It hasn't been established beyond all reasonable doubts that the porn belonged to Osama Bin Fappen. I suggest DNA tests be conducted on all stains found in the vicinity of said porn, we can then spend a week watching SAM cast doubt on the veracity of the evidence, and then at the end we can all draw our own conclusions on this matter. If the porn was Bin Laden's, then yes there are probably several free preview sites out there to whom the entire free world owes its gratitude (apparently western porn played a big role in bringing down the USSR, too).
Thank you for this, iceaura. It's unfortunate that you didn't make an earlier appearance in that other Bin Laden thread--the really big one, that is.
Porn is a fine place to hide secret communications. And few people would suspect that it was radical Muslims exchanging it.
If we have established moral and ethical equivalence with a history of accepted US military actions, we can proceed to just war considerations. Aggression seems a reasonable local description - if goading is aggression. The overall strategy might remain defensive - jury's out on that one (I think religious expansion is aggressive, personally). IIRC OBL more or less delineated that as the strategy. It's ease of formulation and reliability of execution bear noticing - the US seems a patsy, a mark, in that respect. We are dealing with the moral, ethical, and political blowback of that cowardice still. The outcome has not been good - the outcome of cowardice seldom is. We had a chance to do right, and we flinched and skulked and sucker-punched. True of any decision. A better decision has better odds. The outcome of a Japanese surrender without the burden of having committed Hiroshima (let alone the truly ugly reality of the rush to Nagasaki) would have had many benefits, to us and to the Japanese, no? Or even Hiroshima as was, without the sucker punch, Soviet-oriented, science experiment aspects. The war itself was over whenever we quit it. Japan was beaten - no food, no fuel, no weapons, no ports or railroads, surrounded by enemies and winter coming.
But you just assume your way is a better way. I and others disagree. More to the point, the people living with the issue then, not just in an abstract manner, but who saw the daily death and destruction that a world war actually entails and who had access to the best information at the time disagreed with you and I'm going with their reasoned conclusions over yours. Possibly, but one can not presume that your suggestion would have led to that outcome. Again, sitting in your easy chair and pontificating about what a great statesman you would have been and how you are smarter and more ethical than the people trying to conclude that war as quickly as possible means nothing in comparison to those who had to make the decisions then, in the middle of a war with more people dying every day. You say, give them time to decide, try to convince them, but that just means more people die as the war doesn't end while that convincing is going on. Worse, if in an attempt to convince them we inadvertantly give them sufficient information to thwart/mitigate the bombings, then maybe the war doesn't end at all. Arthur
I suppose it all depends upon how you define "radical Muslims." In the 80's, Turkey--which boasts the highest percentage of Muslims, though arguably amongst the least "radical" (or "conservative," as the case may be--funny that, eh?)--was as the forefront of the pornographic film industry. It all changed in the following decades, as the more conservative country folk moved to the cities and effected some of their puritanical attitudes; nevertheless, when I was there in 2000, there was plenty of ... porn. Not that I was looking for it, I was looking for original Tarkan comics and graphic novels and just happened to stumble upon a lot of it.
Yeah, Turkey ain't that radical. How much do you want to bet there are coded messages in there? Steganography
Likewise with Christians - the more radical ones produce, apparently as a consequence of their religion, a lot of societal demand for porn. Particularly the more degrading, "dirty" stuff. Not an assumption - a conclusion you derived from my description of the situation. As would most people. Once noise like comparisons with the projected body counts of hypothetical and unlikely invasions are removed from the signal, the picture does suggest certain conclusions - to any reasonable person. The burden of doubt is on the other side - the one that removed the possibility, not the one the kept it as a possibility. You need to show that the better outcome was unlikely to a degree that balances the certainty of committing Hiroshima without warning, and Nagasaki without negotiation - impossible, realistically. I don't give credit where it isn't due. My heart doesn't bleed for Harry Truman, as his soul struggled with the horror of mass slaughter of Japanese civilians. I don't think he lost much sleep over that aspect of his calculations. Once he knew the bomb was going to work, Truman rejected several opportunities to possibly end the war; avoiding all negotiations, keeping the bomb a secret, and otherwise delaying matters until the bomb could be dropped. That doesn't count as trying to end the war as quickly as possible.
? Wouldn't we necessarily have to proceed in the opposite order? What basis is there for assessing the moral and ethical standing of acts of war, other than just war theory?
Hardly an assumption given what was revealed in the relevant MAGIC decrypts about the state of Japan's political and military leadership at the time, not to mention what's been revealed since then. I'll assume you also take issue with the conventional strategic bombing. What exactly do you think the Allies should have done to end the war?
The hindsight argument. Note on which side of this issue the "20/20 hindsight" arguments are found. What's been revealed since then includes the ability of the less fanatical in Japan to overrule the suicidal as soon as they learned of the existence of the bomb. The possibility of that occurring months earlier, before the bomb could be dropped, was carefully avoided by the US. It was a possibility, it was known and discussed, and it was deliberately avoided, by people with plenty of time to think the matter over and consider all aspects of it. Not in general. By "strategic" I assume you mean calculated to achieve legitimate war aims and evaluated accordingly. I assume you do not mean events such as Guernica, and are ambivalent about Dresden (a repetition of Dresden after it had been shown to be ineffective, would be outside the pale, yes? ). I don't see an obstacle to establishing equivalence classes of action, in advance of or in synchrony with assessments of moral and ethical standing.
That isn't quite what I asked you. So: no, I'm not going to sign up for a conversation whose terms are that I have to endorse sweeping historical claims in advance of any supporting argumentation, or even clear definition of terms.
Love the people here arguing that civilan targets are acceptable. So no one should be charged with murder for 9/11 then because it was an act of war (by bush's own words). You know what I find amusing, America's who argue that peal harbor which was a millitry base was so horible and that fire bombing Tokyo (a civillan city) was acceptable and so was the 2 nukes. So your enemy stacks your millatry so you go and attack his civillans. And that's okay right?
I don't accept that. Every situation is different. The nuking of Japan or bombing civilian targets anywhere during WWII was a desperate tactic designed to end a world war, a war that was consuming an entire generation. We didn't do anything to Bin Laden to deserve 9/11.
That would include yourself, no? At least when the civilian targets are American? Right - you send the military to shoot them in the head. Hence the thread topic. I don't think the people arguing for a legalistic approach are the same ones your trying to skewer here. Rather the opposite. Strawman. Stilted and inaccurate.
Not inacurate, there was a thread on this topic a while ago. On wether Hiroshima should be concidered a war crime and the agument came back that Pearl harbor was more of a war crime
Go ahead and quote whoever said that, and address yourself to them - in that thread - then. They're the only person who's answerable for it, and I don't see where calling out characitures of them in other contexts is productive or even defensible. These cheap little strawmen of the USA are getting pretty tired. But, hey, what can you expect from a poster that can't even spell "inaccurate?"
In a TOTAL war like WW2 there are no truly civilian targets because the entire population was in fact supporting the war effort and the military had dispersed the entire war making machinery among the population. We were doing the exact same thing over here (not at the time of Pearl Harbor however), as nearly every able body person was either directly fighting or supporting the war effort or helping to make the equipment and weapons the soldiers needed to fight with. Arthur
