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'Oppenheimer' draws debate over the absence of Japanese bombing victims in the film
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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I saw those pictures in school. We know that Truman signed off on dropping the bomb on two civilian cities and it was a horror that had never been seen in the world before or since.
Dude, we talk about our atrocities all the time. The current push to whitewash Native American genocide and slavery is actually getting a huge pushback, because we talk openly about this stuff in the US and it's only a minority that tries to silence it. We talk openly about the atrocities during the Vietnam War, and about the invasion of Iraq, and about prosecution for war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
You can say a LOT about the US, and even the amount of denial we have about our standing in the world, but you can't call us in denial about stuff like that. We're in conflict within ourselves about it, but it's a well known and well discussed thing in the US.
And wait... are you from lemmygrad? The tankie server?
I think terminally online people and their kids probably know mostly the truth (or closer to it) than the average American. The fact that one major political party in America is having pretty major success pushing whitewashed history or at least preventing they're history from being taught strongly undercuts your contention that "we talk about our atrocities all the time."
If it was some fringe group like the John Birch Society or some Ayn Rand cult, sure. But it's almost every Republican primary candidate.
I suppose I am being too optimistic.
I also have a major problem whenever I get the sense a European is trashing the US for problems and a history that are absolutely being ignored in Europe. There's been a glut of that making me over-sensitive perhaps. My Brit-sense was tingling for the original comment, but it may be off.
Talk is cheap in a country that has a history of blood on its hands. Pushback on rhetoric isn't the only thing worth being proud about nor is it very productive. Just as another user pointed out, there's no material solutions being offered to the remainders of a group that was victim of colonialism, that is still prevalent today.
Every great nation has blood on its hands. The Japanese aren’t exactly Mother Theresa’s themselves. Oh and they shouldn’t have attacked us if they didn’t want to deal with the consequences. They had no problem killing or injuring thousands of our service men and women. Oh…..THAT. Give it a rest.
I didn't intend for this to devolve into Whataboutism.
I don't want to get into it with the guy from lemmygrad, but the idea that the US behavior can be compared only to colonized countries is ridiculous. We're in the tier of countries like Australia, New Zealand and such where the colonizers split off from the greater colonial power, and we're also in the tier of colonizers like Britain, Spain, Japan and France for our activities in the Pacific and South America.
I can't comment on Japanese crimes, that's for another continent, or if they were better or worse than the US's or say, Britain's. Still, if atomic bombs were dropped on two cities in Britain it would be a travesty and a crime no matter what Britain's done. Same as if we exploded a bunch of atomic bombs and poisoned the earth near where Native Americans live. Which we did.
I still don't think we're in denial. Umm, the previous poster might be. But as a whole I think we know these decisions were immoral. I just think that, as a nation, we don't have the political will built yet to make reparations. I think the left group is larger. The right is a minority, it's just a minority where the money and power is concentrated. Concentrated in many cases by generational wealth, which means the same people stopping us from enacting any meaningful reparations are the descendants of the people who made the decisions. Which makes sense, those decisions got them the power they have now. It's a hell of a thing to fight against.
But the difference between us simply may be optimism on my part.
How are you going to participate in this discussion and just whip out a "I can't comment on Japanese crimes"?
The rape of Nanking.
I went to public school.
Public schools cover this. Even if they didn't, it would take little effort to discover such an atrocity via the internet.
It was a joke to lighten the tension but mine really didn't cover much of anything in Asia. All right. Let's get serious.
I can't comment on Japanese crimes, though, because while yes I am not as well-versed in the history as I am in Western history, I'm still not going to comment because I'm actually not in the group that suffered from Japanese war crimes.
I'm also not about to get into a body count contest because that way lies madness and a whole bunch of "well, this justifies this" arguments.
But if you must know what I think about your Nanking argument, it's this. The atomic bomb was not intended as retaliation for Japan's crimes against China. The uS did not have the right to retaliate against Japan for crimes done to China. Pretty sure the Chinese, if asked, would not have voted to have a nuclear detonation so close to their country given the risk of enviromental destruction.
It wasn't retaliation for anything, it was entirely about prevention. So, it can't be justified by well... ANYTHING Japan did because it wasn't a response to anything Japan did. It was, pure and simple, a show of force on the part of the United States to establish that "Hey, we will END this war."
Furthermore, if it was justified well... it wouldn't be by virtue of the fact that those are civilian cities. We all agreed on the Geneva Conventions and the other treaties making up the Law of Armed Conflict that war crimes don't justify other war crimes, and the principles of military necessity, humanity and proportionality tell us it's a war crime to drop a nuclear bomb on a civilian-occupied city. All of these treaties came after World War II, of course, but they were informed by the events on the Pacific Front.
Basically, the actions of Japan and the actions of the United States in World War II were so terrible that International Law was agreed upon to make sure that people who performed any such action in the future even during wartime would be tried and imprisoned, and that any attempt to use actions like that to retaliate for actions like that would also be prosecutable.
Which is to say, the world as a WHOLE agreed that Japan's military behavior, while horrible, did not justify retaliation against civilians and did not justify the atomic bomb and so on. The entire world agreed that war crimes retaliating for other war crimes were not justified.
This did not stop the nuclear arms race, of course, because everyone involved knew from Mutually Assured Destruction no one would be around to try the guys who started a nuclear war in the end. But suffice it to say, any use of a nuclear weapon is wrong.
None of that has anything to do with my comment. Lol
Anyone claiming the US was retaliating on behalf of the Republic of China is a fool.
@Fazoo Your comment is just "The Rape of Nanking." You were commenting in response to me not wishing to comment on Japanese War Crimes. Yes, I've heard of it. Yes, I had to look up the details.
My original point was that it didn't matter what a country's government had done before when weighing the morality of dropping an atomic bomb on a city, and because I don't know details about Japan I used Britain as an example because I can list off colonization sins by the British Empire. Your response implied that I should specifically address Japan and Nanking. I did. I clarified to you that the US dropping an atomic bomb on a city had fuck-all to do with Nanking, so Nanking has nothing to do with the conversation at hand--the morality of the US dropping a bomb on an atomic city. Then I told you that war crimes in retaliation are still war crimes even if it had.
If you meant something else... What was it? That I had to be qualified to comment on Nanking? I'm actually not, because I didn't know the details until I looked it up on Wikipedia.