[vingt-2]

We're talking about a country which dropped two nuclear warheads on civilian areas. It's a shame and a delusion to even think that the US even once were a symbol of "moral leadership" with "consideration for human life". Edit: I know this sounds like a cliché and a simplistic point of view, but I think it's quite interesting to look at the US history with this in mind.

[fnordfnordfnord]

We dropped the equivalent of many nuclear weapons worth of conventional bombs on Japan.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di...

[nine_k]

[Flamebait warning] There's an ongoing discussion whether the use of nuclear bombs resulted in more casualties than a ground operation with conventional means would. Read about Iwojima, about Japanese schoolchildren being taught how to fight American soldiers on the streets.

If you want an example of massive and pointless civilian casualties caused by Allies in WWII, take the Dresden bombing instead.

[vingt-2]

I totally understand the strategy and absolutely don't rule out the fact that it may have saved more life than it brutally took. But it doesn't change the fact that one nation can make the decision to murder thousand of civilians in hope that it'll save (allies mostly) lives.

[pekk]

Of course, no nation other than the US ever makes this terribly fraught decision. The Axis, for example, always erred on the side of not hurting any civilians. And no nation other than the US today would do something that could even inadvertently hurt civilians.

[DanBC]

At the start of WWII the idea of civilian death was abhorrent and not something that military leaders would tolerate.

It took considerable effort to change opinions to allow deliberate targeting of civilian populations.

To go from not killing civilians, to bombing cities, to the awful fire-bombing of Dresden and the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima shows just how brutal we became during the war.

I'm not sure why you mention the Axis powers. "The Nazis did it too" is not something I want to use to justify my behaviour. We know the Axis powers were fucking evil. I hope we hold ourselves to higher standards that the people carrying out the Holocaust or Unit 731.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731)

> And no nation other than the US today would do something that could even inadvertently hurt civilians

The US deliberately targets civilians. Very many civilian deaths are caused and these are not inadvertent or accidental.

Over 500 cruise missiles and over 1,500 air sorties, causing over 6,000 civilian deaths (Shock and Awe, beginning of Iraq war)is not some incidental death count.

[pekk]

You have misrepresented what I said to a really breathtaking extent. I never said "the Nazis did it too," my concern was never to justify anyone's behavior.

I am addressing a distortion of history. If you don't recognize that fraught decisions and, yes, the unintentional AND intentional deaths of civilians (and rape, and torture) are an ancient part of war - NOT just by the US or the Allies or even the parties to WWII - then I am sorry to say that something is very wrong with your understanding of war and history. Specifically, it is a very selective understanding; a very conveniently selective understanding, aimed only at imparting a sense that the US is worse than everything else in history.

It isn't helpful to propagate this misunderstanding, by selectively citing ONLY cases where the US has killed civilians (but nobody else, and always out of context). It isn't helpful to equivocate casually between civilian deaths in war, and intentionally killing civilians, as if they were exactly the same thing.

There are important and meaningful changes in how civilians have been affected by war over time. But you are just blowing these away entirely in favor of a simplistic cartoon.

I'm not sure why you would hold me to account for defending the Iraq war, which I have never done, or attribute to me the bizarrely specific claim that 6,000 deaths is "incidental". Perhaps you should address this to someone who supported that war.

[riggins]

It's understandable why DanBC was confused. You wrote:

The Axis, for example, always erred on the side of not hurting any civilians.

I have no idea where you got that idea. Hitler used collective punishment against civilian populations to deter resistance. Stuff like 'for every German soldier that dies, we kill 100 civilians'. The German's also bombed civilian centers like London and Belgrade.

[pekk]

If you are supposed to have special consideration for human life, it's strange that you don't focus on much more lethal campaigns of firebombing, or ground campaigns.