[xibalba]

> you can't seriously be saying it's justified to kill 200k Japanese civilians to save a small handful of allied lives

I absolutely would argue in favor of this. In fact, I would argue that it would have been morally just to kill every last Japanese person, military or not, if Japan refused surrender (which was part of the Emperor’s plan for self preservation). Remember the context: 1) Japan attacked the U.S. to initiate hostilities and 2) Japanese resistance became more fierce, fanatical, and deadly (ex: suicide bombings by both military and civilians) as the U.S. approached mainland Japan.

[csee]

You would trade off 200k Japanese civilians for, say, 1000 allied lives? What ratio is morally justified?

If you are arguing that a 200:1 ratio is acceptable, I believe this is a morally bankrupt perspective, given that the consequence of this is a genocide of a people who are otherwise perfectly normal without the broken software that was running in their minds and their society at the time, and given that it is a collectivistic perspective that assigns moral guilt to an entire civilian population (including children) instead of the specific individual bad actors that caused the situation.

Regarding the latter point - on this premise that every single Japanese person shared moral culpability for what Japan was doing - it can't be squared with an understanding of what actually happened. I mean, the existence of children is a QED against it. But even just talking adults - At that stage the country was a fascist dictatorship, with multiple democratically elected leaders assassinated by the military (which was taken over by a fanatical fascist contingent in the 1930s) and a tremendous propaganda effort by the military to control all information and brainwash the general public into thinking they were doing good and just work overseas. Combine this with a poor, ignorant farmer population, and I don't think the simple moral prism that you're applying works.

[nradov]

What ratio are you arguing is morally acceptable? Please give us a specific number with justification.

It's easy to act morally superior decades later. We're not the ones who were forced to make a hard decision in extreme circumstances. How could President Truman possibly morally justify telling Americans that even one more of their sons had to die in order to protect enemy civilians?

[csee]

Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?

If it's 10:1, then that's basically saying that Japanese adult civilian lives are worth absolutely nothing and can be killed without any moral concern, but Japanese children are worth the same as allied lives.

Going any further (e.g 200:1) is unjustifible unless we adopt the collectivistic moral guilt framework where one has moral guilt (including children) simply for existing in that country at that time, irrespective of individual culpability.

  "How could President Truman possibly morally justify telling Americans that even one more of their sons had to die in order to protect enemy civilians?"

Just because the general public would find it difficult to put moral worth into civilian lives of an enemy doesn't make those lives worthless.

I also don't like the language of calling them enemy civilians. They are civilians who live in a country that's currently an enemy.

[xibalba]

> Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?

Are you asking a question?

> Going any further (e.g 200:1)

You're engaging in pseudo-intellectual quantification that is meaningless and unbound by anything objective. But that's besides the point.

The point is, the U.S. was pulled into war by Japan and did not have had any obligation to lose even one more person to end the conflict. And yet the calculus was clear: the loss of life by the U.S. was going to significantly increase per unit of effort/victory as it approached mainland Japan.

> doesn't make those lives worthless

No one is arguing this. But when it comes to the life of my son or brother vs. the life of someone I don't know, I know what my choice will be every single time. And I would bet my entire net worth that 999 out of 1,000 people would choose similarly in that situation. The instinct to stay alive completely outstrips armchair intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight.

[csee]

I am offering my opinion, but you already knew that and were just being sarcastic.

It is also not meaningless, you simply totally ignored the rationale I provided for the 10:1 figure. It's the ratio that roughly equalizes the moral worth of allied troops with Japanese children.

Admittedly this is all subjective, but that also applies to your opinions.

  "The point is, the U.S. was pulled into war by Japan and did not have had any obligation to lose even one more person to end the conflict."

The US wasn't pulled into war by Japanese children, though, and you seem to be perfectly fine with their extermination under your perverse doctrine of collective guilt.

  "No one is arguing this. But when it comes to the life of my son or brother vs. the life of someone I don't know, I know what my choice will be every single time. And I would bet my entire net worth that 999 out of 1,000 people would choose similarly in that situation. The instinct to stay alive completely outstrips armchair intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight"

People decide to do lots of shitty things for all sorts of reasons. The mere act of deciding to do said shitty thing and the fact that that shitty thing is a popular choice doesn't make it less shitty and doesn't serve as a moral justification.

[comrh]

> to kill every last Japanese person, military or not

This is a war crime.

[throw0101a]

Not if the Japanese person was running at you with a weapon in-hand:

> In addition, the Japanese had organized the Volunteer Fighting Corps, which included all healthy men aged 15 to 60 and women 17 to 40 for a total of 28 million people, for combat support and, later, combat jobs. Weapons, training and uniforms were generally lacking: many were armed with nothing better than antiquated firearms, molotov cocktails, longbows, swords, knives, bamboo or wooden spears, and even clubs and truncheons: they were expected to make do with what they had.[63][64] One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen."[65] They were expected to serve as a "second defense line" during the Allied invasion, and to conduct guerrilla warfare in urban areas and mountains.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Ground_forc...

At the very least it would be a form of self-defence.

[xibalba]

[flagged]

[dragonwriter]

> The entire concept of "war crime" is a post hoc rationalization for killing one's enemies after the conclusion of hostilities (see Nuremberg trials.)

The concept of universal laws of war to which all participants are bound and in principal accountable long predates the Nuremberg trials.

> Further, for much of human history, genocide (or the attempt thereof) was standard practice in warfare

For most of human history, slavery was a standard practice, both in and out of warfare, that doesn't make it right.

[xibalba]

You seem to misunderstand me. I don't make an argument for its "rightness".

Rather, war crimes will always occur in war. And the primitive instinct to stay alive, at almost any price, is programmed into us. When faced with existential threats to our loved ones, these ivory tower questions about the relative worths of lives (100:1? 10:1?) are exposed for the nonsense they always were. Our biological programming kicks in: "survive at any cost - protect your own – eradicate the threat". It is only subsequent generations, from upon high in their ivory towers and far removed from the threat, who are able to condemn the savagery of the survivors.

In other words, it is always best to not enter a war. Perhaps even if attacked. 9/11 and the U.S.'s insane and disastrous responses in Afghanistan and Iraq being the latest demonstrations.