risk (economic incentive is much more powerful than people looking at the bigger picture seem to comprehend). This is why we are right to defend against the risks of China's development process to some non-bellicose degree, and have to put every ounce of effort into helping China's a nation to accept greater transparency, and embrace its own diversity and richness (external chauvinism reflects internal chauvinism, presumably). Only the confidence of sincere partnership, and an ability to be sincere about our own shortfalls, will enable both the necessary development and associated risks to be managed simultaneously for the good of China and ourselves. But this is a win-win based on what is a general human problem, not a "China problem", and must always be understood and framed as such.

But the whole effort is a no-start if we keep giving in to racist voices at home. Every time it happens I cringe because it makes the job of wider prosperity harder by showing a complete lack of self awareness and humility, and totally mis-leading the region. Australia and South Korea have pivotal roles in keeping the region balanced for quite different reasons, but both are still too self-absorbed to take mature responsibility and do so. Above all, racism and nationalism are toxic menaces at home and abroad; nuclear menaces without any controls or protocols except mature self-reflection, leadership and a determination to always value all humans as equals to ourselves.

And that human maturity can never, ever view a Hiroshima a "good" thing, no matter the evil acts perpetrated by some or even many, and no matter the subsequent relief it brings.

[pietillidie]

[think positive]

Great post Ronrat, cold hard truth. PTID no ones says Hiroshima was a good thing, but it was the best answer at the time. Killing people is never good, but sometimes it's a necessary evil, when evil men are trying to do you harm.

[David]

Really? No-one is going to challenge this?

I don't give a flying fig if some Jap housewife had her head blown off. Her son or husband could well have been torturing my late friend who was in Changi or shooting at my Mums Uncle in the Dutch East Indies at Balikpapan.

If the death of 100,000 Japanese war factory workers is worth more than whole countries being enslaved and starved then we have lost the plot.

This is pure psychopathy. I'm not saying that RR is a psychopath; it's psychologically easy to dehumanise people of a different culture from a different time and just chalk up their deaths as "one of those things". But the minute that you start considering the reality of it, the more appalling such sentiments become. Opinions like these are what make the Holocaust and other such atrocities possible.

[Mugwump]

^ politics trades in masses of people and it always involves depersonalisation. if you thought of the agony of a burned child, or soldier, you could not fight a war. Yet some wars, sometimes, must be fought. I'm not sure it is psychopathy to adopt the psychological distancing necessary for rational calculation, at such times. Perhaps it is rather the sign of health.

Japan started that war, conducted it with the utmost brutality on the basis of race, and it was right to take all measures to stop it as quickly and as decisively as possible by destroying all that was Japanese until they ceased. You can believe that and still weep at the hideous injuries of a Japanese human being caused by bombing, when you step back down to an individual level. As long as you do feel that, you're far from psychopathy.

[pietillidie]

^ politics trades in masses of people and it always involves depersonalisation. if you thought of the agony of a burned child, or soldier, you could not fight a war. Yet some wars, sometimes, must be fought. I'm not sure it is psychopathy to adopt the psychological distancing necessary for rational calculation, at such times. Perhaps it is rather the sign of health.

Japan started that war, conducted it with the utmost brutality on the basis of race, and it was right to take all measures to stop it as quickly and as decisively as possible by destroying all that was Japanese until they ceased. You can believe that and still weep at the hideous injuries of a Japanese human being caused by bombing, when you step back down to an individual level. As long as you do feel that, you're far from psychopathy.

Dehumanisation is not psychopathic in the traditional sense of the term. It's sub-rational, in that the full expression of rationality is a complex interplay with emotions. The bigger sub-rational delusion, though, is thinking you have enough information in complex systemic scenarios to even be rational. That itself is plainly sub-rational, meaning you need your emotions, and everyone else needs you to be emotionally balanced.

If decisions don't hurt or you can't bear the hurt of their effects, you're not mature enough to be making them.

[Mugwump]

^ suspect it depends on how much you hurt. Hurt enough and I doubt you can make the decision. Fully personalise the consequences and you hurt too much. For that reason, I still suspect distancing is psychologically necessary when people with well- developed empathy have to make decisions involving terrible brutality in war.

[HAL]

We were talking about ^ suspect it depends on how much you hurt , weren't we? No really, it's true.

[pietillidie]

^Yes, agree. A fine line which is part of the balance of the "leadership constitution", or whatever we want to call it, I guess.

[Mugwump]

^ in truth, I think a lot of leaders in that type of context do have an empathy bypass. I'm sure Thatcher did, and though I admire his gifts greatly, I suspect Churchill did as well. He loved a good war, and barely seemed to conceive of the human horror. Roosevelt seemed the one who understood it. Perhaps that's why they say the war hastened his death.

[HAL]

"it" being he or she'm sure Thatcher did?