Re: [Leica] Terror

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen2001@yahoo.ca>]

Please -While there is no question that the dropping
of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrifying,
it was quite clear that Japan was prepared to "fight
to the death" - and was training young children to use
bamboo spears to fight off American troops. Had the US
ultimately invaded mainland Japan, there would have
been far more casualties than there were in the two
cities after the bombs were dropped.

Further - those bombs were dropped after four years of
all-out war - a war begun against the U.S. by the
Japanese. Let's keep history straight here. One may be
a pacifist, and thus consider all war evil and
inexcusable - terrorist if you will. But if one is
not, then one should not be confusing acts committed
by terrorists with wars between nations.

B. D. 
- --- Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com> wrote:
> on 9/12/01 2:13 PM, Austin Franklin at
> darkroom@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> 
> >> and further realize that we
> >> (United States) have also annihilated tens of
> thousands of
> >> civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
> > 
> > I can't imagine for the life of me what your point
> was in making "this kind"
> > of statement.
> 
> presumably that there are plenty of precedents for
> the mass killing of
> civilians in the pursuit of a specific geopolitical
> goal, whatever you think
> of the goal itself. clearly the scene the morning
> after Nagasaki must have
> been quite beyond anything we have seen on CNN in
> the last 24 hrs, even if
> they are  both beyond the scope of human
> contemplation.
> 
> My point is that f you think the goal was good and
> that the means were
> proportionate to the ends, you are unlikely to
> classify either act as
> terrorism. If you disagree with the goal or you
> consider the act
> disproportionate you may classify either act as
> terrorism.
> 
> like it or not there are many people, not just Bin
> Laden's followers, who
> consider the WTC bombing just act, just as many
> millions of Americans
> consider Hiroshima a just act, just as many Britons
> consider the bombing of
> Dresden was a just act, just as many Germans
> consider the Blitz and the
> bombing of Coventry a just act. Probably Herod
> thought the slaughter of the
> infants was justified. Pol Pot had plenty of
> arguments for the terror in
> Cambodia. The Chatila (?sp) camps in the mid-east?
> My Lai? The arguments
> rage. I am not trying to equate all these ghastly
> events but simply point
> out that there is no universal agreement about what
> constitutes a
> justifiable act of war and what is an act of
> terrorism.
> 
> which is why again I think we should drop the
> rhetoric of terrorism and
> adopt the rhetoric of warfare, which seems ten times
> clearer to me whichever
> side you are on.
> 
> -- 
> John Brownlow
> 
> http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
> 
> 
> 


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