And I think this says more about your perception of World War II than it does about mine. You are choosing to ignore all the stone cold facts in favour of "America the great defender" and refusing to see past it. Of course the USA used the situation to its advantage; it became the world leader after World War II, do you think that happened accidentally? It had Western Europe paying it back for 60+ years (I'm not sure if other countries still owe the USA war reparations) - the USA didn't have to do anything, plenty of countries opted out of World War II. You even admit to the truth of the situation without realising it - America stepped in because if it didn't, someone else would have (the USSR) - America saw an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. That doesn't mean America didn't stand up and haul ass to help win the war on behalf of the flagging European forces but I can't believe you're sitting here trying to tell me that it was some morality tale and the USA only got involved because it felt it had a duty to protect the world. That's bull****.

right.... so you blame us for taking too long to get involved in the war, (we were LATE TO THE WAR) and then when we did come in, and save your asses, we get accused of planning to take over the world for getting involved, and it was our plan all along to become world powers!

:joker:

listen to yourself.

Yes .........agree with this the Japanese seemed to revel in the inhuman way they treated allied POW, justifying it by saying these servicemen should not have allowed themselves to be captured alive therefore they are subhuman and worthy of any/all tortures that are then inflicted on them.

and Boy...!!! did the Japanese enjoy revelling in these tortures...sure they did !!!... so I think the contention that they have an evil streak hard wired into their collective DNA is well justified....!!!!

Can we please stick to the topic of this Thread and NOT get derailed into a Europe v America debate

I'm not even sure what the topic of this thread is. the original post is pretty vague.

Is it about whether the US was right to use nuclear weapons on Japan? or what?

Arista doesn't really speak in clear sentences, so I can't really say for sure... :conf:

And backed up with absolutely no evidence. All Germans enjoyed torturing Jews, all English people loved torturing everyone at one point, All Russians loved torturing it's own citizens, Every single Arab loved 9/11.

It's absolute nonsense, and I think you know it.

you are saying that because generalizations aren't 100% true it's not fair to make generalizations... but you are missing the point of generalizations...

by your logic we can't talk about any large scale issues, because all generalizations are unfair, right?

Right.............................................

That isn't what I said at all, where did you pull that one from? I didn't blame America for taking too long to get involved in the war, that's something you brought up that you claim I said (which I didn't). What I said was that America didn't get involved because it was trying to decide which side to take, for financial gain. Absolutely nothing wrong with that whatsoever, going to war is as much an economic decision as it is a political one seeing as when a country goes to war, its war efforts are dictated by the strength of its economy and you don't want to back the wrong horse and end up with an economy in tatters (see: Germany after 1945).

Where was I accusing America of anything? I'm pointing out stone cold hard facts. America became a global leading nation because it set up a network of debt collection and creating "special relationships" with Western European nations after World War II - it created institutions like NATO to form a network between these countries in order to create a sphere of influence that became increasingly important as the Soviet Union did the same and the Cold War escalated. Why are you even taking issue with what I'm saying? America became a global leader after World War II and still is now - that didn't happen accidentally, or do you think America somehow became a global leader by good fortune and it's just held onto that ability over the last 70 years by sheer fluke?

I think it was wrong to drop nuclear bombs on Japan. It's sad enough when incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima irreversibly damage the environment, leave areas uninhabitable, cause pollution and affect thousands of lives; without turning that disaster prone technology into a weaponised form used to punish innocent civilians who weren't hurting anyone. Evil is not hardwired into an entire nation's psyche from birth, evil actions are learned from people in charge teaching their subordinates; war brings the worst out in armies because of how desperate and frustrating wars are.

are you actually comparing nuclear power accidents to the worst war in human history?

i don't see how they comparable. accidents at power plants providing power for millions of homes, compared to dropping bombs on a nation that was trying to murder millions of lives...

not the same thing at all.

Not at all. If you want to say that all Japanese people have an evil trait, then by all means go for your life, but you're making a scientific claim in that instance, because what we know of genetics. It's no different, or less offensive as saying black people aren't as intelligent as white people.

If you want to generalise about English people moaning about weather, or cueing, then that's different - they are our idiosyncrasies. But when you dismiss a whole people as being this or that, then you need to do more than just state it.

No Alex, I'm not, and you know I'm not.

no, we were talking about specific actions by a specific nation.

you act like we can't say Japan did this, and Japan was that, because not EVERY SINGLE JAPANESE PERSON did it. then we can't talk about it at all, by that logic.

You can say some Japanese people did this, some people in Japan were that; the government of Japan was that, but you can't make sweeping statements that everyone from one country is evil because they're from that country...

Then you've missed the point of our whole discussion in this thread. To claim that's what I'm saying is stupid. Why would I try and deny history? Read the post that Nedusa made, then read my reply again where I posted the Sanford prison documentary.

There is nothing wrong with highlighting and facing up to the historical actions of a country - be it England, the US, or Japan, but to assign those actions to inherent traits of a peoples is nonsensical to me, and in no way valid.

I don't think it's fair to paint all of Japan as monsters, just like with Germany there were likely a large section of Japanese society that didn't agree to what was going on but didn't have the means to do anything about it. If we were put in the same situation we'd most likely go along with whatever just to save ourselves, it's easy to judge the citizens of Japan or Germany but we've never lived under the kinds of governments that they did during the war.

A lot of armies committed atrocities in WW2 because each side was demonised and the soldiers on all sides were lead to believe that the enemy was less than human. War brings out the worst in people. It definitely brought out the worst in America, the dropping of the atomic bombs were one of the worst atrocities of WW2 and innocent people are still suffering from it today. There was no excuse for it, Japan was on their way to surredering anyway. It was just a cruel attack against Japan's civillians.

You guys are just attacking the idea of generalizations in general. You are being too meta.

You are dissecting the idea of talking about Japan, instead of talking about Japan.

Well what do you actually want to say about Japan? I'm pretty sure we're all happy to discuss them, and I'm sure none of us would have issues discussing any unsavoury aspects of their past, but the issue here is that we wouldn't assign those actions to the fact they were Japanese.

no one was ever talking about every single japanese person that ever existed though, so why did you start talking about every single japnaese person?

I don't hate japnese people. :nono:

I have a sim that looks a little japanese and i love him almost just as much as my other sims.

Well then what are you actually saying Alex?

Scots really don't get irony. :wavey:

I don't think Americans do either.................

yea, that's why it's ironic that i said that... you just proved my point. :wavey: