Off another thread, to Bible Believers...if you had been a Hebrew at the time of the

war against the Amalekites......

would you have killed children and babies?




1 Samuel 15:3

 

The Japanese had no trouble at all committing such atrocities in China during WW2, systematically and on a vast scale.


Both the Hebrews and the Japanses knew they were gods special guys.

Whether those stinking hebrews put in the instructions from god later, or went in already planning it as gods instructions who knows.


Hardly matters to the victims, or to the murderers.

 

has this thread just landed? or are the BBs staying away in droves?

 

why did yah command the destruction of them?

 

does it make any difference to how we ought to view it?

jack the ripper had a reason for killing prostitutes (they were sinful). therefore what he did was right, right?. the theist, naturally, would respond that jack the ripper was merely a man, and is therefore held to higher moral standards than god/s.

whereas god can do no wrong. even when he does wrong, he's right. even when he's REALLY wrong, he's right. in fact there is no limit to how wrong he can be and still be right. he can be more evil than a truck full of daemons, and still be right. why? because he said so.

 

Before anyone answers, we have to acknowledge we did it in My Lai, and to imagine that case to have been isolated is a naïveté of the highest order.
Never underestimate the cruelty man can unleash on man, even without the supposed justification of acting on a deities whim.

 

Certainly such things happened, but the Japanese made it a matter of policy as did the Germans, with their quasi religious cult of national superiority. "The Chosen People" is an ideology that produces the opposite.

 

We did too, in the destruction of civilian villages.

 

yes, for me it does.

 

it's kinda like the guy that attempted to murder his son but then could not go through with it, today we would call that attempted murder.. even if afterwords he told us God told him to do it...

 

I know those things happened but it is most unrealistic to make any comparison that is not wildly overstated.

And it was not official policy.

 

By "official" you mean shared with the public, true. Destruction of civilian villages was very much policy, however, as revealed in the Pentagon Papers.

 

ok, suit yourself, but you do a disservice all around when you try to make the behaviour of the the American army in Vietnam equivalent to the behaviour of Japanese in China / Philippines / Korea
or for that matter, Vietnam.

FWIW, Americans are welcomed now in Vietnam, and Japanese are not. And nobody is more hatred and unwelcome in China than Japanese.

 

I don't thinking parsing degrees of depravity is all that valuable.

 

As I said, suit yourself, but please do not insult the dead by making this false comparison.

 

I think it insults the dead Viatnamese villagers to imply it "wasn't so bad".

 

I in no way implied that. If you think there is some reasonable equivalency, I guess you will suit yourself on that, however grotesquely inaccurate it is.

The comparison is on the order of someone saying he had flood damage too, because he got a wet basement, when someone else was killed along with his entire town.

Im not an American, that I feel a need to defend American honour.

Im not a Japanese-hater, tho I had to make a serious effort, as many of my family as they killed and raped.

I see you having a wildly skewed view of history. And, btw, completely missing what i said about the behaviour of japanese and germans being largely directed by a religious / quasi religious fervour of sacred mission and racial superiority, with slaughter and atrocity being as natural as a dog scratching fleas in consequence.

 

Perhaps you are simply unaware of the American policies of eradication in Vietnam.
How do you place Nagasaki and Hiroshima on the scale of depravity, intentionally targeting civilian men, women and children? Or our wholesale genocide of Native Americans?
Are they all just "wet basements"?

 

The A bombing was terrible. I did read John Hershey's "Hiroshima". Dont underestimate what i am aware of. I heard plenty about what happened in China, from family members who survived.

This is an in tensely emotional issue for me, and I think it is better we dont discuss it further.
I generally agree with your pov on things and dont wish to fight you.

I think it would be well for you to think a little deeper than you may have on your moral equivalency ideas, but that is for you to decide on your own, not for me to press you to do.

Please do not continue with this.

 

You carry your guilt for your countries wrongs, I carry mine.

 

It is fact not imagination.

My Lai was an isolated crime.

No evidence exists of any other similar act commited by the US in vietnam. Although much evidence exists of the communists commited far more gruesome acts of mass murder such as the Hue city massacre.

It is not an excuse to say that the military would have covered it up either. They were unable to cover up My Lai because the media was uncensored and unrestricted in Vietnam as opposed to WWII.

 

There was no wholesale genocide of Native Americans, there are plenty of them here in NM. The nuking of Japan was necessary, there were still elements of the Japanese army who wanted to continue fighting after it. Funny how the US has a right to defend herself but not ancient Israel.

 

They are thoroughly restricted now. The result of the revelations about our actual policies in Vietnam.
You are wrong about it being isolated. The Pentagon Papers revealed this explicitly. But don't read it if you don't want the truth and prefer your blind defense of the policies we actually had.

 

The Pentagon papers revealed no such thing. Perhaps you could quote the chapter and page of the Pentagon Papers which detailed other such atroctities taking place.

There have been no new revelations about our policies in Vietnam for decades and in fact no policy during vietnam called for or allowed crimes such as My Mai.

Once again provide an example of such a crime or a copy of such a policy.

I am defending no policy because you are dreaming up nonsense.

I am correct about it being isolated it was an isolated crime which is an historic fact not opinion.

- - - Updated - - -

There was never such a policy in Vietnam by the USA.

They are revisionist historic fiction you refer to

 

You are blind to the policies of eradication of the Natives in this country. Andrew Jackson was the biggest disgrace to this country we have ever had.
There was nothing "necessary" about the nuke drops. They indiscriminately killed innocent people. Babies, women, non-combatants.
As a Christian, you have an odd sense of when it is "necessary" to kill.