Moral and legal culpability for Agent Orange exposure

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Originally Posted by Loki

The killing of Armenians happened in a "barbaric" country where people didn't expect better (and before radio was too important, and certainly before television). It also wasn't as clear cut as unarmed people being gassed. I don't think that kind of behavior would be tolerated today though.

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I dread bringing this up, but

This begs the question, who is a barbarian? The 'highest moral guardians' in modern history elevated the number of their potential victims to the ninth power of ten.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

I dread bringing this up, but

This begs the question, who is a barbarian? The 'highest moral guardians' in modern history elevated the number of their potential victims to the ninth power of ten.

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In 1914? Anyone who wasn't white/Western European.

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Originally Posted by Loki

In 1914? Anyone who wasn't white/Western European.

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Not so sure the Russians/Chinese/Japanese were barbarians in '14.

Not entirely convinced the latter weren't.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

The deliberate nature and scale etc and again we were already at war with Germany for two years *prior* to the Soviets going to war with them.

The only act of deliberately trying to kill a people pre-Holocaust that I can think of is the Tasmanian aborigines, but the numbers involved, method of doing so, extent of doing so (it was just one island not even all over Aus) etc are all completely different.

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I'm fairly sure the Romans and Mongolians also committed their share of genocides and tried exterminations, and on a smaller scale exterminating a certain people at least from one region has happened numerous times in history.

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Originally Posted by Loki

In 1914? Anyone who wasn't white/Western European.

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Which was also a convenient excuse to treat the rest like shit, or kill them! Barbarian lives have no value, after all.

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Originally Posted by Flixy

I'm fairly sure the Romans and Mongolians also committed their share of genocides and tried exterminations, and on a smaller scale exterminating a certain people at least from one region has happened numerous times in history.

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The Mongol horde definitely falls into the category barbarian and their actions were considered (and still are) barbaric so not sure that's relevant.

Can't think of any Roman examples relevant to the Holocaust. And again neither were in such such a deliberate, professional and industrialised scale.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

The Mongol horde definitely falls into the category barbarian and their actions were considered (and still are) barbaric so not sure that's relevant.

Can't think of any Roman examples relevant to the Holocaust. And again neither were in such such a deliberate, professional and industrialised scale.

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Industrialized and professional, well, you have to place that in the time of history of course. My memory of Roman history is a bit old and I can't think of specific examples but I'm fairly sure at least some were systematic, and deliberate. I think they tended to kill or enslave most of their surviving enemies, at least.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

The Mongol horde definitely falls into the category barbarian and their actions were considered (and still are) barbaric so not sure that's relevant.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire#Society

Hmmh.

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[...]On the whole, the tight discipline made the Mongol Empire extremely safe and well-run; European travelers were amazed by the organization and strict discipline of the people within the Mongol Empire.Under Yassa, chiefs and generals were selected based on merit. Religious tolerance was guaranteed, and thievery and vandalizing of civilian property was strictly forbidden.

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I'm not entirely sure that for this particular time period I'd classify them as "barbaric". Unless, of course, you consider the rest of Europe to have been equally or more barbaric at the time.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

:( I think my writing skills fail me.

I didn't mean to say that the Holocaust was a precedent to the Holocaust, but if by your admission there had been similar instances before yet they were rare, combined with Randy's claim that due to this rare event the Nazis were especially deserving of death, should not the Nazis also be dismissed as a historic abnormality? I can see this line of thought isn't taking us anywhere, though, given the historic importance of the Holocaust.

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Maybe? I think we might be talking to cross-purposes here. I don't see how the Nazis being a historic abnormality or not has any bearing on what we're discussing.

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This, to me, seems like either an ignorant or a deliberately dishonest view of the Holocaust. The decisions and outside influences that lead to the reality of the machined killings were all an organic, evolving system that could have gone all sorts of different ways had the tide of war, for example, been different. Now, before you assault me for what-iffing, I would like to remind you we are discussing the motives and moral culpability of those involved. In my view, it is perfectly fair to assume of them the same we assume of those who bombed Dresden and Nagasaki.

There never was a singular point in time where the National Socialist regime decided 'yes, we will shove 'em all into gas chambers.' The Wannsee conference has gained a stupendous amount of recognition in the public as part of the Spielbergization of Nazism, but I'm assuming you're not one of the idiots who places any meaning to that one event.

And it is by this dishonesty that you are able to claim these events were not comparable to the events of black slavery, the destruction of the Native Americans, or whatever else we choose to dig up as examples. There is, it seems, an implicit assumption that the Nazi state set out, from the start, to a path towards genocide. This is simply not true. That desperate people did desperate things, okay, we could find other examples of that, too. What of it?

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They didn't have to start out at the beginning looking for a final solution to implement it eventually or to be held accountable for that implementation. The point at which it became policy is almost of supreme unimportance, what matters is that it did become policy., it was the goal they were trying to achieve and they made considerable progress on that track. The crimes of Dresden or Hiroshima or Coventry *or slavery*, if they were crimes, are not the same as the Holocaust because they aren't the same crime, they weren't genocide of any stripe and if what happened to the Native Americans was genocide it wasn't the same because it was the cumulative consequence of 200 years of both unintentional and deliberate actions for purely localized purposes by a host of different state and non-state actors.

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Not so sure the Russians/Chinese/Japanese were barbarians in '14.

Not entirely convinced the latter weren't.

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Russia and Japan were borderline (more so Russia). The Chinese were viewed as primitive.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

:cyduck:

Irony aside, it's historical fact, not something I'm just saying to you

Are you...Are you asking for references? In a really round-about way?

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No. I'm saying just because Germany or any country SAYS "X is part of the war effort" doesn't mean its a part of the war effort.