cahth3iK

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• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Wtih a set of offences specifically tailored to their deeds whiles excluding those of the Allies, potentially inventing new offences apply retroactively for this purpose. Precisely what happened at Nuremberg. At Nuremberg, not only were strategic bombardment carefully excluded, despite...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  I am aware of Japanese attrocities. I think that the appropriate response is trial for the culprit, not descended to their level. What happened was symetric attrocities from the Allies, some sort of show trial for the officials who had...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "It was horrible, immoral, and still the best alternative anyone at the time could think of." I agree on this; given that it is what the US officials implemented at the time, it is almost a truism to say that...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Sorry, I did not mean to insinuate that Hugo believes nuclear weapons to be a panacea; I was merely pointing out that he is in total agreement with the official stance of the US government and officials according to which,...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  No, seriously: if you believe that an island with a 1:3 ratio of military to civilians is representative of anything, you fail political history, big time. And you do not reach governmental levels of authority by having no clue on...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  IIRC, there have been symbolic trials. The problem is that they typically feature philosophers and known Western dissidents who not only reach foregone conclusions, but pompously voice judgements of value without the slightest legal technical content. They are a case...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  As I said, Okinawa had a disproportionately large proportion of military personel to civilian population. I do not think that it can be taken as representative of Japan. It is obviously true that the Japanese commited war crimes; I am...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  What do you mean, "who I am" ? I just do not believe in the notion of an entire people fighting to the death with bamboo spears or committing suicide. This did not happen in Germany in 1945; and the...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Certainly hindsight is an issue. Now, consider this: Litte Boy and Fat Man were the only two nuclear warheads in the US inventory; the next ones were months away, and the output would still have been a trickle. The threat...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  The proportion of military personel on Okinawa was not typical of a society. Indeed, the fact that some soldiers found it necessary to coerce civilians into suicide or to directly kill them is an indication that these civilians had not...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  For a start, calling your interlocutor ignorant is not a good rhetorical technique to convince them. Then again, I have read more than Wikipedia articles on the subject. I do not understand your point about conventional bombs. I said that...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  PPS: as for precision bombing, you do not do that with B-29s. They are not made for that. But you can with carrier-based bombers. In 1945, there were US carriers sailing so ridiculously close to Japan that USS "Franklin" was...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  PS: this said, I hear your caution about anachronic notions on national politics. I just think that if I sin in this respect, it'd be more by thinking of 1945 United States as setting the background and as a precursor...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  That story about the Japanese being incapable of surrendering is just a canard. For a start, they DID surrender. If their education had brainwashed them to the point that is often stated, the nuclear strikes should have just been only...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  PS: the central kernel of Nazi ideology is actually the "Völklisch" movement. You do find Nazis who were only mildly interested in persecuting Jews, but they all shared a mythical and grandiose notion of the origins of Germany. I've never...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  I know of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. So what? Gandhi wrote a letter of congratulations to Hitler, that did not make him a Nazi. Germany was an international player and it is not unexpected for other players to try...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "Kill all the jews – check (...) We want plenty of living space (Lebensraum) (this time around it’s everything ever controlled” by islam) – check" Oh, please. I can do that with pro-Israeli Christian fundamentalists. Comparisons are supposed to enlighten;...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Racism colours the worldview of racists, but it rarely isolates them completely from reality (remember: it is hard to take both power, and leave of one's senses). To give you an example, the French were pretty racist about the Viet-Namese...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  I am quite agreed with "No Japanese citizen should claim that Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a war crime, if they can't admit that the 1937 Rape of Nanking was at least as bad", and in fact it is a general principle: just...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  You know, Soviet symphatizers in Russia also believe in evolution and that the Earth is round. It doesn't make it false. Yes, of course, mass-bombing cities with incendiary weapons is *also* a war crime. Either that, or "not killing civilians"...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Yeah, regarding the capability for chemical warfare, I'm always amazed at how the anthrax attacks of 2001 had faded out of fashion after it was known that they did not originate from Al Qaeda. At the time, it was almost...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Of course the terms of the Japanese were not acceptable as such. This is the reason why people negociate. If you negociate only with people to whose terms you agree, there is nothing to discuss. Alas, this notion is a...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Hey! Portugal and the Netherlands were absolutely major world powers in the 1500s! Netherlands was the main European partner with Japan because of its massive naval capailities, and Portugal divided the world in two with Spain for them to colonise....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Regarding the end of the Second World War in the Pacific: the Japanese wanted to capitulate, i.e. negociate their surrender against some concessions from the Allies. To the Americans, this was unacceptable: they wanted Japan to surrender unconditionnally (Charles puts...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  @16: One of five, with China, no?...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  @12: "...combined with the French nuclear capability" Erm. So, the French would keep their four stategic nuclear submarines and ~200 100kt warheads while the British would disarm? That's not commitment to disarmement, more like sub-contracting strategic deterrence. I'd rather see...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  The notion of firearms as "levelers" is a myth. If they really were, police forces would not need special intervention teams of trained hunks armed to the teeth; part-time squads of artritic old ladies with vintage Webley revolvers would suffice....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Incidentally, in line with the port, I heartily recommand Hans Blix' "Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters". http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-nuclear-disarmament-matters...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  When I was a child, my parents were friends with a French Army colonel who worked with Pluton and Hadès missiles -- what the French called "pre-strategic" intermediate-range missiles: they'd blow up a Soviet armoured division in Germany, not to...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Pretty much the same thing with the UKUSA intelligence agreement. Craig Murray suggests that it is the reason why the UK was spoon-fed bollocks during the run-up to the aggression against Iraq, provided its own contributions to it, and washed...