War in Gaza

[Szdfan]

So do you think that because the US military is hypocritical and morally compromised and dropped the atomic bomb, that the Nuremberg Trials shouldn't have happened? By your logic, since ancient militaries killed civilians and all armies care more about winning than civilian deaths, why shouldn't Nazi Germany be able to systemically murder 6 million Jews? How could the US and its allies prosecute Nazi leadership after the war because of Hiroshima and Dresden?

Let’s turn that around. Are you saying that the Nuremberg trials prove that the US is not morally compromised and was justified in dropping the atomic bombs?

No.

I think that that what Germany did was quite wicked. But I’m saying that if Germany won, there wouldn’t have been trials, much like later Russias Stalin has never been on trial and just like the US wasn’t. If Germany and Japan had won, the US soldiers would have paid accordingly for their deeds. Germany and Japan would have argued that they would never do such a thing as destroying American cities.

Of course the Germans were developing nuclear weapons at the same time the US was and did employ V1 and V2 missiles to attack cities. They didn't have the range to reach the US.

And I’d like to see some evidence that rules of war, have actual reduced killing instead of any reduction in killing being attributed more accurately to economics or other factors.
It gets murky. I can imagine a military command center calling off an air strike because of 10 civilians. That’s a plus. But then if the military target was valuable enough, I can see the same military command being willing to strike in spite of the 10 civilians.

I'm not sure it's possible to prove that. However, there have been moments where American soldiers who have committed atrocities have been held accountable -- Abu Grahib and Mai Lai, for example.

Such is the dilemma we find ourselves in once we venture away from Gods will. Once we are so far outside of Gods will that we think it is okay to kill people because of a magic combination of (a) someone in fancy clothes told me to, and (b) I am wearing matching fancy clothes as him, this gives me license to kill other people as long as they are wearing different fancy clothes.
But if we all take off our fancy clothes and wear normal clothes, it would make this same killing murder, and I may be killed myself by people wearing certain special clothing.

But since the world is so far outside of will of God, shouldn't we support efforts by the world to mitigate some of its worst impulses?

Each culture probably has slightly different takes on what sort of behavior is bad in war. Islamic militants included, tribal people, cannibals too. And Christians have a completely different take, which I think, should not give quarter to the argument that having rules of engagement and war, makes our version of war making more justified and civilized. We call a cannibal tribe barbaric for eating their enemy. They may call the US barbaric for bombing entire cities.

I still reject the notion that somehow we can't criticize anything or that nobody can hold any other country accountable for horrific behavior.

[RZehr]

Ya, I’m not really against these rules. For sure not against the intent of them.
I just really question their efficacy. War involves public opinion and support, right? And this is helped, if you can tell the populace that we are fighting war in an honorable war with honorable methods and motives. Then people don’t demand war to cease.
So I’m concerned and suspect that these rules are actually in service of more war making. Rules may save civilian lives in certain targeting decisions, but if they justify more war overall? And if the evidence supports this hypothesis, then shouldn’t we then be against them, if they are contributing to more war and conflicts?

I think we are seeing this in Israel now. The Israelis feel justified in what they are doing. And they view themselves as fighting with modern, civilized methods. Not like barbaric Hamas. And nonetheless, look at what is happening at their hands. Mass civilian causalities. And we don’t want to mention how Hamas fights and how they apply rules of war, or else Bootstrap might bootstrap me.

[Ken]

The US and probably every nation, values their soldiers lives higher than the enemies civilian lives. Remember why the atomic bombs were dropped? The US was already winning the war at that point. But the US didn’t want to lose the soldiers it would take to storm Japan proper. In other words, the US decided Japanese civilian lives lost didn’t matter as much as losing American soldier lives.cute Nazi leadership after the war because

I don't think the calculation was nearly as simplistic as you make it sound. And you also have to calculate how many Japanese lives were saved by not invading Japan. The US Military and government was planning the invasion of Japan in the wake of the Battle of Okinawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa which had just finished and had killed something like 250,000 American, Japanese and Okinawans and wounded many tens of thousands more. By that point, Japan was essentially a death cult using children as suicide bombers, civilians as cannon fodder, and were waging suicidal kamikaze attacks that sank dozens of American ships. By the end of the battle, 90% of Okinawa was destroyed.

If you are an American decision maker in the summer of 1945 your choices are essentially:

Invasion of Japan for which Okinawa was a harbinger. Death toll would have been at least a 10-1 ratio if not 20-1 so for every 100,000 Americans that are killed or wounded it kills 1-2 million Japanese, a large percentage of whom are civilians and children mobilized to fight last stand battles. And the war drags on into 1946 if not 1947. The battles likely become far more bloody than even Okinawa.

Siege and Blockade of Japan. This was thought to be the most non-violent option. Just cordon off Japan with an immense naval and air blockade until it surrenders while strategic bombing of infrastructure and cities continues. But given the fanaticism of the Japanese government this would have pushed the war into at least 1947 and would have resulted in the deaths of millions of Japanese through starvation and bombing. Japanese industry was embedded into civilian neighborhoods much more densely than in the US or Europe. So bombing military targets meant bombing civilian neighborhoods. And conventional bombing would have continued to escalate the longer Japan held out.

Nuclear Weapons. We all know how that turned out.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and alternative histories are difficult. But one can make a very serious argument that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the least deadly way of bringing the war to an end. And that bringing it to an end a year earlier through nuclear weapons actually saved millions of lives. One can never know what an actual invasion or blockade of Japan would have looked like. But it would have been among the deadliest in history.

Also bear in mind the war was not just between the US and Japan. By far the deadliest aspect of the war was between Japan and China. The Chinese suffered between 14 and 35 million casualties due to the Japanese occupation of China and the war in China. Without a decisive victory over the Japanese home islands, that war would have just dragged on as well. The Japanese has nearly a million troops in China at the end of the war and that occupation would have only grown more deadly and brutal the more Japan was threatened. Postponing the end of the war with Japan into 1946 or 1947 could have sentenced millions more Chinese to death. Especially if the Japanese military had retreated to fortress redoubts in China.

Finally, consider the political consequences if the US had chosen a conventional invasion of Japan that went badly and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of Japanese and another year of war if it had then become public that the US had weapons that could have ended the war a year earlier and had chosen not to use them. That was on decision-makers minds as well.

Did Truman make the right decision? I don't suppose we will ever know without knowing how all the other policy choices would have played out.

Sometimes bringing a war to a quick and bloody end is the more human option to allowing it to linger on for years more.

[RZehr]

Which sounds familiar to the Gaza War logic. Hamas is a death cult too. And Israel thinks that this war will somehow reduce deaths in the long run if they can win totally.

Point being, when the stakes are high enough, the rules erode. When the stakes are low, rules can be afforded.

It’s good when they are afforded. But prepare to wring hands in consternation if you don’t understand that they will not stop if hinder a real war. Don’t depend on rules. The solution has to come from somewhere else.

[Ken]

Which sounds familiar to the Gaza War logic. Hamas is a death cult too. And Israel thinks that this war will somehow reduce deaths in the long run if they can win totally.

Point being, when the stakes are high enough, the rules erode. When the stakes are low, rules can be afforded.

It’s good when they are afforded. But prepare to wring hands in consternation if you don’t understand that they will not stop if hinder a real war. Don’t depend on rules. The solution has to come from somewhere else.

Every war is different but they all rhyme at some level. Hamas is to a large extent, the creation of Israel. And the conduct of the war seems to be driven more by political necessity for Netanyahu than anything else. In the summer of 1945 the political imperative in the US was to bring the war to an end as fast as possible. Today in Israel it seems to be the opposite. Keep prosecuting it as long as possible.

Same thing in Ukraine. Russia and Putin seem to have gotten addicted to war and continuing the war in Ukraine is the political imperative over bringing it to some negotiated end that would turn Russian eyes inward to ask why their economy and country is in shambles.

[RZehr]

Hamas is a creation of Israel. I think I understand what is meant by this, and don’t dispute that history. I think its similar to Al-Qaeda and Bin Ladin and the US.

But it seems to infantile Hamas, to remove their own agency and responsibility. These are men like you and I, who have free will, and can make choices. No matter Israel’s role in Hamas, every single Hamas member, from top to bottom, has not lost their free will, has not become an empty drone of Israel, where every action they personally take is Israel’s fault.

[Ken]

Hamas is a creation of Israel. I think I understand what is meant by this, and don’t dispute that history. I think its similar to Al-Qaeda and Bin Ladin and the US.

But it seems to infantile Hamas, to remove their own agency and responsibility. These are men like you and I, who have free will, and can make choices. No matter Israel’s role in Hamas, every single Hamas member, from top to bottom, has not lost their free will, has not become an empty drone of Israel, where every action they personally take is Israel’s fault.

Israel technically didn't create Hamas. But the Netanyahu government deliberately empowered Hamas through a whole lot of different means in order to prevent a Palestinian government that would have sought a more peaceful two-state solution. It was to their political advantage to have Hamas as their opponent than some more reasonable government.

So the monster that was Hamas on 10/7 was very much an Israeli creation.

[Szdfan]

Hamas is a creation of Israel. I think I understand what is meant by this, and don’t dispute that history. I think its similar to Al-Qaeda and Bin Ladin and the US.

But it seems to infantile Hamas, to remove their own agency and responsibility. These are men like you and I, who have free will, and can make choices. No matter Israel’s role in Hamas, every single Hamas member, from top to bottom, has not lost their free will, has not become an empty drone of Israel, where every action they personally take is Israel’s fault.

Israel technically didn't create Hamas. But the Netanyahu government deliberately empowered Hamas through a whole lot of different means in order to prevent a Palestinian government that would have sought a more peaceful two-state solution. It was to their political advantage to have Hamas as their opponent than some more reasonable government.

So the monster that was Hamas on 10/7 was very much an Israeli creation.

Israel -- through its oppressive treatment of Palestinians in Gaza -- also helped create the conditions where a sizable part of the population would support and feel sympathy for Hamas.

[Bootstrap]

Which sounds familiar to the Gaza War logic. Hamas is a death cult too. And Israel thinks that this war will somehow reduce deaths in the long run if they can win totally.

Point being, when the stakes are high enough, the rules erode. When the stakes are low, rules can be afforded.

It’s good when they are afforded. But prepare to wring hands in consternation if you don’t understand that they will not stop if hinder a real war. Don’t depend on rules. The solution has to come from somewhere else.

I agree. But the rules can be a kind of litmus test, a way of clearly seeing that something has gone way beyond what is acceptable.

Both Israel and Hamas are after retribution. There is no way to justify the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. There is no way to justify what Israel is doing now from a rational military perspective. Unless you accept terrorism as a military strategy. Israel has lost the moral high ground in the way they have conducted this war, and a lot of their traditional allies have backed away.

[ken_sylvania]

Which sounds familiar to the Gaza War logic. Hamas is a death cult too. And Israel thinks that this war will somehow reduce deaths in the long run if they can win totally.

Point being, when the stakes are high enough, the rules erode. When the stakes are low, rules can be afforded.

It’s good when they are afforded. But prepare to wring hands in consternation if you don’t understand that they will not stop if hinder a real war. Don’t depend on rules. The solution has to come from somewhere else.

I agree. But the rules can be a kind of litmus test, a way of clearly seeing that something has gone way beyond what is acceptable.

Both Israel and Hamas are after retribution. There is no way to justify the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. There is no way to justify what Israel is doing now from a rational military perspective. Unless you accept terrorism as a military strategy. Israel has lost the moral high ground in the way they have conducted this war, and a lot of their traditional allies have backed away.

Who determines what is acceptable?

Historically it's been powerful nations with wealth and technology who set the rules of war in a way that favors their preferred method of fighting.