Ukraine conflict

Quote: OnceDear

At >£3m a shot, not so surprising. This is just a gesture.
They'll also be sending a few peashooters with which to defend the Patriots.

Well we have had single gun banks that can put more than 3000 rounds in the air per minute for years now. That’s quite a shield. Just enough for any small localized unit like a patriot.

Quote:

Russian sausage tycoon Pavel Antov has been found dead at an Indian hotel, two days after a friend died during the same trip.

They were visiting the eastern state of Odisha and the millionaire, who was also a local politician, had just celebrated his birthday at the hotel.

Antov was a well known figure in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow.

Last summer he denied criticizing Russia's war in Ukraine after a message appeared on his WhatsApp account.

Quote: petroglyph

https://youtu.be/dfgF4x7TCmM Very informative video

According to Col. Macgregor on the video, Ukraine was annihilated about 10 days ago according to his prediction.

With all the talk of the Russian war crimes for bombing civilian infrastructure, would the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be considered war crimes?

Quote: DRich

With all the talk of the Russian war crimes for bombing civilian infrastructure, would the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be considered war crimes?

Yes maybe, no maybe.

I saw part of the movie about the American sniper where he's hoping he doesn't have to shoot a kid who is acting like he might shoot a rpg at American troops . The kid can't figure out how to work it and finally drops it. Normally shooting a kid would be a war crime.

It was expected the Japanese would resist for a long time upon an invasion of their homeland. But it is only assumed that the A bomb would save lives. You can't know for sure.

Quote: DRich

With all the talk of the Russian war crimes for bombing civilian infrastructure, would the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be considered war crimes?

No, because we were not the aggressor in that war, and bombing cities was standard practice by all sides during WWII. We did not experience this luckily because of our geographic isolation, but in Europe and Asia, bombing runs over all major cities were routine through the war (long before America got involved, America was pretty late to enter).

Some would say the Firebombing of Tokyo was more atrocious than the atomic bombings (it certainly killed more mathematically, if death count is the morality scale, and was probably even more of a civilian area).

But, the reality is the dropping of the atomic bombs almost certainly saved lives (on all sides), Russia was about to start an invasion from the North (which would have been far more brutal), and every island would turn into an endless causality meat grinder.

The reality is Japan was worse than the Nazis during WWII, and was the aggressor on multiple fronts (including against America after invading most of East Asia), so my sympathy towards them is limited, but it definitely was not a war crime by any contempery evaluations of the American government.

Russians are dropping bombs to seize territory, Americans the dropped bombs to save lives.

Is dropping thousands of standard bombs morally or legally different (at that time) than dropping one powerful bomb?

Quote: Gandler

No, because we were not the aggressor in that war, and bombing cities was standard practice by all sides during WWII.

Does being the aggressor matter under the law? Is this just your opinion or is there something in the international law that carves out for non-aggressor? I understand the laws are different now than they were 80 years ago. My guess is the bombing of Hiroshima would be considered a war crime based on today's international law.

Quote: DRich

Does being the aggressor matter under the law? Is this just your opinion or is there something in the international law that carves out for non-aggressor? I understand the laws are different now than they were 80 years ago. My guess is the bombing of Hiroshima would be considered a war crime based on today's international law.

You don't have to go back 80 years to find bombing of cities by the US. Baghdad was even live on TV.

Quote: kenarman

You don't have to go back 80 years to find bombing of cities by the US. Baghdad was even live on TV.

Smart bombs. Well, even if some miss, that's not considered a war crime, unless you'tr purposely targeting civilian centers.

Quote: DRich

Does being the aggressor matter under the law? Is this just your opinion or is there something in the international law that carves out for non-aggressor? I understand the laws are different now than they were 80 years ago. My guess is the bombing of Hiroshima would be considered a war crime based on today's international law.

Targeting civilians is a war crime under current international law (though this can be a gray area, because more accurately it is directly targeting civilians, collateral damage is kind of assumed).

However, none of that really matters, because the Fourth Geneva Conventions (which was the first related to civilians, the earlier ones are essentially regarding prisoners of war and servicemember issues), was not signed until after WWII.

If you are going to go back into history, every country has violated the current Geneva Conventions and other international treaties. However, the United States military investigates itself internally for GC violations, and it is very unlikely that they would charge a President and all of the top leadership for something ordered by the nation. Though charges against individual SMs for wartimes are relatively common.

The reality is bombing of cities was the norm in WWII by all sides, in fact the Atomic bombings were not even the worst of it (I guess you can argue they are more extreme because they pushed nuclear weapons into the front of everyone's mind and led to escalation, but just focusing on the bombings themselves). There is no moral equivalence between America and Japan in WWII, WWII Japan was quite possible the most evil regime in world history. Japan actually got off pretty light in post WWII because most people were focused on Europe. I think a couple thousand Japanese were charged with war crimes, whereas over 100k Nazis were (the Japanese number should have been far higher than the Nazi number).

But, being the aggressor can matter in International Court, a country defending itself is generally given more leeway for extreme tactics. Also, winning certainly helps, because the reality is the countries that can set up a tribunal (for mass trials) probably has some bias going in their favor.