Well then, this would condone anything and everything in pursuit of victory.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki undoubtedly saved more lives than they cost.

I take it you mean bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more lives than they cost. Why take that into consideration anyway? You’ve already said that willing the ends means willing the means, you have already dispensed with any utilitarian calculations by implying that killing more people than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which are places not bombs) is justified if it brings about the final result. This hedging of your bets is far more weasly than accepting it was a horrendous but necessary thing to do.

Or maybe I’ve just spent too long living in East Asia, where virtually everybody takes the view that Japan had it coming.

Nobody cares how long you have lived in East Asia and how it has furnished you with either some kind of argumentum ad populum “virtually everyone” agrees with me excuse for the bombing. You wouldn’t accept anything similar if I said, “I drink a toast on September 11th. Having lived in the Middle East for years virtually everyone there takes the view that the US had it coming.” Such an argument forgets the fact that the Imperial Army were hardly the only victims of the bombing, that men, women and children who had nothing to do with the decisions of the war, not to mention Korean slaves who were taken to work in the factories received no positive discrimination by the atomic bomb.

Not to mention having read a lot of wartime history of that region, which explains why.

Good for you!

As Wardytron posted somewhere yesterday, we’d all have much preferred it if Germany and Japan could have been defeated by giving them a good talking-to.

No doubt, but the strawman that suggests I think Japan and Germany should have been given nothing whatsoever stronger than a good talking to conceals the fact that this wasn’t the issue I raised with you. I said it was ghoulish to drink a toast to the dropping of the atomic bomb, not that it shouldn’t have been dropped so either you aren’t clear about what we are talking about by mentioning whatever it was wardytron said or you’re just blustering to hide the fact you think the dropping of atomic bombs are worth celebrating.

But I stick to my guns. You can’t will the ends without willing the means. Hiroshima and Nagasaki undoubtedly saved more lives than they cost. Perhaps it would be more tasteful to celebrate VJ Day on the 15th. But I can’t help feeling that that would be rather weaselly and evasive. What ended the war was the shock value and scale of the atom bombs.

Or maybe I’ve just spent too long living in East Asia, where virtually everybody takes the view that Japan had it coming. Not to mention having read a lot of wartime history of that region, which explains why.

As Wardytron posted somewhere yesterday, we’d all have much preferred it if Germany and Japan could have been defeated by giving them a good talking-to.

The staunchest supporters of the bombing will defend it from the point of view of necessity. Those who revel in it are not supporters but sadists.

—

I say, Kamm old stick, how’s the hedge fund business holding up?

IDF source: Charges of civilian shootings false

Mar. 25, 2009
Yaakov Lappin , THE JERUSALEM POST

Allegations that IDF soldiers deliberately shot and killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead have been found to be categorically untrue in official army investigations, an IDF source told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the results of the investigations have not yet been officially released to the public. He stressed, however, that the investigations were close to completion.

The investigations examined claims made by graduates of the Rabin Pre-military Academy during a conference held last month, which were later written up and printed in an academy pamphlet. Some Israeli media outlets, including Haaretz, then seized on the claims, and the allegations went on to make headlines around the world.

During the conference, one soldier claimed a marksman opened fire on a mother and two of her children, after a squadron commander told them to walk into a no-entry zone.

“All of the soldiers who were involved in the conference were questioned – not as a punishment – but in order to understand whether they had witnessed these things. From all of the testimonies we collected, we can safely conclude that the soldiers who made the claims did not witness the events they describe,” the source said.

“All of it was based on rumors. In the incident of the alleged shooting of the mother and her children, what really happened was that a marksman fired a warning shot to let them know that they were entering a no-entry zone. The shot was not even fired in their general direction,” the source said.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237727539851&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter