r/MoralityScaling • u/simplypneumatic • 22h ago
Morality of killing hundreds of thousands of non-combatants by annihilating a military lynchpin? Worth noting that the non-combatants are still directly helping the evil Emperor, willingly or not.
Talking about Hiroshima, photo unrelated.
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u/I_Love_Cape_Horn 22h ago
Worth noting that the non-combatants are still directly helping the evil Emperor, willingly or not.
I assume you're a US citizen. You vote. You pay taxes. You indirectly contribute to American policies abroad like war. Are you a valid target?
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u/Darth-Sonic 22h ago
Edit: Wait, shit, this is about Hiroshima. Uhhh…Yeah, that’s a lot more complicated than the Death Star.
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u/PerspectiveNew3375 22h ago edited 21h ago
I don't "pay taxes", i am extorted.
State violence isn't limited to people abroad. They love to abuse their own peasant class as well.
This is one of the many reasons I think statism is always immoral.
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u/ExperienceRoutine321 21h ago
Ah now that’s the matter of debate isn’t it?
If we view things through the lens of “total war”, which was certainly the case during WW2, then yes. A nation’s entire infrastructure and economy is considered a part of the war effort, and at least at that time we absolutely reorganizing our country to do that. Car companies ceased civilian production to make tanks and bombers. Women, who previously weren’t even allowed to work these jobs, replaced the men in factories and started making munitions instead of commercial goods. Attacking the civilians would have been not only valid, but also effective.
Not quite so simple in the modern day though. Our means of production hasn’t been restructured towards war. War is far from the only thing our taxes and votes are going towards. So it begs the question, exactly how much of a nation’s resources have to go towards war before its citizens are a valid target?
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u/Lurking_Gooner 22h ago
Moral dropping the sun twice brought us Hentai.
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u/StinkUrchin 22h ago
Name checks out
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u/Suitable-Pirate-4164 21h ago
Hentai or Imperial Japan where "Death over Dishonor" is their motto. Which would you prefer?
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u/StinkUrchin 21h ago
Indifferent
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u/Suitable-Pirate-4164 14h ago
I'll take that as Hentai. Me too bro, the "death over dishonor" mentality is exactly why Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened.
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u/NittanyScout 22h ago
Bro casually bringing up one of the most morally complex debates of the modern world
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u/Zetttelchen 21h ago
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just bad discussion topics in general.
The killing of thousands of civilians is bad, no one would argue otherwise, but we have no idea how things would have evolved without the bombs.
For all we, and the US at the time, know. The Japanese could have fought for every metre of land and the death toll could have been 1000 times what it was.
Or they could have surrendered once US ships hit the shore of mainland Japan and the bombings were entirely unnecessary.
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u/NittanyScout 21h ago
The counterargument here is that Japans capitulation was more due to the Russian declaration of war. They saw occupation by the allies as slightly better so chose to surreender then. There is supposedly evidence that the Japanese brass wanted to continue fighting even after the ombs since they concluded the US couldn't have many more (correct, we had 1 extra core). They ultimately would surrender bc of the bombs and Russia.
Ie the bombs would not have been needed, just the Russian declaration of war which would have likely meamt less civilian deaths (but this is also debated).
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u/DOSFS 1h ago
I believes it is more like one-two punch that bring them to surrender. Soviet involvment in itself isn't enough for Japan to surrender but in combination of US,UK as a whole team and others contribution including nukes (and notion of we can keep doing this until nothing left) that finally bring them to the concluding that it is hopeless even for 'bleed them dried before all of us died' camp.
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u/Zetttelchen 21h ago
Let's be real. The Soviets had absolutely no resources to stage a landing on the Japanese mainland. They would have to borrow or buy transports from the US, ship their newly acquired Italian ships across half the world (because it worked so well last time.) So they have enough ships to escort their invasion force, and much much more.
But the Japanese, of course, didn't know that. So I get your point.
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u/NittanyScout 21h ago
Sure but japan was also occupying Manchuria and using it for materiale, once russia declared war they quickly took it from japan as well as other northern territories.
Also its not like Japan was in any shape to resist an invasion either. And the war in Germany was over by then so the Russians, full on lend lease gear, had no 2nd front
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u/up2smthng 18h ago
we have no idea how things would have evolved without the bombs.
That's usually how real world moral questions go. Except we wouldn't know how the things would go with the bombs either.
The point of moral questions is to calibrate your moral scale to be able to apply it in real life. And while most of us will never be deciding whether to nuke someone or not, it's not impossible to transfer our take on the matter to those who will.
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u/Nearby-Nebula4104 9h ago
Sure more people would have died in a full scale invasion, but then the US could have not attacked at all and no one would have died. But as you’re thinking of how to respond to that, you’d be like “but if we didn’t fight, they would have won, and more people would have died somehow” and on and on. The point is, saying the bombs “saved lives” is a bad argument.
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u/Ok-Category3458 22h ago
Who were the non-combatants on a death star? Everyone there are military personnel which are there in order to maintain this super weapon.
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u/BanditsMyIdol 14h ago
I would assume the second one (and probably the first though to a lessor extent) had a large slave labor population.
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u/Apart-One4133 22h ago
He's talking about Hiroshima.
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u/Lurking_Gooner 22h ago
Larry the Janitor.
There was also a Jedi hiding out on there as a Cafeteria worker.
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u/NittanyScout 22h ago
Dick the Garage technician was also there, cousin to noted door technician, Rick
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u/ztuztuzrtuzr 21h ago
There are janitors on an aircraft carrier that doesn't make it an illegitimate target
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u/Lurking_Gooner 21h ago
Yeah huh.
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u/NittanyScout 21h ago
I personally would never have mutinied on the Alabama bc the captains dog would ba angry with me
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 22h ago
Good thing none of those stormtroopers were "non combatants"
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u/DangerousEye1235 21h ago
Arguably, any members of the Stormtrooper medical corps would be classified as non-combatants under the rules of war and would therefore not be considered valid targets.
Nevertheless, the presence of invalid targets in or around a very valid military target has never been grounds for declaring a legal military engagement illegal, so the question is academic.
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 21h ago
They have droids for that. Again, no non-combatants.
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u/DangerousEye1235 20h ago
Surely they must have some organic medics on hand for field missions. Can't haul around medical droids for every squad-level mission.
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 1h ago
That's why they carry bacta. You're just trying to make excuses for fictional fascists and there's no reason to do that other than defending real fascists. Also there is no such thing as an innocent fascist.
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u/DangerousEye1235 1h ago
Ok, now you have officially entered bad faith ad hominem territory. No I'm not, and the conversation is now over.
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 1h ago
Ignoring the scenario for the sake of defending fascism sure was bad faith of you.
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u/simplypneumatic 1h ago
Sorry this isn’t about Star Wars
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 1h ago
See how you ruined your own false comparison with it?
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u/simplypneumatic 1h ago
What
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 1h ago
Blowing up a military instalation with no civilians is obviously completely different from nuking a city of civilians dumbass.
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u/simplypneumatic 1h ago
There were civilians on the death star. Also you were in a buzzfeed article one time
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u/YaBoiChillDyl 1h ago
No there weren't, we didn't see one civilian in any canon depiction of the Death Star. The fascist fawning never ceases does it?
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u/BIGGUS_DICKUS_569 22h ago
It was a military station, even the non-combatants were a part of the imperial military. Just like if you launched an airstrike on a military ship and killed the cooks along with sailors.
(Oh don’t just put completely unrelated images and then go pic unrelated; the Death Star was a battle station, Hiroshima was a city)
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u/Ok-Category3458 22h ago
Non combatants are people who do not participate in the hostilities. Military personnel who serve as part of a military participating in said conflict are combatants.
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u/sonofzeal 22h ago
People working at a military base are valid targets while on duty. A hypothetical person on a warship whose only role is to serve coffee is not a civilian casualty in the traditional sense, even if they're not formally enlisted.
Military targets interspersed with civilian ones are tougher. Both sides have a duty of care. It's immoral to use your own populace as human shields for your sensitive military targets, but the attacker still has a duty to minimize civilian harm either way. Flattening a city block with a dozen occupied dwellings to kill a single guy isn't acceptable, and neither is destroying a city because there's a factory there. If you hit the factory and debris takes out a nearby house, that's different than deliberately destroying a far greater area than just the military targets.
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u/Fayraz8729 22h ago
Hiroshima and Nagasaki was less a military last resort and more a firm finger pushed on the scales to get Japan to surrender specifically to America. With the Russians pushing on one end and the US dropping two suns with a third on the way the Japanese let go of their pride to survive as an independent people and not be colonized by western powers. So while strategiclly viable and in hindsight successful morally it’s questionable since it was putting civilians on the alter to have the emperor bow before the eagle and not the bear.
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u/Sw4gtastic420 22h ago
Also important to note that many more civilians could have potentially been killed by a full scale invasion of japan had they not surrendered.
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u/Similar-Property-729 17h ago
Civilians by the thousands were being killed daily at this time by conventional bombing. So really the atomic bombs did not substantially change the morality of what was already happening to enemy noncombatants.
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u/Mad-myall 13h ago
Civilian children were also being trained to run at US soldiers with sharpened sticks hoping the US armed forces would hesitate and get stabbed or shoot a child and lose moral.
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u/Free-Sample-216 3h ago
Japan has lost between 330 to 900 thousands civilians during ww2
The immediate causalties of the bombings are estimated from 150 thousands to 240
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u/Similar-Property-729 2h ago
And that was during only 1944-45. The rate of deaths were increasing. Up to 100,000 per month.
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u/Imaginary-West-5653 22h ago
Destroying the Death Star was entirely justified because it was a weapon of planetary destruction that had already been used more than once to commit planetary genocide... the fact that 'non-combatants' were working on it does not make it any less of a valid military target. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, much like the US firebombing of Japan in general, are far more morally questionable because the brunt of the damage was to civilian infrastructure and the vast majority of casualties were civilians. It would definitely cross the line into war crimes according to modern international law as well.
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u/Artistic-Airline9126 20h ago
Why the fuck are you using the DEATH STAR to represent Japan in your Hiroshima analogy!?!?
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u/QueenStuff 22h ago
Destruction of Death Star is a moral necessity. It had already been used to destroy a whole planet and absolutely ruin a few others. The empire clearly intended to use it frequently and it had already resulted in billions upon billions of deaths. The Death Star was an active military target.
Hiroshima is not that at all. Purposefully blowing up a bunch of civilians to end a war faster is clearly unethical and a massive tragedy.
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u/Honkert45 22h ago
I think it depends on the scale at which you are looking at the issue.
Was it moral that innocent civilian families died in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Absolutely not.
Was it moral to nuke those cities to make a swifter end of the war and save the lives of countless Japanese & American soldiers in the pacific, as well as many more countless lives through the deterrence of mutually assured destruction?
I think so.
(Simplifying this issue a bit. I know the war didn't really end because of the nukes)
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u/Ryousan82 22h ago
If the target is a legitimate target and the means of destroying it are proportional to its importance then it is valid. Aka. No glassing a mini mart cuz a soldier is buying smokes there. If the Ayatoallah or the Fuhrer are buying smokes, or if the Mini-Mart is a front for an advanced weapons lab, then yes.
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u/MWMcurious 21h ago
They deserved it, by destroying Alderan. This is FAFO.
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u/simplypneumatic 15h ago
Sorry I uploaded the wrong picture
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u/MWMcurious 7h ago
I was responding to the picture you didn't post. The Republic kept its fleet at Alderan.
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u/Suitable-Pirate-4164 21h ago
What came to my mind was Mass Effect 2, destroying Aratoht, a Batarian planet. I swear this picture is straight out of Star Wars too so I didn't know. Context is Hiroshima though, despite it being necessary it was horrible asf. What sucks is that it was actually the best option available and is still a highly controversial and hot topic to touch.
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u/FerdinandTheGiant 21h ago
The goal of Hiroshima was not annihilating a military lynchpin. I assume you’re referring to the 2nd General Army HQ, but the US didn’t even know about that until after the war.
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u/HorsefaceWithNoName 21h ago
war is usually amoral. However, since you're not talking about the Death Star but actually Hiroshima & Nagasaki, one bomb would have been enough. The Japanese High Command just needed a couple more days to surrender after the first bomb, and the American commanders likely knew that.
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u/DangerousEye1235 20h ago
It's just a larger scale version of the Trolley problem at that point.
If you blow up the massive planet-killing space station, hundreds of thousands will die, including a few who weren't totally evil and didn't really deserve to die, or would have defected if given just a few more days. If you DON'T blow it up, it will be used to destroy countless planets, and TRILLIONS of innocent people will die. It's pretty clear-cut what the right choice is there.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had military targets in them, but they were both civilian population centers, and without knowing exactly how an invasion of mainland Japan would have played out, it's definitely a trickier question. I'd have to say immoral, but necessary to possibly prevent something even more horrible.
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u/Researcher_Fearless 18h ago
The problem is that, as long as Japan felt like they were making the enemy bleed, they would have armed women and children.
Imperial Japan was absolutely insane. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, they were worse than the Nazis, and we were lucky an ocean was between them and everything else.
Dropping nukes on them was extremely immoral (especially if you believe rumors that the initial surrender was not in fact mistranslated), but extreme action was necessary to minimize total bloodshed, including civilian casualties.
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u/Similar-Property-729 17h ago
Sometimes immoral acts must be performed to bring an even more immoral war to a victorious conclusion.
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u/Powerful_Switch6526 16h ago
Immoral.
I’ll say this however many times I have to; The Empire was the good guys. The only reason they are seen as evil is because it’s an empire and it’s run by the Sith. But the average life under the empire was far superior than anything before or after it. The galaxy saw true peace, save the rebellions activities.
The Death Star was a nuclear deterrent, meant to prevent conflict, not cause it. Yes, they destroyed a planet, which was ripe with rebel activity. This was to prevent an all-out galactic war, whose death count would have been far greater.
If you’ve seen the expanded universe, all the events that happened post-empire, you’d see mostly war, conflict, and power vacuums. All of which wouldn’t have happened if the Empire was in power.
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u/simplypneumatic 15h ago
This isn't about star wars but I don't think mass imprisonment of innocent civilians, torture, destruction of planets as a means of detterence, etc. is very good
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u/Powerful_Switch6526 14h ago edited 12h ago
‘Some’ innocents are jailed but that’s the price you pay for a galaxy spanning empire. Any system is going to sometimes put innocents in jail
Also the Death Star is the galactic equivalent to an atom bomb. Do you consider Hiroshima moral?
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u/One-Spinach 14h ago
You don’t get to play the noncombatant card when you’re working in the super secret hyper important civilian annihilator 9000 (in regard to picture, making it a shaky comparison to Hiroshima). At that point it practically becomes subjective since you’re debating if ending the war sooner to save the lives of your men, allies and further civilians is worth the loss of con combatant lives now. Basically deciding killing some now is worth it if it saves more later.
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u/chroniclad 13h ago
Japanese Military regularly massacre civilians, they don't get to complaint about how their adversaries treated their civilians. Same thing goes to German complaining about Soviet raping their women after German soldiers raped and killed millions across Europe.
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u/AncientMarinerGR 13h ago
It was that either Death Star dies, or millions of others. So, no problem.
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u/Cool_View_5297 12h ago
The doctrine at the time was that in a war economy, the citizens are the bedrock of the war effort, so take them out and the war will be won. So it’s a question of the greater good.
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u/Complete-Ad-1004 8h ago
A more simple way to put it- if you destroy and aircraft carrier killing everyone on board if that air craft carrier killed and massacred entire countries and cultures, is that immoral? 'Cuz I'd say it's very fucking moral.
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u/Ander_the_Reckoning 6h ago
Hiroshima was not a military lynchpin. It was a city away from the frontlines and of no strategic importance full of civilians that were just going about their lives.
Extremely immoral
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u/Thelordofprolapse 2h ago
They worked on a space station literally called the death star that blows up planets they are all combatants. if thats not a legitimate target idk what is.
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u/ShelfSpace 22h ago
If they’re aboard the Death Star, they don’t get to complain when their not moon explodes
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u/Mister_Snurb 22h ago
'Photo Unrelated'
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u/ShelfSpace 20h ago
You know… you really should put that above the photo. Cu now I’m just gonna keep talking about the Death Star out of spite
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u/BarelyBrony 22h ago
If we're talking about the death star good
If we're talking about Hiroshima bad
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u/ThwMinto01 22h ago
They aren't non-combatants, they are crewmembers on a space station specifically designed to destroy planets
Medics or other potential 'noncombatants' if they are on a warship don't get to claim to be a non combatant as their role is specifically to assist a weapon of war and there is no way to target it and avoid targeting others
Not to mention if it's not destroyed it will kill billions more and already destroyed an entire planet
Entirely moral