If Hunter S. Thompson ran the WWII US War Dept, he'd approve of bat bombs

Again, if you can’t see the difference between shelling or bombing a city, and rounding up and executing civilians, I don’t know what to tell you.

Civilians are mixed in with military assets. Civilians are PART of the military assets. Who do you think is building their bombs and bullets? When a city is attacked, everything within it is a potential target. That’s war.

Rounding up citizens after the battle and cutting their heads off in the streets is something else.

There are many examples of the Soviets (Katyn), Germans, and Japanese doing mass executions of civilians. You don’t find anything like that perpetrated by US troops. The worst the US did was to inter Japanese people in the US. While wrong and a violation of their rights in every sense, not even in the same ball park as to the other atrocities.

You’re saying there’s a meaningful difference between being shot in the head and having a bomb dropped on you.

Those are the words of a coward who thinks that it’s somehow better to kill people indiscriminately from a distance than to destroy them one at a time in person. I very much doubt the dead make any such distinction - nor would you, if you watched your family burn to death trapped in the shattered rubble of their own home.

Civilians are not military assets. Every international treaty recognizes this fact, and it is a war crime to target civilians. You may not intentionally kill non-combatants. That includes not only civilians, but also medical services such as the Red Cross and even neutral military forces within an active war zone.

There are even stipulations within international law addressing the concern of unscrupulous armies using such non-combatants as “human shields”. You may not conceal military assets as civilian, medical, or neutral assets. This is why soldiers wear uniforms, and why you can’t paint a medical cross on your munitions bunker. All such behaviors are war crimes.

Functionally speaking, there is no difference between beheading a city worth of civilians and bombing them - except that in the case of beheading, civilians can actually choose to resist their murderers. You can fight, flee from, or even engage in diplomacy with soldiers on the ground. Bombs cannot be fought, cannot be outrun, and cannot be reasoned with.

They also kill many, many more people with far, far less difficulty than ground forces ever could. They destroy infrastructure, causing indirect casualties long after the attack has concluded. Ground forces place themselves directly into the line of fire in order to kill, but bombs are inherently disposeable, unlike soldiers.

Ground forces also have consciences, and can choose to discriminate in their targets, selectively avoiding killing those they do not wish to, or even actively disobeying orders. Bombs are unthinking, unknowing, unfeeling - they cannot be swayed by pity, cannot choose whom they kill, and cannot disobey orders.

There is at least a chance that a soldier will spare a lost child that they find in their path, but a bomb will rip them limb from limb every time.

Despite your claims, US troops have historically engaged in mass executions of civilians. Notable examples are easily found in the American Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War.

Additionally, the United States is the only nation in history to have deployed nuclear weapons in wartime, and the targets of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were specifically chosen as civilian targets devoid of military value. To claim that these bombings were anything other than “mass executions of civilians” is delusional.

I’m just going to come out and say it: you are wrong.

The United States is not a shining beacon of purity and righteousness. Its hands are as bloody as anyone elses. The US military has repeatedly, knowingly, and fully intentionally committed atrocities, conducted mass executions of civilians, and engaged in breaches of international treaty and war crimes. And they have never been held accountable for these actions.

You’re a dog that can’t see his own reflection.

You’re full of it. Both targets had military assets.

And you’re even more full of it. No matter how much you emphasize your point.

I’m going home. Have fun talking to yourself.

And now you devolve into petty insults, mockery of my formatting choices, and storming off in a huff.

(Although to be honest, I’m quite fond of dogs and don’t see association with those noble creatures as insulting in anything other than ill intent.)

To be fair, I double checked and I was in error - at least Hiroshima possessed a major military headquarters. Not sure about Nagasaki.

That said, dropping a nuclear weapon onto almost four hundred thousand people purely to destroy that Hiroshima headquarters is still abhorent and unjustifiable indescriminate slaughter.

Of course, the bomb wasn’t dropped purely to destroy military targets. Hiroshima had been one of several cities purposefully left untouched by Allied strategic bombing. They wanted a “clean reading” of the effects of the weapon. So there you have it - intentionally using a civilian population to conduct tests of experimental weapons of mass destruction.

Remind me again how that is less horrible than the Nanking Massacre?

Oh, right. They “deserved” it. Those dirty yellow Jap devils and their horrific wholesale slaughter! We’ll make them pay, even if we have to level an entire city of innocents to get to the ones who are responsible! (Assuming any of the guilty soldiers are even in Hiroshima currently, of course…) Oh well! Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out, eh?

Mister you’ve been reading some mighty one-sided history books. I can’t be bothered arguing too much with someone who outright denies well documented facts, but I will at least point to this:

It is one massacre, one of many conducted by US soldiers. Don’t get me wrong I’m not accusing the US of being any more evil than any other army in any war, but to claim they’re any more innocent is complete and utter bullshit. In all wars atrocities are perpetrated by all sides. The Japanese war machine was indeed an abhorrent beast guilty of many crimes, but the only reason the US have come out appearing more innocent is that they won the war.

I’m not saying no US soldier ever killed civilians wantonly. I’m saying it has never been a directive handed down from the top, at least since WWI, to round up and execute civilians.

In the sample you gave people involved were eventually condemned and punished. There were rogue soldiers in Iraq who killed civilians on purpose and are serving time in Leavenworth right now. Even now, as crappy as Gitmo is, the policy has never been to just exterminate those seen as a problem.

German, Soviet, and Japanese where given commands from the top and the participants were never condemned by their leaders, they were given promotions. While no one in war is “innocent”, the US has has made concerted efforts in the past to at least attempt a level of civility. You can also look at how these nations treated POWs for some stark contrasts of behavior.

One person was convicted and served three and a half years under house
arrest before Nixon had him released. No one else was punished.

Oh yeah, I forgot no one in the US government or army brass has ever
approved the ill treatment of prisoners of war.

Make no mistake, if the Allies had lost the war we would know of a lot more
crimes committed by allied troops and we would know of a lot less crimes
committed by the Germans and Japanese. As the saying goes, history is
written by the victors.

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