You gotta be kidding Hapa. Art likes to argue??? He wont answer anyones questions!!! An argument takes two sides. This is nothing more than another ART SERMON, where he drones on and on about whatever he wants while dodging everyones questions. ART is the most twisted and confused person on ET, next to longshot Lets face it.... they guy cant tell the difference between a soldier who is perfectly happy targeting infants, and a soldier who only fights enemy combatants. Pffffft. Has some serious screws loose. peace axeman
Hapa, while I don't accept the moral relativism that you suggest, I will accept your assessment of ART. In fact, a small part of me kinda likes the nutty bastard. But try as I might, I just can't for the life of me understand the mentality, which is unfortunately all too common in this country, and which ART so quintessentially represents, that seems to always root against the home team and invariably finds common cause with our enemies. Now please don't misunderstand me. I'm all for debating policy and questioning authority. That's part and parcel of living in a free and democratic society. But what I cannot understand is the blind and fervent desire to be alienated from the larger American family, with whom we share certain fundamental values, moral precepts and interests, notwithstanding all the clamor and harangue at the edges. And when that is combined with a predilection to sympathize and defend those who's greatest ideal is to destroy those very same values and, indeed, our very way of life, I am saddened. But in the end, I know that ART and his cohorts, despite their hyperactivity, are rather insignificant. So we shall continue to do what is right and what is necessary, while the angry fringe smuggly derides this great land and those that keep them free.
Phew...I thought it was just me. He reminds me of an autistic person...in their own world oblivious to reality. Oh well, I was bound to find someone on here who I legitimately thought was a complete and total nob....
ART posted some links that provide well documented proof that the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan was militarily unnecessary..... leading to the obvious conclusion that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were two of the most spectacular, vicious acts of terrorism in history.
Are you at all surprised that the "crowd mentality" would devote their energy toward the messenger, and not the message?
Not surprised at all. I had the exact thought as I read through the deepening debate on "ART's motivation". Yes... how could anyone post factual information which burst thru shared delusional bubbles of goodness and moral superiority?
So we should "understand" the point of view of the Sudanese Arabs and Arab descendents, who enslave the black Christians and animists in the South, those they don't slaughter (now being warned by the UN as an ethnic cleansing) anyhow? We should "understand" the view of the Hutus who slaughtered a million or so people in ethnic cleansing? Give me a break. I took "secular" ethics. I have no problem discussing Kant, Mills, and such. But we don't have to get into these types of philosophical models on ethics to have a basic grasp on the most obvious evil (those that want to kill anyone and everyone who does not agree with them, including those that don't want a fundamentalist government), and those that fight terrorist networks and soldiers who represent countries believed to be a threat (whether or not it is a threat). By the way, it is funny you talk of "secular" ethics and "understanding," while in your double standard you mention nothing of the fact that the most intolerant and hateful people are in fact these terrorists, like Atta, who don't at all try to understand us "Americans," but rather want to kill any and every person (in the West and even in much of the relatively secular Muslum countries). And who does the most close-minded preaching, the fundamentalists who rail on Western values and insist that everyone should live their way, under strict and often oppressing rules (or else they are infidels), or as you suggest, America, whose main message preached is that nations should allow their citizens the freedom to determine individually (as much as possible) how they want to live their lives, while employing a participatory government (a democracy). It is funny that you would be so pretentious and presumptuous about what people here know about formal "ethics" classes, when you haven't even examined your own double standards. Americans try much harder than these fundamentalists to understand other people.
Of course we should understand the point of view of people who engage in inhumane acts. We can either take a black and white neoconservative perspective, all good, or all bad...us versus them...good versus evil.......or we can take a humanistic perspective and attempt to understand the factors that lead people to act so destructively. Some people believe that evil acts are the product of nature and not nurture. Current advancement in the field of psychology, and neurophysiology counter this primitive thinking to demonstrate that environment plays a most important role in the choices people make. People are not born evil, they become damaged to the point that they see no option but to commit evil actions. If we assume that people are not born evil, but become that way, then understanding of how they were influenced to become evil, what mind conditioning they were subjected to to become capable of evil actions, allows us to move toward positive solutions. This line of thinking however goes against the neoconservative Christian based totalitarian approach to life, in which evil is a power of the Devil, not a product of psychological trauma or even chemical imbalances. Given that we have seen Christians in the past behave in most barbaric manners to support their religious zeal and Christian missions, we too have seen Christianity evolve to its current state. Does the decrease in the barbarism seen by Christian leaders mean that there is less of the Devil at work? Or does it mean that there is evolution that comes from education, prosperity, better nutrition, secularist thought, etc.? The middle east remains a mostly impoverished, uneducated, and survival consciousness dominated area, in which religious zealots preach a 14th century level dogma. We can either take a "bomb them into the stone age" approach, or we can take a more evolved approach to understand how they arrive at their own ethical conclusions, and begin to act in a manner that expresses the level of evolution, humanity, compassion, and Godliness we claim to represent.
Funny how it took a SECOND nuke before Japan even surrendered. They murdered many, many thousands of American POWs, used Americans for their "scientific experiments," murdered, plundered and raped women in Korea and Manchuria, and of course attacked Pearl Harbor without declaring war. They had a military that used kamikaze pilots and, for that matter, soldiers. Now the latter methods were fair, but why should we lose 500,000 (or whatever the ridiculous number expected to be killed) more of our people to invade their mainland and force a surrender? In fact, more people were killed by conventional bombs in one night (Dresden), but that doesn't give politically correct self-righteous people (who might sing a different tune if they were more than likely to die invading Japan while seeing the atrocities they committed) as nice a picture to get all, well, self-righteous about. Truman did the right thing under the circumstances!
You should read what ART actually posted. You will see documentation that Japan was trying to surrender for months before the bomb and the choice to irradiate the Japanese cities had much more to do with terrorizing the USSR than saving US lives.