Yosuke Yamahata

[Walsingham]

Um... easy point, but it needs to be made. Are you seriously claiming moral equivalence between Stalin's Russia and Roosevelt's USA?

[Guard Dog]

Yeah I've heard of that story. Is that a true story or just an urban legend.

 

No that actually happens. The first one that got everyones attention was a thief breaking into a house via a skylight. He fell through and broke his leg. The owner caught him trying to drag himself out the front door. The thief was arrested then he sued the homeowner for the accident and actually won. Once again proving Shakespere was a wise man "First kill all of the lawyers". Sorry Gromnir and Enoch.

 

But I digress for topic here. I agree with GDM completely. As sad as the pics of human brutality are I am much more moved by pictures of human accomplishments and the natural world. That is just me. I will agree with Arkan, the Hubble Deep Field is one of my favorites. But below is one I have always found pretty moving. Its a pic of the Shuttle Atlantis launching as seen from the ISS.

 

shuttle.bmp

[Yuusha]

@Guard Dog: It is pretty incredible. The Earth looks peaceful from up there. May God have mercy on humanity and may we all strive to act in love.

 

Great pic man.

[Dark_Raven]

This would be more peaceful.

 

The nuclear fires cleansing the Earth. Given a few hundred years, it will be reborn again and perhaps have better beings be the caretakers instead of us.

[St_Jimmy]

This would be more peaceful.

 

The nuclear fires cleansing the Earth. Given a few hundred years, it will be reborn again and perhaps have better beings be the caretakers instead of us.

 

You've played too much Deus Ex: Invisible War.

[Dark_Raven]

nah

[chris the jedi killer]

This would be more peaceful.

 

The nuclear fires cleansing the Earth. Given a few hundred years, it will be reborn again and perhaps have better beings be the caretakers instead of us.

Just thinking about it gives a chill done my spine

[Azarkon]

Um... easy point, but it needs to be made. Are you seriously claiming moral equivalence between Stalin's Russia and Roosevelt's USA?

 

Out of the list of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Churchill, and Roosevelt, it's obvious who the two "winners" are. No, by no means were Churchill and Roosevelt "perfect" leaders, but compared to the competition, it's hard to deny that they did the least wrong, and made the most right of decisions.

 

Out of the list of Merkel, Putin, Hu, Blair, and Bush, however, the choice is less obvious, and I think that's the gist of the issue. The US can not ride on the surge of good leadership that led it in the past, and today the image of the star spangled knight is badly tarnished, to the extent that American exceptionalism is being challenged on a routine basis. All this bad press must be interpreted in this context - American arrogance has built up alot of pent-up rage, and given the opportunity the world is bringing us down to size. It's not so much that the US has done an inordinate amount of wrong in the past (though we've certainly done our share), but that those wrongs take on new meanings when America is no longer the hero but the accused, no longer the judge but the judged. It's been said that these days it's a fad to bash America... I don't disagree, but this has been the nature of national image for as long as it existed. We fad-bash others (ie China), and others fad-bash us. It's awfully unfair to represent a nation solely by its wrongs and mention not at all the rights and reasons, but I suppose it's only fair that other people trash us the same way we trash them.

 

In short, it sucks to be on the receiving end of the stick, I suppose.

[Fionavar]

Thread Pruned: Perhaps we could try to temper humour, even if politically astute, that nonetheless serves to aggravate pain of those who are in fact survivors.

[Walsingham]

Laudable moderation, Azarkon. Things are less clear cut. Yet while the leaders may be less distinguishable* the systems have grown far more distinct. The USA of today has had the civil rights movement, and the rise of public education and welfare. Not to mention spending hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid. Similar thinsg could be said about Great Britain. While Russia is sliding back into the pit, which China never left.

 

 

 

*Leaving aside Vladimir Putin, for my money. The ex-KGB secret policeman, architect of Russia's disastrous Chechen adventures, and ruthless abuser of the legal system to seize personal control of almost all crucial Russian industrial assets; not to mention probable instigator of the murder of political opponents.**

[Xard]

This would be more peaceful.

 

The nuclear fires cleansing the Earth. Given a few hundred years, it will be reborn again and perhaps have better beings be the caretakers instead of us.

 

Full scale nuclear war would be enough to end all life on earth apart from some microscopic species in the dephts of oceans and possibly incects, those nasty buggers. (It is "believed" that insects would evolve into next rulers of this planet if we humans would screw ourselves)

[Guest The Architect]

Full scale nuclear war would be enough to end all life on earth apart from some microscopic species in the dephts of oceans and possibly incects, those nasty buggers. (It is "believed" that insects would evolve into next rulers of this planet if we humans would screw ourselves)

 

Eww, imagine a whole planet full of giant ****roaches!

Edited August 7, 2007 by The Architect

[Gorgon]

I prefer to think in the lines of Mad Max, mutants and bunker cities.

[Walsingham]

Quite. Let's erase all trace of the music of Giuseppe Verdi, the poetry of kipling, the cooking of the American deep south. Let's remove all trace of the understanding of our surroundings ...on the offchance that rocahes are better than we are.

 

[Azarkon]

Laudable moderation, Azarkon. Things are less clear cut. Yet while the leaders may be less distinguishable* the systems have grown far more distinct. The USA of today has had the civil rights movement, and the rise of public education and welfare. Not to mention spending hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid. Similar thinsg could be said about Great Britain. While Russia is sliding back into the pit, which China never left.

 

Granted, but usually it's not the domestic systems that people bash but the foreign policy, and here the comparison is similar to leadership. Sure, you have Russia strong-arming the former Soviet states, and you have China propping up brutal dictatorships in Africa, but neither expressions of geopolitics are quite as visible as the wars we've got going in the Middle-East - and here you have to remember that most of the world doesn't believe the US is there for altruistic reasons. It tends to go downhill from there.

[Walsingham]

A totally disinterested foreign policy would result most likely in teh country piling everything it had into the Cote D'Ivoire and the other bits of the former Belgian Congo. Or Myanmar. The effort would cripple and economically destroy the donor nation in a couple of years and teh eventual benefit to the receiver would be nil.

 

no-one criticises doctors for taking payment for their services. They're seen as lovely.

[Azarkon]

Actually, that's because of medical insurance, and Sicko criticizes plenty of that

 

Now, you're of course right that a disinterested foreign policy would yield certain unsavory conditions, but the gap between indifference and intervention is quite large, and even if we were "right" to choose intervention, in "principle," there's still the matter of practicalities. I don't think you can deny that US foreign policy is currently a cesspool of mismangement and failure, regardless of its stated intentions. I'm not so worried about what we say we meant to do, but about what we failed to do. Numerous still are the apologists, but fewer now are those who believe that the situation in Iraq will stabilize any time soon. While I don't agree with all of its points, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200708...eyond_disaster/ gives an argument that's increasingly harder to dispute. One cannot judge a policy merely on moral and ideological grounds - implementation is, as in all things, the most significant measure, and here the Bush administration is knee deep in sludge. Personally, all else is secondary: the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but in the end it's the results that count.

 

I fear Iraq will go down in history, like Nam, as yet another blow to the feasibility of US interventionism and all the bad press is just an extension of that.

Edited August 8, 2007 by Azarkon

[Yuusha]

One could argue that the only reason behind the invasion of Iraq, was for Bush to continue the 'family business'.

 

I miss Bill Clinton... Although at '98 he did bomb a 'weapons factory' in Sudan. Which later turned out to be making aspirins.

[Walsingham]

Azarkon, much as I'm enjoying our debate, I think we're going off topic. The point iirc was that:

 

1. The use of the bomb on H&N was justifiable by modern rationales. Even with the benefit of hindsight.

 

2. The US administration at the time was better than other comparable states. And that the use of the bomb does not make this untrue.

 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Azarkon]

I thought that debate was over, and we were just trying to get at the source of why people are dredging up old laundry in an effort to discredit the US, but you're the mod

Edited August 8, 2007 by Azarkon

[Gorgon]

Quite. Let's erase all trace of the music of Giuseppe Verdi, the poetry of kipling, the cooking of the American deep south. Let's remove all trace of the understanding of our surroundings ...on the offchance that rocahes are better than we are.

 

Wait a minuite, you don't prefer mutants over roaches ?

 

The use of the bomb can't be called justifiable when the arguments for it are all based on assumption. You can say definately that it shortened the war, but you can't say with any ammount of finality that a swift surrender could not have been agreed without it, or that the bombs saved as much as a single life.

 

Of course it matters in such a massively destructive war who started it, and of course it matters what their motivations were, but on all sides considerations for civlian deaths were overshadowed my military necessity as a matter of course. At the time of the bombings Japan was contained, unable to respond.

 

Military necessity was nolonger as prominent with the outcome nolonger in doubt, but the Americans nuked Japan, and Bomber Command continued to hit civilian targets even long after any consideration of german production rates was an issue. Politicians should have stepped up and put an end to it, but the politicians themselves had become the generals.

Edited August 8, 2007 by Gorgon

[Walsingham]

Scientifically I agree, obviously, when you say that we can't say with certainty. However historical analysis is not science. It is very likely that the bombs saved lives. I also think that compared with the damage done by the firestorm use of conventional weapons they weren't 'excessive'. And not wanting to be rude, but you're ignoring my earlier point about deterring Stalin. I think it's fairly evident from many sources (best collected in The Court of the Red Czar) that Stalin would cheerfully have pressed on into Europe without his fear of the bomb, and without a practical demonstration he would not have grasped its significance.

 

I agree that military necessity had waned in the shadow of political momentum. Dresden for me is a far better example than H&N.

[Sand]

If Japan or Germany developed these bombs first I thik they would use them without hesitation.

[Walsingham]

If Japan or Germany developed these bombs first I thik they would use them without hesitation.

 

I know more than most, but still very little about the command architecture in the Japanese court. So i shall stand aside for someone else to acst light on this.

 

I think where Hitler is concerned it's a complex question and would depend a lot on the timing, and the context. I doubt he would have used it on Britain before 1944, but oddly enough might have done against the USA. He would quite certainly have used it against Soviet Russia. *thinks* No battle of Stalingrad. The wehrmacht just rolls into the debris. Of course they'd get sick pretty quickly from the radiation. *wakes from reverie*

[Yuusha]

@Walsingham:

Stalin would cheerfully have pressed on into Europe without his fear of the bomb, and without a practical demonstration he would not have grasped its significance.

So you're basically saying that the real reason the Americans deployed the bomb was to keep Stalin in check?