To answer this question examine this photograph closely. It was taken in Dresden during WW2. It was the aftermath of one of many carpet bombing raids. The people shown are civilians.
Then ask yourself these questions:
1. Has anything changed in the world since this photograph was taken?
2. Have piles of human bodies diminished over the last sixty-four years (of course, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were no piles because the people there were vapourized)? Keep in mind: Vietnam, Korea, Palestine, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, etc.
If your answer is ‘No’ to both questions, then the answer is in the affirmative.
Humans definitely are infinitely stupid because they never ever learn!
Don’t you mean ‘we’ never learn?
I agree we are stupid and that the slaughter in the Dresden photo is a pattern of human history.
But pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will (I think Gramsci said this). Don’t give up hope!
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there is nothing in human history that speaks to me that we will ever learn. in fact, there won’t be anymore time- we have effectively destroyed our home planet. poetic justice i suppose
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David, unfortunately in my opinion, you have used the wrong photograph to make your point.All wars are an absolute tragedy and waste of human life,however WW2 was as far as I am concerned, justified. Any action by the allies to bring the war to a speedy conclusion was also justified.
I have heard all the arguments about Dresden,Nagasaki,and Hiroshima, and unfortunately you reap what you sow.
My father was badly wounded on D Day,WW2 and his brother was a prisoner of war to the Japanese for three years.My mothers sister lost her husband at Tobruk.Another of my mothers sisters husband lived out the rest of his life with one leg.
War is well known to my family.
I like your self am a pacifist,but I am under no illusion what was in store for us, if the Germans/Japanese had won the war.It is indeed the only war I would have signed up for.
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Michael, a man who urges people to ‘Eat, drink and be merry’ has not given up hope!
Betmo, 10,000 years of wasteful war and still it goes on. Beats me.
Hey, Phill, the irony of WW2 is that the aggressors were defeated, in part, by the U.S. which is now heavily involved in covert imperialism and militarism. And, of course, WW2 was inevitable after the heavy imposts and humiliations imposed by the Allies after WW1. And what Germany tried to do in WW1 was done by most European nations and Britain as they tried to establish empires all over the world using military force.
Sorry to hear about your family’s losses but, in war, clearly there are no winners.
Cheers to all.
P.S. The root cause is stupid, greedy humans!
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Human history has been nothing but one, long, brutal, violent expedition since its begininng. We do just as much killing now – on far larger scales thanks to “improving technology” – as we did in WWII, we just do it over longer periods of time and in numerous “smaller” conflicts instead of one large conflict.
Whether it is Mao’s killing of tens of millions of civilians, or Pot Pol’s extermination of millions, or the U.S.’s killing of over (estimated, since the U.S. “doesn’t do body counts”) one million Iraqi and Afghanistani civilians, or the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur by various official factions, or the US’s killing of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians 3 decades ago, or..well, you get the idea.
The reasons always vary for the slaughter, but it always boils down to the same excuse: one faction saying they are “good” and they are fighting the “bad guys.” The slaughter of the civilians in Dresden – estimated at between 25,000 and 60,000 – by the Allies in 1945 was – as usual – called “collateral damage” by the US. Unfortunate, but necessary to stop the Nazi’s supply lines. Blah blah blah. There is always an excuse to justify it. Out of 28,410 houses in the inner city of Dresden, 24,866 were destroyed. An area of 15 square kilometers was totally destroyed, among that: 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 19 churches, 5 theaters, 50 bank and insurance companies, 31 department stores, 31 large hotels, and 62 administration buildings. In total there were 222,000 apartments in the city. 75,000 of them were totally destroyed, 11,000 severely damaged, 7,000 damaged, 81,000 slightly damaged. Keep in mind that targeting hospitals and civilians is a War Crime, but – as is always the case where the victor gets to write the history – the Allies looked like the “good guys” and this war crime was swept under the carpet. If we had lost WWII, it would have been US and British leaders being hung for these crimes. Ditto Hiroshima and Nagasaki: over 1 million civilian deaths total, including from cancer and radiation years after the bombs were dropped, as a direct result of the US having used the only nuclear weapons in the history of the world on a civilian population (so far).
David is correct. There is no progress being made by the human race in becoming a gentler, more peaceful, more enlightened species. We are doing just as much killing now as we ever have, and always in the name of some ideological or geo-political goal. And in the cases where this happens by “democracies,” we cannot just blame the leaders who order these atrocities. They simply represent those who elected them. Every single human being who supports their government “wrong or right” shares the blame and the crime. Only those of us who have steadfastly and loudly opposed these criminals and their war-mongering will escape the fires of Hell that await all those who are complicit in these ultimate crimes against humanity.
Heil!
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Hey, Demon, great comment. Unfortunately there is no ‘Hell’.
If warmongers escape earthly punishment, they escape. Cheers.
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Betmo hits the nail on the head for me, we are destroying our own planet and yet we continue on the same path. That say’s everything we need to know about the human race. Sometimes we just don’t want to learn.
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Hey, Lucy, I think it’s more likely that they can’t learn rather than won’t.
Hey, Demon, part of me wishes that the evil ones will get their just deserts one day but the more rational part says, “No way, Jose!”
Let’s punish them while they’re here I reckon and if you are right, they’ll be punished again. Serves them right!
Cheers.
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Ah Dresden! sounds like a poker game.I’ll see ya Dresden,and raise you Coventry,London,Liverpool, Portsmouth,Paris,Warsaw,and for good measure a few holiday camps
Belsen,Auschwitz,Birkenau,Belzec,Treblinka, and then there were the people well they just didn’t fit in did they? The Gypsies,Jehovas Witnesses,Communists,and some allied troops cos they were deemed to have a strange looking dick..
And the Russian dead who knows how many?
And who could forget all those American soldiers caught trying to escape in the last bash by the Germans at the end, a thousand of them lying in a field DEAD executed..
There is not enough space on a blog to catalogue the crimes of the German and Japanese bastards of W.W.2.
And before any reply,please spare me the old line”Most Germans or Japanese didn’t know what was going on” even in Japan today they are still trying to cover up what they had done in WW2,by leaving it out of their history books.
The knew alright,they all thought they were going to win the war,big mistake.
Anyone who thinks if the Germans or Japanese had pulled it off,we the Anglo Saxon cousins were going to share in the glory and booty are very much mistaken.There were ovens waiting for the next group off the block.
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Phill, I don’t think that anyone seeks to diminish the inglorious, disgusting, brutal attempt by Germany and Japan to conquer the world.
The larger point is that they are simply two groups of humans who demonstrated the evil that all humans are capable of.
Do you really think that what America is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and did in Vietnam, and is intending to do in Iran with nuclear weapons (obliterate is the word of choice), is any different?
Cheers.
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David,to answer your question in a nutshell NO.
I am very aware of the crimes of the British Empire,and now the U.S. Empire. I guess with the Brits you could make a case the numbers of deaths racked up in order to spread the “Empire” may well be on par with the atrocities of the Nazi’s.More astute historians than I could probably give an acceptable figure all could agree on.
However, this does not excuse the crimes of the German/Japanese people of WW2.
To make a point similar to yours, I would have used photos of Hanoi or similar, where the U.S is guilty as charged.To make any comparison with Dresden, in the context of WW2, in my opinion, is to invalidate your reasoning..
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Phil, good points. It always boils down, however, to the same fucking thing: whether it is the Brits, the Germans, the Japs, the Russians, the Americans, the (insert name of nation here), etc, the killing is always done for some high-sounding reason and justified away by the idealogical nut-jobs. “The Nazis were evil, they murdered 6 million jews!” “The Allies were evil, they murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents bombing Europe!” “The Americans are evil, they murdered a million innocent civilians when they nuked Japan!” Etc, etc.
Who CARES what the effing REASONS for the murders were? Murder is MURDER. I’m not talking about self-defense here. I’m not talking about shoot first or die. I’m talking about pre-meditated, well-planned murder on a genocidal scale that wipes out human beings by the thousands and millions. Planned and executed with precision. By the Nazis, by Pol Pot, by the United States, etc.
Human beings are thugs. Apes. Animals. And we haven’t evolved one fucking bit in the last 200,000 years.
If I could change myself into a dove, or an end table, I would.
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Amen to that, Demon!
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