Originally Posted by
Douglas Wylie
The point was, that the Japanese were not so different in their waging of war than many other cultures, including the earlier days of our own culture.
Therefore, demonizing them for what happened in Nanking is hypocritical.
One major difference is that international law is something that evolves. A couple of centuries ago, it was a major tenent of international law that you couldn't interfere with what a government did to its own citizens within its own borders, no matter what. Today, we think that it is perfectly all right to intervene to prevent a government from carrying out a genocide on its own people. Likewise, in the Bronze Age, the rape and slaughter of noncombatants was a regular and accepted part of warfare. You did it, and you expected the other guy to do it. However, over time, it became unacceptable to slaughter civilian populations. Did it still happen from time to time? Yes. Was it condemned when it happened? Usually.
When people revolted against the Assyrian empire, or the Roman empire, the civilian noncombatants would be slaughtered en masse as a warning to others. But when the thirteen colonies revolted against the British empire, the Brits never considered setting Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to the torch as a way of quelling the rebellion. By the early 1900's, acts like the Rape of Nanking would be considered, I suspect, major violations of jus ad bello.
David Sims
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