this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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TOKYO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Japan on Sunday marked the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing on Hiroshima, where its mayor urged the abolition of nuclear weapons and called the Group of Seven leaders' notion of nuclear deterrence a "folly".

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

You know what's a "folly"? Not recognizing your war crimes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed. We dont hear enough for the US to confess to its war crimes, many of which are still going on today.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

See, that's the funny part: When the US bombs a hospital, it makes international headlines for at least a week. And the US acknowledges what happened. Same as when they accidentally shoot down a passenger plane.

In contrast, when russia shoots down a passenger plane, they deny that it even happened. And when they bomb a hospital, it's part of systematic hospital bombing campaigns like in syria or ukraine and they bomb one hospital every 2-3 days. And it doesn't make any headlines at all.

That's the difference between war crimes committed by the US and war crimes committed by, say, russia.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you mean like when Julian Assange published papers demonstrating that the US soldiers were killing civilians for fun and then they extradited him, imprisoned, also imprisoned Manning and wanted to keep everything a mistery?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah man and now imagine if that shit happened every day in the Iraq war and nobody ever reported on it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

The US can't even fess up and and rectify the sysyemic violence happening domestically to its first nation people, blacks and people of colour. How about they begin there and then atone for what they've done to the rest of the world. Ukraine is a US proxy war with Russia. And war keeps the US rich and powerful. Couple that with a crumbling education system, social support and religion and you have a decent supply of young men and woment to enlist. Nobody outside the US would buy the nonsense you just spewed. Go pick your cherries elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is kind of how I think about it. Westerners are as full of shit as anybody but there's an interest in being the good guys, which is unique at the block-level in this century.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The US still hasn't acknowledged almost all of its warcrimes in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and regularly deploys tear gas against its own citizens.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Use of tear gas in domestic riot control is not a violation of the chemical weapons convention.

https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/articles/article-ii-definitions-and-criteria

  1. “Purposes Not Prohibited Under this Convention” means:

(d) Law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes.

Is it bad when used unnecessarily, especially not with a riot? Yes. But to imply that the US is commiting a war crime by using it is misleading.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's not what the OP said, though. They mentioned war crimes AND tear gas.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The US would be doing a war crime if they were enemy soldiers. The US doing it on civilians is even worse, despite not being a warcrime.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, what I know about Japan makes me think this is self-pity thinly disguised as humanitarianism.

Like, I agree that they shouldn't have been bombed, but I also think Hirohito and friends should have gotten the same treatment as top Nazis. Somehow I don't think these guys would like that position. Without reading this I bet they haven't really proposed an alternative to nuclear deterrence either.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's something typical of the West.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not really, we know and often discuss the bad shit we've done. The racists and bigots among us never want to talk about it though, so maybe that's who you're thinking of.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

By and large, I would say this is not true. Ask any random folks who Pinochet and the Chicago Boys were, or ask about MKULTRA or COINTELPRO, or Operation Cóndor, and the best you're likely to get is a blank stare.

I think a most of the more terrible things the US has done is known by highly educated folks who were given the opportunities to learn them on specialized education tracks, but not by most folks on average, which really sucks =/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Shit, you can't even get a huge percentage of Americans to acknowledge crimes Republicans straight up admit to, nevermind asking them to acknowledge past crimes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It's sadly typical of many countries but in some you can at least read about them.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

Oh, OK, let's not go bringing up warcrimes on the anniversary that we unmade a city to prove a point.

Ww2 is over, let's try to move past it, we can bring all this shit up when someone tries to start ww3.