this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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In my mind, Oppenheimer figured out this when he said that:
are you really both-sidesing the literal nazis?
We never nuked the Nazis...But even if we did, are you saying that the Nazis being Nazis would've justified vaporizing every civilian man, woman, and child in a city or two?
Whether or not you'd say it was justified is a different beast altogether than having to be the one that made it possible in terms of responsibility.
Tangentially, many firing squads will have only one person have a real bullet(s) while the rest have blanks so that they don't all have to feel responsible for ending a life. Even that is setting justification aside.
The belief was that the bombs would save lives compared to an invasion on both sides. There's been a lot of retrospective analysis, but most of it agrees with that assessment. An invasion of Japan would have been absolutely ruinous for Japan's civilian population. But it's still a question of whether the ends justify the means in a lesser of two evils situation.
I can see that viewpoint and not argue against it, that might be totally right. I'm trying to point out that agreeing with it and being the person or one of the main people who made the bomb possible are very different.
Being ok with the decision as a member of a country at war and being ok with the decision as someone who made the bomb are very different.
So yes dropping the bomb to end the war in Europe early would have been justified. Now please stop being a literal nazi apologist.
You're assuming that Hitler would have just surrendered after seeing the atomic bomb, but there's no actual indication he would have. He was fucking nuts. At some point there was an actual race to Berlin, the Wehrmacht was completely annihilated, women and kids were on the front lines and still no surrender. He would have sacrificed every last German before surrendering
We'd be having the exact same conversation about how the Japanese would've never surrendered had we not the proof otherwise.
>Literal Nazi apologist
Holy fuck...how about you don't use words that you so obviously don't understand.
"both sides were as bad as each other" is very obviously a stance in defence of the nazis, so i don't know what you think "apologist" means
Good thing I never fucking said that and would never agree with the statement. The point of the comic is that our lack of perspective taking and dehumanization of others enables terrible atrocities. That factor of dehumanizing propaganda exists on both sides but I'm not taking the comic so far as to equate us to the Nazis (again, not who we nuked in the first place) That's obviously a gross oversimplification.
You'd get more from the comic if you put Germany and Japan on the left. The mechanic of dehumanization oscillated out of control until we felt justified wiping out entire cities of Japanese. But if you're the one responsible for the atomic bomb, the atrocities of foreign soldiers would likely give you little peace as your invention vaporized kids in playgrounds...and babies in strollers and wombs...mothers who just wanted this stupid war to be over so their husband could come home and they could raise a family.
Next time, just ask a question before putting your dumbfuck words in someone else's mouth to justify calling them Nazi apologists.
"Are you saying both sides were as bad as each other ?" No, of course not. "Oh, my bad."
^ That's how this should've went.
so you just don't understand the implications of the original message you posted?
otherwise please reply with a justification of how:
you made an incredibly silly argument, but the even sillier thing to do right now is to stand by it
you not understanding the implications of your own argument isn't my problem, friend
You've given up the right to be responded to.
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