Are civilians guilty in some wars?

On the morning of August 6th, 1945 at 8:16am, a B-29 superfortress called the Enola Gay commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets dropped the worlds 2nd atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The 12 kiloton device “Little Boy” detonated and instantly killed some 80,000 people with thousands more dying later from the heat flash and radiation.

Do you all think this was the moral thing to do? True strategically it was, the invasion of Japan that was planned would have killed millions and dragged on the war. But Hiroshima wasn’t a military target; in fact it was selected because it was not.

I believe that the citizens of Japan were in fact guilty and while I wouldn’t say they deserved to die, they were definitely not innocent and largely responsible for what Japan had done, not just to the US, but to the entire Far East. Now Japan wasn’t a democracy but the fact is virtually everyone either supported the wars or were complacent in their execution. There was no Japanese resistance movement and most of the people cheered when they heard of Pearl Harbor. More importantly they all went back to work making the machines that would be used to kill Americans. I’m my opinion this makes them just as guilty as any soldier. As for the children, I consider them their parent’s responsibility and just as it is morally permissible to shoot as someone who is using a human shield, it is permissible to do the same to a nation.

My second question is: does an evasion of magnitude by civilians anywhere allow for the same consequences and are there any exceptions? All the Arabs cheering on 9/11 come to mind. Japan and Germany come are the obvious examples where the people supported their leaders in their evil but what about other nations like Serbia or China?

Post 1

Friday, December 17, 2004 - 6:36am

I believe that the citizens of Japan were in fact guilty and while I wouldn’t say they deserved to die, they were definitely not innocent and largely responsible for what Japan had done, not just to the US, but to the entire Far East. Now Japan wasn’t a democracy but the fact is virtually everyone either supported the wars or were complacent in their execution.

The same line of reasoning by the 9/11 terrorists allowed them to explain their actions to themselves.

The U.S. and Japan had been sparring for 20 years before Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor and the Philippines were "American" in the minds of some people in America. They were nothing more than conquered colonies. The Philippines was taken from Spain. The U.S. "annexed" (conquered) the Kingdom of Hawaii. These were only chips in a game played by people who considered their subjects as pawns.

The Japanese invasion of China was certainly brutal, but no less so than the atrocities commited by the Kuomintang -- including burying alive people who presumed to resist.

Whether a country is a "democracy" or not is irrelevant. On the one hand, the USA is not a "democracy" and never was. Ancient Athens was. Even so, it is wrong to hold "everyone" responsible for actions of the state when they specifically voted against those actions.

You do not know that "virtually everyone" in Japan supported the war or were "complacent." You expect American behavior from people who hide their feelings as a matter of social survival. By the stanrdards of other times and places, we Americans would be "complacent" because we don't form large mobs, drag bureaucrats from their homes, behead them, and then go back to business as usual.

Getting down to the details, the invasion of Japan was not a foregone conclusion. Japan was beaten and surrounded. They might have surrendered years earlier, but we insisted that the emperor must go -- a point we finally conceded. In 1945, Japan was surrounded: it was an island nation surrounded by a hostile navy. The US general staff -- including Eisenhower and others -- was strongly opposed to an invasion as being totally unnecessary.

The atom bomb was used on Japan -- on innocent Japanese civilians -- because Truman wanted to show Stalin that he was just as ruthless. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were lessons for the Russians to chew on.

In the book, The First Casualty by Philip Knightley, there is a reference to a work by Margaret Mead -- a liberal intellectual, of course -- written during World War II, in which she outlined how the US could "win the peace." She said that our goverment should no longer lie to us as they did about Pearl Harbor. That was from a government-funded project in the middle of the war. Her point was that the damages at Pearl Harbor were not announced to the American people for months. Even so, we went to war. Pearl Harbor had little to do with the American entry into World War II. We just think it did because that is what we were told in our public or parochial schools. The attack took place. Roosevelt's cause for war rested on that attack. Even so, the specific action was irrelevant because both sides were spoiling for a war and had been for two decades. When one or the other thought they could score a knock-out punch, they did. It did not matter who "started" it.

Bottom line: check your premises -- all of them.

Post 2

Friday, December 17, 2004 - 2:14pm

Marotta,

By all means, check premises!

If it were Roosevelt's desire to get the U.S. into the war in Europe, he didn't need to engineer a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (I gather that's your point about the government lying to us about Pearl Harbor. Do you really believe they invented 2,500 casualties, including my great uncle, and the sinking of the Arizona?) The U.S. Navy was already engaged in the Battle of the Atlantic and it was only a matter of time before we were formally at war with the Nazis. Roosevelt didn't need Pearl Harbor to get the war he wanted. In fact, the Japanese attack created a huge diversion from Roosevelt's alleged aim to get us into the European theater.

As for nuking Japan only to impress Stalin, what need did we have to do that when we had been trying to get the Soviets to attack the Japanese on the Asian mainland? Our problem with Stalin wasn't that he was too aggressive, but not aggressive enough (at least in the Pacific theater). Also, if the purpose of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks was only to impress, why wasn't one enough? Isn't it telling that the atomic bombings were necessary to get Japan to surrender, because once wasn't enough? We had to hit them twice before they saw reason.

Also, I know of no evidence that Japan would have surrendered to us "years earlier" were it not our condition that the emperor abdicate. First, we issued no such terms until the summer of '45, and second, we let MacArthur retain the emperor AFTER the Japanese had as a practical matter surrendered (if not formally). Moreover, the fiercest fighting occurred in the Battle of Okinawa in June 1945. We took the heaviest casualties in World War II during that battle. We lost nearly 20,000 men in a month's time, and the Japanese lost over 100,000. The battle shows that the Japanese were not on the verge of surrender save the issue of the emperor.

An excellent and very readable primer on World War II is John Keegan's "Second World War". I highly recommend if you want to better understand the history that led up to the atomic strikes against Japan.

R. Pukszta

Post 3

Friday, December 17, 2004 - 4:39pm

Well said, Puke. But with regard to Stalin, I don’t think we REALLY wanted him to attack Japan, except to draw Japan’s resources away so we could invade and win. This outcome would have given Stalin more post-war presence in East Asia than we wished. I believe the nukes were a wise method of finishing Japan BEFORE Stalin could follow through on his promise of helping us and getting his grubby hands on Pacific (never frozen) harbors.

Jon

(Edited by Jon Letendre on 12/17, 5:21pm)

Post 4

Saturday, December 18, 2004 - 1:16pm

Letendre,

What you say makes sense. I overstated my point to the extent that it excluded any secondary consideration on Truman's part to send a message to the Soviets.

Pukszta

Post 5

Saturday, December 18, 2004 - 5:21pm

Rooster Puke wrote: If it were Roosevelt's desire to get the U.S. into the war in Europe, he didn't need to engineer a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (I gather that's your point about the government lying to us about Pearl Harbor. ...)

No, that was not my point. While it is true that some historians do maintain this, that was not my point.

The damage at Pearl Harbor was minimized in the press. The first reports in the UK were that the US had chased off an attempted attack.

The leaders in Washington were afraid that if the American people knew the actual extent of the damage that they would not support a war.

American involvement in the war in Europe was not broadly popular. Many people -- for instance Charles Lindbergh -- were willing to let the USSR and Germany fight it out.

Chiang kai-Shek in China openly courted the Nazi regime, sending emissaries, etc., to learn from them. Also, the Italians provided the first air force training at the request of Chiang kai-Shek. However, Madame Chiang (May Ling Soong) knew the power of American capitalism and recruited mercenaries here for what became the "Flying Tigers." The point is that Chiang kai-Shek was a fascist, an admirer of Hitler and Mussolini and not morally superior to the Japanese in any way.

The question is: Are civilians responsible? The answer is: No. You are only responsible for your own actions.

Post 6

Saturday, December 18, 2004 - 5:41pm

Rooster Puke wrote: Also, I know of no evidence that Japan would have surrendered to us "years earlier" were it not our condition that the emperor abdicate.

My reference is The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alperovitz.
Alperovitz is a liberal -- and no friend of capitalism -- however, this work stands on its own. I read it when I worked at The Atomic Energy Museum in Albuquerque. It started out as his doctoral dissertation. In responsse to criticism, he completed the book.

Diplomatic feelers from Japanese legations in Sweden and Russian were part of the fabric of the war. Having broken their code, the USA was fully aware of the discussions.

The retention of the emperor was the major sticking point. We eventually relented on that, with the proviso that he abandon his deity status.

This is one fact among many to show that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not militarily necessary to ending the war. As I said above -- from Alperovitz -- the American general staff was opposed to an invasion of Japan. Similarly, they were not uninamously in favor of using the atomic bomb in this way or in any way or in some other way. These were the same American military leaders who had defeated the Germans. There was no consensus among them on the problem of (a) Japan and (b) the atomic bomb.

It is also an interesting fact of history that now that the USSR has been defeated and its state papers are revealed it seems that they were never as powerful as our press in service to our govenment claimed they were. They could not have been. (That is a derived truth from the basic principles of Objectivism: statism does not work.) However, our leaders -- being "muscle mystics" -- feared that the USSR (like the Nazis) really could mount a total (nuclear) war.

To bring this around to the main question: each of us is only responsible for our own actions. You are not responsible for anything that Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton did. The "people" (so-called and however defined) of Japan or Germay or Patagonia are not responsible for the actions of soldiers in the field.

Post 7

Monday, December 20, 2004 - 9:16am

"We had to hit them twice before they saw reason."

Indeed they still didnt 'see reason' even after the second atomic bomb drop. It was not untill after a conventional firebombing of tokyo after both bombs were dropped that they surrendered, and during the surrender there was an attempted coup from a faction that did not want to surrender. Additionally, the emporer had been training each and every civilian in hand to hand combat to prepare for a ground invasion. Given the enormous amount of japanese casualties at Okinawa (90,000 - 100,000) it is reasonable to conclude that the atomic bombs used in japan not only saved many American soldiers lives but also many japanese civilian and soldiers lives compared to an outright invasion.

"To bring this around to the main question: each of us is only responsible for our own actions."

Yet each of these civilians took part in the day to day operations of this aggressor nation and the vast majority subscribed to the viewpoint that they were the superior race of the world. They built the machines, the navy, the guns, the bombs, the metal, everything that the japanese war machine required to exist. Perhaps if they pulled a John Galt and existed at the most basic sustenance level, never contributing to the japanese war effort beyond their most basic needs for survival, then one could argue they are entirely free of guilt. If we are each responsible for our own actions, are we not also responsible for the consequences of our own actions?

Michael

Post 8

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 3:47am

Excellent post by Michael F Dickey that hits the main points! Bravo!

I'd add one point. We have to remember what both sides where fighting for - not just how they fight. The Japs were fighting for a dictatorial society and to spread that tyranny to conquered nations. We were and are a liberal democracy seeking to protect ourselves and others from Japanese expansion. Wartime is not a context of normalcy. It requires judgments that one would never make in peacetime in any civilization. There is no moral equivalence between them and us then ,or the Islamist and us now (contrary to the outrageous implications of Michael E Marrota in post 2).

Post 9

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - 3:35pm

Marotta,

You wrote, "The "people" (so-called and however defined) of Japan or Germay or Patagonia are not responsible for the actions of soldiers in the field."

Sure they are if they are supporting war that puts them in the field, and so they are a legitimate target in war to the extent they are actively engaged in the war effort - for example, while working in a munitions factory (as opposed to at home in bed). By the end of the war in the Pacific it became very difficult to tell who in Japan was or was not involved in the war effort. Hell, they had old women stripping the bark off pine trees to provide the raw material for aviation fuel.

Of course, times change. The modern American war machine is capable of incredible precision and devastating lethality. The total war mode of six decades ago is not necessary to achieve victory today. Because we can now avoid most civilian casualties without compromising our war aims, we should do that.

Dickey,

You make an excellent point about the fire-bombing of Tokyo. Most people do not know that burning Tokyo to a crisp at the end of the war was more devastating than either of the two atomic strikes.

Pappas,

Amen! It does make all the difference in the world that we were the good guys and they were the bad guys. It also makes a difference that neither Nazi Germany nor fascist Japan were totalitarian societies like Soviet Russia was. The people of both these nations actively supported the aggression their governments started to conquer empires for them.

R. Pukszta

Post 10

Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 1:36pm

You're right that we can avoid civilian casualties but what about our own? Just like 50 years ago, the safest way to take a city is to level it first. We lost 2 dozen men taking Fallujah, we didn't have to lose a single one if we carpet bombed the place.

Post 11

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 6:27am

Hardy,

You raise a good question. What is the moral balance between avoidable civilian deaths and unnecessary risk to our soldiers? Context is critical here, which sounds like a bit of a cop-out in giving a solid answer. We can get overly fussy about "collateral damage", and I think we have been too fussy in Iraq. For example, when Sadr's men were using a mosque as a fortress, we should not have hesistated in destroying the mosque. Again in Fallujah, once we gave the civilian population time to evacuate, we should have been willing to do more bombing to minimize the risk to the Marines doing house-to-house searches.

If civilians get killed under those circumstances, it is because they have choosen a risk we gave them an opportunity to avoid. Maybe that's where the balance lies and a principle can be teased out of that.

Pukszta

Post 12

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 2:34pm

I think it is necessary not to ommitt a certain fact: As Ludwig von Mises pointed out rulership is always based on the (at least passive) agreement of those ruled. If people do not accept their government and act in order to overthrow it, the costs of ruling them finally become so great that it is impossible for the rulers to maintain their position. Thus, in a situation of war between a moral and and immoral country, one can establish a criterion whether a certain human being is guilty or not: Those who support their immoral government are themselves immoral (even if it is only by not resisting its commands), and those who fight it are moral.
I think that, from an Objectivist viewpoint, wars (at least those between moral and immoral countries) amount to conflicts of morality. And in conflicts of morality of this extent there is no such thing as a noninvolved, morally neutral civilian. Either the citizens of the immoral enemy state support the good, or they support the evil. There is no possibility of staying morally "neutral".

Post 13

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 5:22pm

May I pose an ad hominem?

How many of you writing this stuff about the guilt of civilians during wars (and by extension, peace time) have actually lived under a military dictatorship or an unfree country where political power is maintained using guns?

(Edited by Next Level on 12/24, 5:23pm)

Post 14

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 5:49pm

No, but most of us live in a free country and know what we would do if we were coming under a system where we would lose our right. I'm an American and I'm sure most of you are too and the concept of living under a free government is so pervasive in my pyche I wouldn't know how to function living under a dictatorship except by doing everything in my power to restore my freedom, and if that involves me dying so be it.

Post 15

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 7:32pm

What a way to spend Christmas Eve!

I haven't said anything in the thread. But since Next asked, I'll try to provide some perspectives from "the other side".

Yes, I have lived in the Communist China for 25 years before I came to US. Since I was born I was exposed to nothing else but Communist propaganda, and I naturally turned out to be nothing else but a little Communist. To become a communist martyr fighting American Imperialists, Soviet Revisionists, or KMT Nationalists, would be the highest achievement that I could have imagined. Most young people who were born around or after 49 held the same ideals as mine. Had American or any enemy invaded China during that time, there was no question that we would have fight you to death. When I was in 6 and 7th grade, we actually went to some army base and did trainings with throwing hand grenades and shooting with real rifles. I was not too bad at them.

Fortunately, before I was old enough to actually do some real damage, China started to open its door to the West. Perhaps it was because of the exposure to the Western and traditional Chinese writings which had previously all been banned during Culture Revolution and my earlier years, or because I started to learn to think for myself, my belief in Communism crumbled in my late teens.

My uncle had been in the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army during the Korean War. He was an accountant in the logistic branch and did not really do any fighting. So in my eyes during my younger years, his army service was not as glorious as it could have been. He was the kindest and most industrious person that I've ever known.

Post 16

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 8:21pm

Of course there were innocents at Hiroshima. The guilt or innocence of civilian casualties is irrelevant to our right to destroy regimes that recognize no rights. The important thing is getting it over with, not minimizing innocent loss.

Jon

Post 17

Friday, December 24, 2004 - 8:42pm

"How many of you writing this stuff about the guilt of civilians during wars (and by extension, peace time) have actually lived under a military dictatorship or an unfree country where political power is maintained using guns?"

Does it matter? "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

It also reminds me of a scene in WE THE LIVING where Uncle Vassily (I think), when pressed to take a stand, cops out and says, "It's not so bad." And he DID live under those conditions!

And let us not forget that it was not that long ago that blacks were hosed down...

Post 18

Saturday, December 25, 2004 - 1:38pm

Michael F Dickey wrote: Perhaps if they pulled a John Galt and existed at the most basic sustenance level, never contributing to the japanese war effort beyond their most basic needs for survival, then one could argue they are entirely free of guilt.

You cannot hold someone responsible for knowledge they did not have. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to invent everything invented by everyone else -- including the idea of a John Galt Strike?
Perhaps if these Japanese civilians were nearly brilliant and almost insightful, they could have seen what was coming, left Japan in 1920 or 1930 and come to the greatest and freest nation on Earth so they could be locked up in concentration camps when the war started.

Jason Pappas: "The Japs were fighting for a dictatorial society and to spread that tyranny to conquered nations. We were and are a liberal democracy seeking to protect ourselves and others from Japanese expansion."

"Dictatorship" and "tyranny" are not immoral. They are only forms of government. Constitutional monarchies, commercial oligarchies, hereditary mayoralities, or whatever, how the government operates depends on the society of the people who empower it. History is replete with examples of dictatorships and tyrannies that were no worse and even much better than so-called "democracies." You are using words the way your public school teachers taught you to. You are repeating what you have heard on television. If you explore the facts, and reason from first principles, you will come to different conclusions.

Jason Pappas: "Wartime is not a context of normalcy. It requires judgments that one would never make in peacetime in any civilization."

The advantage to an objective philosophy is that it is independent of range-of-the-moment exigencies. By the standard you suggest:
* free enterprise usually works well enough, but when some entities become too powerful, then the government needs to step in with anti-trust laws
* people can usually make their own choices, but the Food and Drug Administration is necessary to handle the exceptional cases and prevent unsafe products from harming them
* the market is wonderful and all, but the obvious emergency before us demands that we enact temporary wage and price controls until the crisis passes.

I believe that Ayn Rand failed to solve the "Lifeboat Problem."

Rooster Puke: ...they are a legitimate target in war to the extent they are actively engaged in the war effort - for example, while working in a munitions factory (as opposed to at home in bed). ... Hell, they had old women stripping the bark off pine trees to provide the raw material for aviation fuel."

So, it is moral to kill people who are home in bed? Military defense demands the killing of old women, lest they be forced to strip the bark off trees?

Rooster Puke: It does make all the difference in the world that we were the good guys and they were the bad guys. It also makes a difference that neither Nazi Germany nor fascist Japan were totalitarian societies like Soviet Russia was. The people of both these nations actively supported the aggression their governments started to conquer empires for them.

The differences among America under the New Deal and the other nations of World War II were difference of degree, not kind. The New Deal government locked American citizens into concentration camps because of their race. The New Deal enacted huge public works. The New Deal established a minimum wage. The New Deal made it a crime to "hoard" gold. The list is long and has been documented often. That we had an elected government does not make those actions moral.
We supported the Kuomintang in China even though Chiang Kai-Shek specifically and consciously sought and got material support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The war in Asia was between (or among) different kinds of socialists: the Japanese, the Nationalist Chinese, the Communist Chinese. America had seized the Philippines from Spain -- and excuted Philippine nationalists who presumed to resist our occupation. America seized Hawaii, which had been an independent kingdom, no different from Denmark. Like any war, World War II was not about "good guys and bad buys" but about "Us versus Them."
If it was wrong for the Japanese army to kill people in the nations they invaded, it was just as immoral for the American army to do the same thing.

Sascha Settegast: I think it is necessary not to ommitt a certain fact: As Ludwig von Mises pointed out rulership is always based on the (at least passive) agreement of those ruled. If people do not accept their government and act in order to overthrow it, the costs of ruling them finally become so great that it is impossible for the rulers to maintain their position.

1. What about failed revolutions? If people rise up and are defeated, do they lose their moral cover? By your standard, having fought and lost, they then become targets for your bombs.
2. You can see people in the streets, people running around with guns, setting up barricades, etc. You cannot see a real revoltion, a revolution of ideas. The old Soviet Union collapsed for many reasons, among them was the samizdat, self-publication of ideas not sanctioned by the state. Your standard makes them your enemies because you could not see them doing the one thing that really works: discovering and spreading ideas.

Sascha Settegast: Thus, in a situation of war between a moral and and immoral country, one can establish a criterion ... "

First you have to establish which country is "moral" and which is "immoral." The winners of World War II condemn the Italian invasion of Ethiopia as immoral. I do know for a fact, that you can get spaghetti and espresso at an Ethiopian restaurant in Minneapolis today, so apparently, some people in Ethiopia felt benefited by the infusion of Italian culture. You would have to investigate the differences between the old hereditary tribal laws and their enforcement against the practical effects of European fascism from the point of view of who was allowed to say and do what -- apart from the obvious expectation that in neither case was direct opposition to the government allowed.

Sascha Settegast: Those who support their immoral government are themselves immoral (even if it is only by not resisting its commands), and those who fight it are moral. ... There is no possibility of staying morally "neutral".

So, when bank robbers take hostages, do the police have the right to slaughter everyone in the bank because the hostages failed to resist?
1. There are many ways to "fight" an immoral government, not all of which are immediately apparent from a jet bomber.
2. The claim that not resisting commands is the same as support fails. Again, there are many ways to "resist" that are not evident unless you know what you are looking for. More to the point, the standard yuo offer creates an untenable alternative for the victims.
a. They obey the commands of their government -- and get killed
b. They refuse -- and get killed

Next Level: How many of you writing this stuff about the guilt of civilians during wars (and by extension, peace time) have actually lived under a military dictatorship or an unfree country where political power is maintained using guns?

Thank you.

Clarence Hardy: No, but most of us live in a free country and know what we would do if we were coming under a system where we would lose our right. I'm an American and I'm sure most of you are too and the concept of living under a free government is so pervasive in my pyche I wouldn't know how to function living under a dictatorship except by doing everything in my power to restore my freedom, and if that involves me dying so be it."

Baloney! Compare America in 1904 to America in 2004 and then tell yourself that you are "semi-free" or some other nonsense. You claim that things are "not that bad" when in fact they are. You carry a driver's license. You need a social security card to get a job. Your wages are set by law. Career opportunties are closed to you without governnent licensing. Your money is worthless paper. You are not allowed to use cash in many instances (see the Patriot Act). The government monitors your bank account, your telephone calls and your mail. You pay a direct and regressive tax on your income. You can go to jail for selling stock market equities on the advice of your broker.
Oh! But it is not "that bad" you say, because you have the right to write an op-ed essay praising Ayn Rand and denouncing evil. The reason you can do that is that it has no effect on the system you are living under. (If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.) If you put your money where your mouth is, you would grab your gun and go to war against this evil government, rather than suffer its predation on your life.

Personally, I have no interest in such a plan. I believe that violence is the last resort of the incompetent. Going to war against the state is a really bad idea.

You don't even know whom to shoot first. Who is your enemy? The guy working in the city-owned sewers? The wildlife ecologist at the national park? The crew of the space shuttle? The social worker? The janitor at the social services building? The liberal college professor? Or the conservative professor who believes that the government ought to deliver the mail? What about people who ride the city-owned busline, voluntarily and consciously making a moral choice to give money to a vicious public enterprise that denies you your inalienable right to start your own busline and that loots tax dollars from the whole nation just make up its losses? By your standards, the people who ride the bus are just as immoral as the chairman of the House Transportation Committee. What about the parent who cannot give a reason for a 9:00 pm bedtime and just uses authority? Or perhaps the child who refuses to see the logic in a 9:00 pm bedtime and thus demonstrates a propensity to become a property-destroying delinquent? Or the child who does accept the 9:00 pm bedtime and who will be elected to student council and then to congress? Kill them all now, you say?

I believe that each of us makes the best of the life we are given in social circumstances available to us. If this were 1904, and I were born in Europe, I like to think that I would do what my grandparents did: emigrate. In 2004, there is nowhere to go. This is the A. E. van Vogt "World of Null-A" where an all-powerful non-Aristotlean machine runs the world.

My advice is to give up your fantasies and face the facts. Make a good life for yourself. You will be much happier.

Hong Zhang: "Yes, I have lived in the Communist China for 25 years before I came to US. ... My uncle had been in the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army during the Korean War. ... He was the kindest and most industrious person that I've ever known."

Xie xie ni. Thank you.

Jon Letendre: Of course there were innocents at Hiroshima. The guilt or innocence of civilian casualties is irrelevant to our right to destroy regimes that recognize no rights. The important thing is getting it over with, not minimizing innocent loss.

"We had to destroy the village to liberate it."
Pardon me, child, but your immoral government denies you the inalienable right to own a gun, therefore I will kill you to defeat your immoral government.

Joe Maurone: "And let us not forget that it was not that long ago that blacks were hosed down..."

And therefore, the governments of western Africa would have been morally justified -- if not required -- to nuke Atlanta?
This impinges directly on the claim above that those who do not resist are culpable for the actions of their oppressors. By that standard, in addition to prosecuting klansmen for the bombings of churches, we should indict the entire Black population of the south for being Uncle Toms? After all, the ones who resisted were killed off already, so the survivors must be guilty.

Post 19

Saturday, December 25, 2004 - 3:50pm