Indiscriminate warfare

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neophyte said:
Assume I’m legitimately involved in a just war, and I’m planning an attack on a legitimate military target the destruction of which is necessary to win the war.

I have two means of attack.

The first is inherently incapable of discriminating between innocent civilians and the military target which has been intentionally placed among them. For example, an atom bomb.

The second is capable in principle of discriminating between them, but is incapable of it in fact. For example, my limited targeting technology means that I need five hundred high-altitude bombers carrying a million pounds of ordnance and no matter how hard I try I’ll wipe out the same buildings and people as if I used the A-bomb.

Am I morally obligated to go with the second option?

Please pretend that any resemblance to an actual historical event is totally accidental. I intentionally tried to make this as narrow a question as possible. Any discussion of the actual justness of the hypothetical war, the actual legitimacy of the hypothetical target or the actual capabilities of my hypothetical technology is a separate quesiton.
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You must help end the war against the evil your country has decided to fight as quickly as possible, taking the least number of lives possible. Your mission is to secure the victory. Think of Hitler, and the absolute curse upon the world he represented. He had to be destroyed with decision and overwhelming power. To accomplish good in war, we often have to commit unfortunate acts. God help us.:knight1:
 
PauloFreire2 said:
You must help end the war against the evil your country has decided to fight as quickly as possible, taking the least number of lives possible. Your mission is to secure the victory. Think of Hitler, and the absolute curse upon the world he represented. He had to be destroyed with decision and overwhelming power. To accomplish good in war, we often have to commit unfortunate acts. God help us.:knight1:
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You oversimplify.
Hitler was not always evil, he became evil under the influence of prescibed drugs, (speed), and the necessities of a losing war.
He loved children and dogs, and was faithful unto death to his wife.
Yes, he did evil to his Jews. But we are not innocent of that, for he first gave them all permission to leave, and provided transport, but no-one would take them. They sailed from country to country, from rejection to rejection, finally returning to Germany, for there was nowhere-else to go.
Read the Voyage of the Damned, and be ashamed.
Do not judge the cornered rat.
By the way, the military tactics you seem to support come straight out of ‘Mein Kampf’
Blitz krieg, and overwhelming force for starters.
Concerning the Gassing of the Jews and others, for it was not just the Jews, Zyclon B, was intended to be humane. That cannot be said for Tall Boy and Fat Boy.
Concerning deaths in war, those which MUST be minimised are those of noncombatants. Indeed, deliberate incaution of killing noncombatants is a WAR CRIME.
Have no doubt, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were no less WAR CRIMES than were the gassings in the death camps. The only difference is ‘victor’s justice’
 
Voco_proTatiano said:
You oversimplify.
Hitler was not always evil, he became evil under the influence of prescibed drugs, (speed), and the necessities of a losing war.
He loved children and dogs, and was faithful unto death to his wife.
Yes, he did evil to his Jews. But we are not innocent of that, for he first gave them all permission to leave, and provided transport, but no-one would take them. They sailed from country to country, from rejection to rejection, finally returning to Germany, for there was nowhere-else to go.
Read the Voyage of the Damned, and be ashamed.
Do not judge the cornered rat.
By the way, the military tactics you seem to support come straight out of ‘Mein Kampf’
Blitz krieg, and overwhelming force for starters.
Concerning the Gassing of the Jews and others, for it was not just the Jews, Zyclon B, was intended to be humane. That cannot be said for Tall Boy and Fat Boy.
Concerning deaths in war, those which MUST be minimised are those of noncombatants. Indeed, deliberate incaution of killing noncombatants is a WAR CRIME.
Have no doubt, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were no less WAR CRIMES than were the gassings in the death camps. The only difference is ‘victor’s justice’
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Hitler personified Evil in every way. He was a total monster. Your defense of him is an abomination.
 
Voco_proTatiano said:
You oversimplify.
Hitler was not always evil, he became evil under the influence of prescibed drugs, (speed), and the necessities of a losing war.
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You’re kidding, right?

Hitler and his thugs were beating and killing people on the streets in Germany long before he became Chancelor. And almost immediately after he became Chancelor he instigated an operation to kill his rivals in the party. On the Night of the Long Knives (June 29-30, 1934) all his party rivals were killed.

And he wasn’t on speed then, nor under “the necessities of a losing war.”

Nor was he losing the war in January, 1942 when he had Heydrich and Eichmann work out the “Final Solution” at Wannsee.
 
PauloFreire2 said:
Hitler personified Evil in every way. He was a total monster. Your defense of him is an abomination.
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But you have to admit we’ve got an original here. I’ve occasionally run into apologists for terrorism on these forums, but never an apologist for Hitler!
 
PauloFreire2 said:
Hitler personified Evil in every way. He was a total monster. Your defense of him is an abomination.
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Every combattant government demonises its enemy.
Kaiser Bill was not the monster he was painted,
Stalin might have been, but he was our friend, regardless that he murdered many more ‘undesireables’ than did Hitler.
So I am a stumbling block to you.
Well, I am a stumbling block to any fool who swallows war time propaganda hook, line and sinker.
The world is not black and white.
There is no confrontation between the infinitely good and the infinitly evil.
Everything is grey. Some greys are darker than others.
Everyone is entitled to an advocate.
To deny that is a denial of basic freedom, and that is an abomination.
 
Voco_proTatiano said:
Every combattant government demonises its enemy.
Kaiser Bill was not the monster he was painted,
Stalin might have been, but he was our friend, regardless that he murdered many more ‘undesireables’ than did Hitler.
So I am a stumbling block to you.
Well, I am a stumbling block to any fool who swallows war time propaganda hook, line and sinker.
The world is not black and white.
There is no confrontation between the infinitely good and the infinitly evil.
Everything is grey. Some greys are darker than others.
Everyone is entitled to an advocate.
To deny that is a denial of basic freedom, and that is an abomination.
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I’ve never met an apologist for Hitler before.

But I can tell you this – we did not demonize Hitler. The very worst propaganda we could produce did not paint him as he actually was.

When Allied troops liberated the concetration camps and we saw the first newsreels of what happened there, it was a total shock to people in America – we never imagined the Nazis were that evil.
 
vern_humphrey said:
But you have to admit we’ve got an original here. I’ve occasionally run into apologists for terrorism on these forums, but never an apologist for Hitler!
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Ignore him, his ravings aren’t worthy of reply and are quite off-topic besides.
 
neophyte said:
Ignore him, his ravings aren’t worthy of reply and are quite off-topic besides.
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So you find me to be a raver.
Perhaps that is because you cannot bring yourself to accept that behind what I have to say, there is a deeper truth, which you, in your devotion to your own propaganda, cannot see.

Yes, Hitler did some bad stuff before the war, and was responsible for some EVIL stuff towards the end of the war.

But remember, the First World War was supposed to be the end of all wars, yet it imposed upon Germany, a reparation which was impossible to meet, therefore guaranteeing either the utter destruction of Germany, or a revolt against the reparation.
That Austro-Hungary and Germany had a JUST Causus Beli against Serbia, and her allies is quietly forgotten, and we have just recently found out by how much.
Thus, the second world war was caused in Europe by the first world war settlement, as was the war in the East caused by forcing Japan into a corner.
Japan was only emulating what the UK and US had been doing some 50 years earlier, but like Germany, she was not to be allowed into the club of empire builders.
Now for demons who were tolerated after we cried ‘never again’
Have you forgotten Pol Pot?
Have you forgotten Mugabe?
I have already reminded you of Stalin!
You demonised Saddam Hussain, but he was no worse than Tito, for an iron hand was needed to hold Iraq together, as you are now finding today. Either Iraq will fall apart, or a new iron man must be found, but fear this! the new iron man will not be a pro western secularist as was Hussain.
So to get back to the point:
Do not believe that there can ever be justification for a war of anihilation.
Neither believe that by destroying the enemy government, called in military terms, decapitation, that you can end a war.
To end thge war, there needs to be an authority which can parlay, even unconditional surrender, but note you, Japan did not surrender uncondotionally, The Emperor had to be retained, else Japan would have sunk to the extremes that Churchill promised, and a guerilla war would have continued for generations. The emperor was needed to command his troops surrender.
How hard you learnt that, and how quickly you forgot.
How many decades will you stay bogged down in Iraq?
You have been stuck in Germany now some sixty years. Yes, you now only have a few military bases there, and nominally refrain from putting pressure on the German Government, but yet you still apply pressure.
You are prepared to see your enemies as evil, but are immensly surprised when some of them see you as no less evil.
 
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