My position is its immoral. You think when going to war we should take all women and children as plunder? Kill all the men?
Yes and this is one reason why Deuteronomy 20 is INCREDIBLY IMMORAL??? YOu are just making my point and at the same time saying you don't agree in principle with my point? Could you be more vague? It's an immoral scripture, it's immoral; when used by the Japanese, So what is your issue?
What a crap argument. Possible the worst attempt to justify the immoral and disgusting scripture in Deuteronomy 20. Now I see your argument. Short version, massive fail. Massive. Fail.
Deuteronomy orders either kill all living things in 6 cites or in all others, make an offer of peace, if refused kill the men and take children and women as plunder.
What we did in WW2, fight the enemy until the soldiers are defeated. Allow any soldier who surrenders to be in prison and later released. There is no plunder of women? Killing of all men?
An atomic bomb killed most people in the city. So did the fire bombings of Tokyo. Invading the mainland was a terrible option so we destroyed cities until surrender. Mainland invasion was up next at the cost of 1 million AMerican soldiers and countless Japenese citizens. At no point did the military take any women and children as plunder. Yahweh thinks it's ok. At no point was all the men killed as Yahweh wants. At no point was every living thing killed, as Yahweh wants. Once surrender took place humanitarian efforts began. No slaves, plunder, forced labor.
Your comparison is a complete failure. The Deteronical laws are barbaric and written by an inhumane person.
Let me go through this again.
If I say NO to this - was it immoral to stop the Japanese continued plunder and wanton killing and abuse of people
then I'm saying NO to this - is it moral to let the Japanese continue to plunder and wanton killing?
The your conclusion is I'm accepting Deuteronomy?
Oh boy. I see how they get you to believe fiction.
Deuteronomy calls for doing the same thing the Japanese were doing. But to ALL OTHER NATIONS. To the other nations who are worshipping the wrong Gods , you KILL EVERYONE?
What we did is ignore Deuteronomy and fought the Japanese until we defeated the army. Then we took their army, disbanded it and sent them home. We then moved to Japan and helped them re-build. We did not kill all the men and take the women and children as plunder.
The atomic bomb did not kill every living thing that moves. It wiped out 1 city. There were millions of Japanese still alive. Millions of women and children not taken as plunder. There was no forced labor (that's only if they surrender right away). We did not kill all living things because they were not Christian.
The cognative dissonance in your mind at work to allow you to accept Deuteronomy 20 has become blaringly clear in this bizarre comparison.
The only people in your example following Yahwehs law were the Japanese. They were killing men and plundering women/children. That is the law in your book. Instructions for when going to war.
Kill all the men (not beat the army and then put them in a humane jail if they surrender), just kill the men and plunder. For they are yours, the spoils of war Yahweh gives to you.
2 cities were atomic bombed (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
United States policy has been written down, for all to read, and I read it once on the internet. It is to rebuild former enemies so that they are economically stable, and good trading partners, and they will resent us less for beating them.
In practice, however, such a policy led to the defeat of Germany in WW I, then the re-attack of Germany in WW II.
Everyone is quite aware that the US isn't rebuilding countries out of the goodness of their hearts. However, the US has contributed a lot to world peace (United Nations, for example), and humanitarian aid.
The US could, of course, adopt different policies:
1. Utterly destroy the enemy, salt the wells, etc. We might even rape the women (ala Sherman's march to Atlanta). Sure, Sherman was despised by the south for over a century, but he got the job done. Sherman, by the way, was the only one involved in a real war to take California, having attacked the tiny fruit drying town of Los Angeles.
2. Don't destroy the buildings or oil wells, capture the oil and buildings but kill the people and use the oil and buildings ourselves and occupy the land. However, if we tried that in the Middle East, the entire Middle East would join against us (as they did against Israel), and we'd have another 6-days war, and decades of terrorism (but that's what we have anyway). We could sell the country to neighboring countries, and let them sell us the oil.
Frankly, I think that choice 2 is the right one, because it would discourage dissention and future wars. Would WW II have happened if Germany had been utterly dismantled and sold to surrounding nations (at a profit for us)? Would any other nation try to attack the US if the US had the policy of killing the people and selling the real estate and oil?
If the US adopts a non-intervention policy (like the policy of President Woodrow Wilson), ruthless dictators like Hitler would rise to power. The phrase, "nice guys finish last" is likely true. Evil people rise and stay in power for many years.
The US made SALT agreements with Soviets, which limits nuke capability for the US and Soviets, but utterly ignores the rapidly growing nuke capabilities of small third world nations. Those tiny nations could weild massive nuclear power.
Sadly, the US focused on fighting a third world nation for the past 30 years (Iraq), and made weaponry suited for fighting it (such as attack helicopters with machine guns). Such weapons are useless against incoming nuclear missiles.
China just threatened Trump's administration by flying mach 10 missiles over the top of his aircraft carrier in the China Sea (a sea that China recently seized along with Taiwan and Hong Kong). The fact is, the US has mach 4 missiles at best, and they are no match for China's might. China is a manufacturing super-power (albiet, most things are crap). But, if it becomes necessary to go to war with China (and the current administration is certainly threatening both China and Russia), the US could not compete. Are we supposed to ask China to make more weaponry for us so that we can use that weaponry to attack China? China is also an economic super-power, holding most of the US National Debt. Are we supposed to tell China not to attack us, or they will lose all that money that we owe them?
We could have trusted in God (thou shalt not kill), and not attacked Iraq (since it was innocent of terrorism) as commanded by God in Revelation. But, everyone lacked faith in God, didn't believe that God had a plan to deal with terrorists in His own way, and didn't care if God could see the future and the miserable job that we did.
