Gasping for air from a trench in eastern Ukraine, an infantryman was ready for the worst when a suffocating white smoke spread into his position.
A Russian drone had just dropped a gas grenade into the trench, an internationally banned practice in warfare used to suffocate Ukrainian soldiers hiding inside. Forced out in the open, the Ukrainians immediately became vulnerable targets for Russian drones and artillery.
. . .
Russia has increasingly deployed chemical agents in its grand offensive to occupy the last cities in the Donbas region under Ukrainian control. The suffocation tactic is to take out entrenched personnel and dampen the morale of Ukrainian soldiers who – severely outmanned and outgunned – have been withdrawing village by village in the east for nearly a year.
Everybody always gets hung up on the nukes but I never see anyone complaining about the firebombing which killed many times more people (or the Japanese and their many attempts at biological warfare).
War is inherently bad, and using powerful weapons to end it sooner is the pragmatic and often moral choice. Would you have preferred that the allies invaded Japan, causing millions more to die? Or perhaps simply blocade Japan, causing millions more to die? It’s easy to be moralistic when you don’t have to make decisions that have millions of lives hanging on them.
Yeah, for sure let’s continue to 1up and glorify violence. While you do that, let me reiterate the point you seem to be arguing against:
More violence is not the solution to violence.
You can go on now.
If you ignore the many examples throughout history of more violence being the solution to violence, perhaps you may have a point.
I can go on now?
The need for bombing with nukes is a made up history. Japan was surrendering with just one condition that wasn’t a big deal and could be discussed in the peace treaty. But the bombs, specially the Nagasaki one, was not meant for the Japanese to surrender but as a show off to the USSR.
Because, believe it or not, [part of] the US saw the USSR as an enemy even during the war.
There would never have been any peace treaty, the allies had already agreed that axis surrender must be unconditional.
Japan having one condition would not have matteted, because the allies were not interested in a conditional surrender.