Posted on 12/05/2009 6:00:32 PM PST by NYer
How does the killing of an innocent child ever become moral?
Could we have used conventional weapons on those minor factories?
It doesnt ever become moral, but it can still be necessary.
That’s the paradox, the measure, and the certainty of how close the human race came and can still come to consuming itself if hard choices are avoided...
The British and French avoided hard choices in 1938...moral perhaps but the consequnce was the death of 20 million people...
Sorry, but you seem to speak with forked tongue. How can evil become necessary?
In 1940 the Japanese bombed Ningbo with fleas carrying the bubonic plague. In 1941 they dropped plague fleas on Changde. Both times they produced an epidemic.
The War of 1812. (We attacked the UK over trade restrictions, among other things.)
The Mexican War. (We attacked Mexico to get California and the Southwest.)
The Vietnam War, and the U.S.-backed coup d'etat against South Vietnamese president Diem that preceded it. (The so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a complete lie.)
The Iraq War. (I'm sorry, but it's a fact.)
In each of these wars, the president and Congress of the United States acted in what they believed to be the national interest. That being said, every aggressor nation claims to be acting in its national interest.
In any case, the question of who started what is not always clear-cut. While we technically started the War of 1812 (we declared war on Britain on 18 June, 1812 and invaded Canada on 12 July), certain circumstances leading up to our attack could be construed as acts of aggression on the part of the British Empire. Vietnam was a battle of World War III, part of the containment strategy against the Commuists in the USSR and China. And we had solid strategic reasons to take down the Saddam Hussein regime as part of our overall strategy against global fundamentalist Islam.
However, we fought the Mexicans in order to take California and the whole Southwest for our own. It was a war of conquest, plain and simple.
While I'm glad that we won in Iraq and in Mexico, and sorry we lost in Vietnam, the fact remains that none of those three countries ever attacked the U.S.A. We had our reasons for starting those wars, but we did start them, and any refusal to acknowledge that we did is intellectually dishonest.
Do you really believe that?
You are arguing from a faulty premise.
How does the killing of an innocent child ever become moral?
How does the killing of an innocent child ever become moral?
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” - from Hamlet , Wm. Shakespeare; Act II, scene ii
Your thinking makes it evil, mine a necessity.
I respect your thinking, but its not mine.
” I regret the loss of innocent life ...”
But then you defend it. Odd.
Actually the war of 1812 was in response to Britain stopping American vessels on the high seas and taking American crews captive(’’press ganging) The Mexican War was really about Texans, who were nominally under the jurisdiction of Mexico, wanting to be an independant nation. Vietnam? Vietnam was ongoing since. First the Japanese, then the French and then it was our turn. Could hardly say we ‘’started it. WW2
Sophistry.
Sorry, typo. Meant to say that Vietnam had been an ongoing war since WW2.
You’re apologizing?
I’m not apologizing for anything.
Let me help you with your research.
Planned Bacterial Attack on the United States. Proposals included use of these weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use kamikaze pilots to dump plague infected fleas on San Diego.
Some Japanese generals proposed loading the balloons with weapons of biological warfare, to create epidemics of plague or anthrax in the United States. Other army units wanted to send cattle plague virus to wipe out the American livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops. As it happened, 9,000 balloons each carried four incendiary and one antipersonnel bomb across the Pacific on the jet stream to create forest fires and terror from Oregon to Michigan.
As the end of the war approached in 1945, Unit 731 embarked on its wildest scheme; codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan was to use kamikaze pilots to infest California with the plague.
Toshimi Mizobuchi, who was an instructor for new recruits in Unit 731, said the idea was to use 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin in July 1945. A submarine was to take a few of them to the seas off Southern California, and then they were to fly in a plane carried on board the submarine and contaminate San Diego with plague-infected fleas. The target date was to be Sept. 22, 1945. As it happened, the fleet of submarine seaplane carriers that assembled was assigned to launch torpedoes at the locks in the Panama canal, but that was changed to attack the US fleet at Ulith just as the war ended.
And niether am I engaging in’’ sophistry’’. We could argue this from know till Doomsday and come up with a dozen different histories.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.