Free Republic

Absolutely that is one of my points.

We can comfort ourselves by self-righteously denouncing our enemies methods, while ignoring the inconvenient fact that we have ourselves used similar methods in the past.

Unfortunately this is unlikely to convince our enemies or neutrals, as they are all perfectly well aware of our past history and how it clashes with our present position that such methods are never acceptable.

Or we can recognize the facts of our past and attempt to demonstrate why our use of somewhat similar methods was appropriate, give the situation at the time, and those of our enemies today are not acceptable. This alternative has at least some chance of changing other's minds.

The alternative has no chance of doing so. Pretending that everything America has done is beyond criticism may make us feel better about ourselves, but it will certainly not convince anyone else that what we are doing now is right.

What I am talking about is that most Americans today seem to fall into one of two camps: 1. America is and always has been wrong in everything it does; 2. America is and always has been right in everything it does.

Since that is the position, nobody seems to want to discuss particular policies, as minds are already made up in advance.

I am attempting to argue for a middle position. America has been on net a very positive influence in the world. Which does not mean that many of our policies and the methods we have used were not wrong, on occasion.

I believe the most effective approach to making us an even more positive influence is to recognize our past missteps and misdeeds as the most efficient way to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. This approach is a balancing act, and carried too far it leads directly into the Clinton approach of traveling all over the world and apologizing for everything we have ever done (or not done).

My point is that the Allies chose to intentionally attack cities as such rather than military targets within those cities. The civilian casualties that resulted were not collateral damage that was a byproduct of attacks on military targets, which were inevitable given the highly limited accuracy of the munitions of the time.

Causing the maximum number of civilian casualties was the purpose of this particular strategy. America has largely chosen to forget about this aspect of our past.

My point is that the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, intended to cause civilian casualties, are not different in type from tactics we used ourselves in WWII. IOW, we cannot credibly denounce this method unless we are willing to admit that we ourselves used terroristic methods in the past and denounce them equally.

It is entirely possible to make a case, one that I happen to agree with, that the cause in which such methods are employed makes sufficient difference that our methods were at least partially justified, whereas those of Hezbollah are not.

But that is an argument about goals, not about methods.

why your Coke is made from high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar

There is increasing evidence that this switch is a major factor in the obesity epidemic in America. All so a few sugar farmers can be paid much above the world price for sugar and in the process come close to destroying the Everglades.

Calling this atrocity a "rape case" rather understates things.

If the soldiers are found guilty, I think the death penalty is appropriate.

I guess it depends on your definition of "accurate." Most of these bombs were considered "on target" if they hit within one-half mile of where they were supposed to hit.

The Syrian regime is not explicitly religious or sectarian, just as Saddam's wasn't.

However, as with Saddam's regime, most political power is held by members of a minority group. In Iraq these were the Sunnis.

In Syria they are the Alawites, a Shi'ite group that believes Ali was actually an incarnation of God. Given the general Muslim belief that God never was incarnated and that Mohammed was the last prophet it is not surprising that other Muslims consider them heretics.

Area bombing was supposed to make the Germans stop fighting. It didn't do that.

The invasion and conquest of Germany by the Allied and Red Armies did accomplish it.

Area bombing helped to some extent, but its contribution to Nazi defeat was not even close to being in proportion to its cost in dollars and in flight crew and civilian deaths.

Last week it was more hysteria on how New York is due to be destroyed by a hurricane any time now, and this week we're being warned about how the New Madrid fault in Missouri is due for another earthquake, which will destroy the entire industrialized midwest.

Given enough time, all these things will indeed happen. For instance, the New Madrid fault appears to have been causing major earthquakes every 100 to 200 years for quite a long time.

We're closing in on 200 years since the last one.

Birth rates are falling amazingly rapidly almost everywhere on earth.

The Population Bomb has become the Population Dud.

Not inherently very different from a blood transfusion.

If you don't kill the baby to get the cells. Otherwise-discarded umbilical cords pose no huge ethical dilemma.

But it was disproportionate payback. Can't have that.

The stated goal of "area bombardment" was to "break the German will." It failed in this. It had other military effects that contributed to the shortening of the war, as you note.

Every dead German was one less to pick up a gun.

True. Except that since most German men were off in the military, those affected by the area bombing were primarily civilians, mostly women and children.

The military effect of The Bombs were almost entirely on morale and psychology. The actual destruction and deaths they caused could have been (and were being) duplicated by firestorm raids on the Japanese cities. More people died in the firestorm raid on Tokyo than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

However, the psychological impact of a single plane dropping a single bomb and destroying an entire city must have been immense.

A while back I lived in Los Alamos, where the first bombs were built.

The local paper often reprinted stories from other papers, usually but not always from overseas, in which the reporter visits the town and describes the constant sense of overwhelming guilt the residents of the town suffered under. We were apparently all walking around with our shoulders slumped and unable to look a foreign reporter in the eye.

Quite amusing, actually.

“Hundreds of civilian men, women and children have been killed by what seems to be indiscriminate Allied bombing,”

It didn't just seem to be. It was indiscriminate.

Both the Americans and (especially) the British used an area bombardment strategy in which cities were attacked intentionally, with the explicit goal of killing as many civilians as possible.

This was supposed to "break the German will to resist."

Didn't work.

Redner is the owner of several local nudie bars. This type of establishment appears to be the highest-growth industry in Tampa.

She walked the streets with $56,000 sewn into her petticoat

Considering this is about $900k in today's money, this can't be considered fully normal.

In general, not a bad article, allowing for the leftist bias. There are no easy answers in the Middle East.

Some factual errors.

Syria and Hamas (and most of the Palestinians) are Sunni

Actually, the Syrian regime is controlled by Shi'ites. A splinter group that even other Shi'ites consider weird.

is there any Hillaryesque Democrat who would cheer retroactively about our Christian nation and its Army of the West defending white settlers by exterminating Native Americans?

For a group that was exterminated, there seem to be quite a few of them around.

I contend that words like "exterminate" should not be used casually.

Good point. The outrage is a trifle excessive for this one.

The year-older prospective bridegroom isn't going to be functionally able to consummate the marriage for quite a few year.

FWIW, these types of arrangements were almost universal in Europe till a few centuries ago, especially in aristo and royal circles. King Henry II turned a very young French princess engaged to marry his own son into his mistress.

I see no reason it would be impossible to expand the chain greatly while still maintaining the quality.

But they would have to maintain private ownership while opening additional packing plants, keep the high comparative wages for employees, and all the other things that allowed them to build to where they are today. IMHO, this just isn't possible in a standard fast food franchise setup.

However, whoever owns the company could make a lot of money very quickly by going public, franchising and letting the quality go to hell. Here's hoping whoever is in control isn't thinking only about dollars in their pocket.

This is, BTW, one of the drawbacks of capitalism. Somebody can almost always make a lot of money by cheapening a superior product. It takes the market a while to catch on and during the lag you can get very, very rich.