what life is expendible

silent gav

ok. just need to get this off my chest. maybe this isn't the right forum but hey delete it if you want. maybe what i'm about to say is simplistic or very complex but; what life is expendible. be it lebanese, israeli, rwandan, irish, american, christian, jewish, muslim, buddist. All we hear debated is who is right and who is wrong in a conflict. is it just me that feels any loss of life is wrong. how can anyone look into the eyes of another human being and say it's better they are killed. is it not this constant debate of whose right and wrong that takes away from the real solutions. anyway enough of my rambling......

RandomOne

Eh? You make no sense. It's not about who gets killed, but why. It makes no difference what race they are. The question should be does the means justify the end. Most of us I would presume support the soldiers going into battle in WW2, and although it cost millions of lives, felt that freedom worth fighting & people on all sides dying for.

silent gav

ok so basically what your saying is if someone does something bad you should do something bad back to them as long as you feel you are right and they are wrong. surely you become just as bad as they are as soon as you start retaliating. obviously i feel what they germans did was wrong however does it give us the right to carpet bomb germany and kill thousands of innocent men women and children. if the irish government started a war which you disagreed with but were powerless to stop do you thing another country would have the right to kill you for being irish and living here.

So Glad

Silent Gav, Silent, Silent Gav. There comes a time in everyones life when we realise that humans are a bunch of insane monkeys. Be proud that you life in such a crazy world.

To be honest, nobody has to right to decide who should live or die. Especially when religion is used as a front.

SoupyNorman

So Glad wrote:

Silent Gav, Silent, Silent Gav. There comes a time in everyones life when we realise that humans are a bunch of insane monkeys. Be proud that you life in such a crazy world.

To be honest, nobody has to right to decide who should live or die. Especially when religion is used as a front.

Unless its used as a front by the Peoples Front Of Judea.

oleras

silent gav wrote:

what life is expendible.

how can anyone look into the eyes of another human being and say it's better they are killed. ......

anybody that hurts a child, thats who..... and if it is my child i will have no trouble looking into there (sic) eyes...

oleras

RandomOne

silent gav wrote:

ok so basically what your saying is if someone does something bad you should do something bad back to them as long as you feel you are right and they are wrong. surely you become just as bad as they are as soon as you start retaliating. obviously i feel what they germans did was wrong however does it give us the right to carpet bomb germany and kill thousands of innocent men women and children. if the irish government started a war which you disagreed with but were powerless to stop do you thing another country would have the right to kill you for being irish and living here.

No, I said it's about the end justifying the means. I didn't mention being right or having any rights. Put it this way: If a country declared war on Ireland sending squadrons of planes to drop bombs, does Ireland say "we're better than them, we won't kill people" or does it send a load of anti-aircraft fire to intercept them knowing full well the pilots will most likely die?

If someone breaks into your home and threatens your wife and kids lives, do you take the high ground or do you do everything in your power to protect your family?

The only difference between right and wrong is a persons perception. The only rights we have are those given to us by those governing the land we live in.

Pocari Sweat

The feckin' Peoples' Front of Judea? They can go feck them selves, I'm all up for the Judean Peoples' Front.

silent gav

RandomOne wrote:

No, I said it's about the end justifying the means. I didn't mention being right or having any rights. Put it this way: If a country declared war on Ireland sending squadrons of planes to drop bombs, does Ireland say "we're better than them, we won't kill people" or does it send a load of anti-aircraft fire to intercept them knowing full well the pilots will most likely die?

If someone breaks into your home and threatens your wife and kids lives, do you take the high ground or do you do everything in your power to protect your family?

The only difference between right and wrong is a persons perception. The only rights we have are those given to us by those governing the land we live in.

I understand what you are saying but what i am saying is that by concentrating on the right and wrong of a situation i.e. the planes bombing us are wrong to do so therefore it is ok for us not to care about the pilots when we retaliate or that the person threatening your family is wrong therefore it's ok to kill them etc belittles life. it lets us forget or not think about the lives of those we percieve as wrong.

when we thing about the lives lost in world war II, the lives that come to mind are jews, allied forces etc. we don't think about the 100s of thousands of innocent germans or innocent japanese killed. We think they were expendible for the better good. is that right. is that ok. i don't think their families would think so.

Zillah

People are never expendable. But loss of life can be justified, usually by the threat of greater loss of life, or massive loss of liberty.

I have no problem with using large amounts of violence to destroy those who would threaten those I love. I'd rather not have to bash in the head of some scumbag thats trying to kill my family, but its something I would do without hesitation. Most people would agree. War is usually the same but on a larger scale.

Britain went to war against Germany because they invaded and annexed other nations and threatened to establish a terrible reign.

Britain carpet bombed Germany because it was the only method of crippling the nation's industry and morale. If that wasn't done, they couldn't win the war. Germany was doing the same. Its a concept known as Total War. Its not army versus army, its nation versus nation. It doesn't happen these days, hence precision bombs and the Geneva convention and all that pansy UN stuff.

There are strong grounds for criticising the Allied bombing of Germany towards the end of the war. They continued thoroughly devastating bombing on a nation that was already completely broken. It became a mechanised system that they were quite used to.

Perhaps it was revenge. Personally I am humbled by the events of WW2. I could not have the temerity to see fit to criticise the mentality of people who had been fighting for six years in a war against an evil empire that was trying to conquer the world and exterminate entire races of people.

I'm big on moral subjectivity.

FillSpectre

oleras wrote:

anybody that hurts a child, thats who..... and if it is my child i will have no trouble looking into there (sic) eyes...

Oh please. I don't know what happens to parents but they seem to lose sense of themselves. Their child is ultra important and it gets passed on to any child as a result. This leads to complete over reaction to situations. Parents are always worried about the stranger outside when it is statistically more likely your relaitves are likely to harm your child. Driving your child to school puts them at more risk than them walking. A childs death is worse but a child raised to be a hate machine used to kill others is worse again if you ask me. Making a 12year old join an army

silent gav wrote:

when we thing about the lives lost in world war II, the lives that come to mind are jews, allied forces etc. we don't think about the 100s of thousands of innocent germans or innocent japanese killed. We think they were expendible for the better good. is that right. is that ok. i don't think their families would think so.

I am a little more bothered about the Russians than the Germans or the Japaneese considering those two were aggressors. The Russian people suffered more if you ask me. Many think the japaneese would have fought forever unless the A bomb had been used this was mainly down to their culture of honour.

I was with Washington at Valley Ford, shivering in the snow.
I said, "How come the men here suffer like they do?"
"Men will suffer, men will fight, even die for what is right
even though they know they're only passing through"

Ultimately war has many causes and reasons. There is no right or wrong in war normally but later it may be explained that way. Isral should not have been allowed exist if you ask me. The UN made a mistake then and it is still a problem. The Germans were so baddly punished from WWI they were kind of forced into war. In WWII the realised that punishment of a country after a war isn't a great idea so they rebuilt the place with the US managing to take so choice copyright materials from the Germans.

You can't actually resolve fundemental disagrements so war is inevitable humna life is actully not that precious either. Next time you see footage of a kitten rescued from a drain after 8 hours think of the cost and how many human lives that money could have saved.

Adding good and evil to the mix is the problem. I read something about rape and apparently it didn't exist in some cultures. Now you can argue the act did but people didn't think it bad or suffer mentally. It is modern culture and teachings that actually make it bad to us and also make it so that people feel more of a victim. Ignorance is bliss and guilt is hell.

TomCo

All life is expendable, if it weren't things would grind to a hault.

Pigman II

I think all life is expendable. We've got far too high an opinion of ourselves and our place in the universe. I think that's the root cause of most of our daily worries.

JC 2K3

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054949932

tbh

TomCo

Its not remotely the same thing.

s8n

We don't need knackers and scobies. They are deffo expendible.

Dragan

In the grand scheme of things, everyone is expendable....there is always a bigger picture.

What you need to worry about is

a) Who is looking at that picture?
b) What way are they looking at it?

Sarky

Belgians.

THEY know why.

Zillah

FillSpectre wrote:

Many think the japaneese would have fought forever unless the A bomb had been used this was mainly down to their culture of honour.

Not quite. Firstly "forever" is more like "until the US had to invade mainland Japan". Secondly, they didn't need to hit populated cities. Any demonstration of such an impossible weapon would have broken them. They could have at least tried annihilating a few rice paddys first. There's also strong evidence that they chose to use the atomic bomb because they wanted to test its effectiveness against human settlements and as simple revenge for the war in general. They knew that the USSR would be the new huge threat after the war, and that the nuclear weapons would be the ultimate weapon in any potential conflict between them.

The Japanese would not have surrendered without the A-Bomb, but that doesn't mean the US needed to hit two densely populated cities.

FillSpectre

Zillah wrote:

Not quite.

Yes there is debate on the subject hence I said "many think" . It is also beleived the Japaneese were on the verge of an A bomb themselves hence the heavily populated areas were destroyed to kill the scientist also. Grenade launcher to kill a fly approach

L31mr0d

Vegetius wrote:

If you want peace, prepare for war

Depending on your orientation, theres is always some form of humanity that you view as expendible to make the world a better place. You might say kill off all the pedophiles, rapists, wife beaters and the world would be a better place, then others would argue for rehabilitation.

War is usually just a way of one government imposing its view of peace on another, i'm sure a communist and a democrat would have polar opposite ideals of what a truly "peaceful" world would look like, and just as how now the majority of people accept democracy, but there is always a "resistance" (i.e. terrorists) against it. The same would be true if Hitler had won, and written the history books.

Winston Churchill wrote:

I know history will be kind to me. For I intend to write it.

We would be fascist, and happy for the majority, but there would always be a grumbling under the surface for something better, just like today, and how do you get that? You kill off those opposing your beliefs so that you can instate your own... its a vicious cycle that has continued since the inception of civilisation. The world we live in now is no better than that of 1000 years ago. Sure we have better amenities, but there is more famine, pestilence, war, death than the world has ever seen, not to mention global warming and natural disasters increasing annually.

Summary:
Life is expendible when that life threatens your life, your families life, or your view of a peaceful life. The opposer, oddly enough, will believe your life is expendable for any of the same reasons.

ArphaRima

The way I put it is this: would you pick up a rifle if a foreign army was occupying/invading your country?

For me the answer is yes. For some people I know they would never. They would rather a life of tyranny than freedom and the entailing violence to gain it.

So Glad

I have always thought in my head that once there is weapons, there will always be war.

Black Swan

It is estimated that over 50,000 innocent Japanese children were vaporized with the two A-bombs. No wonder people fear the USA?

Well, I doubt that anyone chatting about this issue can clearly explain why the second A-Bomb was dropped so quickly after the second?

Bodhidharma

Firstly ALL people are expendable to the people who hold power. All leaders act selfishly to protect their own interests. It seems to me that some people are looked upon as more expendable than others, i.e non whites. It is the way it was, and the way it is.

Secondly the A bomb being dropped on Japan was just a disgusting, flexing of America's military power to the onlooking Russians. Nothing else. I doubt the Japanese people were even considered.

theTinker

L31mr0d wrote:

Depending on your orientation, theres is always some form of humanity that you view as expendible to make the world a better place. You might say kill off all the pedophiles, rapists, wife beaters and the world would be a better place, then others would argue for rehabilitation.

i think along the same lines as this. im a bit of a fan of harsh and swift "punishment/justice" for ALL of the aforementioned types. In real life i am quite a nice person and i can completely understand people do terrible things because of thier past etc, but SUM(repeaters, ppl who do terrible things to simple cause pain and never regret it) i think are nothing more than infections that should be cleansed. im not even angry at them, why would i be angry at an infection when i can cut it out?.

jimmycrackcorm

Bodhidharma wrote:

Secondly the A bomb being dropped on Japan was just a disgusting, flexing of America's military power to the onlooking Russians. Nothing else. I doubt the Japanese people were even considered.

And it had nothing to do with sparing over an estmated 50000 US soldiers lives from an inevitable invasion of Japan to finish the war.