From: visser@convex.com (Lance Visser)
Subject: Re: Gundam: Amuro here... (repost)
Organization: CONVEX Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx., USA
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 16:57:12 GMT
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In <1992Oct6.145508.19935@athena.mit.edu> cam@athena.mit.edu (Daniel Cameron Daly) writes:

+>Yes, there are people out there who identify with Amuro before Char.
+>Char advocated the deaths of billions of people through asteroid dropping, 
+>people who had committed no crime other than being in the wrong place at the
+>wrong time.  This sort of action cannot be justified by the honorable
+>intentions supposedly maintained by the Jions.  Throughout the course of human
+>history, atrocities have been committed against groups of people by 
+>military groups which believed that they had a good reason.  Look at the
+>Japanese civilians who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The majority of them
+>had not raised a weapon against the US, and still they died by the thousands.
+>Why did that weapons have to be used?  Because US strategists decided that
+>it would save the lives of many thousands of servicemen who would be
+>involved in the invasion of Japan. Was the deaths of so many justified?

	It is a misconception to think that only US servicemen were going
to be the ones doing the dying.  For most of 1945(and before), Japan did not 
have the ability or the humanity to take care of the territories it was in 
control of all over asia.  Look at the civilian deaths via starvation and 
malnutrition in the territories they occupied plus the things they did to
civilians themselves in various places.  If the war had continued, the deaths
among non-japanese asian non-combatents would probably have exceeded those
of active military men on both sides.



+>perhaps.  That is still a question being argued by historians today.
+>But what if we had had the capability to drop hundreds of nuclear bombs,
+>enough to completely destroy Japan?  To sink it into the ocean, make it a
+>burning rock on the bottom of the sea?  Is that justifiable to save lives?
+>All the untold hopes and dreams of millions ended because we didn't want
+>to risk ourselves?  Some will, of course, say yes.  I could never agree with
+>that sort of inhumanity, and so I guess that I am an Amuro.

	All the bomb does is put all the horrors of war into a small, neat 
no-risk package.  Ask the japanese about the millions of chinese, burmese, 
Indonesian and others whose dreams they ended.  
	I dont see that much moral difference between ordering a war that
will devistate a large area and kill millions one at a time or dropping
a bomb that does it instantly.

	I think that the turning point is when you go beyond just fighting
the enemy to the point where your talking about the complete destruction
of the enemy (i.e. sinking japan or turning it into a burning rock).

+>	To return to Gundam, as this has digressed greatly, I think that
+>the heros in the ongoing saga are those who are willing to risk their
+>lives for what they consider to be right, and to protect the lives of those
+>around them.  They might receive support from organizations which are 
+>themselves evil in order to battle other wrongdoers, but they usually act to
+>protect the innocent from those forces.  Amuro, Bernard, Camille, Jude,
+>Seabook, and many others risked their lives to protect against the
+>forces of immediate destruction.  perhaps they fought for an organization
+>so corrupt that it was slowly killing its own citizens, but at least they
+>defended the right of individuals to live out their own lives.

+>	As for Char, I am not entirely sure that his motives were as 
+>honorable as might appear.  In the original series, his entire basis for
+>action was revenge against the Zabi family.  When he had finished killing
+>them, he departed for a time, until the Titans forced his return into
+>the central conflict to protect the people he called his own, the spacenoids.
+>Only in Zeta Gundam were his motives noble, IMHO.  By CCA, he had become
+>as petty as those he would destroy, wasting valuable resources and risking
+>the betrayal of so many just to finish his battle with Amuro.  I cannot
+>respect his actions.

	In CCA, my view is that he had become so desperate to put an end to
the war that he was willing to sacrifice anything and anyone just to see it
ended in his favor.  It could be that he understood that jion was collapsing
and could not accept that or the loss therefore he gambled everyone and 
everything in one last desperate move against the federation.






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