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You can't really argue that the Spanish Inquisition wasn't evil. They really were torturing people gratuitously just to try and vindicate themselves.

Rush Limbaugh.

Obama
Biden
clinton(both of them)
Micheal moore

What makes Obama evil?

garret wrote:Obama
Biden
clinton(both of them)
Micheal moore

I love that the quality of debate in US politics has reached a point where I don't know if you're joking.

Cheese Elemental wrote:How do you define evil? Is it something that is morally wrong? Is it something that corrupts the mind and soul? What do you think?
-Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The US had no good reason for dropping atomic bombs on civilian population centers. Killing a nation's civilians to force them into surrender is wrong. It's sickening how I hear it dismissed as 'All war have casualties.'

IIRC Hiroshima and Nagasaki had some pretty big military targets as well. Factories/bases and such. If they were looking to nuke a true civilian target they would have gone for tokyo. If i were choosing a target for a nuke attack on an enemy, i'd choose a juicy military target no matter how close it is to civilians. yeah, civilians get caught in the collateral, but they're the ENEMY. If you were trying to save their lives you probably wouldn't be dropping nukes in the first place.

Dreadwinter wrote:What is love?

baby don't hurt me...

spartanghost wrote:

baby don't hurt me...

don't hurt me no more.....

Dreadwinter wrote:

don't hurt me no more.....

Oh, I don't know why you're not there

spartanghost wrote:IIRC Hiroshima and Nagasaki had some pretty big military targets as well. Factories/bases and such.

They both had extensive ports. I think only Nagasaki was a military port, but both were key to supplying the war effort. Still, you can decimate port facilities without wiping out a civilian population.

If they were looking to nuke a true civilian target they would have gone for tokyo. If i were choosing a target for a nuke attack on an enemy, i'd choose a juicy military target no matter how close it is to civilians. yeah, civilians get caught in the collateral, but they're the ENEMY. If you were trying to save their lives you probably wouldn't be dropping nukes in the first place.

That's not really good enough, though. You can't just ignore civilian casualties because you're also meeting a military aim. Every attack has to be measured; what good will this do compared to how much harm.

In this case, the question is whether the benefits of ending the war months (maybe even a year) sooner were greater than the deaths. From the level of US casualties expected (which would have been returned onto the Japanese ten times over) I think it was a reasonable decision. But you can use the same method to assess Dresden, and there you have something like 100,000 civilian deaths, and all that was achieved was the temporary cutting off of some road junctions (that were mostly used by refugees).

I agree that civilian deaths should be avoided when possible, but in an all-out war like WW2 was, It is at most a secondary concern to the effectivness of the attack. if i had the choice of a target which would cripple my enemy but kill alot of his civilians or a target that *might* stun him for a bit with low civilian casualties, I'm gonna chose the former. As soon as you start thinking of the enemy as human beings that must be saved you lose a decidedly important advantage. It sucks, but that's war for you. The moment war stops being horrible is the moment it gets thrown around like sailors cursing.

About dresden, I don't know anything about that. I guess they strategically omit that from allied history classes, eh?

Many many times in my Pen and Paper roleplaying history have I had to define evil.

Evil is committing acts with intent to harm others in a manner physical, financial, emotional, or other forms for benefit of only the person involved in committing the acts.

That is the simplest possible definitions. There are many degrees of evil. I feel it's best defined by: understanding that what you do harms someone else, but you commit that act regardless of how you know it may cripple or interfere with another so that you may gain something of any value. Bonus evil points if you don't care about their subsequent jailing, being shot, bankruptcy, etc.

Cheese Elemental wrote:I once considered commissioning a plaque that said 'Live no Evil', which is 'Live on Evil' backwards. This was during my brief Goth phase, before I became religious.

When it comes to morality in my religion, I feel that I'm pretty relaxed about it. I don't have anything against homosexuality or ogling another man's wife, because after all, these are natural things and we shouldn't repress our instincts. Or maybe I'm just addicted to sex.

You know there's a commandment against the second one, don't you?

We all interpret these things different ways. After all, it's not my fault if I can't tell who's married.

Cheese Elemental wrote:We all interpret these things different ways. After all, it's not my fault if I can't tell who's married.

You're the one getting goo-goo eyed. It's no ones fault but your own.

sebster wrote:

garret wrote:Obama
Biden
clinton(both of them)
Micheal moore

I love that the quality of debate in US politics has reached a point where I don't know if you're joking.

for the most part im joking(except for moore)
i jusr put it up cause some people put stuff saying certain repuclicans are evil

spartanghost wrote:I agree that civilian deaths should be avoided when possible, but in an all-out war like WW2 was, It is at most a secondary concern to the effectivness of the attack. if i had the choice of a target which would cripple my enemy but kill alot of his civilians or a target that *might* stun him for a bit with low civilian casualties, I'm gonna chose the former. As soon as you start thinking of the enemy as human beings that must be saved you lose a decidedly important advantage. It sucks, but that's war for you. The moment war stops being horrible is the moment it gets thrown around like sailors cursing.

No, you always have to think of the enemy as human beings, for the simple reason that they are. Pretending otherwise changes nothing.

Of course, civilians will die, that's war. But every action you take you have to decide whether the objectives you hope to achieve are worth the lives you expect to take.

About dresden, I don't know anything about that. I guess they strategically omit that from allied history classes, eh?

History classes aren't ever going to give you enough info to really get the full story. Even if they ran as well as possible you'd only get a fraction of the detail, and history classes are run nowhere near as well as they could be. Anyway, the exact military reasons for the Dresden bombing are still unclear to this day, no-one involved in the planning has ever been exactly what the military target in Dresden was... never a good sign. What is clear is that Dresden had attracted a lot of refugees, and while exact figures aren't clear most reports put the casualty count well in excess of 100,000.

And sure, if it took out valuable German industry and brought the war to a quicker conclusion then there's a fair argument that the casualties would have been worth it. But it didn't. The atomic bombing on the other hand, while also killing so many civilians, maybe did stop a brutal invasion of Japan and end the war in China sooner and so might have been justifiable.


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garret wrote:for the most part im joking(except for moore)
i jusr put it up cause some people put stuff saying certain repuclicans are evil

That's kind of the problem with the debate right now, isn't it? You called our guys poopie heads so we're gonna do the same!

And while there's always been an unfortunate tendency in the left wing to shift into a moralistic tone, in the eight years of the last administration there really was a case that a lot of the things done were evil. In order to level the claim back, you need more than 'they said we were'. You need a story about someone in the Obama administration that's somewhere near the ballpark of lying to drag your country into a war.

With regard to Dresden, I have a particularly excellent source material that is my Great Uncle Val's flight log, in which he recorded his thoughts and experiences during his sorties.

Well, I have a photocopy of it. Must dig it out. Haven't seen it since I oved house, so it will be in one of the two boxes on top of the wardrobe I'd imagine. If not, my Bro has a copy.

Pretty good reading, if a little heavy going due to his copper plate style hand writing.

Hey he was getting shot at at the time. My scratches would have been OH ! Oh ! OH !

Metallica's version of "Am I Evil?" keeps running through my head.

sebster wrote:
No, you always have to think of the enemy as human beings, for the simple reason that they are. Pretending otherwise changes nothing.

bull . yeah they are human beings but their goal is to KILL YOU and do whatever it is you're fighting to prevent them from doing/prevent you from doing something. if you're at war with them then it's important enough to kill them over. therefor you should if it will further your goals. if you're not willing to do that you shouldn't be fighting the war in the first place.

I like the Metallic song about the guy who can't see or hear or talk after getting blown apart by a bomb in a war.

G

sebster wrote:

garret wrote:for the most part im joking(except for moore)
i jusr put it up cause some people put stuff saying certain repuclicans are evil

That's kind of the problem with the debate right now, isn't it? You called our guys poopie heads so we're gonna do the same!

And while there's always been an unfortunate tendency in the left wing to shift into a moralistic tone, in the eight years of the last administration there really was a case that a lot of the things done were evil. In order to level the claim back, you need more than 'they said we were'. You need a story about someone in the Obama administration that's somewhere near the ballpark of lying to drag your country into a war.

what you say evil i say necesary

IMHO:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared more lives than they took. If the bombs had not been dropped the war with the Japanese would have gone on far longer.

Evil is a very subjective concept.
Although I agree that Hitler was a horribly evil person, do you think he thought he was evil?

It's all a matter of perspective.

spartanghost wrote:
bull . yeah they are human beings but their goal is to KILL YOU and do whatever it is you're fighting to prevent them from doing/prevent you from doing something.

Yeah, but they're still human. Saying that they aren't is utter nonsense. In the end it doesn't matter if someone I'm fighting kills me, or I kill him. Death is death because in war all lives are represented as statistics.

spartanghost wrote:
if you're at war with them then it's important enough to kill them over.

That's a poor assumption. Ever heard of the Crimean War?

spartanghost wrote:
therefor you should if it will further your goals. if you're not willing to do that you shouldn't be fighting the war in the first place.

Yes, if it will further your goals. But that won't always be the case.

CRAP. i accidentally posted again. sorry.

dogma wrote:

Ketara wrote:It depends on whether you believe morals are objective, or subjective. If you're religous, morals are subjective, and herefore it is very clearly defined exactly what evil is. However, if you're an atheist, morals are entirely subjective, relative to your society and culture, and therefore evil does not exist.

Not necessarily. There are plenty of self-professed Atheists who believe in objective morality. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens immediately come to mind. Though you could argue that the vehemence of their Atheism necessarily qualifies them as religious; turning the argument on the distinction between Atheism as a lack of belief in God, and Atheism as the belief in the absence of God.

If you believe that morals are objective, then you must believe that they exist separate from humanity. You have to be able to say that if humanity was wiped out tomorrow, morals would continue to exist. But then you get into the fine detail. If you're Plato, you believe that you have 'The Form of the Good', which makes morality possible, for example. But believing that these morals can exist seperate from humanity is really just as absurd as believing that there's some guy with a big beard who made the world.

As to war, well, war is merely state sanctioned assassination on a massive scale. Most wars are fought between figureheads or, and the people who get caught in the cogs of their machinations are merely pawns. Was Nagaski and Hiroshima wrong? Well, the fact is, regardless of the method, its people killing other people. If you believe it is morally absolvable to kill other people, then the scale is really just a way of keeping count, and irrelevant.

As to war, well, war is merely state sanctioned assassination on a massive scale.

I've got to question your use of "assassination" here. How is it an assassination?

Most wars are fought between figureheads or, and the people who get caught in the cogs of their machinations are merely pawns. Was Nagaski and Hiroshima wrong? Well, the fact is, regardless of the method, its people killing other people. If you believe it is morally absolvable to kill other people, then the scale is really just a way of keeping count, and irrelevant.

Scale isn't "a way of keeping count", keeping count is a way of measuring scale.

Do you think it's impossible for something's morality to depend on the situation? I see nothing wrong with killing being morally absolvable in some instances and not in others.

Golden Eyed Scout wrote:Rush Limbaugh.

QFT

On a side note about the nuclear bombings of Japan. It is important to remember that the fire bombings the US was engaged in Japan was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY worse than the two nuclear bombs they dropped. Also, there is a very strong argument that Japan was going to capitulate, and that the two dropped nukes were in no way going to shorten the war any more than everything else that had already been done. But the US wanted to demonstrate its nuclear ability to the world. Don't forget that the US wanted to get nukes before Russia, and there was a huge race to be the winner. This is the dawn of the cold war.

Ketara wrote:
If you believe that morals are objective, then you must believe that they exist separate from humanity.

Not true, I could simply believe they are the same for all of humanity.

Ketara wrote:
You have to be able to say that if humanity was wiped out tomorrow, morals would continue to exist.

Again, not true. Objective does not mean independently existential. Only the most basic forms of Platonism would maintain such an idea. All I would need to postulate is that, given a human frame of reference, all morality is the same. Since we can only ever discuss things inside a human frame of reference such a conception is as close to objectivity as one can come.

Ketara wrote:
But then you get into the fine detail. If you're Plato, you believe that you have 'The Form of the Good', which makes morality possible, for example. But believing that these morals can exist seperate from humanity is really just as absurd as believing that there's some guy with a big beard who made the world.

I agree, but that's not really what Plato said at all. The good Plato described existed beyond man, but the Greeks did not necessarily identify barbarians as men. All Plato maintained in describing the good as transcendent was a form of universal abstraction which permitted the judgment of non-Greeks.

Ketara wrote:
As to war, well, war is merely state sanctioned assassination on a massive scale. Most wars are fought between figureheads or, and the people who get caught in the cogs of their machinations are merely pawns.

That's a relatively modern understanding of war which ignores the force of cultural bias. People don't just go to war because they are forced to. There is always a measure of consent. After all, who's going to force you? The other people who already decided to go to war?

spartanghost wrote:bull . yeah they are human beings but their goal is to KILL YOU and do whatever it is you're fighting to prevent them from doing/prevent you from doing something. if you're at war with them then it's important enough to kill them over. therefor you should if it will further your goals. if you're not willing to do that you shouldn't be fighting the war in the first place.

Look, I’ll type this slowly if that will help. Yes, civilians casualties are inevitable and yes, if you aren’t willing to inflict civilian casualties you shouldn’t be fighting. No-one is suggesting there must never be civilian casualties. Just that when undertaking operations the level of casualties inflicted should be justified by the importance of the objectives achieved.

It isn't hard to get. The level of destruction inflicted should be proportionate to the military objectives met.


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ixlar wrote:On a side note about the nuclear bombings of Japan. It is important to remember that the fire bombings the US was engaged in Japan was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY worse than the two nuclear bombs they dropped. Also, there is a very strong argument that Japan was going to capitulate, and that the two dropped nukes were in no way going to shorten the war any more than everything else that had already been done.

The suggestion that the Japanese were going to capitulate is very contraversial to this day. Even after all this time we still don't know. I can't fault the US command at the time for believing the Japanese were going to fight to the last. Like I said earlier the US ordered hundreds of thousands of new purple hearts in expectation of the casualties from invasion.

But the US wanted to demonstrate its nuclear ability to the world. Don't forget that the US wanted to get nukes before Russia, and there was a huge race to be the winner. This is the dawn of the cold war.

Nah, the Russians were so committed to the war in Europe that no serious nuclear program could be started until after the war. The Americans were far more worried about the Nazis developing the bomb.

The argument that the US used the bomb to threaten the Russians as much as end the war with the Japanese does have merit, though.