President's are accountable regardless of what you suggest here.

This is the equivalent of saying "Nuh-unh." You can do better.

dc dux, I read this http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...06/17/company/ ....and if it's an accurate .description of the moves and intent of our democratic leaders in congress, I can't see your objections of my characterization of the democrats as the other major right wing political party in the US. They aren't even able or interested in giving us crumbs in negotiating this surveillance authority and accountability..... you want me to support this party? Isn't it correct to work against Hoyer, Pelosi, Rockefeller, Reid and house and senate members who support them and vote with them, as if they were republican thugs like Kit Bond? It's only are rights they are ceding to Bush & Cheney.....

host....the party of Hoyer, Pelosi, Rockefeller, Reid stopped Bush's illegal "terrorist surveillance program" that wiretapped American citizens w/o a warrant.

I dont agree with the compromise proposal on telecomm immunity in the current that would leave it to the FISA courts to determine immunity.

But the bill does reinforce, and some might say strengthen, the basic underpinning of the FISA program that prohibits warrantless wiretaps of citizens.

I accept that I wont likely agree with the Democratic party on every provision of every bill but I wont disavow the party based on those relatively few disagreements (at least for me).

The reason I never joined the Democrats was my unwillingness to compromise on things like this. Tellecom immunity, continuing to fund the war... I don't know why I'd want to compromise on such important votes.

Can you imagine if the Democratic Congress voted down everything to do with wiretapping and the war?

Will...I judge on the totality of the Democrats policies and actions.

On the issue of wiretapping American citizens w/o a warrant for 4+ years...they STOPPED IT from continuing unabated!

Its very likely that would not have happened if the majority party in Congress had not changed in 2006.

I simply don't understand where you want to take this.

I certainly accept the fact that a President has power and can act on his own initiative without consulting others. However, in our form of government his acts are validated or invalidated by the actions (or inactions) of the other branches. Therefore I do not accept the broad concept of the President being able to act unilaterally, especially when it comes to matters like war, torture, habeas corpus, etc.. Certainly, I can accept the flaws in our system relative to timing. My question to you was was regarding the timing issue. The President can ask others to execute a decision based on his sole judgment. However, even that requires complicity on the part of others for execution of his decision and is therefore not unilateral. If the President fails to uphold the law of the land, our other branches have an immediate obligation to address that situation in my opinion. Again, in my view that is not "unilateral".

I don't know how to express my view on this any different. If what I have presented is saying "Nuh-unh", so be it. I think some of you just want to be able to say the "unpleasant" things are all about Bush and not take any responsibility for our current situation. In my view that is simply disingenuous.

I expect Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba to be vilified by the right...and they cant use th excuse that he is profiting by writing a book...he just told the truth, as he believed it to be:

By that standard, is the failure of Russia to nuke the USA in response to US action a condoning of US action?

In order for the Judicial branch to say "no" to the executive branch, they need a case brought before them. And, to quote the asshole on your 20$ bill, "the supreme court has made it's decision. Now let them enforce it" in response to Andrew Jackson's plans to commit genocide on the Native Americans living on land the Andrew Jackson wanted for white people.

Similarly, in order for the Congress to censure the President, they have to impeach the president. This is a long, drawn-out process that requires a large amount of resources and time. Can the President not be guilty of being an idiot, an asshole, or a fuck up without the implicit consent of congress unless congress impeaches the president every time the President does something wrong?

Under that kind of logic, I hold you personally responsible for every act I do. You could come up here and prevent my action (sure, you don't know where I live -- but you could spend lots of money finding it out, I'm not untrackable).

It's a complete abdication of any responsibility for any action whatsoever, as far as I can tell.

Similarly, guess what happens if the President says "go and do X", and you don't do X? You, personally, are pretty much fucked. The President has made it clear that if you obstruct his choices, he'll fire you and ruin your career. So when the President tells you to do something that seems merely questionable, and doesn't want to here "but, that's dumb", you can either quit your job, ruin your life, or do the merely questionable act.

Under your standard, the fact that 1000s of people are willing to do what the President tells them to do, even if the act seems questionable to them, means that they collectively are responsible for the President's decisions?

Remember: the President doesn't say "here is what is going on. Here is what I think will happen. Thus, I think you should do X. Do you concur?" The President is expected to have access to information that you don't have -- in theory, that information might be sufficiently sensitive that you _shouldn't_ know it, even if things are working fine. So sure, it might be a bad idea to invade Iraq without a good reconstruction plan -- but you are the General in charge of the invasion, and you don't have the time to make sure that the President is doing the job. Barring your invasion orders being utterly idiotic on their face, with no possible way to make them not-stupid, you presume the President has delt with the other problems outside of your domain.

And that holds for lots of people. Maybe a handful know the entire plan -- and they have raised their objections asto why it is wrong, but their job is to advise the President, not override the President. Even if they quit, they aren't legally allowed to go off and tell other people that the President is being an idiot.

I don't get it. Do I just misunderstand your position?

Not correct. We don't have a legal relationship with each other as the President and the other branches have a constitutionally defined relationship. Abetter way to look at it is - if you had authority to do stuff, but I had authority of the money you needed to do it, you would not be able to do anything that involved real money without my involvement. If you lie or engage in defrauding others to be able to do stuff, then you should be held accountable for that. So, in that regard, if a President does act "unilaterally", I would expect that he would be held accountable by the other branches of government. I understand the problem of timing in our system, however, unless the President is actually doing the torture, launching a nuclear bomb, etc, he has to have complicity in his decision. If I were a general and the President asked me to launch a nuclear bomb and I felt it was the wrong thing to do, I would not do it. Congress is involved in selecting people who would be in position to execute those kinds of orders.

I disagree. The people who stood up against Nixon were not "fucked". There are many other examples of heroic Americans who stand strong for what they think is right. Sometimes you have to accept the consequences for your views. Regarding the Iraq, war I think Collen Powell paid a price for disagreeing with the Administration, agree or disagree with him I don't perceive Powell as being "fucked".

Quiting a job does not equate to ruining your life. You present a false choice.

Also, the thing about Bush is everyone knew his views. You can not realistically suggest that anyone was surprised by anything Bush has done. For example the guy said he was going to do everything in his power to go after terrorists. What did people think that was going to mean? What it meant to me was that he was going to tap phones, he was going employ extreme investigation techniques (i.e. - water boarding, which was not defined as torture when it was being employed), etc, etc, he was going to push the limits do things that the average person might feel uncomfortable about. So, if you were in the CIA or a guy like Gonzales and you hear the Presidents words, what are you going to do? If you are in Congress and you hear those words, what are you going to do? Well we know. Congress did nothing initially but give Bush the authority and money to execute his war. When the politics of it got uncomfortable some in Congress said - oh that was all Bush - we did not know he would...- Bush acted "unilaterally"-etc., etc. I say that was and is BS.

If you have a responsibility and you don't act that is being complicit in my view. If you don't have a responsibility and you don't act, then you are a bystander, or a potential victim.

I would not risk being a victim and I would act, what would you do? If I felt a President was going to execute an illegal war, I would put a lot of effort into organizing people to protest, stand-up against it, use whatever power/influence I had to stop it. I had respect for the people who did that with the Iraq war, even though I disagreed with them. That is what makes this country great. On the other hand, we have people like John Kerry, who was for the war and against it at the same time. Gee, give me a break.

I would not presume anything. I would question the President until I was satisfied that the decision was correct. I don't think I am unique in that regard.

I just think we see issues in a totally different way. I am often amazed by how different two people can see an issue. I believe you are very sincere in how you see this, and I find it very interesting. I doubt we could ever reconcile our different points of view on this. I understand your words and I think you understand mine, your reaction to my words is like "you must be kidding?" My reaction to your words are the same.

He sure isn't the Republican Nominee for president. :p

Clearly you don't have a career-dominated life. :-)

I was somewhat surprised when a "we will not engage in nation-building" isolationist turned out to be planning of an invasion of Iraq from before he was elected president, yes. I was actually +shocked+ that the US President would put forward bald-faced lies in order to attempt to convince the world that Iraq was worth invading.

I mean, I didn't think someone would be that destructive of US interests.

Until the amount of raw destructiveness of the administration was revealed, I figured that it meant that he would do everything that the US president has the legal power to do. You know, "in his Power".

What the fuck? Are you joking?

Water Boarding was called torture when Japanese military members where tried on War Crimes charges after World War II. By the US fucking government. 50 fucking years ago.

Or are you saying they tortured people, while saying "This is totally not torture, right guys? Right?"

I actually vaguely recall that the US President stated that he had evidence and knowledge that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical weapons, and possibly nuclear weapons. And that this information came from confidential sources that the US President couldn't share, because it would endanger them.

Can the US President have sources that aren't safe to share? Yes, the US President can.

If the US President actually had that knowledge, would the war have been illegal? No, it probably wouldn't have.

Now, let's suppose the US President then goes and engages in the war, and the pretenses under which he engages in war are false. There is no such evidence has any real reliability, and the statements made by the US President do not align with reality.

Does my believing the lies of the US President mean that he didn't unliaterally lie and bring the country into an illegal war?

I'm just checking if I have to be psychic or not.

You don't have the power to ask questions of the President. You probably get next to zero face time with the President. You get orders from the President, not justifications.

The President does not have time to get into a philosophical argument over the rightness or wrongness of every action. The US President has too much to do, too many responsibilities.

As an exmaple, the US military is based around that idea. You don't ask your superiors to justify every order to your satisfaction. If you find the order to be illegal, you are expected to disobey it. If you find it stupid, depending on your relationship with the source of the order, you might have the privledge of saying "sir, what about X, sir".

Because it is better that you obey a somewhat stupid order, than the commander have to spend 30 minutes justifying each order to each of her subordinates, find that 25% of them disagree anyhow, and only have 75% of the force to actually carry out the mission.

Under which, the Judges interpet the law, the Congress writes the law, and the President executes the law. The Congress can Impeach the President if they think the President has engaged in high crimes.

But what if the President just is incompetent? Or the President engages in crimes that aren't high crimes? Or the President fucks up his job?

What is worse -- what if the cost exceeds the benefit? At this point, Bush is less than a year from getting kicked out, and an impeachment trial would take most of that time, might not even win, and Cheney could proceed to pardon Bush for it after he was sacked (see: Nixon). Do you hold your nose for a year, or not?

And what if you think Bush might be pulling a fast one, but are not sure?

And what if you think that, if push comes to shove, Bush might do something extremely destructive if you attempted to impeach him? (Say, a unilateral invasion of Iran, which under current law the military has to obey the orders for 30 days without Congressional approval... go go cold war!)

I suppose the first step would be to try to pass a law preventing Bush from engaging in military aggression without the consent of congress?

First, my comment about water boarding was wrong. It is not a questioning technique I would use or want to be subjected to.

Your take on the career issue I find interesting. I ran up the corporate career ladder before going into my own business. Early on in my corporate career I adopted an approach to business from a speech I heard from Lou Holtz (former college football coach) summed up: Do the best you can, Treat others the way you want to be treated, and do what you think is right. This has always served me well and I have never had to struggle with decisions. It is a falicy that you have to "sell-out" to accomplish your career goals. In fact, I truly believe the opposite is true, good leaders want to be surrounded by principled people. If I felt you were a "kiss-up", you would not work for me for very long. If I felt you did not have the strength of your convictions, you would not work for me for long. I never had a problem with disagreement. I don't think Bush does either. But take a guy like McClellan, you have a coward who does not speak-up we he could have, and then shows disloyalty by truly "selling-out". His 15 minutes of fame is going to be fleeting. Powell on the other hand has the respect of conservatives and liberals. Who would you rather be like?

Monstrous or not, it ended the war, didn't it?

meanwhile, as time goes on the notion of "terrorist" means less and less:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/wa...combatant.html

So has attempts at genocide and other forms of mass killing. There are other ways of ending wars.

This one is faster and at a cost of less lives.

How soon would the WWII be over if instead of Hiroshima, Berlin was bombed? And not in 1945 but in 1940? Well, we wouldn't know, but I doubt it would last 5 years.

I'm afraid you're working off incorrect information, Logan. The war was over long before the use of nuclear weapons. Any history book will verify that Japan was in ruin and was planning surrender months before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan's military was beaten completely in June of 1945, 2 months before the dropping of the bombs. Japan had effectively run out of oil in April. We'd carped bombed them into the stone age on March 10, killing over 100,000 Japanese with a huge bombing campaign, one of the largest in human history. The largest in history came when, on May 23, 520 B-29s dropped over 4,550 tons of incendiary bombs into Tokyo. By the time everything was said and done, 56 square miles of the capital were leveled.

The worst part, though, was that the new Japanese government made several attempts at peace in April and May.

The bombs dropped saved no American or allied lives.

Right, because they were dropped late.

Early? Late? Either way would still be an atrocity. There is still no excuse, just as there is no excuse for approving torture. Again, there are other ways—ways of conducting ourselves in tune to the values we hold and protect, instead of against them.

Go back to school.

Sorry, I'm more of the speak softly but carry a big stick.

Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do. Sometimes I still don't want to do them but I still need to get that thing done, so I hire people how can do them.

I'm happy to live with approving torture. War isn't about ettiquette and doing things right. It's about being the last man standing.

War isn't civil. It's not meant to be, trying to make it so is stupid by itself.

I don't know, I find the "be human to the people bent on killing you" train of thought a bit out there.

Of course, I also understand that the people aren't always there willingly and are just fighting because they have to. Nonetheless, unless you have a surefire way of attacking the source (government or organization) without mass murder, killing morale is the next best thing.

Japan had lost and was seeking to surrender for months, and we dropped nuclear bombs. Explain how that was in any way necessary.

Do I look like Truman to you? He dropped it because Japan rejected the Potsdam terms. Why their surrender wasn't considered before, I don't know.

I'll explain, briefly. Japan was prepared to surrender with the only condition being that the Emperor went unharmed. This was back in April of 1945. The US knew this and rejected it because, well, we wanted to punish them for Pearl and such. The horrible thing is that after Japan was allowed to surrender, the US actually left the Emperor unharmed and used him to help stablize and rebuild the nation.

The point I was making above? Dropping the bombs saved no lives and was done after months of Japan attempting to surrender. It was not for some greater good at all. "Monsterous or not, it ended the war didn't it?" No, it didn't.

IMO, Hiroshima and Nagasaki most likely prevented WW3 by revealing to the Soviets that any invasion of Western Europe would be a foolhardy exercise, even for armies used to horrific losses. Stalin was seriously contemplating resuming hostilities in Europe and seizing as much of Germany and France as he could. Without atomic weapons, the Allies most likely would have been overrun by a more experienced and brutal Soviet foe.

There's a whole subgenre of science fiction dedicated to an Allied invasion of Japan, most of which ends with eventual US victory but with horrific losses on both sides, but the majority of historians believe that the bomb was dropped as much for Soviet observation as Japanese losses.

War is about power. Jazz beat me to it in saying that at the very least it was a message of "don't fuck with us".

I know that murdering a lot of people is more dramatic than a press release, but if the soviets were invited to the testing of a nuclear weapon on some island somewhere wouldn't they have gotten the point? Without us having to blow up two cities in a country that we had already beaten?

That's a question for novelists, not historians. It was an option that was considered, but there were still military issues left with Japan, and no one wanted to invade the Home Islands. There's rarely no one single answer to things like this.

Wow, are we okay with raping and killing women and children too? That's a war tactic. Quite demoralizing, and it asserts your military's superiority.

The idea isn't just to win in war; it is to win while maintaining your humanity. The U.S. is still recovering from the fallout. It is as much apparent today as it was all those decades ago. (At least I'd like to think there is a recovery process.)

Oh, comon. We wax hypothetical all the time on TFP.

Please don't disrespect all the Filipinos that died in the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The Japanese brutality that ensued was legendary which included the beheading of my grandfather's oldest brother. To add insult to injury before beheading him and several others, they bled them so that they could use their blood for transfusions to injured Japanese soldiers.

My family lived in caves for a period of time hiding from the Japanese.

War is war. It's not meant to be pretty, but to cast off this ideology that the Japanese were trying to surrender and that they deserved better treatment. Please give me a freaking break.

I couldn't disagree more. The idea in war is to win. Period. If you've gone to war, the alternative is not acceptable.

I cannot think of a modern war - with the possible exceptions of the Franco/Prussian War and WWI - that did not simulateously prosecute at least a modicum of violence on civilian populations. If nothing else, infrastucture to feed armies of soldiers did not exist until the late 19th Century. Prior to that armies lived off the land, which meant the local population. The ramifications of that live on in the US Bill of Rights, namely the Third Amendment.

I know of no country that would prefer defeat to victory without the preservation of humanity.

Don't be so melodramatic. My grandfather's brother was literally cut in half by machine gun fire at Pearl Harbor right in front of my grandfather, who retold the story to me only once because it was so painful to him. That doesn't excuse nuking a country after ignoring their wish to surrender for months.
My family (on my father's side) was enslaved by Romans, but that also has nothing to do with this.
Surrender is surrender. "Cast off" this idea that somehow because they did bad things they deserved to be wiped out after they gave up. Justice is reached in a court room, not on the receiving end of a bomb.

Do you have any limits, or would you advocate exempting the US from the provisions of the Geneva conventions....?
Who do you cede the authority to, to determine when it is appropriate "to torture", and to what degree. When they do it, they say they do it in your name.

What are your principles, what do you stand for, if you can use "happy" associated with the practice of torture ? Do you really believe they would only use it on "the bad people"? Who determines who the bad people are, and by what standard of evidence or collection of evidence?

What about the ideas outside of war? Wars usually end eventually. There are many more paragraphs to be written after your bold "period" there.

I'm sure they're out there. I know of no country, thankfully, that would prefer a global scorched-earth victory to a conditional surrender. I think you're speaking from the point-of-view of the military apparatus. I would be more inclined to agree with you if I saw it purely from that perspective, but I don't. I see it from the perspective of the nation and its society. I would like to think my own nation would sooner prolong suffering and struggle in a conventional war than opt for the wholesale slaughter of "enemy" civilians on a grand scale.

An atrocity is an atrocity, and this one is a dark shadow over U.S. history. And now there is this industrial military complex that is capable of much more than that.

If winning were the only object, where are the American nukes in Iraq?

Will, read a bit more about the brutality of the Filipinos in the hands of the Japanese. One person being ripped in two by machine gun fire who is an enlisted serviceman is hardly equal to whole civilian villages being raped and maimed.

As far as the enslaved Roman tale, that's a great tale. I'm sure you have some sort of telling of it in some fashion, book or manuscript? I have living members of the family and books authored and published by family members.

My family already gave thanks, they gave up the entire cattle farm they had to feed the US Army. When the accountants showed up to pay for the head of cattle, my great grandfather said,"We're even."

You may want to find justice in a courtroom. Other members of my family wanted more than just war reparations for the atrocities from the Japanese.

I don't know host, apparently some members of my family were considered the bad people of the Japanese for helping the resisteance fighters in the Philippines.

I don't like to clean the toilets, but they need to be cleaned. I don't like picking up the garbage, but it needs to be done. I'm glad that there are people in the world that are willing to do the things that I'm not able to stomach for myself to do.

Again, I'll say it loud and proud, I'm happy to have such people that are willing to torture people in order to get information that is not going to come out otherwise.

host, I stand for fairness and equality. If someone is brutal towards community members, then someone should unleash that same brutality towards them in return. You may not believe in retribution, but it fits in my view of the world.

re: geneva conventions...

tell me did the guys (ETA, Hamas, IRA, Abu Sayaf, Al Qaeda, Iraqi Insurgents) who blow up market places, restaurants, and malls follow the Geneva Convention?

So? The Nazis surrendered and guess what? We stopped bombing them. Then we had Nuremberg to punish war criminals. Japan tries to surrender and we bomb them for months and then nuke them for good measure.
There's verified evidence from several sources, actually. But that has nothing to do with anything.
Vengeance is natural, but that doesn't make it right. And this still has absolutely nothing to do with anything. The discussion is about the use of nuclear weapons being necessary or not, and it clearly wasn't.

Baraka, interesting points. I have always believed that war is simply politics prosecuted by other means. One does not enter into war lightly, in my opinion (the Bush administration notwithstanding), but should a country make the decision to go to war they must do so with the intention to win. If they do not, then there is no point. Please note that I did not say "win but keep their morals intact". People die in war - it is a truism. Sometimes innocent people die in war - again another truism. It is unavoidable since they do not happen in a vacuum.

Wars end and then people must deal with what had to be done to win or deal with the fact that they lost. War is a very scary proposition for governments since a defeat can topple them or end in occupation. A government not willing to compromise on moral integrity at a time of war is a government that faces being voted out at best or being removed by force.

This caught me, though:

Realizing that no Western nation is currently "suffering" because of the Iraq or Afganistan Wars - there are no shortages or battles being fought there - I think that you have a higher opinion of humanity than I do. If you asked anyone with family members getting ready to invade Japan about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which was preferable, I will bet that the response would be in the high 90's for the atomic option. If dropping firebombs on Kabul, for instance, would bring Canadian troops home sooner and with a lower casualty rate, do you really think that Canadians would chose to keep troops in the field over the opportunity to bring them home?

yep ahhh. Justice is served... All those Japanese war criminals that were sought after and tried... :shakehead:

your point of view is that it clearly wasn't necessary. I don't agree with you.

Seeing as the Russians also didn't agree since the whole eastern European set of countries they decided to keep for themselves as they marched toward the Allies. Yes, they willfully gave up those territories they marched through... I don't believe for a minute that they would have stopped if it weren't for the demonstrations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

They did. In 1991.

thanks for the timeline correction.

I think that's an important part of this thought, if torture is so abhorrent, surely war is too. Both are truisms to humanity. Your outline here best describes why I find that torture is acceptable. It's just framed as war in your post, but I see the same thing but with the lens of torture.

I see your point, but I still think that torture only confirms what you think you know, not any actual facts. The same Soviets you mentioned were masters at getting confessions of crimes that were imagined wholesale by the torturers.

Torture is an inefficient intelligence gathering tool.

Innocent civilians were either vaporized or had to suffer in the agony of radiation poisoning for as much as decades. What kind of sick justice is that?
And the only reason you gave was.... your family was victimized by the Japanese. Which doesn't address the nuclear attack at all.
They had already long since stopped, Cynth. By April they had essentially no navy. They lacked the ability to wage war against anyone, let alone continue expansionism. It wasn't until August, 4 months later, that the nuclear bombs were dropped. Ignoring factual evidence and presenting appeals to emotion and sympathy arguments are intellectually dishonest.

apparently it was not entirely clear that the japanese were definitely going to surrender before the bombing of hiroshima, but there was no question that they were before nagasaki got levelled.
but there were two types of bombs and on the second day it was thursday and the weather was nice.
so why not, eh?
let's see what this new toy can do...

on the other hand, it was also not entirely evident to folk at the time what the nuclear weapons were that they had fashioned---they were understood before hiroshima as really really big conventional bombs, basically--but that changed after, yes?
you'd think it'd have changed.

btw my stepfather was part of the bomber crew that would have flown a third bomb had it not become REALLY obvious that japan was throwing in the towel. he felt so great about it that he's spent much of the rest of his life doing political work against nuclear power in general.
go figure.


so anyway the two bombs are not the same, the do not present the same problems.

you could accept jazz's arguments concerning the cold-war motive and STILL not understand or accept the bombing of nagasaki. if that sort of thing concerns you--ethics and all that.

i understand the school of "thought" that says war is war and all bets are off--i understand the argument that "terrorists" don't play by the rules so why should "we" play by them--blah blah blah i generally say afterwards--and i wonder what good there is in using these arguments to justify blowing off those few international conventions that make the already barbaric state of war a little more humane, particularly given that the arguments encapsulate exactly the kind of motivations that created the need for such agreements in the first place, and demonstrate why they're important.

it is easy--really fucking easy--to slide down the pathway to barbarism: there's **always** a justification, it's **always** reactive it's **always** "their fault" that "we" have to throw respect for even the most basic norms that make us human beings and not some extremely dangerous and stupid animal out the fucking window.

i know i know war is ugly and people die.....but how on earth does it follow from this self-evident claim that therefore all ways of killing are equivalent and that therefore anything goes?

people say war is about revenge and is about primitive human instincts and i suppose that's true--and it is in the effort to get past a world controlled by these primitive human instincts that the modern world took shape, for better and for worse--and it is strange to consider that the doctrine of total war (clausewitz) and the notion of international law designed to place limits on what people can do to each other are the results of the same modernity, ain't it?

jazz, I don't disagree that it is inefficient. In the hands of those paranoid governments, you are correct, it doesn't do much for their cause.

In the end, I believe this doesn't help the US cause, but it doesn't change my opinion of its usage.

From what I've read of the war they didn't surrender and were not willing to surrender after the Germans did.

I don't care who is doing the beating, but if you don't get the guy to say "uncle" he's still going to try to get you when he's got the opportunity.

And, no Will, it wasn't just my family, it was my entire race. My family happened to have good example of the atrocities at their hands. Jewish family members who have Holocaust survivors don't have much love for Germans either.

Again, you may find it not to your liking, but after reading all the accounts that I did from the Filipino perscpective, I was quite satisfied with the outcome.

RB, by my understanding (I've been studying WWII at length since I was in my early teens), the US had decoded the Japanese communications by as early as February. They intercepted communications about surrender as early as March, and had confirmed reports in April through June. The Japanese even tried to use allies of the US as intermediaries. Their one condition was to not harm the Emperor.

One thing that cannot be disputed is that Japan had lost it's ability to wage war long before either bomb was dropped. They were no longer a threat to anyone, let alone the US. So dropping the bombs could not have been done in order to prevent the loss of more lives or to stop Japanese aggressions.

The obvious answer is that at the end of the process everyone is equally dead. The only difference is how drawn out the process was and who the person was prior to being dead. Morality has little to do with warfare.

The fact that poison gas was not used as a weapon between c. 1918 and c. 1985 shows that there are some weapons that require restraint. Even at the height of the most total war this planet has ever seen, gas weapons were not used by any side.

Was Nagasaki payback for Pearl Harbor? Maybe. I agree that it seemed to be overkill, but who can say that the current global political landscape would have been different without it? Again, that's a question for novelists, not us.

No and no. One of the overtures made was that the Emporer would remain the head of state. There were several others that included the Japanese disarming themselves and that no war criminals would be prosecuted.

Japan had not yet lost it's ability to wage modern war when the bombs were dropped. It was right around the corner and would have happened by September or so, but the US had a valid concern that an invasion would have been very costly given that Japanese civilians were expected to resist as heartily as they did at Okinawa.

Japan wasn't willing to surrender unconditionally because they didn't want the Emperor killed. That was their only condition. And guess what, after the bombs were dropped, the US decided that the Emperor was necessary to control the rebuilding of Japan so he was left alive, demonstrating that the condition was acceptable and ignored.
Have you see Monte Python an the Holy Grail? "I have not yet begun to fight" the black knight says, despite not having any arms or legs. There no longer existed an opportunity for Japan to attack, as their military was basically gone.
This is still irrelevant. And Filipino is a nationality, not a race.
You're satisfied with vengeance. I get that. But vengeance is not justice.

will---i know the history around this pretty well, and while you're right, you could still make the arguments i put up above about hiroshima and nagasaki posing basically different ethical problems.

jazz--i don't really follow your argument--on the one hand, it's tautological.
then you make some odd jump to talking about the ban on poison gas.
how do you get from a to b and what are you arguing?


as for the last question--you can set up ethical problems that concern the past without launching into the curious world of counterfactuals.
again, i am not sure what you're arguing.

You're only listing the first of many overtures made by the Japanese. By the end, the only condition was that the Emperor was not killed. And it makes sense, as many of the Japanese believed that the Emperor was still holy.
Japan's navy was essentially gone as was their air force. Maybe they would have swam to China?

As for the civilians, all they needed to do was keep the Emperor as a figurehead, which is actually what the US decided to do.

rb: I don't take torture or war lightly. My only comment to being "proud" about them is that I have to be part of the whole. This is mainly about things that I don't, can't, or won't do and that there are a select few people out there that are willling to do such things. This goes for picking up trash to being a soldier, building houses to torturing individuals it is the length and breadth of humanity and societal living.

The only example I can come up with as an explanation is I am proud of military men who show service to their country, yet I know those that have seen combaty, they have killed and maimed invidiuals. I don't like that side of it, but it is part and parcel of what they do.

does that make sense?

Sorry, I got distracted by something while writing that and didn't realize how disjointed it is.

Poison gas and nuclear weapons are similar in that they're indiscriminant killers that leave long-term effects on the survivors. Granted that they don't have the same long-term ecological effects, but prior generations showed restraint with tried and true WMD before 1945. My point is that the same actors restrained themselves from using gas prior to WWII as well as afterwards, but only after seeing its effects. No one really knew all of the problems associated with nuclear weaponry until well into the 1950's. Once those became clear, Nagasaki in particular started to be seen in a completely different light, one that wasn't available at the time.

Which is exactly what I said. What I left out was that those that made the overture didn't have the power to negotiate or to make a peace at all. It's notable simply because it happened.

In the end, the condition wasn't that the emporer wouldn't be killed, it was that he would remain head of state, even as a puppet. And that what they got. There's a huge difference between the two.

The Japanese still had the ability to ferry their troops from China back to the Home Islands.

And the US didn't care any more about the Japanese civilians than the Japanese did. They all cared about the Japanese elite, who made policy.

Sure since you've been reading about WWII since you were a teen, maybe you can shed some light as to the actual reparations that the Japanese paid to the Philippines, Singapore and China. Three countries that have well documented war crimes and thousands that suffered and were killed at the hands of the Japanese.

You're espousing that justice could be had from courtroom, I have not read of any courtroom that was able to hold responsible any Japanese soldiers for warcrimes. In fact my readings have shed light to the fact that Japan doesn't recognize any of it's nationals to have committed any warcrimes.

understood--i'm making a similar point, but trying to place the tipping point between hiroshima and nagasaki.

i don't think there's much question about both being atrocities--part of a long list of them which unfolded during world war 2 (to keep with this)---if you're feeling ambitious and dont mind sitting through a version with an irritating russian voice over, have a look at this:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?...is&sitesearch=

Umm might seem petty at this point to chime in, but I thought the basis was Japanese surrender wasn't so much about harm to the emperor, rather retention of his throne?

Had I been the one dictating terms, and facing a Japan with no navy or air force, that was crippled and isolated, and offering surrender, I wouldn't let him retain his throne; I certainly wouldn't kill him or use it as justification to drop nukes.

So you're saying someone in the position as Premier of Japan didn't have the power to negotiate a surrender? I think you may need to read up on Japanese government through WWII into post-war.
The Japanese leadership were scared to death of having the Emperor killed by Americans because they knew they'd lose any power they had left over the Japanese people and they were worried about it becoming anarchy. They knew that surrender would only mean something if they could restore order and begin to rebuild, which made the Emperor's life priceless to Japan. It had nothing to do with power because the Japanese people assumed he had power regardless of whether he actually had it or not.

I'm not sure where you're getting your information from.
Do you know how? Fishing boats. I have a book here at home with amazing black and white pictures of Japanese troops on fishing boats which are headed toward the main island. The fishing boats were privately owned, though, which means a military strike with them would be nearly impossible.
How did that effect their decision to nuke Japan after repeated attempts at surrender from the elite in government?

Still immaterial to the subject at hand. I don't know what makes you think you can change the framework of the conversation to the Philippines. I'm talking about why the bombs were dropped. You're welcome to continue talking about whatever it is you're talking about.
Clearly you didn't do any real research at all. I have 4 books that only deal with the Tokyo Trials. I'll tell you what, google "Tokyo Trials". Even wikipedia has a pretty decent entry for it.

Really? Just because it's fishing boats doesn't mean that they are harmless.

Japanese troops landed on the Malay peninsula. They commandeered privately owned bicycles and invaded Singapore. Singapore fell to the Japanese Feb. 15, 1942.

Their occupation of Singapore resulted in 40,000 civilians executed under suspicion of being anti-Japanese.

still no war crime court justice.

And how many troops, from your research, did Japan have in August of 1945?
Tokyo Trials. Intellectually dishonest.

Life imprisonment and individuals were paroled after 5-10 years?

hardly justice.

sorry.. JUSTICE... please see that word.

You're touting that someone who was maimed or murdered should seek courtrooms for justice. I don't see how 5-10 years served is justice for beheadings, maiming, rape, pillaging, of villages and countrysides.

Yes, my aunt and her 2 young childred felt so vinidicated that her husband's beheaders had their day in court.

[sigh]

The Japanese Premier never made any such overtures. It was done in his name without his knowledge.

The only common request in the 40-page dossier that MacArthur gave Roosevelt in February 1945 was that the Emporer would remain head of state. Note, it wasn't that his life would be spared, it was that he would remain head of state. Those aren't mutually exclusive - after all, he'd have to be alive to serve - but the request, which was one among many, was that Hirohito would remain emporer. Those making the offers weren't so much worried about anarchy as continuation of Japanese sovereignty and tradition. After all, the Japanese had started the war hoping for a negotiated end to it and hoping to retain some of what they conquored or the liberation of some of the colonies. They just started the war in a way that roused the giant and continued to persecute it in a way that failed to engender any respect.

Fishing boats would have been a big source of the fleet to move the troops, but they would have used their civilian ferries and their remaining merchant fleet, ragtag as it was.

One other thing that I just caught - the Japanese air force was still a going concern. They had planes and pilots left in the last days. They were just stockpiling the gasoline to run them in anticipation of the invasion.

Good point. LET'S NUKE EM!
Another good point. NUKE EM!

So, to summarize, while you were under the impression from your readings that there was no courtroom that was able to hold accountable any Japanese soldiers for "warcrimes":
There actually were, and it's such an obvious fact that even wikipedia has information on it. Did you read the Wiki page? 3 prime ministers, were convicted of class A war crimes. Military leadership was convicted. Outside of the Tokyo Trials, 5,600 Japanese personnel were prosecuted, including in the Philippines!

You can't guess history, Cynth. You actually have to do the research.

Japan Premier Suzuki, July of 1945. While it's generally reported that he announced that Japan would never surrender (or some such nonsense), he was actually the one who laid out the Emperor condition towards the end of attempts, immediately before the bombs were dropped.
As I said, Japan ran out of oil in April of 1945.

If you're so well read on this stuff you'll then know that the Japanese were very careful in making sure that they didn't create any war criminals. They were very carful of that since the San Francisco Treaty was the actual court remedy.

Of that court justice you tout, it restored nothing to our family businesses, loss of family member, and little justice served to my great grand father or the widowed wife.

yes, will, justice was served according to your beliefs. Make 'em pay with the wallet even though they killed your family and took your family livelihood away from you. Yes, courtrooms and money solves everything.

I'm hesitant to believe your understanding of what really happened now.

The San Francisco Treaty simply was an official end to the war between the allies and Japan, it had nothing to do with war crimes. The war crimes were addressed in the aftermath of the war with the thousands of trials of Japanese soldiers and officials, including most notably the Tokyo Trials in which those responsible for such reprehensible acts as the Nanking Massacre and the use of narcotics and biological weapons were sentenced. Death by hanging is a rather serious punishment, wouldn't you say?

As for the reparations (monetary compensation) to the Philippines by Japan, Japan gave 198 billion yen (or about 550 million in USD).

Anyway, none of this is particularly pertinent to the topic at hand, which is something you simply refuse to discuss (which I understand, I don't like being wrong either).

Sorry there are two points I'm confusing here. Reparations and war crimes.

Reparations were meted out by the treaty. Warcrimes were via the trials.

I'm going to say that my family did not receive any justice from courts, nor any payments or reparations. I've done extensive family history and geneological interviews and have gotten no satisfaction of knowledge in that aspect.

Again, where is the justice? As far as I'm concerned It didn't exist.

Acutally will, unlike you, I've stated before I like being wrong. Being wrong gives me the opportunity to learn something new. Since you're an expert at most everything, I'm sure you find it challenging to learn new things.

Quite possibly; however, it is a different world now. I'm not sure if this remains relevant today.... Interesting conundrum, nonetheless.

If there were to be a national referendum held tomorrow, I would bet my bottom dollar that most Canadians would not be in favour of firebombing Kabul if it meant a high casualty rate of civilians--even if it meant bringing home the troops. That isn't what we're there for; that isn't in line with Canadian values.

This is a misleading comparison, though, but your point is taken. It would be difficult to know what a populace wants in a war-torn country, but I would suggest that in today's Western society, much of the public wouldn't have the stomachs for such acts of war. I wonder how many Americans view Hiroshima and Nagasaki as mistakes (for the lack of a better word).

Generally this would be where this part of the discussion ends.
I'm sorry your family didn't get some of the monetary compensation, but shouldn't they be happy they escaped alive? And that the allies defended them by risking their own lives? Shouldn't they be happy that, despite not being a major power, they were defended just as vigilantly by the allies as they would defending their own families? That's what I take away from the Philippines and other South Pacific victims of Japanese expansionism. As for justice, those who were responsible for war crimes were prosecuted. It's probable that those responsible for what happened to your family were held responsible.
Blah blah blah red herring.

Sorry will, no not happy.

Manila was ravaged far greater than any European city. I can't begin to even list the losses of the family besides the eldest son.

You may find that justice has been served but I did not.

Putting aside the issue of bombing war torn countries for a sec.

A recent poll reported that nearly a third of US public supports torture in limited circumstances; the good news is that over half believe all torture should be prohibited.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pi...n08_graph1.jpg

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pi...d=&pnt=496&lb=

What is it that differentiates us from our western allies who face a similar "terrorist threat" yet countries like Spain, France, Great Britain overwhelmingly oppose the use of torture.

Could it be attributed in part to the fact that the American public has been carpet bombed with "terrorist" rhetoric by the WH for the last seven years?

I think they're under the false impression that torture can yield results. Even people here on TFP, despite my best efforts, believe that torture works.

Education is key in this matter. Whomever tells you that torture is okay is wrong. Please tell them that physiologists and psychiatrists overwhelmingly agree that torture cannot yield reliable results, which makes it useless as an information gathering technique.

will, IMO, its much more than that.

Something has become ingrained in the American psyche (or at least a signficant minority of Americans) that it is acceptable to ignore the Constitution and basic human rights for the sake of "protecting the homeland" from threats, real or imagined.

IMO, that is a far greater danger than terrorist.

http://collateraldamage.files.wordpr...emy-791213.jpg

Group think, yes. But if people are singled out and have it explained to them, I believe that most would be able to make an informed and ultimately correct decision regarding torture.
Is it wrong that sometimes I just want to shake this country like I was a British nanny? Between a majority of my countrymen believing that the Earth is 6000 years old and this bizarre and irrational fear of "terrorists", I do feel like hijacking a national news feed and reading this country the riot act.

fella by the name of hitler tried that a few years ago...he was looking for help...where were you then?

no doubt.
and many other places have pluralist political contexts, where the united states really does not.
when for example torture by the french paramilitary in algeria surfaced as a political and ethical issue in 1957, it did so via the french left--initially the communist party-later through a broader network (there are reasons for this, but they're distracting)---the results of teh torture itself were in the short run that the french crushed the fln--so it "worked"---but in the process their actions *created* mass algerian support for the fln *which it did not initially have* and turned it from a small military organization into the core of a mass movement AND they galvanized political opposition to the entire debacle domestically--AND the revelations hlped bring down the 4th republic and nearly triggered a civil war in france (i kid you not)---AND turned france into an international pariah--AND managed to generate a whole series of truly ugly associations between french presence in algeria/colonialism and fascism that makes the algerian war STILL something that is not talked about a whole lot in france. all this in a nutshell, you know? so the consequences of french use of systematic torture beginning in 1956 in algeria werea very mixed bag in which as it turned out the immediate advantage they gained in and around algiers in 1956 was overwhelmed by other consequences---most of which happened because france at the time was a deeply divided place on left-right lines--and so the issue was both a Problem in itself and was also a significant Political Problem--and in the longer run, it was the latter that turned out to do the most damage.

and the damage done by this played out over the next decade--i dont see how there could have been a mai 68 without the experience of algeria beforehand.

so think of it on utilitarian grounds--even if there are in most places conservative-types who think that protecting their shit justifies torture, they typically are not a dominant position ideologically--or more exactly, they are not in a position to control the entirety of political discourse--but they nearly were able to in the states after 2001.

i think the bush people have set something into motion that will bear ugly fruit fro a very long time.

there are a couple points to this little parable, whcih i am writing between bites of pasta.

a. such consent as there was for the bush-people's use of torture, extraordinary rendition, etc. was a direct function of the extent to which the press collapsed into a simple relay system for conservative ideological statements in the afterglow of 9/11/2001. we do not really live in a pluralist context still--though it is certainly more open than it was 6 years ago,

b. even if you support the idea of torture, when you look at what's happened in parallel situations in the past, the problems have so far outweighed the advantages produced that you really have to ask yourself if there's a point to such support--presumably it's based on some support for the continuation of the existing order and all that it entails--well, if that's the case, then i think torture is simply a bad bad idea on pragmatic grounds.

c. there is a mountain of data available about the effects of torture as an infotainment gathering procedure--it really aint new--most of the time, the one thing that you will surely find out is that the person being tortured wants the torture to stop happening. that is not a good basis for infotainment gathering. and that's just the simple, short-run kind of effect, in sound-byte form. there are many many others, all gifts that keep on giving. so again, if you can put aside moral problems with the actions themselves, the problems and consequences seem to outweigh any imaginable advantage

d. the entire conversation about serious, brutal occupation is in the context of this thread a red herring.

Objectively defining torture is an interesting exercise to me, however, I think torture has to be defined subjectivly. Given the subjective nature of defining torture I doubt there can ever be agreement on where the line gets drawn between what is and what is not torture, especially on the margins. There will always be opportunities for those sitting on the sidelines to come in after the fact and make charges against those on the front lines of doing unpleasant work.

Samurai had an answer for torture - sapaku.

Whoa, now that's a hell of a Godwin. And it's not even close to correct, either.

then think about what you're saying before you post it...

guy by the name of goebbels was his news feed...

by the way, godwin's a major cop-out here...

This coming from someone who actually compared going off on a newscast to the holocaust and WWII.
Jesus Christ. Goebbles lied on the air. I was talking about telling the truth. This thread should be renamed "Historical context I don't understand".
"Here"? You mean the place that you tried to threadjack with an asinine comparison?

what in the world are you "talking" about?

i just ate some tiramisu and while i was away it seems that someone changed the channel and i am not longer reading a thread about the bush administration's cavalier relation to torture and am instead watching an episode of a reality show. american's greatest mixologists: metaphor division.

it's all terribly confusing.
is someone going to be sent home?

Can I be a judge?

Or maybe we can get back to the topic of the Senate....and torturing terrorists, maybe?


Oh, how was the 'misu?

See, what I don't get is how this is "torture for terrorists". This is "torture for whoever the government decides to torture".

If it was "torture for terrorists", there wouldn't be a problem with reasonable judicial review of the "terrorist" status of the person in question.

I'm sure if you worship the president of the USA, or have arbitrary Faith that he can Do No Wrong, clearly anyone He Chooses to Torture must be Deserving of their Fate. And it would Never be Abused by such a Great Man.

But that still doesn't make it "torture for terrorists".