Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Bakustra wrote:Slade, you're coming at this from an alien perspective to myself and Gen. Trelane. You focus on legitimacy. Legitimacy is all well and good. Neither of us will argue against the legitimacy of the attack. I am arguing against its morality. One could easily consider valid targets that it was nevertheless immoral to attack. Dresden is generally considered to have been a legitimate target, but many people still consider its firebombing a horrific and immoral act. One could easily pick other examples. My argument is that the deliberate attack on the submarines rescuing survivors from the Laconia was an immoral action, and that it was also hypocritical for the Allies to try and condemn Doenitz at Nuremberg for the order he issued in response to this incident. Again, I am not making claims about the legality of the action.
YOu do realise that in a Total War scenario, which was the way WWII was fought, morality is practically out of the window? The Nazis showed no mercy to their conquered countries, or their prisoners. So why should they be shown any special treatment? In wars like this, the question that is dealt with in any mission is this: What will save more of my men's lives and kill more of the enemy? Everything else is secondary and frivolous.
So why so upset about the claim that it's immoral? If morality is not a concern, then claims of morality or immorality are immaterial and hardly worth putting hand to keyboard. But I'm not actually saying that it was immoral to attack the submarine, but rather to attack it while it was pulling people out of the water and so risking the lives of said individuals, if not murdering them outright. But I feel, unlike many it seems, that Nazis are not actually subhuman, and so deserve the same treatment regardless of their actions. I mean, this is just like justifying prison rape- welp, they're bad guys, so they deserve to get forcibly sodomized regularly. Just because someone is a Nazi doesn't mean that they forfeit any human rights. But your understanding of morality is more "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth", so have fun with your vision loss!
Stuart wrote:Bakustra wrote:I am arguing against its morality. One could easily consider valid targets that it was nevertheless immoral to attack. Dresden is generally considered to have been a legitimate target, but many people still consider its firebombing a horrific and immoral act. One could easily pick other examples. My argument is that the deliberate attack on the submarines rescuing survivors from the Laconia was an immoral action, and that it was also hypocritical for the Allies to try and condemn Doenitz at Nuremberg for the order he issued in response to this incident.
And, bringing up Dresden really makes a very neat example of the whole problem with the 'morality' argument. Many people might consider the destruction of Dresden to be a horrific act but there are, equally, many people who do not. As it happens, I'm one of them. Whether or not Dresden was an immoral act or not is a
personal opinion. It has no validity other than as a personal opinion. In fact, your statement that the attack on the U-boats following the Laconia incident was 'immoral' is no more meaningful than saying 'I don't like it'. It is no more meaningful than that because it is nothing more than saying 'I don't like it' in different-sounding words.
So, your argument that the attack on the U-boat in question was 'immoral' really is nothing more than you saying "I don't like it because I don't like it' and dismissing everything else that has been produced as to why the attack was carried out by putting your hands over your ears and carrying on with the chant 'I don't like it'. That's not an adult way to behave.
Slade, you attempting to serve as an arbiter of "adult" ways to behave is hilarious on several levels, but this is not the place to talk about your many faults as a simulacrum of a human being.
You clearly do not understand what I am saying, because your response is that "morality is irrelevant" which is yet another shift in your argument. I have been observing such shifts but not noting them before now for a variety of reasons. One of them is that I believe that we should be kind to those less fortunate then ourselves. Yes, morality is not universal. Welcome to 100-level philosophy, I guess. I recognize why the attack was carried out. I am not concerned with why. This is something that I will repeat, and you will ignore, until this probably degenerates into moderation. So if you are unwilling to address what I am actually arguing and saying, perhaps this conversation should come to an end.
PeZook wrote:If we declare the bombing immoral because it killed survivors, then we must also declare immoral every single hostage rescue action ever taken in which some of the hostages died or were injured.
It is not moral to let a hostage taker get what he wants and let him go to avoid death or injury to hostages, because...then he will go on to take more hostages, or train people to take hostages, causing more misery and harm in the future.
So the people they were pulling out of the water were hostages? You're smarter than this. There was no need to take hostages, since he could have left on his merry way. He stopped and other ships were brought in- to pull people from the water. He was only abiding by the Naval Protocol of 1936, so I guess that any sub that did that was hostage-taking- oh, this is because he was a
Kraut jerry German Nazi, right? And apparently Nazis are Untermenschen. I
forgot.
But, going with the insanity for a moment and assuming that they were hostages, then if you conducted a "hostage rescue" by blowing up the building, or machine-gunning the area, then you would not be able to get off scot-free in a reasonable society. At least you would be culpable for reckless endangerment and negligent homicide.
If Hartenstein really did what he did out of humanitarian concerns, he should've disarmed the ship. Declarations of humanitarian intent are really well and good, right until you are finished with your rescue, hoist the red cross down and merrily proceed to kill more people during your career. Arguably, even disarming the ship wouldn't really cut it, as two months later U-156 could've picked up more torpedoes and proceeded to sink ships anew.
Why people can't see the hypocrisy in that action is staggering to me. The laws established for proper use of the Red Cross flag were designed explicitly to prevent the degeneration of the symbol: if warships, tanks etc. could just temporarily hoist the symbol up every time they did something non-war related, both sides would start immediately shooting legitimate Red Cross vehicles on the assumption they're not actually doing humanitarian work most of the time, but instead want to not be bothered for some time.
And of course there's the fact that any action that lead to Germany losing the war faster could be moral, even if it killed fuckloads of people instantly, because while Hartenstein put on his display, the SS was merrily murdering its way through Russia. So a day shaved off the war meant lives saved.
Man, it's... it's almost as though you can take humanitarian actions at one time and kill people at another time! Damn, I guess that there may be some complexity or something to human behaviors! Oh no, we can't pigeonhole this guy into the "kill kill kill" or "let him live" categories! Society is collapsing!!
He put out the flags to indicate what he was doing, along with making his broadcast and refusing to fire unless in self-defense. If you feel that the ideal in wartime is for warships to let people die because of legal niceties, just say
that you're a callous individual who cares little for sailor fuckheads so.
Your morality amazes me. Anything goes, as long as it kills Nazis. Hey, could I
rape a Nazi, as long as I kill him or her afterwards? Could I do so if I produced a study showing that doing so had a non-zero impact on Nazi war capacity? Could I cast a genocide spell to wipe out all Germans from the Earth, seeing as that would end the war almost immediately? Could this be used to justify any action in any war, as long as you have sufficient propaganda to convince your populace of the evil of the opposition? Does this lead to monstrous ends if applied? Will you back off from your disgusting proposal or pretend that you implied some sort of limit to it? I hope that these questions and more will be answered soon!