Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tj444
wow... i think what pops said was disgusting.. but that you think its ok to condon that you used people to clear minefields and are fine with comfort girls tops that ten times over..
I did not say I condone the use of Nazi POWs to clear minefields after their occupation ended. I said it was done. Both that it was done, and the manner in which it was done, as well as the fact that it violates several treaties the country was party to, are things that offend me. It is one of several less than proud moments in Norwegian history, although not nearly as much of a disgrace as how we treated the women who mated with the Nazis, or the offspring of such unions for a couple of generations.
What could arguably have been done instead, treaties and law permitting, would be to train the POWs in mine clearing operations and employ them in that capacity to clean up their own mess the same way our people would be doing it otherwise: with gear, training and great care. In short, respecting their lives while acknowledging that their acts require lives to be put at risk to protect the civilian population, and that it is preferable that this risk be assigned to them as the originators of the problem, rather than to the people they invaded and occupied.
That said, my general stance is that- apart from treaties and applicable law- there is no international community, and thus no inherent problem with a default policy of vae victis, particularly as regards combattants. There is a question of values on the part of the one undertaking an action, however. For western nations, that excludes comfort girls, pillaging and so forth. For some other nations, it does not. I'm not advocating either approach. Just saying war sucks, human nature is a beast, it's a dog eat dog world, and we're all competition that will eventually have to wage war on each other for scraps if we don't change how we do things.
If war was just a matter of declaring a winner, we would be playing chess with heads of state instead.
quote:
So for you to condon using live Germans to clear minefields,.. how does that make those that did that any different than the SS & Hitler?
To reiterate, I never condoned it, I pointed out that it happened. Also, there is marginal distinction between the SS and the armies of several modern nations, if any distinction exists at all. As for Hitler, the man was a socialist with no grasp of biodiversity and insufficient regard for the value of life, personal liberty and individuality. That alone is sufficient to demerit him in my book.
quote:
And you are "fine with comfort girls"???? [...] Its the same situation for the victims as it was for the comfort women that you are fine with..
People suffer. I think that sucks. I feel for them.
But it's not the situation of the victims that concerns me. Rather, it's the defensibility of the chain of events that give rise to such a situation, and those are not comparable. I would love to expound on that, except I've done so at great length in the past in other threads, and don't particularly feel like reiterating the whole frame of reference and attendant arguments here, where it is essentially far off topic.
Incidentally, I never said children. I said women, and implicitly men, too. Adults.
quote:
Your attitude makes pops look almost saint-like in comparision.. 
In a victim-centric morality, that may well be the case.
Suffering is a fact of life. Reality is harsh. Life sometimes sucks.
I don't make it be that way, and I don't like that it is, but I do have to live with it.
I embrace life and favor letting others live theirs. Appreciating the value of life is impossible without some degree of recognition that the lives of those you hate is also valuable, not just the lives of those you love. It is not our place to go casually discarding lives; enough are ended by factors outside our control not to compound it by actively ending them when it isn't necessary. Much like freedom of speech, where the protection is principally for the words we would have unspoken, it is the lives of the unpopular and the vulnerable that most need protection in recognition of the value of life.
I embrace freedom and would not deprive someone of theirs if they guard and treasure it to the best of their abilities. The vast majority of us will make compromises in this area if pressed over an extended period of time, or subjected to mind breaking experiences, both of which are ugly and cruel things that I would not do to anyone except in a defensive war on my own home soil, or to save or protect those I love, as a matter of aesthetics. However, if one is unwilling to risk one's life to preserve one's freedom, I do not recognize that as a valid claim to freedom. I deeply respect any valid claim.
Loyalties are important; in part, they are important because reality is harsh and leads us inevitably into conflicts. Some conflicts are avoidable, such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where only those required by treaty to join have any moral defense. Some are unavoidable, such as conflicts over scarce resources that are necessary for life. Those are, for the most part, still ahead of us in time. I foresee those will be far more brutal conflicts, given the higher stakes. For now, we can get by through exploiting underdeveloped countries and burning out future from both ends.
That won't always be so. And at that point, we are unavoidably all either allies or enemies, as a consequence of the inherent competition for survival. In the ultimate final analysis, even a reduced Malthusian curve leads us to the point where our life will end up in the same struggle to survive as all other life, unless we change our ways dramatically. I don't foresee such change.
If a man assaults a member of his chosen community without due cause, he does something wrong by my count.
If a man assaults an outsider to which he has no allegiance, he's acting in poor taste.
What these people did to their own and their allies, was treason.
What they did to the Talibs, was very distasteful.
I can forgive poor taste.
Health,
al-Aswad.
< Message edited by Aswad -- 1/12/2012 3:21:40 AM >
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: The actions of a few disgrace all allied troops. - 
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