BF2S Forums Let's Never Forget: 100 years of Genocide

sergeriver wrote:

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

EVieira wrote:

Found this in a book review at the Harvad Human Rights Journal:

Hiroshima and “Reflections on the Holocaust and Hiroshima,” explore the definition of genocide in the context of mass killings of civilians in wartime. Hiroshima is not generally considered to be a genocidal event and no action was ever taken to discipline those who developed the atomic bomb, sanctioned it, and executed its use. At the same time, the killing was arguably targeted at civilians in a way that did not allow for individual surrender. By expanding the term “genocide” to include mass killings like Hiroshima, Frey revises the traditional understanding that genocide is only the purposeful annihilation of a specific group.

Like I said before, history is written by the winners. The UNs definition of genocide would never encompass Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Genos (Race) Cide (To kill). The Americans weren't trying to wipe the Japaneses off the planet. A-Bomb was a terrible thing indeed, but they weren't trying to wipe off all the Japanese. What would be worst is that if they dropped the bombs at Tokyo, Osaka, major cities.

QFT

A thought: Although I agree with dropping the bomb instead of invading Japan, I wonder if the US could have accomplished victory by sending film footage of the testings at Bikini Atoll, to Japan as a fair warning of the power the US had at their disposal. Maybe they did, I dunno. Gotta look it up.

lowing wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

Genos (Race) Cide (To kill). The Americans weren't trying to wipe the Japaneses off the planet. A-Bomb was a terrible thing indeed, but they weren't trying to wipe off all the Japanese. What would be worst is that if they dropped the bombs at Tokyo, Osaka, major cities.

QFT

A thought: Although I agree with dropping the bomb instead of invading Japan, I wonder if the US could have accomplished victory by sending film footage of the testings at Bikini Atoll, to Japan as a fair warning of the power the US had at their disposal. Maybe they did, I dunno. Gotta look it up.

I tend to agree with Serge and Lowing on this one: the A-bomb, notwithstanding its power, was considered as a weapon, and was used to prevent an attack on Okinawa and the Japanese mainland, which would have cost a lot of lives (civilians and troops), seeing the strength of the Japanese defenses earlier during the war, e.g. Iwo Jima.

If one would consider the A-bomb a form of genocide, one would also have to consider the destruction of German cities by the British and American heavy bombers during WWII as being the same.

IMO the term 'genocide' has to be reserved to the deliberate killing of a people, based on race or religion (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genocide and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#C … m_genocide).

only 1.250.000 aermenian were living in turkey at 1915.
they were moved from their homeland because they want to create aermenia at eastern anatolia and they started to ambush villages and kill people living there.
they were moved to syria. only 56000 people died on the way.
only men that can fight against us were moved. old, sick people stayed at their homeland.
If we have killed so much aermenians there wont be 12 million aermenians today.

Pierre wrote:

lowing wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

QFT

A thought: Although I agree with dropping the bomb instead of invading Japan, I wonder if the US could have accomplished victory by sending film footage of the testings at Bikini Atoll, to Japan as a fair warning of the power the US had at their disposal. Maybe they did, I dunno. Gotta look it up.

I tend to agree with Serge and Lowing on this one: the A-bomb, notwithstanding its power, was considered as a weapon, and was used to prevent an attack on Okinawa and the Japanese mainland, which would have cost a lot of lives (civilians and troops), seeing the strength of the Japanese defenses earlier during the war, e.g. Iwo Jima.

If one would consider the A-bomb a form of genocide, one would also have to consider the destruction of German cities by the British and American heavy bombers during WWII as being the same.

IMO the term 'genocide' has to be reserved to the deliberate killing of a people, based on race or religion (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genocide and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#C … m_genocide).

The only difference in considering the bombings a genocide or not is the word "intent". That word is what puts the bombing out of the genocide definition, but a definition created by the UN at a time when the UN completely dominated by US and its allies.

Genocide is expanded by Fey (from my post earlier) and other philosophers to include mass killings where there is no chance of surrender or survival. That is the difference between those bombings and the convectional bombings done by all sides. Conventional bombs give you the chance to protect yourself, and both sides could surrender at any time. The atom bombs gave the people no chance of survival or surrender.

I agree with this definition, genocide is to be considered the mass killing of any race, religion or group, whether your intent is to wipe them out entirely or simply to accomplish something, like the end of a war or the repression of a rebellion through famine (Stalin's case).

Whether it was a crime or not to cause such suffering on some many families has nothing to do with it being called genocide or not, but I think that's what makes most people here resistant to see such mass killing as a genocide.

Last edited by EVieira (2006-11-24 07:25:49)

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

Please, read my definition of genocide since it is taking the original roots and its meaning kthnxbai.

Geno (Race) Cide (massacre/To kill). Therefore the word genocide means to kill off an entire race. IT WAS NOT AMERICAS INTENT TO KILL OF ALL THE JAPANESE.

But I agree it was a terrible thing.

Then your definition is entirely wrong. Neither Hitler nor Stalin nor Saddam hussein managed to kill an entire race. They "INTENDED" to do this, and fortunately were only successfull to an extent.

Please, read the definition of genocide posted by Sergeriver which was the beginning of this argument. And read my posts, where I consider the expanded definition of genocided as proposed by others.

Last edited by EVieira (2006-11-24 07:29:50)

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

EVieira wrote:

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

Please, read my definition of genocide since it is taking the original roots and its meaning kthnxbai.

Geno (Race) Cide (massacre/To kill). Therefore the word genocide means to kill off an entire race. IT WAS NOT AMERICAS INTENT TO KILL OF ALL THE JAPANESE.

But I agree it was a terrible thing.

The your definition is entirely wrong. Neither Hitler nor Stalin nor Saddam hussein managend to kill of an entire race. They had thh "INTENDED" to do this, and fortunately were only successfull to an extent.

Please, read the definition of genocied posted by Sergeriver which was the beginning of this argument. And read my posts, where I consider the expanded definition of genocided as proposed by others.

Take the meaning by it's original root is the best way to find the definition. Hitler wanted to wipe off the jews, But he failed.

Then  you are even more wrong. The roots of the word means to "Genos" race, ethinic, and "cide" the latin suffix for "to kill". Even though it has greek/latin roots, the word was coined by a modern man, and to describe the mass killings wich occured in WWII, and not only of Jews but of many Polish and others.

There was no implication of totality, neither in the construction of the word nor in the crimes Raphael Lemkin was describing.

EVieira wrote:

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

EVieira wrote:

The your definition is entirely wrong. Neither Hitler nor Stalin nor Saddam hussein managend to kill of an entire race. They had thh "INTENDED" to do this, and fortunately were only successfull to an extent.

Please, read the definition of genocied posted by Sergeriver which was the beginning of this argument. And read my posts, where I consider the expanded definition of genocided as proposed by others.

Take the meaning by it's original root is the best way to find the definition. Hitler wanted to wipe off the jews, But he failed.

Then  you are even more wrong. The roots of the word means to "Genos" race, ethinic, and "cide" the latin suffix for "to kill". Even though it has greek/latin roots, the word was coined by a modern man, and to describe the mass killings wich occured in WWII, and not only of Jews but of many Polish and others.

There was no implication of totality, neither in the construction of the word nor in the crimes Raphael Lemkin was describing.

Read the UN definition.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

You forgot about the American Indian.


Edit:(Ok a little more than 100 years)

Yeah! The Native Americans all lived in Disney Pocahontas peace and harmony with nature and one another before Europeans showed up. And then it was all a one-way street of violence against the Indians from there!

thanks, now i don't have to say it

the "native" americans were far from innocent in those affairs, we're just supposed to feel bad for them for not using things like "science" and "technology" and having a bad K/D ratio

they weren't being bombed for the genetics of being japanese, they were being bombed due to the politics of being japanese

EVieira wrote:

sergeriver wrote:

EVieira wrote:

Here is some more good excerpts for this discussion. They shed some light on why the definition of genocide is not a simple thing at all:

"There are considerable disagreements among experts concerning whether a specific complex of behaviours merits the designation genocide, even leaving aside clear-cut instances of attempts at moral appropriation of the concept.  There are various reasons for this.  First, like any other legal instrument, it was the outcome of negotiations between parties that held conflicting views as to the proper scope of its constituent parts..."

"A second reason for uncertainty as to how the concept can be fitted to particular complexes of behaviour derives from the fact that the "ideal-typical" genocidal complex that Lemkin had in mind was the destruction of European Jewry. "

[Source: S D Stein. "Genocide."  In E Cashmore (ed.). Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations. Fourth Edition. London: Routledge, 1996]

If you want to call the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a Genocide you have your right to do it, but let others think it was not.

I can't see it any other way, the way those people were vaporised. There weren't even bodies for the family members to bury, as the ones which weren't vaporised were too radioactive. To me it can't just be called an awful thing because it meant to end the war. I'm not, in way, trying to compare the Holocaust to this, or condemn the ones involved in the decision of the bombing.

Nevertheless, it was a good discussion. +1 to you.

It was indeed.

sergeriver wrote:

Ottomania wrote:

only 1.250.000 aermenian were living in turkey at 1915.
they were moved from their homeland because they want to create aermenia at eastern anatolia and they started to ambush villages and kill people living there.
they were moved to syria. only 56000 people died on the way.
only men that can fight against us were moved. old, sick people stayed at their homeland.
If we have killed so much aermenians there wont be 12 million aermenians today.

Go away.

never.

Last edited by Ottomania (2006-11-25 01:37:07)

Ottomania wrote:

cyborg_ninja-117 wrote:

Ottomania wrote:

only 1.250.000 aermenian were living in turkey at 1915.
they were moved from their homeland because they want to create aermenia at eastern anatolia and they started to ambush villages and kill people living there.
they were moved to syria. only 56000 people died on the way.
only men that can fight against us were moved. old, sick people stayed at their homeland.
If we have killed so much aermenians there wont be 12 million aermenians today.

Still genocide.

this people didnt killed by turks, some of them killed because they were rich and attacked by other groups,
some because of hungry, and some because of disaster. at least it is not 1.5 million!

Why don't you learn from Germans, they don't deny the Holocaust.  You should do the same with the Armenian Genocide, show more respect for those people, you are not guilty anyway and nobody is accusing you for this.