A UN team has concluded that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, was committed during the Hamas attacks in Israel on 7 October.

[Link]

I recognise the problem with moralising over past wars where bomb targeting technology was different to now.

However, I can't support attacking non military targets and we did that using plenty of loosely connected 'total war' justifications.....it's weak at any time but when the war is won....well...I'll just say it's not for me.

As for Japan, the problem with the argument that we needed to drop a nuclear bomb on civilians to stop a war is that it's a level of barbarism I can't accept.

Not well known and kept from most people is that Japan had put out feelers for a conditional surrender but Truman rejected it....it was unconditional or nothing for him.

Once I heard that the justifications for dropping that bomb became very weak.

Sure, you don't get the unconditional surrender but I don't buy the argument that you kill hundreds of thousands of people to get the kind of peace you want. A conditional surrender is all in the detail, there was no need to invade.

If Japan had had the bomb we wouldn't have done it....It's a kind of evil and there should be a line beyond we shouldn't travel and I think that happened there.

Edited by Stirlingsays (04 Mar 2024 2.35pm)

Good question; probably not.

Interested to know how valid that approach was, what authority the person who made that approach had and what conditions were proposed.

There was a tentative suggestion from their Soviet ambassador that they use the USSR to broker some deal. However, he had no authority to progress this, the USSR were not remotely interested, and Tojo would never have even dared suggest the loss of face on conditions the Allies would have reasonably demanded from any surrender.

I think this is a revisionist, anti-bomb motivated non fact.

For my part, the loss of hundreds and thousands of lives is barbarism, but a drop beside the tens of millions lost in the Asian theatre, who would have perished had the war continued there, and who would have died in the securing by Stalin of a pan-European USSR.

just because media outlets are saying it, doesn't mean it necessarily happened. The have no evidence. A bit like the Aid workers were involved.
To me it smacks of more smears (on what was already a horrific attack) to try and justify Israel now going far beyond a military operation, in the killing and displacement of Palestinian civilians.

Japan had been beaten back to its islands. Personally I don't question the obvious truth that they wanted to know what conditions would entail. The idea that this has to be announced officially is surely unrealistic.

America had the cards at this stage. It could have chosen several other courses of action other than dropping the bomb or invasion. It could have blockaded Japan and continued strategic bombing. It could have taken a Japanese delegation to observe a testing of the atomic bomb and thus given its leadership fair warning of the consequences of refusing terms.

Personally I view that Truman would accept nothing but the unconditional surrender requirement and was prepared to level Japan to get it.

Purely upon humanitarian grounds as a European....as was his genetic stock, I can't defend that deliberate killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

As for Stalin....We should have let Hitler fight him on one front.

Edited by Stirlingsays (05 Mar 2024 11.40pm)