The Ethics of Scenarios With SS

Jacometti

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Your point is what, exactly?

Do you think that I believe that internment of US citizens was just and moral?


No one claimed 'lucky'....however, they were quite a bit 'luckier' than the Jewish population of Europe...including the Low Countries, or the Caucasian...hell any non-Japanese population of Japan or Japanese conquered territories.

The point is....the moral equivalency argument is total rubbish.
The pictures you posted look to me like absolute US government propaganda.

These people were law-abiding citizens of a democracy, which was not occupied by the Nazis or Communists. So what "luck" should they have needed to stay out of internment camps ? Why were they treated differently from US citizens of Italian origin, for example ?

Moral equivalency is total rubbish, I agree - morality and ethics apply at the level of individuals. I consider all governments immoral by default, as they have no scrutinies committing horrible crimes and injustices in the pursuit of their interests. The Western Allies went to bed with the Stalin Regime and accepted their subjugation and abuse of 50 million additional non-Soviet people in order to defeat the Axis. How can we talk of moral high ground in those circumstances?

I can picture an alternate history, where the Stalin regime had been a bit more agressive in pursuing World Communism, invaded Poland and some other countries in 1939 and the West would have aligned itself with the Nazis to defeat that threat to world peace. The Pope certainly would have been with us.
 

Vinnie

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My Grandfather was interned after Italy declared war on the UK. He spent a couple of weeks in Peterhead Prison along with the rest of the Italian Community form Aberdeen. It was not too harsh. In fact after he was released into the care of the army...they realised he was born in Aberdeen so should not have been interned instead he was conscripted. He felt the conditions in the internment camp were better than the army opne.
 

Fort

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The pictures you posted look to me like absolute US government propaganda.
Ansel Adams took those photos...I don't know the context.

Here's the history and Adams' own words:

In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's best-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. In "Suffering under a Great Injustice": Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar, the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress presents for the first time side-by-side digital scans of both Adams's 242 original negatives and his 209 photographic prints (with the print on the left and the negative on the right), allowing viewers to see his darkroom technique and in particular how he cropped his prints.
Adams's Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style of landscape photography. Although a majority of the photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities. When he offered the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams wrote, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment…All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use."
 
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Fort

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no one said they were the same, far from it. One was an extermination camp the other an internment camp no comparison.

The Japanese photos are not from 'extermination' camps.

Some internment camps were by far better than some others, and early in the war the treatment was worse, no doubt because of Pearl harbor. I'm not trying to put a "value" on war crimes, that seems to be everyone elses job. There is no doubt if you are wieghing the enormity of the war crimes, the ones committed by the Axis Powers are the worst, hands down, followed closely by the Russians who were our allies. No attempt at "coloring with the same brush"...what I said is there was little difference to a causulty of either one, dead is dead. Are you trying to say that the allies committed no war crimes?

Nope. Those words have never been uttered or even thought by me.

or do you not like hearing about them?

Actually, I don't like to hear about them, to be honest. Every time one surfaces it makes me feel even more disheartened by humankind.

Are you a revisionist historian?

Far from it. I see the 'comparison, we are no better because we did bad things ourselves crowd' as disengenuous at best, and promoting a sinister agenda with the goal of demoralizing Western culture, at worst.
Study what was done wrong, learn from the mistakes of the past, and change course to a better track, don't stare at the mistakes so long you lose sight of the horizon.

Because thiers are worse ours don't count?

Absolutely not, however they don't tip the scales even close to even...they can't even be weighed on the same scale.

It seems maybe we need a thread where some here can rate the war crimes, on a scale of 1 to 100, and THEN it gives you all a great base to argue over.

I guess an analogy is you are in a white suit, while there is no argueing that one stain is by far worse than another, but in both cases the suit is stained.
No, the analogy is: one suit with battle stains of its own blood and not a small amount of the enemy's defending itself, and in the course of that defense a little mud and **** sullied the cuffs, the other, through its aggressive actions, drenched in the blood of innocents.
 

Blaze

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Last I looked, the American's didn't have skulls on their caps. They must have been on the good guys team!!!!!!
 

Robin Reeve

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Last I looked, the American's didn't have skulls on their caps. They must have been on the good guys team!!!!!!
I am positive that all soldiers have skulls under their helmets.:p
 

Bugslayer

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No, the analogy is: one suit with battle stains of its own blood and not a small amount of the enemy's defending itself, and in the course of that defense a little mud and **** sullied the cuffs, the other, through its aggressive actions, drenched in the blood of innocents.
yes sir...but the point is BOTH suits are stained.It seems many here like to point out the faults of others yet have trouble confronting thier own faults.

Fort, the western culture has been demoralizing itself all by itself, George Bush! Does anything else need said? An international joke that just kept giving.

Honestly does not speaking of our war crimes make them disappear? Instead of demoralizing Western culture, maybe admitting our mistakes, talking about them so they don't happen again would be the better course. As you said you don't like hearing about them, I'll bet modern germans don't like hearing about thiers either, but they get to everytime some nutjob objects to playing a SS scenerio...or heaven forbid would rather have thier little pieces of cardboard black (because everyone knows that black cardboard is inherently far more evil than the grey cardboard) LMAO I think there are too many keyboard cowboys here without anything better to do (a situation I find myself in every Winter)
 

Fort

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yes sir...but the point is BOTH suits are stained.It seems many here like to point out the faults of others yet have trouble confronting thier own faults.

That's not the point at all....and we have you and your ilk to constantly keep the fingers pointed at the culture you loathe, so I find no need to add to the hate.

Fort, the western culture has been demoralizing itself all by itself, George Bush! Does anything else need said? An international joke that just kept giving.

Bush had quite a few issues I disagreed with....but nothing like the current occupant. Yeah, the Left and their hero..Obama...what a joke.

Honestly does not speaking of our war crimes make them disappear?

I never once said don't speak of our missteps. But to constantly wallow in them, instead of acknowledging mistakes and moving on, is just giving aid and comfort to the other side...plain and simple.

Instead of demoralizing Western culture, maybe admitting our mistakes, talking about them so they don't happen again would be the better course.

Acknowledgement and discussing them is one thing....wailing and gnashing moaning about even the most minor of them is quite another.

As you said you don't like hearing about them, I'll bet modern germans don't like hearing about thiers either, but they get to everytime some nutjob objects to playing a SS scenerio...or heaven forbid would rather have thier little pieces of cardboard black (because everyone knows that black cardboard is inherently far more evil than the grey cardboard) LMAO I think there are too many keyboard cowboys here without anything better to do (a situation I find myself in every Winter)
I don't initiate the conversation...but I don't stand by and allow revisionism, nor moral equivalency crap...or I know I am but so are you....pass uncommented on.
 

alanp

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yes sir...but the point is BOTH suits are stained.

Honestly does not speaking of our war crimes make them disappear? Instead of demoralizing Western culture, maybe admitting our mistakes, talking about them so they don't happen again would be the better course.
But here is the crux, BS: our 'war crimes' are individual acts by soldiers going against official policy for the most part. Nazi, Japanese and some Russian crimes were committed when soldiers were following official policy. That's why some of us can't follow the "both suits are stained and we need to discuss it so that it doesn't happen again" line of thinking. It's impossible to eliminate all individual acts of atrocity--such is the nature of man; it is possible to eliminate (or at least stop justifying) government policy which leads to more and worse crimes. Talking about it can't eliminate all Ted Bundys but can make it less likely that a Hitler or Stalin comes to power.

The fire-bombing of Germany is the nearest thing to a 'crime' that US policy has instigated. (It was justified on a strategic level vs. Japan given their industrial factories being largely home-based.) Given the fact that US leaders didn't know the exact physics that created firestorms that is not a crime, (IMHO.) Axis leaders knew the physics of Zyklon, rape and bullets in the head.
 

mgmasl

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I wish to play.

I like playing the SS thing

Am I a bad person for doing so?

Scott
Yes.. If you decide to kill yourself -we can send you vídeos with options to do it - remember some of us need your ASL material
 

stuh42asl

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I do so like the responses to this thread, as a soldier our lives depend on our mates, and our leaders for the most part. Attrocities committed may at that time not to be seen as such. War is a maddness that infects men at such times. I was in Bosnia twice and seen the effects of ethnic cleansing and executions , I have seen villages denuded of men over the age of 6 years old, war is a maddness driven by the last gasp of politics. Remember men on both sides were friends once and neighbours. War seperates us for a time from each other as our goverments settle their disputes by our blood. And when the war ends we the people pick up our tools of peace again and work to repair that which what was destroyed. Politics and governments are really the evil of all men, in all countries wars are started by a desire for something, feed by the fuel of government and ignited by the passion of the people.
I think war is the only thing we as a race on earth excell at, which is too bad, we create brilliant engineers and scientists and academics who strive to better us , but are turned ultimately one way or another to be used for war. A board game is a good means to teach us the past so we can remember this one important concept we have all forgotten and our veterans remember. WAR IS HELL, there is no winner in war , it just gives us those that survive.

Shane
 

horseshoe

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I do so like the responses to this thread, as a soldier our lives depend on our mates, and our leaders for the most part. Attrocities committed may at that time not to be seen as such. War is a maddness that infects men at such times. I was in Bosnia twice and seen the effects of ethnic cleansing and executions , I have seen villages denuded of men over the age of 6 years old, war is a maddness driven by the last gasp of politics. Remember men on both sides were friends once and neighbours. War seperates us for a time from each other as our goverments settle their disputes by our blood. And when the war ends we the people pick up our tools of peace again and work to repair that which what was destroyed. Politics and governments are really the evil of all men, in all countries wars are started by a desire for something, feed by the fuel of government and ignited by the passion of the people.
I think war is the only thing we as a race on earth excell at, which is too bad, we create brilliant engineers and scientists and academics who strive to better us , but are turned ultimately one way or another to be used for war. A board game is a good means to teach us the past so we can remember this one important concept we have all forgotten and our veterans remember. WAR IS HELL, there is no winner in war , it just gives us those that survive.

Shane
This thread was really blowing and going when i first got on gamesquad and i was too new to reply.

Agree with all you have said, war is truly hell with no winners or losers.:dead: It is truly the one thing that mankind as a whole excels at.

As to the ethics of playing a scenario with the black SS counters, I ALWAYS use the black ones every time. Its a game not a politcal statement, and i'm not trolling trying to start this thread up again. There was enough trolling on it the first time around.:eek:gre:
 

tecatefil

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As to the ethics of playing a scenario with the black SS counters, I ALWAYS use the black ones every time. Its a game not a politcal statement, and i'm not trolling trying to start this thread up again. There was enough trolling on it the first time around.:eek:gre:
Being as I’m coming to ASL from SL back In the 80’s, I don’t even have that option, the price to play with Black SS far out ways the interest in reliving my CoI days, hehehehehehehe

I ran across this thread on a English expat forum for Munich.
http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t240947.html

I thought it was pretty interesting, made me think about the war from the “bad guys” point of view. Didn’t change my mind about any thing but made me appreciate How F-ING Lucky we are here in the USA/Canada Never having to go through the craziness of having our country/people's attacked/bombed on a MASS scale for what ever reason within modern history.

Phil:)
 
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