Allied Morality Questioned in Bombing of German Cities

[David Floyd]

Ramo, give it up - the government and US apologists here will never admit to their logical inconsistency. They think it's OK for the US/allies to kill civilians in order to further their aims, but not OK for anyone else.

Even a small child should be able to see that intentionally killing civilians is always wrong - and in fact a small child probably WOULD say that, before it was "explained" to him.

[loinburger]

A small child would probably also realize that the justification that somebody "wouldn't kill one innocent in order to save the lives of ten innocents, because at least by allowing ten innocents to die my hands will be clean" is complete and utter bull****. If you have the capability of stopping the murder of ten innocents and choose to do nothing in order to supposedly keep your hands clean, then you are culpable.

So yes, a small child will answer that it would be wrong for him/her to murder somebody, but a small child will answer that it is also wrong to allow somebody else to commit murder.

[David Floyd]

A small child would probably also realize that the justification that somebody "wouldn't kill one innocent in order to save the lives of ten innocents, because at least by allowing ten innocents to die my hands will be clean" is complete and utter bull****. If you have the capability of stopping the murder of ten innocents and choose to do nothing in order to supposedly keep your hands clean, then you are culpable.

Wait, you think it would be acceptable for me, personally, to murder one innocent person in cold blood
in order to save the lives of ten other innocents?

THAT is bull**** - the one person I'd be killing did nothing wrong, and does not deserve to die. Maybe the other 10 don't either, but that doesn't mean I have the right to kill another innocent to save them.

The fact is, I am responsible for my own actions. If I commit the injustice of killing one person, I am responsible. If someone else kills 10 innocents, they are responsible, not me.

But this isn't even what we're talking about. We're talking about the US and Britain burning hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to death in order to save the lives of their soldiers. That is absolutely unacceptable. Those governments should have known going in that their soldiers might be at risk - because let's face it, no one forced either one into the war, they both entered of their own free will (yes, I know Germany DOWd the US, but we put them in that position), and we should not have tried to make it easier on ourselves by murdering innocents.

But then again, these governments obviously weren't too concerned about the lives of their soldiers, seeing as how they forced them into slavery just to fight a war for political ends in the first place.

Bottom line? War is never, ever justified (except in the case of self defense against blatant aggression against yourself relying on volunteerism to fight the war), because in war, people die.

[Darius871]

This is obviously just one of those pointless arguments like abortion, either it feels right to or it doesn't.

[David Floyd]

How could burning civilians to death ever "feel right"?

[Darius871]

It never does, I mean loinburger's concept of killing one innocent to save ten innocents. If someone thinks it isn't right to kill even that one innocent, you can not convince them otherwise because it's a matter of conscience, and the same goes for those who think it's a worthwhile sacrifice.

IMO this isn't a matter of doing what is right, or doing what is necessary either, but just trying to do more good than harm in each day, and trying to live with that, and hope the man upstairs can sort out the rest.

To get on topic, I am totally with you on one thing: yes, it is absolutely wrong to kill innocents to save soldiers, which is what we're talking about here.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by David Floyd
The fact is, I am responsible for my own actions. If I commit the injustice of killing one person, I am responsible. If someone else kills 10 innocents, they are responsible, not me.

That's what I expected you to say. Yes, you are responsible for your own actions. If the action you take is to "do nothing," even though by "doing something" you could have done good and/or prevented evil, then by "doing nothing" you have caused less good and/or more evil to result. If you know that John wants to find Joey in order to murder him, and yet when John asks you where Joey is at you give him the information "because it would be wrong for you to lie," then you are going to be culpable in Joey's murder -- you share John's responsibility for the murder because you assisted him. If John is in the act of attempting to kill Joey (say he has a loaded gun pointed at him), and you are able to prevent the murder (by, say, breaking John's arm, or shooting him with your own gun) but do nothing "because John has done nothing wrong to you, so it would be wrong to harm him," then you share John's responsibility for the resulting murder because you had the ability to hinder/prevent the murder but did not do so.

Apathy is not always an ethical response to a dilemma. You are responsible for your own actions, so if your action or lack of action causes harm or does not result in good then you are culpable.

But this isn't even what we're talking about. We're talking about the US and Britain burning hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to death in order to save the lives of their soldiers. That is absolutely unacceptable.

It is what we're talking about -- was there a net loss of life as a result of allied bombing, or did allied bombing reduce the number casualties that would have been inflicted by the Nazis and the IJA thus resulting in a net gain of life? You've somehow reduced the question to "Is it wrong to kill innocents," which is irresponsible of you -- you've tried to present your own position as a tautology that pretty much everybody else on the thread already agrees to (while you imply that they disagree with it and thus that they aren't even worth debating with), while completely ignoring the fact that some of us don't consider apathy to be an ethical response to a dilemma.

[Kontiki]

Yikes, it's frightening how some people can actually justify the bombing of civilian targets. Dissident is one of the few who have the right perspective on this - it was terrible, morally reprehensible and, sadly, a part of that war. In the end, the allies won, which, on the whole, was a good thing. Saying it shouldn't have been done by anybody is like saying slavery should never have happened throughout human existance. Of course it shouldn't have, but it did and now we need to move on a learn from our past mistakes.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Exactly.

War is a fundamental evil, one of the greatest moral wrongs of all, in any of it's forms. Unfortunately, sometimes the alternatives forced upon you by would be enemies are worse. So pile on the bastards and break 'em as fast as possible, by whatever means are necessary and effective.

Great quote and thought. I haven't read the enirety of this thread but this struck me as the heart of the matter. The means to an end arguement should have the following as a corralary. It is appropriate to resort to these types of actions when enough force is applied that it spares future actions that otherwise would result in far greater casualties.

The ongoing MtG/Floyd philosophical arguements are IMO voided when the alternative is years of piece meal fighting with far greater casulaties that otherwise are avoided by delivering overwhelming force.

As for the piece in question, I believe the commanders had moral misgivings before they pulled the trigger on these operations, but realized the necessity. Hard decisions require hardened individuals.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by Ned


SD, the vast bulk of the civilian bombing was conducted by the British. The US bombed in daylight and used precision sights to target military objectives. The Brits, in contrast, carpet bombed cities at night.

This is total crap. Despite the massive amount of propaganda surrounding the Norden bombsight, the "precesion sights" were anything but, and all evidence shows this. "From 20,000 feet, 2/3 of American bombs fell 1/5 of a mile off target or more."

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1004.htm

I'll agree that it was nice that the Americans tried to improve accuracy, but don't be naive about the actual effectiveness.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Guardian
Okay, so as long as you're "not as bad" as the other side, you can't be wrong, is that it?

Well, I'm sure Saddam, Bin Laden and all their friends will be pleased to hear that, because when it comes to amounts of blood spilled, the US is about seven leagues above the lot of them even if taken together.

Hmm, 2 out of 10.

[DanS]

I don't have any problem with this historian questioning the morality of allied bombing. He might find that the Allies went overboard in some instances. I'm horrified that the firebombing of Tokyo went ahead, even though it might in the end prove to have been justified.

It seems likely that the US didn't have a sufficiently advanced protocols to make these trade-off decisions. Whether these primitive protocols rise to the level of negligence is open to argument. I'm reminded that not 25 years before, there wasn't even a framework for using poisonous gas...

Since then, and especially since Vietnam, we've taken great pains to make our weapons more precise. There is a moral element to that. Call it "pre-sorting" for the almighty.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DanS
Since then, and especially since Vietnam, we've taken great pains to make our weapons more precise. There is a moral element to that. Call it "pre-sorting" for the almighty.

It also has something to do with PR.

[DanS]

Oh, yes. We killed several birds with that stone, including cost/kill. Hardly costs a nickle nowadays.

[Ozz]

This is why you don't start a war, you don't know what
horrors your unleasing when you start the shooting.

The Germans, Japanese got exactly what they deserved.

"Bombs on England" indeed