On top of that “we killed more people when we firebombed another civilian population” as a justification for doing so. Holy shit.
I tend to see that line more as observational than moral. As in "once we decided to invade the home islands we'd functionally ceded the assumption that killing 150,000 civilians in an aerial bombardment was going to be acceptable". The tool we used was incidental relative to the need to slaughter Japanese civilians into subservience.
Americans who think like this should all be rounded up and shot like dogs.
We're running into that paradox of tolerance with a statement like this. You kinda have to ask how many residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (nevermind Tokyo) would be glibly asserting "the Manchurians fucking deserved it" twenty years beforehand.
If we can assert that American civilians who can't sympathize with Japanese civilians should be slaughtered, what do we think about Japanese civilians who thought the same of Koreans or Philippines or Vietnamese civilians? The justifications of violence never seem to end.
I tend to see that line more as observational than moral. As in "once we decided to invade the home islands we'd functionally ceded the assumption that killing 150,000 civilians in an aerial bombardment was going to be acceptable". The tool we used was incidental relative to the need to slaughter Japanese civilians into subservience.
We're running into that paradox of tolerance with a statement like this. You kinda have to ask how many residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (nevermind Tokyo) would be glibly asserting "the Manchurians fucking deserved it" twenty years beforehand.
If we can assert that American civilians who can't sympathize with Japanese civilians should be slaughtered, what do we think about Japanese civilians who thought the same of Koreans or Philippines or Vietnamese civilians? The justifications of violence never seem to end.