Maybe you should double check your math on that. How can you maintain that Osama was killing innocents if Obama was carrying out a collective will? If Vince is suppose to get the @#$! out the US if he won't share in the blame then how do you (all) maintain there are innocents?

freeman2 wrote:I think the 2012 election is over before it has even begun. Say what you want, Obama deserves credit for getting accomplished what should have been the main goal from the beginning.

bbauska wrote:
You have a view that you are not responsible for anything that happens in the US. Fine. Step aside and let those who are willing to stand up and act for justice. Is the USA perfect? No, I never said they were.

Let's use Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an example, since I think that is the most similar to the current terrorist actions.

An entity (Japan)

Do you think we should:
A.) Drop the bombs?
B.) Drop leaflets and humanitarian aid?
C.) Invade Mainland Japan?
D.) Go home?

If the US attacked Afghanistan before Al Qaeda attacked the US that would have been unjust. When Afghanistan defended Al Qaeda, they accepted responsibility as well. The US should act with restraint, but exact justice for hostile acts against the US.

Sassenach wrote:Vince, could you clarify something here. Are you trying to say that you regard any act of war as being morally equivalent to an act of terrorism ? It sure seems that way considering the fact that you included the bombing of Nazi Germany and the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in your list. I can understand why you might make that argument, but the fact is that in both these cases a plausible case can be made that they actually saved more lives than they cost by hastening the end to WWII. The only real counter arguments you could make are either that the war would have ended just as quickly without those actions (which is highly doubtful) or that we never should have been in the war in the first place so it's irrelevant. But the latter argument is essentially to say that we should always bend the knee to tyranny. In any event, grey areas do exist in respect of pretty much every example you raised, which is hardly the case when you look at Bin Laden's actions.

Roadkill wrote:I continue to celebrate, smile, dance (not so well) and cheer for the death of OBL. A wonderful thing the death of a terrorist is. Even sweeter when the terrorist is the likes of OBL. Ok, gotta run, I have a new dance I've been wanting to try out, I call it the "Ha Ha OBL Your Dead, @#$! You Very Much"

The choice you've given me re: WWII is a false dichotomy. Yes, the Japanese navy attacked the American Navy. Yes, the Japanese Navy also caused dozens of civilian casualties in that attack as well. Fine...have the American Navy attack the Japanese Navy in response to stop that aggression. What does killing 100,000 people who had nothing to do with that attack have anything to do with justice? How is killing those innocent people any different than the Japanese Navy killing innocent people at Pearl Harbor.

Failing to invade Japan is not bending the knee to tyranny. It is leaving innocent people out of a dispute between two states.

Sassenach wrote:Vince, this is remarkably silly. By the time of the Hiroshima bombing the US and Japan had been at war for several years and it was quite obvious that the Japanese, despite being largely beaten, were not willing to surrender and wished to continue fighting.

It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

* Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
* Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
* Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
* Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
* Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
* Surrender of designated war criminals.

Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

Guapo wrote:This is actually untrue.