Hitler, hirohito, Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo

[Lazylen]

just because poland was in the middle of it all, doesnt mean that it played a bigger role.

Without Canada, WWI may have gone the other way.

Canada started as a pitiful little colony in WWII with basically no arms, a navy of three ships and no planes, to becoming a middle power with the third largest air force in the world.

 

[Kristian95]

Mao and Stalin were worse than Hilter and Japanese.

I think all four are bad, but Hitler and the Japanese subjected foreign people to attroceties whereas Stalin and Mao mainly inflicted atrocities on the population of the land they ruled (Stalin having exceptions to that rule).

I think just because Firaxis made the error of including Stalin and Mao, it will not make that error better by including Hitler and a WWII Japanese leader. Personally I would be disgusted and never buy the game, if those were included!

Call me a hypocrite if you like but I find Hitler and the WWII Japanese leaders several leauges above Mao and Stalin in cuelty... maybe because I have read too much about the sick "experiments" they performed on Jews, gipsies, chinese and whomever else they did not like.

 

[monolith94]

They were losers. N I guess the majority of their nations would not be proud of them.

So then why Boudicea?

 

[Hero]

I think all four are bad, but Hitler and the Japanese subjected foreign people to attroceties whereas Stalin and Mao mainly inflicted atrocities on the population of the land they ruled (Stalin having exceptions to that rule).

I think just because Firaxis made the error of including Stalin and Mao, it will not make that error better by including Hitler and a WWII Japanese leader. Personally I would be disgusted and never buy the game, if those were included!

Call me a hypocrite if you like but I find Hitler and the WWII Japanese leaders several leauges above Mao and Stalin in cuelty... maybe because I have read too much about the sick "experiments" they performed on Jews, gipsies, chinese and whomever else they did not like.

Why is it worse to kill people in the name of science than ideology?

 

[Andrei_V]

Why is it worse to kill people in the name of science than ideology?

Good question.

Another good question is why flying jets into skyscrapers is any worse than killing people in Iraq war. AFAIK the death toll only among Americans exceeded 9/11 casualties by Dec 25, 2006.

Even better question is how many Iraqi civilians died during the last war, and how many civilians did Saddam kill during his whole life. I got a suspicion that the figures must be quite comparable.

 

[Lazylen]

i say nuke em all. therell be no outlash against me in manitoba.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Mao and Stalin were worse than Hilter and Japanese.

they're worse, but they still "won".

So then why Boudicea?

she's famous, even for a loser.

 

[Hero]

Good question.

Another good question is why flying jets into skyscrapers is any worse than killing people in Iraq war. AFAIK the death toll only among Americans exceeded 9/11 casualties by Dec 25, 2006.

Even better question is how many Iraqi civilians died during the last war, and how many civilians did Saddam kill during his whole life. I got a suspicion that the figures must be quite comparable.

Whether or not these are good questions, they are certainly off-topic. Saddam wasn't mentioned in the OP. And while I personally believe the Iraq War to be a crime, I think there is a huge difference between intentionally targetting civilians and (even carelessly or negligently) causing civilian deaths while fighting a war.

 

[Kristian95]

Why is it worse to kill people in the name of science than ideology?

As a scientist I would like to chip in with a bit of idealism
Science's only role in this world is to make life easier and more comfortable for mankind. Unfortunately, like everything else, science is governed by human beings and human beings, being how they are, have a nasty habit of trying to gain power / supremacy of one another, therefore science is often abused.... the same can be said of ideologies, for instance communism is basically a really nice thought, but with the way human beings work and think it can never succeed.
Killing is never acceptable and definately never civilized either!

 

[Andrei_V]

I think there is a huge difference between intentionally targetting civilians and (even carelessly or negligently) causing civilian deaths while fighting a war.

My point, exactly.

If you present the history in a way that Stalin et al intentionally targeted people, you'll necessarily come to a conclusion that they were bad dudes just like those 9/11 terrorists.

If you present the history in a different light, like those millions killed were 'collateral damage' on a way to a 'greater good', you'll get a justification for their misdeeds just like George W. Bush did before starting the war.

The # of victims really does not matter. Imagine four patients in a clinic, which badly need different internal organs for transplantation, otherwise they gonna die in a few hours. Now imagine a healthy visitor. If the doctors simply grab this visitor, kill him, take his organs and transplant them to their 4 patients, they'd save 4 lives in exchange of 1.

Does anyone think they'd be morally justified? I'd say, no, even if it means sacrificing 1 life in order to save 4. In this case the innocent visitor is not 'collateral damage', but a direct target of doctor's actions.

However, if you manage to bend or misinterpret the history in such a way that the visitor 'just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time' like those Iraqi civilians, you'll get the necessary justification.

 

[cybrxkhan]

^to add to this, Stalin (haha) said "One death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic". i don't like him, or his communist buddies, but he has a very excellent and even wise point there.

 

[Gooblah]

albeit a creepy one...

 

[pooshka]

^to add to this, Stalin (haha) said "One death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic". i don't like him, or his communist buddies, but he has a very excellent and even wise point there.

hm for some reason I thought the quote was from Eichmann?

 

[Sofista]

It's in Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux.

EDIT: "Wars, conflict - it's all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!"

 

[TheLastOne36]

just because poland was in the middle of it all, doesnt mean that it played a bigger role.

Without Canada, WWI may have gone the other way.

Canada started as a pitiful little colony in WWII with basically no arms, a navy of three ships and no planes, to becoming a middle power with the third largest air force in the world.

Review your history lessons. Then you'll agree with me.

 

[brianshapiro]

My point, exactly.

If you present the history in a way that Stalin et al intentionally targeted people, you'll necessarily come to a conclusion that they were bad dudes just like those 9/11 terrorists.

If you present the history in a different light, like those millions killed were 'collateral damage' on a way to a 'greater good', you'll get a justification for their misdeeds just like George W. Bush did before starting the war.

The # of victims really does not matter. Imagine four patients in a clinic, which badly need different internal organs for transplantation, otherwise they gonna die in a few hours. Now imagine a healthy visitor. If the doctors simply grab this visitor, kill him, take his organs and transplant them to their 4 patients, they'd save 4 lives in exchange of 1.

Does anyone think they'd be morally justified? I'd say, no, even if it means sacrificing 1 life in order to save 4. In this case the innocent visitor is not 'collateral damage', but a direct target of doctor's actions.

However, if you manage to bend or misinterpret the history in such a way that the visitor 'just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time' like those Iraqi civilians, you'll get the necessary justification.

The two situations , where there is intentional murder, and there is collateral killing, must necessarily be treated as unequal because of the concept of moral agency.

But at the same time, I think there's a lot of emotion about this as a way to counter hysterical emotion in the other direction. Even though people think terrorists are committing moral wrongs, there is a sense that they're in an unjust social situation. Then you have what is in historical terms a relative few people killed in 9/11, and people have moral outrage. I think the liberal response to terrorism is a want to keep things in a type of perspective.

Yet I think we have to keep things in the correct perspective, and understand why whatever harm America is causing--its more the fault of a broken international system and not the fault of the country or even its leaders--while the killing of civilians is the direct fault of terrorists. There is different kind of moral agency involved and each has to be treated differently.

 

[Andrei_V]

The two situations , where there is intentional murder, and there is collateral killing, must necessarily be treated as unequal because of the concept of moral agency.

How do you qualify Stalin's victims, then.

Those 1m or something executed were not different from Saddam or terrorists from a certain POV, as well as those 2m or something who died from harsh conditions in the Gulag. Those who died from mass starvation (~8m) were simply a 'collateral damage'.

What I'm trying to tell, it is never 100% clear whether this or that killing was 'justified', especially in advance, when the consequences are not yet known. It's certainly plain wrong to say that dude A was worse than dude B because A was responsible for more victims.

When George Washington ordered Col. Daniel Brodhead and General John Sullivan to lead expeditions against the Iroquois nations in 1779, destroying their villages, it was not merely to defeat them, it was to destroy them completely. A 'scorched earth' expedition. Besides direct victims, it led to mass starvation of Iroquois during the next winter, basically, an act of what we call nowadays 'genocide'.

Was Washington a mass murderer then, and if so, why the hell he is present in the game?

 

[brianshapiro]

How do you qualify Stalin's victims, then.

Those 1m or something executed were not different from Saddam or terrorists from a certain POV, as well as those 2m or something who died from harsh conditions in the Gulag. Those who died from mass starvation (~8m) were simply a 'collateral damage'.

What I'm trying to tell, it is never 100% clear whether this or that killing was 'justified', especially in advance, when the consequences are not yet known. It's certainly plain wrong to say that dude A was worse than dude B because A was responsible for more victims.

When George Washington ordered Col. Daniel Brodhead and General John Sullivan to lead expeditions against the Iroquois nations in 1779, destroying their villages, it was not merely to defeat them, it was to destroy them completely. A 'scorched earth' expedition. Besides direct victims, it led to mass starvation of Iroquois during the next winter, basically, an act of what we call nowadays 'genocide'.

Was Washington a mass murderer then, and if so, why the hell he is present in the game?

Well what I'm saying is just in terms of what you should do as a response to something, the situations are unequal. Just by the fact that they're different makes them unequal. The failures of America in the world are part of larger broken international economic and political system and a this point America can do very little. Whats necessary is to reform this, but there is nobody to hold accountable for it, Bush or anyone else, unless its more minor charges, because a different political actor would have done the same thing. In the case of terrorists, whatever else is the policy it becomes necessary to go after individuals who caused deaths because its dangerous to allow them to continue, because the individuals themselves have dangerous beliefs.

As for what Washington did, first of all, I think our modern qualifications of things as genocide is wrong. Genocide should only be called genocide, first of all, when you're attempting to purge a race on the basis of being a race. America was in conflict with the Indian population, and conflicted with them on different grounds, including territorial interests. We only put as much moral condemnation on Stalin as we do because his victims were the result of him trying to maintain his personal power in office. Stalin, thus can be given all the blame for his situation, where a lot of Washington's blame can be diverted to territorial problems caused by America's presence in the New World and the beliefs about how wars can be carried out that were in the society. This is why we consider Stalin a bad man, and not so much Washington, because all the blame in Stalin's situation is on Stalin's shoulders.

So the point isn't about "justification", its about how we can talk about what was wrong and what we can do to address it.

 

[Andrei_V]

Well what I'm saying is just in terms of what you should do as a response to something, the situations are unequal.

I agree. But why do we think they are unequal? Do we base our judgment on accurate information or on myths created by some political or religious forces?

Let me go back to my example with the clinic's visitor. Now there are two clinics with identical situation, in the clinic A the doctors decide to kill the visitor and save 4 lives, in the clinic B the doctors decide to let those 4 go. Media headlines:

"In clinic B four patients die; in clinic A only one is dead in a similar situation". "Due to heroic efforts of A's personnel 4 patient lives are saved, only one people is dead!"

How would you judge the same thing in this case, based only on these media reports? Note that they only report facts, and quite accurately. They simply omit certain little details. Now these 'little' details is what actually turns the whole thing upside down, and this is how propaganda works.

As for what Washington did, first of all, I think our modern qualifications of things as genocide is wrong.

Why do you think modern qualifications are applicable to Stalin, then? These modern qualifications were developed after WWII.

Genocide should only be called genocide, first of all, when you're attempting to purge a race on the basis of being a race.

That's what Washington did. He did not discriminate between 'warriors' and 'civilians', he simply ordered to wipe them all out. All of them, to prevent their possible future alliance with the British.

We only put as much moral condemnation on Stalin as we do because his victims were the result of him trying to maintain his personal power in office.

Not all of them, only a small minority of high officials during the 'purges' of 37-38. Happens all the time to many world leaders. They'd kill their potential competitors, ministers, generals, etc.

If you think otherwise, try to explain how the Russian peasantry (that's about 90% of all victims) would possibly threaten his 'personal power'.

Stalin, thus can be given all the blame for his situation, where a lot of Washington's blame can be diverted to territorial problems caused by America's presence in the New World and the beliefs about how wars can be carried out that were in the society.

You can equally claim that a lot of Stalin's blame can be diverted to the problems caused by Civil War, Antanta intervention, total destruction of Russian economy, the necessity of Industrialization, and the need to feed all the people involved in it.

There's plenty of excuses for Stalin. It's only a matter of which propaganda do you like better.

 

[injeKT]

Good question.

Another good question is why flying jets into skyscrapers is any worse than killing people in Iraq war. AFAIK the death toll only among Americans exceeded 9/11 casualties by Dec 25, 2006.

Even better question is how many Iraqi civilians died during the last war, and how many civilians did Saddam kill during his whole life. I got a suspicion that the figures must be quite comparable.

Note that he had nothing to say about the millions tortured by Islalmo-fascists.

You make me sick to my stomach.