Except that it isn’t.
Of course it is.
If you drop 20,000 seperate bombs, then a number of variables arise.
-
Timeframe of barrage
-
Geographic area of barrage
-
Recurrence of target zone, rendering repeat damage insignificant
-
Ability of targets to escape jeopardy during barrage
-
Ability/incentive to cease barrage once objective has been achieved
When you drop a single device with the destructive power of those 20,000 bombs combined, then you eliminate these variables, and cause the maximum possible destruction in one fell swoop.
A 5 year-old could recognize this fact, even if they could not adequately articulate it. It is your empirical comparison which is insignificant, not the damage caused by the bomb.
That is a lot guff. Concentration of explosives in one bang does one thing and one thing only: amplify the shockwave force. Put another way, it overcomes harder targets at the cost of overkill.
The last thing this forum needs is some immature kid with, “X is true! Omgz, ur so retarded!” posts.
LOL.
As opposed to a child who declares: “X is not true!” despite an inability to refute it. Or, indeed, one who invokes tenure as a measure of validity.
…Or one who invokes common sense behaviour. How many times to we have to go over this before it sinks in?
I don’t know, because I don’t know how often it has been covered. Either way, your self-aggrandization is irrelevant.
The assertion stands unchallenged: it is more horriffic to drop a single explosive with the yield of 20,000 than the 20,000 themselves, for the very elimination of variables you dismiss as ‘overkill’.
I submit that the word: over-kill is poignant enough in itself.
This is the difference between kids and adults. Kids see common sense as dimunition. I guess it is irrelevent if you want only the walls left to talk to. shrug
And now you display hypocrisy.
It was you who took offense to common sense, not I, prompting your line of insulting discourse. If you wish only to blow your trumpet rather than address the assertion made, then that is your business, but spare me your defensive justification.
Explain how my assertion is incorrect. A barely more complex equivalent of ‘nu-uh’ does not constitute an argument, let alone common sense.
:S
Its just one dude’s testimony, but at the bottom there’s a long list of books on the topic. A summary of one by mark weber* (2007) can be found here. http://www.ihr.org/other/afterthereich072007.html
*not max weber
I also don’t understand why we’re letting Retardoper get away with his higher order democracy spiel. He just cites freedom house. Well, I couldn’t find anything on freedom house’s website about their methodology in how scores are assigned.
But wikipedia is your friend, and in this case, so is Noam Chomsky. Epic fail.–snowflake
The following is my short definition of a higher order democracy. I am probably missing some tenets, however this will do for a start:
-
universal sufferage.
-
civilian control of military
-
vibrant and diverse free press
-
freedom of religion
-
strong and active legislature
-
impartial judiciary, equal protection under the law
-
protections for private property
-
active and unhindered opposition parties
-
acceptance of civil liberties for minorities
-
strong, active local and provincial governments
-
regular and peaceful change from established order to opposition
-
stable and impartial regulatory regime
-
peaceful and impartial elections
-
powers of the executive is limited or balanced
-
active and influencial private non-governmental organizations and political associations
It has not gone unnoticed that you have not defended your “resort hotel” claim.
According to your definition of higher order democracy the US doesn’t fit the bill.
Lol we’re asking for Freedom House’s definition of higher order democracies, because we challenge the validity of the countries they call democratic.
But this is typical, rather than debate about something relevant you’ve retreated onto some other tangentially related topic.
The US is not a pure democracy, it’s a constitutional republic.
The US is not a pure democracy, it’s a constitutional republic.
That joke just never gets old.
Now Caley needs to realize that The BOMB was not a military device, it was a weapon of terror , a pure psychological war device. It was not really about the numbers as much as it was about the mental effect of destroying four to five generations of people in a matter of minutes. And that is why it is the most despicable act of state terror in the history of mankind. And to add insult to injury the act is being defended with filmsy excuses.
You could drop 20000 bombs at once on a city but it won’t have the same mental effect.
Well it is man.
“It was not really about the numbers as much as it was about the mental effect of destroying four to five generations of people in a matter of minutes.”
Exactly. Very effective.
@Lodzator and McKibbin
Combining conventional TNT bombs in a pattern creates a firestorm, its called firebombing. It was used extensively in Japan and Germany in the later stages of WWII. In Dresden the fire bombings killed over 25,000 (Estimates of dead ranges from 250,000 to 18,000). It destroyed 39 square km (15 sq. miles) on par with the devastation in Nagasaki/Hiroshima. The total amount of bombs dropped was 3,900 tons. In Hiroshima 99,000-160,000 and in Nagasaki 60,000-80,000 are estimated to have died.
So in fact there is little difference in using firebombing technique or fission bombing, the only difference is the amount of aircraft you need to use. Several thousand compared to 1. The effect is psychological since the massive fire bombings that took place in Japan before the atom bombing didn’t make any dent on the Japanese high command even though it was just as devastating in effect. It was purely psychological, firebombing and atom bombing differ very slight when it comes to devastation and loss of human life.
However we are discussing the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Nobody has yet explained to me how the Allies could have gotten the Japanese to surrender without using the atom bomb. The devastating fire bombings didn’t work. Conditional surrender could not be negotiated because of the Allied leaders Potsdam Declaration (Ultimatum).
Secondly I wonder if you believe that there is a difference in kind between mass bombings, fire bombings and atom fission bombing? If so why? It takes as many lives. (We’re talking about the then WWII, not todays fusion bomb global annihilation destruction version)
I fail to see how an anarchist can address an aggressor when aggression is a fact. How should Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Tojo been stopped? When is a pre-emptive strike allowable according to anarchist dogma? i.e. Should Germany been invaded 1936, when the German armed forces were weak? Should the Allied have done a separate peace with the German High Command and rolled on to Moscow to overthrow Stalin? Should the Allied have done a separate peace with Japan and stopped Mao’s takeover of China. 100 of millions of lives would have Ben spared and billion of lives would have not had to suffer terror, hunger and war.
What is the anarchist answer to stopping an ongoing agression? What are allowable means of war for an anarchist to be used in stopping an agressor? How does an anarchist calculate loss of life when waging war, the ratio of enemy soldiers and enemy civilians killed contra saved own combatants and civilians? 1-1, 1-10, 1-100…
My guess is that there will be no answer since anarchism is just a dream and an Utopia. There are no tools to realize and execute anarchist theories in real life.
When facing hard and brutal facts on the ground no amount of theorizing will help. When your family, friends and fellow human beings are about to be oppressed and/or exterminated you must act, and act fast. You cannot fight aggression by writing a thesis, neither can you fight the encroaching and expanding Big Government and creeping socialism by the same means… You fight with what you have…and you make deals with the lesser devil…afterwards you can write history books discussing ad nauseam if if was just or right., as we are doing here…the only thing that makes war just is if you win and beat the agressor…The Supreme Court said as much after the Civil War. The South could have seceded if they won but since they lost they were criminals…
Combining conventional TNT bombs in a pattern creates a firestorm, its called firebombing. It was used extensively in Japan and Germany in the later stages of WWII. In Dresden the fire bombings killed over 25,000 (Estimates of dead ranges from 250,000 to 18,000). It destroyed 39 square km (15 sq. miles) on par with the devastation in Nagasaki/Hiroshima. The total amount of bombs dropped was 3,900 tons. In Hiroshima 99,000-160,000 and in Nagasaki 60,000-80,000 are estimated to have died.
So in fact there is little difference in using firebombing technique or fission bombing, the only difference is the amount of aircraft you need to use. Several thousand compared to 1. The effect is psychological since the massive fire bombings that took place in Japan before the atom bombing didn’t make any dent on the Japanese high command even though it was just as devastating in effect. It was purely psychological, firebombing and atom bombing differ very slight when it comes to devastation and loss of human life.
However we are discussing the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The commander of tactical bombing of Germany and Japan, as well as General McArthur and others said that the a-bomb was not necessary. See quotes I posted earlier.
Nobody has yet explained to me how the Allies could have gotten the Japanese to surrender without using the atom bomb. The devastating fire bombings didn’t work. Conditional surrender could not be negotiated because of the Allied leaders Potsdam Declaration (Ultimatum).
The US knew from intercepted Japanese/Russian messages that Japan wanted a conditional surrender. The declaration also wasn’t clear on the fate of the House of the Emperor, as long as a new government was peaceful and democratic. The emperor was never tried as a war criminal anyhow, but that was the condition holding Japan back from surrender.
I fail to see how an anarchist can address an aggressor when aggression is a fact.
…
Argument from ignorance.
Providing security is profitable. “Costs of (re)capture” is an aspect of proportional punishment theory.
What is the anarchist answer to stopping an ongoing agression? What are allowable means of war for an anarchist to be used in stopping an agressor? How does an anarchist calculate loss of life when waging war, the ratio of enemy soldiers and enemy civilians killed contra saved own combatants and civilians? 1-1, 1-10, 1-100…
There is no possible justification for killing innocent civilians. It is possible that no judge would act on a crime though.
My guess is that there will be no answer since anarchism is just a dream and an Utopia
You posted this 15 minutes after your last post. :rolleyes:
While it is vital for the libertarian to hold his ultimate and “extreme” ideal aloft, this does not, contrary to Hayek, make him a “utopian.” The true Utopian is one who advocates a system that is contrary to the natural law of human beings and of the real world. A Utopian system is one that could not work even if everyone were persuaded to try to put it into practice. The Utopian system could not work, i.e., could not sustain itself in operation. The Utopian goal of the left: communism — the abolition of specialization and the adoption of uniformity — could not work even if everyone were willing to adopt it immediately. It could not work because it violates the very nature of man and the world, especially the uniqueness and individuality of every person, of his abilities and interests, and because it would mean a drastic decline in the production of wealth, so much so as to doom the great bulk of the human race to rapid starvation and extinction.
In short, the term “utopian” in popular parlance confuses two kinds of obstacles in the path of a program radically different from the status quo. One is that it violates the nature of man and of the world and therefore could not work once it was put into effect. This is the utopianism of communism. The second is the difficulty in convincing enough people that the program should be adopted. The former is a bad theory because it violates the nature of man; the latter is simply a problem of human will, of convincing enough people of the Tightness of the doctrine. “Utopian” in its common pejorative sense applies only to the former. In the deepest sense, then, the libertarian doctrine is not Utopian but eminently realistic, because it is the only theory that is really consistent with the nature of man and the world. The libertarian does not deny the variety and diversity of man, he glories in it and seeks to give that diversity full expression in a world of complete freedom. And in doing [p. 304] so, he also brings about an enormous increase in productivity and in the living standards of everyone, an eminently “practical” result generally scorned by true Utopians as evil “materialism.”
The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the State and its thrust for power. In contrast, it is the seemingly far more realistic conservative believer in “limited government” who is the truly impractical Utopian. This conservative keeps repeating the litany that the central government should be severely limited by a constitution. Yet, at the same time that he rails against the corruption of the original Constitution and the widening of federal power since 1789, the conservative fails to draw the proper lesson from that degeneration. The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical Utopian.
I don’t really feel like wasting more time on people who are entrenched statists and haven’t read/don’t understand libertarian theory and are therefore unable to attempt to solve problems.
Either way, the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were completely unnecessary even from a military perspective. Japan didn’t surrender because of the nuclear bombs dropped on its cities. It surrendered because it didn’t want to be taken over by the Russians who were overtaking them on the western front in Asia. So it gave itself over to the Americans in order to protect it’s culture from complete obliteration by the Russians. The Emperor and the Military powers didn’t really care about civilian deaths. Two cities were an acceptable sacrifice.