In 1939, FDR issued a plea that all combatant nations refrain from bombing because he saw it as a bad thing.
But, in 1943 FDR started to bomb civilians. Over 600,000 moms, kids, and babies would die in Germany.
"Bomb shelters turned into ovens and roasted persons inside, so that rescue workers days later found the bodies seared together in an indistinguishable mass; the molten asphalt of the streets engulfed those who fled the burning buildings."
Why did FDR burn to death 600,000 Germans and a million or so Japanese?
Is it odd how Dems focus on waterboarding?
2007-11-06 05:59:52 · 9 answers · asked by Duminos 2 in Politics & Government ➔ Politics
Quote by author Algis Valinunas
2007-11-06 06:03:36 · update #1
The fire bombing of the all wooden building Japanese cities was much worse.
2007-11-06 06:04:32 · answer #1 · answered by booman17 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You have mis-stated the plea. Roosevelt never asked for a stop to all bombing, but to an agreement not to bomb purely civilian targets.
In 1943, it was not a given that the Allies would beat the Nazis. The practice of firebombing cities was a British, not an American (in Europe, anyways) undertaking. The rationale was to not just destroy German industry, but the workers that made them viable.
This was all decades before precision guided munitions and smart bombs. Nobody in 1943 had the ability to hit precisely defined targets.
Same thing in Japan. Most residential dwellings in Japanese population centers were constructed of wood. If you wanted to target Japanese industry, it wasn't such a large stretch to maximize the loss of civilian Japanese war workers as well.
The only large city to be targeted in World War Two that had no military or industrial value would be Dresden. That Americans and British firebombed it was obscene. Even so, targeting a non-value target like Dresden pales in comparison to Nazi and Japanese atrocities.
Your concept of the value of torture, too, is misguided. Even the Nazis realized that torture was counterproductive. Their big intelligence coups were based on coercion, and tangible rewards for those who provided useful information. The vast majority of those they tortured were tortured to confess to crimes they clearly did not commit, in order to provide a semblance of legality, by way of confession, for disposing of them. The Nazis tortured the most when the ultimate disposition of the victims had been decided beforehand.
Nobody needs to tolerate water boarding, because, besides being immoral and illegal, isn't an effective technique for gaining useful information. If I water-boarded you long enough, I could get you to confess to shooting JFK. And that would be useful how?
2007-11-06 14:49:16 · answer #2 · answered by Sim - plicimus 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Why don't people get that there is nothing nice, pretty, or fair about war? Everyone world leader that has sent their army into battle knows that there is nothing eloquent about it.
As far as the Dems focusing on water boarding, the question is not about the "torture", it's about rights for human beings. But you can spin the argument however you'd like in order to prove your fallacy.
2007-11-06 14:07:16 · answer #3 · answered by Lisa M 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Since I am 100% anti-war, and always have been - your bogus question does not affect me at all.
Waterboarding is wrong ethically and morally, and is against the Geneva Conventions. And your wholly insane rant doesn't make a dent in that fact.
2007-11-06 14:11:30 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
ARE YOU KIDDING? Maybe you forgot the real casualties of the war, the 6 million+ men women and children shoved into REAL ovens for being Jewish. Hitler and his allies needed to be stopped. Sorry, we tried saying please, but that just didnt work. WAR MEANS DEATH. We try to limit civilian casualties.
2007-11-06 14:07:25 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 1⤋
It isn't just waterboarding but torture on the whole. We aren't the FDR generation so it is not applicable. We are here and now. That is the concern.
2007-11-06 14:06:39 · answer #6 · answered by gone 7 · 2⤊ 2⤋
FDR had a real war on his hands. If you recall - or research - you'll find that Hitler's troops invaded several countries in Europe, and wanted more.
Osama bin Laden is not Hitler. He's more like Bush's step-brother.
Funny, though, how we're now the nation invading and occupying others...
2007-11-06 14:06:13 · answer #7 · answered by leftypower 2 · 4⤊ 4⤋
Just because one bad act, even if justifiable, has been perpetrated in the past, that doesn't excuse perpetrating more bad acts in the present.
Sorry, but the "But Johnny did it too!" excuse stopped working in kindergarten.
2007-11-06 14:04:31 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 2⤋
Awful as it was - they started it - better them than us.
2007-11-06 14:04:09 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 5⤊ 1⤋