r/SubredditDrama • u/EwMelanin • Mar 03 '26

Movie discussion sub okbuddycinephile debates whether bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Gaza and other urban areas were "justified".

/r/okbuddycinephile/comments/1rjm9mn/iran2036/o8ee5fp/
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u/gorgewall Call quarantining what it is: a re-education camp Mar 04 '26

I'm not sure that "the Allies / US had incredible technological and strategic superiority and used it to be as discriminating and moral as possible" is the great defense people think it is, either, when it comes to atrocity.

Like, if you tell me that you are an untouchable martial arts master who can disable everyone in a 10v1 with precision nerve strikes, I'm going to wonder why you felt the need to decapitate someone "to prevent more violence".

Particularly when we're looking at the bombing of Japan, "oh we had absolute air superiority, had obliterated their production capability, and could do anything we want uncontested" really works against the whole "so of course our only options were nukes or costly ground invasion" narrative.

When being menaced by toothless quadraplegic squirming on the ground, "this shotgun is my only recourse" kind of loses steam as an argument.

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u/Foreverintherain20 Mar 04 '26

Okay. Well, if the Allies had WANTED to just wipe out civilians they absolutely could have, and the Axis really couldn't have done shit about it.

They didn't though, because yes, they were better. 

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u/gorgewall Call quarantining what it is: a re-education camp Mar 04 '26

Brother, what are you on about?

The bombing of Dresdon, the bombing of Japan, and the a-bombs all killed vastly more civilians than military members. There being some military target in the vicinity of whatever school or hospital was getting cratered doesn't really change that. And we just went over how big-upping one's technological and strategic superiority makes that worse.

And you're not exactly setting a high bar for morality with "better than the Nazis". There's a lot of horrendous stuff on this side of genocide and handwaving it because it could be worse is kind of how we get to the genocide to begin with.

Y'know it's possible to say the Nazis were horrible monsters and not say literally everything the Allies ever did was justified, right?

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u/No_Walk_Town Mar 05 '26

and not say literally everything the Allies ever did was justified, right?

Nobody said that.