Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
Funny - I've been working on a question, too: Were it not for the impressionists, would people be seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in cheese sandwiches?

I decided to keep it to myself.

By the time the Impressionists were around, religious figures had greatly faded as a common motif in art. The Impressionists were much more about Nature and Light.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Who said that dropping bombs on cities was OK?

Von Clausewitz

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sgtclub
War is morally wrong?

I wouldn't go that far, but I know it's unhealthy for children and other living things.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Huh? The Axis won?

This explains a lot. According to the history books in your schools, Germany got its ass kicked by Norway, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands etc., so Germany never had an opportunity to accuse anyone of war crimes!

You and Ty go to the same public schools?

Seriously, his original point seemed to be that our people might have been tried by Germany and Japan had the Axis won. My point was that Germany and Japan never evidenced the slightest understanding of even the "concept" of a war crime in World War II, let alone any interest in charging anyone with one, as evidenced by the fact that they never did this with any of the numerous countries they conquered during the course of the conflict.

Or are you* trying to say that some** of those 30 million dead soviets were only executed by the Germans after trials for war crimes!

Hello


*You or Ty

**uhm, even one?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I would phrase it a bit differently. Is there a meaningful difference between intentionally inflicting extreme pain on a captive, who prior to being a captive, wanted and was actively seeking to take your life or the life of someone whom you had a duty to protect v. inflicting extreme pain on someone who wanted to take you life or the life of someone whom you had a duty to protect?

I suppose you really believe that there is no moral difference between shooting an enemy soldier on the battlefield, on the one hand, and torturing that soldier to death if you capture him.

So, all the treaties about prevention of torture, all the war crime prosecutions that this country has pursued, all the legal principles that distinguish between a soldier doing his duty on the battlefield and a prisoner of war... are just meaningless to you?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I suppose you really believe that there is no moral difference between shooting an enemy soldier on the battlefield, on the one hand, and torturing that soldier to death if you capture him.

So, all the treaties about prevention of torture, all the war crime prosecutions that this country has pursued, all the legal principles that distinguish between a soldier doing his duty on the battlefield and a prisoner of war... are just meaningless to you?

No, you have to remember, Club is talking purely about morality, not law. Apparently on his island, the two are in no way connected.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Seriously, his original point seemed to be that our people might have been tried by Germany and Japan had the Axis won.

I was just trying to say that what we did to German and Japanese cities might have be considered more critically if we hadn't won the war, etc. The reasons for that are many. I wasn't trying to suggest that Germany or Japan or the USSR had the same commitment to addressing war crimes, or to put those regimes on a moral par with ours.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

So, the President's own commission is chastising the CIA and other intelligence agencies for being "dead wrong" on WMD.

Yet, these are the people who are going to decide who to torture and when, right?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
This explains a lot. According to the history books in your schools, Germany got its ass kicked by Norway, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands etc., so Germany never had an opportunity to accuse anyone of war crimes!

You entirely miss Ty's point. His point is not "the Axis would have held trials if they had won." It was that the conduct of the Allies was not morally superior to that of the Axis, and that if the same rules had been applied to the Allies they would have been found guilty. Personally, I disagree with his point on many specifics, and I don't equate the bombing of Dresden or Tokyo to the bombing of Nanking and London. But anyway -- I at least understand his point.

But, even on your theory -- which people from Norway, France, or Poland levelled German cities? Tortured German prisoners? Did something that would constitute a "war crime" under the provisions of the Nuremberg accords?

Each of those countries fell in about a week, without mounting any serious defense and without having the capability to conduct a mass attack on civilians, or do much of anything else.

Moreover, neither Germany nor any other country prior to 1945 even discussed the concept of a war crime. This does not prove anything particular about the Axis; France, Britain, and the US also did not conduct war crimes trials after WWI, despite indiscriminate shelling of civilians, use of poison gas, etc. It was just not a concept that anyone had. The concept of "victor's justice", prior to 1945, entailed summary execution of enemies for the act of being enemies -- and this, the Axis did freely and routinely.

You and Ty go to the same public schools?

You want to compare your academic record and your career to mine? That should be fun.

Seriously, his original point seemed to be that our people might have been tried by Germany and Japan had the Axis won. My point was that Germany and Japan never evidenced the slightest understanding of even the "concept" of a war crime in World War II, let alone any interest in charging anyone with one, as evidenced by the fact that they never did this with any of the numerous countries they conquered during the course of the conflict.

Again, you misunderstand Ty's point. His point is that, if the same rules had applied to the Allies, they would have been found guilty of the same crimes. He was not making the historical claim that the Axis were likely to hold war crimes trials -- that was an unprecedented notion in 1945. On the other hand, the Axis certainly would have executed people freely, and it defies belief to think that they would not have been a little more upset at the people who bombed cities than at the average foot solder.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I don't equate the bombing of Dresden or Tokyo to the bombing of Nanking and London.

I don't know enough about the bombing of Nanking to have an opinion. But the bombing of London is an interesting story. The Blitz was initially aimed at military targets -- airplane factories, airfields, etc. One of these was the docks on the Thames. Bombing at night, the Luftwaffe missed its target badly -- as happened often, for both sides -- and bombed a residential area, killing many civilians. In retaliation, the RAF bombed Berlin. Hitler then shifted the focus of the Blitz to bombing London and other civilian areas. (I think I have all this right, but maybe not.) The point being that each side justified bombing the other's civilians as retaliation for what was done to it.

I'm not interested in comparing the moral culpability of the Allies and the Axis. What we did to cities like Dresden and Tokyo was horrific, and was done with only the slimmest of military justifications.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Just a couple points on war crimes - the Geneva Convention predates WWII (though the current conventions were adopted after WWII) - the first Convention was in 1864 and then there was the Hague Convention around the turn of the century and the Geneva Convention in 1929. And the concept of war crimes predates WWII -- there were War Crime trials in Liepzig after WWI, for example.

Historicall, the victor got to hold the trials, and Germany certainly would have held them and would have had a war crimes concept during the war - how the hell they would have defended their own behavior one can only imagine.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
You want to compare your academic record and your career to mine? That should be fun.

You should stop doing this.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
You should stop doing this.

Guess what I made on the LSAT.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by taxwonk
By the time the Impressionists were around, religious figures had greatly faded as a common motif in art. The Impressionists were much more about Nature and Light.

My question was less about subject matter and more about representational style. The the face of the Virgin (or Jesus, or Elvis) on a cheese sandwich is rarely realistic in a traditional sense, and, perhaps, people were not predisposed to see such things until the impressionists introduced their visual vocabulary into general public awareness.

Sort of a "no one had Freudian dreams until they started reading Freud" thing.

eta I'll stop now, I promise.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
So it's okay because we thought about it really hard before we did it?

Or, more accurately, after we did it....

You are not listening - I never said it was OK. I was just responding to the phrase - that makes us no different from the Baathists. I heard it during the cold war a lot about the Soviets and I have heard it referenced to the Nazis. I never said what happened at Abu Graib was OK or moral. But, just becaused it happened, does not make us the same as Saddam Husseins regime or the insurgents. They disembowel and behead their prisoners. The kill them and record it on video tape. They also gassed their own people and the Iranians in war just to name a few. We have a long way to go before we get down to their moral level. Our torture of the prisoners may have been a step in their direction, but it was the first step up mount Fuji.